690 instead of 185 abusive priests no big deal to six Illinois Catholic dioceses

We non-theists view every religion as a cult; the obsessive, even delusional veneration of an imaginary friend called God or its equivalent in differing cultures around the world. Cults can have positive and negative effects based on the very human qualities of the cult leaders who claim divine inspiration and infallibility for the cult they have established. Religious cults have a powerful hold on mankind, with over 95% of our 7.7 souls following one of roughly 4,000 religions worldwide. How much good such cults provide individuals or society is impossible to measure though it must be significant to attract that overwhelming portion of Earth's inhabitants.

How destructive they can be is a bit easier to gauge. We've learned from Illinois' Attorney General that the six Illinois Catholic dioceses have, in recent decades, under reported the number of priests accused of child sexual abuse by over 500. Now, two lawyers representing 300 victims of such abuse, will provide names and pictures of many of the accused not named by the Church as early as February. No other institution, religious or secular, has such an horrendous record of both incidence of child sexual abuse or coverup and denial of its magnitude. We must go back nearly 900 years to 1139 when the Second Lateran Council established priestly celibacy, a cult like structure creating both the opportunity for and perpetuation of abuse victimizing millions of innocents over the centuries.

I'm not opposed to having an imaginary friend to help navigate life's difficulties. I've got one or two myself. But I'm certainly not inclined to establish a cult, build edifices in its honor, or most importantly, staff them with spiritual leaders shackled by cultist restrictions on the most basic of life's drives and pleasures.