I'm a Catholic and proud of it, but I would not allow a priest to be alone with my children. The corporate structure of the Church is one of its greatest strengths and its greatest weakness. Understand though, that while the connection between a parish and its bishop is fairly strong, the connection between Rome and some church in Ireland is very very loose.
The Pope is a Bishop. Cardinals are Bishops. I don't think people understand these things. The Catholic church has not changed in the dogma much at all in 1800 years. What does this tell you about individual Popes and their effect on the church? It tells us that the faith itself is so much more important than the structure.
The people that are criticizing the Church don't like it because of its structure. These problems are most likely worse in protestant churches (http://www.catholicleague.org/research/abuse_in_social_context.htm) but no one discusses this because the vast majority of these churches are only loosely related with other churches if at all. Inotherwords, the underlying hatred of the Catholic Church has less to do with sexual abuse than it does general hatred directed at large institutions.
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