Tristero, blogging at Hullabaloo, suspects that the offensive Good Friday sermon was a diversionary tactic:

If it is your job to manage an obscenely large and disgusting scandal, it is far, far better to shift everyone's focus onto some batty priest's intemperate and "unofficial" remarks than do nothing and have people learn even more salacious details about priest/boy buggery. And that is why that batty priest compared outrage over the coddling of sexual abusers to anti-Semitism.

Thomas Patrick Doyle, a Dominican priest with a doctorate in canon law and five separate master's degrees, sacrificed a rising career at the Vatican Embassy to become an outspoken advocate for church abuse victims.

Since 1984, when he became involved with the issue of sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy while serving at the Embassy, Doyle has become an expert in the canonical and pastoral dimensions of this problem—working directly with victims, their families, accused priests, bishops, and other high-ranking Church officials. Doyle wrote an important letter on Maundy Thursday about the roots of the scandal:

. . . Those who have criticized the hierarchy have been accused of dissent, disloyalty or worse. Victims and their attorneys have been demonized or told to forgive and move on. None of this rhetoric has stemmed the continued revelation of more victims and more cover-ups. The Pope and the bishops have not been able to move from defense to offense or even to guarded neutrality. The public apologies and expressions of regret and shame that have come from bishops have been rejected by the victims as insincere and self-serving. In his letter to the Irish people, released on March 19, Pope Benedict expressed what certainly sounded like sincere sorrow and regret. Throughout his letter however, he injected references to the institutional Church and even put harm done to the victims on equal footing with the loss of respect and confidence in the Church. This adds to the conviction that at the end of the day this is not primarily about healing the victims
or purging the Church of the source of the pain, but about power, papal and episcopal power, and the assurance that more of it won’t be relinquished. . . .

Clericalism, the belief that priests and bishops are fundamentally different from ordinary people and entitled to deference, obedience, and unquestioned respect because of their exalted state, is the source and support for these aspects of causality. . . .

To allow an objective, fearless, and radical examination into the causal relationship between the “scandal” and the system would lead to a risk that probably extends beyond the imagination of all bishops, namely the dismantling of the very structures that assure the existence of their world.

Although clergy sexual abuse has plagued the church for centuries, the current reaction from the body of believers, but especially the laity, has been significantly different from anything in the past. This reaction has had a seriously detrimental impact on the essential aspects of the church’s operations in the world. . . .

The image of pope and bishop is steadily shrinking because the deference, respect, and credibility essential to this image has been severely damaged and continues to erode in spite of all efforts to regain or at least hold on to what is left of their former stature. Catholics are walking away in ever increasing numbers convinced that they don’t need the control of the institutional Church for spiritual sustenance. The sexual abuse scandal may not be the only reason but it certainly is the dominant reason for the diminishing role and influence of institutional Catholicism.

The Church will survive but in the long run it won’t be in the form of a gilded monarchy with its stratified vision of humankind. In all likelihood it will be the Church as community and hopefully this Church will hold as its most important members those who are most vulnerable, most rejected and most in need -- not of control, but of love.

Ratzinger should step down.