Reading through the Boston Globe's archives of its coverage on our local child-molesting priests, and the church hierarchy which needed the threat of subpoena to make them report child molesters in its ranks to law enforcement, I ran across an article with this chilling passage:

Until recent years, the church also had little to fear from the courts. But that has changed, as predicted in a 1985 confidential report on priest abuse prepared at the urging of some of the nation's top bishops, Law among them. "Our dependence in the past on Roman Catholic judges and attorneys protecting the Diocese and clerics is GONE," the report said.

The frightening part? The implication that there was a time when Catholic judges could be relied on to hush up atrocious crimes by priests...