Yesterday's Chicago Tribune featured an op-ed by Anne Burke, former interim chair of the National Review Board. Money quote:

It appears that even after years of investigation of child abuse by priests, the cover-up of that abuse has been further institutionalized. Some of the alleged crimes in Philadelphia transpired while the National Review Board of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, on which I served, was trying to get to the truth of the scandal.

She concludes that, in light of the events in Philadelphia, it's now clear that despite assurances to the contrary, "little has changed" with regard to real reform after the scandal. Burke led the board after the resignation of its first chairman, former OK Gov. Frank Keating, who compared the behavior of some (not all) of the bishops to that of the Mafia. Back in '03, he said; "To resist grand jury subpoenas, to suppress the names of offending clerics, to deny, to obfuscate, to explain away; that is the model of a criminal organization, not my church."HT: Bob Nunz