We Are No Worse Than Society

William Oddie, an commenter/blogger for the Catholic Herald in the UK, wrote a story "Distressed by the Atheist Onslaught" where he talks about atheists "vicious irrationality."  PZ Myers, over at Pharyngula, has a nice post on responding to Oddie.  However, I wanted to address one point in the article that PZ did not cover.  Oddie states the following:

But things are as they should be. As I remarked in my last post, nobody said that being a Catholic was easy. And when the Church is being faithful to her mission, this is how the world will regard her. Oh, and this has nothing whatever to do with child abuse; our enemies know that the evidence is that we are no worse than representative of society as a whole (shameful enough though that is).

He says it.  Plain as day with respect to the child abuse scandal plaguing the Catholic Church, "we are no worse than representative of society as a whole."  Is this supposed to make us feel better?  In an ever increasing secular society, Oddie is satisfied that Catholic Priests are "no worse" than society.  If they truly feel that becoming more secular does lead to a decrease in moral values, I would expect that the Church would far exceed what is representative of society.  Does this not show that the absolute morality that religion claims to be essential to our society is indeed not essential?

It is always fun to see religious folks refer to atheists as irrational.  You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.