Pedophile! Pedophile!....man of God?

I was raised in the Roman Catholic church, and while in my youth I viewed it as simply parental obligation as I've grown older I've found solace in the church. Over the past decade or so, it's come to light that there have been some Catholic priest who've abused their position and sexually abused young children in the church. This is both reprehensible and inexcusable. What angers people far more than the fact that these things occurred is the fact that a good number of these things were covered up.
Has this been going on in the church for some time? Obviously it has as people who've survived this come forward all the time and tell their stories. Should we ignore these stories? If so it would be at our peril. Should we act as if these occurrences are the exclusive domain of the Roman Catholic church? We'd be stupid if we did. Every so often I turn on my television and hear of some small town preacher or a local one for that matter accused of taking sexual liberties with the youth of his church, but more often than not as they are not Catholic it rarely warrants the big press and follow up stories that it would get if the clergyman were a Catholic priest.
In the song "Ode to Billy Joe" a young man leaps off a bridge to his death because he's tortured by having been molested by a church elder. Literature and popular culture are smattered with stories of the young and naive being taken advantage of by some in positions of authority in the religious bodies to which they belonged. Is it justified? Of course it isn't.
In the midst of the Catholic sex scandal I grew weary of non Catholic holier than thou types saying disparaging things about ALL priest because of the actions of a few. In the time that I've spent in the Catholic church as a child and as an adult I've never been privy to ANY behavior from my priest which I'd consider inappropriate. I wager that most clergy regardless of their faith are honest men who have dedicated their lives to the practice of their faith.
Recently the head of a mega-church was accused of bribing young men (with church funds) into sexual relationships with him. Do I believe there is any truth to the allegations? Honestly I've not seen enough evidence one way or another to either assume he's guilty or innocent of the charges. If it is true I'm upset that a clergyman would do something so reprehensible while preaching God's word, but what truly bothers me is that the same people who would incinerate every Catholic priest on earth simply because of a few sick men are coming to the defense of the accused minister. I even heard Reverend Al Sharpton asking if we as a people should even scrutinize the "private lives" of our clergy. I found this a tad odious. Men of the cloth are supposedly carrying the mantle of God. When one is a standard bearer for his God he IS held to a considerably higher standard than some politician or public figure. There are those who would say that the Late Reverend Martin Luther King engaged in activities that were quite unbecoming a minister. I don't know if those allegations are true or not, but as Reverend King was attempting to get a good portion of America to give basic human dignity to another portion of it and he was NOT attempting to get donations to give to mistresses on some church payroll, comparing MLK to some of todays wanton clergy is like comparing apples and water mellons.

I won't openly attack someone else's faith, or what I perceive to be "cult of personality" ministries, but I have to say I have a hard time reconciling those who would lambast my faith (from which the MAJORITY of Christian religions are derived with the exception of Coptic, Greek & Eastern Orthodox) while acting as if somehow theirs exist in a vacuum. We live in a country that is supposed to be devoid of religious litmus tests, yet I guess that only applies if one belongs to the "right" religion.