the worst spin one could imagine

I am not sure whether I am pleased that the Catholic Church is so bad at spin (if they have not perfected it, this is a good sign) or just displeased with the latest word on the child abuse scandal. I saw a number of people on talk shows in the last week talking about this, and their spin was exactly the release the Vatican had today: "Hey, not just Catholics abuse people!" While I think most people would admit that this is true, and I am not certain that it is even more prevalent in any one church or denomination, it strikes me that this sounds an awful lot like one school kid saying the other kids do it too. Our response should be what my Mom's would have been, "Well if the Lutherans jump off a cliff, will you do it too?" (Not that I am saying anything about Lutherans, it just sounded funnier in my head than Baptists and Presbyterians was just too long, but I digress) My suggestion would be to say nothing at all rather than this, they are going to get eaten up for this mitigation and it serves no real purpose. Only people with real animosity towards the Catholic Church say that it is just a problem with them, and I don't think they really believe this to be true, unless they are loony (Not that I am saying anything about loony people). Just be straight (no pun intended) and to the point, tell people some priests did a terrible thing, we are putting measures in place to make sure it never happens again and we are truly sorry for any part we have had in making anyone's life worse. See, not too bad, I would accept your apology...especially if it was written and attached to a check for 660 million bucks.