As Mark Twain said:

History doesn’t repeat. But it sure does rhyme.

The “moral panic” we have witnessed in the past two months is, unlike the events of 2002, almost entirely a media-manufactured event. Nothing of the utter hysteria directed against Benedict accomplished anything good or revealed anything really damning against him. It was an artificial panic concocted by an anti-Catholic media that chose to wage war on the Church and on this pontiff using abused children as human shields. Someday, when cooler heads prevail, people will see this.