Disgraced religious figure Paul Shanley

Defrocked priest Paul Shanley,78 at this writing in 2009, was one of the most flagrant offenders in the Roman Catholic Church's sex scandals of recent years.

Shanley was born in Boston and was ordained at age 29. More than a decade thereafter, he became active in the North American Non-Boy Love Association, an organization that openly advocated sex between men and young boys.

Father Shanley practiced what he preached from the time he was a hip-style young priest until his imprisonment many years later. By himself, he cost the archdioceses of Boston a great deal of money that had to be spent to settle complaints about his pedophilia.

The larger question is how and why the church, which certainly knew about Shanley's dreadful activities, allowed such things to continue. The "princes of the church" who were his superiors would seem to have a great deal to answer for in this scandal.

Shanley was fired from his Boston parish in 1993, moved first to Connecticut and then to California, and was arrested in 2002 on charges of child rape.

In 2005 he was found guilty and sentenced to 12 to 15 years. In 2009, his case is set for review following his appeals.

If there is indeed a hell, one suspects that people who sexually abuse small children will eventually find that their final resting place is in its sub-basement.