Well no, it really isn't. Calling it a "systematic cover-up" implies that it was, well, a cover-up. It wasn't. Or at least there's no evidence that it ever was.

The whole business has its roots in a 1930s-era piece of canon law called the crimen sollicitationis, "the crime of solicitation." The long story made short is that the church polices its own priests. It always has. The crimen sollicitationis specified the procedures for dealing with priests who used their position for prurient purposes — a canon crime politely called "solicitation" which covers the kind of abuses we're talking about here. A routine and universal aspect of the investigation of such cases was the placement of the investigation under seal to protect the privacy of both the accused and the accuser. In this way the crimen sollicitationis was no different, fundamentally, from any other bit of canon law governing the investigation and punishment of priests who abused their positions. Nothing was "covered up" in the sense of being deliberately hidden for nefarious purposes.

Now, with the benefit of hindsight we can ask two questions: First, did the church adequately handle the problem of priestly solicitation itself? And second, at what point should the church hand off such a problem to the local civil authorities?

I think everybody would agree that the answer to the first question has historically been no. Or at the very least, we can all say that it would have been grand if the church had been more aggressive in investigating and defrocking accused priests. This is not a controversial stance.

And as for the second question, well, that's hellishly more complex … but fortunately I don't have to answer it, because the church already has. Around 2000 the church altered its canon law regarding solicitation, particularly as it pertains to children. The rules have been completely changed specifically to prevent cases of abuse from falling through the cracks as they have in the past. As a part of the changes, the church is now much more aggressive about handing off cases of suspected abuse to local civil authorities when such cases warrant.

So even if the church had been doing things that warranted that kind of downright bigotry, they stopped fifteen years ago.

Anyway. Like I said. Long, complicated story.