Oh, that's crap. There are more than 100 victims of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy where the Church itself covered up the crime. You can play with definitions however you want, but that is not a misperception of the Church, but a realistic view of the actions of the Church.
I've been Catholic, and the Church exists to extend the existence of the Church. Any other action is in service to that goal.
And there is plenty of moral outrage for coverups, no matter the source.
Please. People hate the Church because it says it is one thing and is another. The media is critical of the Church because the Church has tried to make itself the authority on people's behavior, yet itself behaves in a reprehensible manner. Maybe it should just go back to being the Mafia's bank and just obliquely supporting drug cartels and human rights abuses via loans?
Your whole comment is just whataboutism. You've an opportunity to refute the assertion that the Church knowingly covered up abuse of children, and you've decided that if others have done it, it can't be that bad.
Heck, if the Church defrocked the abusers (those in need of its "cures") when they were reported, and took actions to keep them from abusing and answer for their crimes to the legal authorities, no one would have this (particular) problem. But the Church didn't, because it was protecting itself. The Church is more important to the Church than the victims of those crimes.
Hence, the Church exists to ensure the existent of itself, and all it's actions are in service of that singular goal.
Frankly, moral outrage at child sexual abuse and the systematic cover up of the abuse and protection of the abusers is justified. If the Bible is written in such a way that such moral outrage is a sickness, then it is truly awful foundation to base your morality upon.
But thank _you_ for minimizing the responsibility of those covering up the crimes and ensuring that they could continue.
Moral outrage is not a sickness - moral outrage is thinking God's thoughts after Him and so is to be commended!
Also, no evidence of any god exists, but that is another argument. Let's stick with arguments that postulates the existence of a God in the Catholic tradition.
First, according to the Bible, papal infallibility has whatever the Church does held as law in Heaven. Stupid rule, but there you are. Therefore, if we judge that covering up and enabling child abuse is immoral, then the Church is by its own rule, immoral. Well, that doesn't work out so well for the Church. So let's leave that aside.
The Catholic Church (and other denominations) tries explain evil (and thus side step the "All Good, All Power, and All Knowing -- pick two problem of God), but claiming that it is all part of God's greater plan. The difficulty here is that it doesn't side step the problem, but tried to solve it by adding a layer of abstraction to it. What you end up with is that God's plan has to be definitionally immoral because it came from the mind of God.
The answer is, of course, who can know the mind of God? It sort of kicks the can down the road much the way the Millerites (now Seventh Day Adventists) do on the end of the world and QAnon does with Trump coming back (was it January 20th? Or March 6th? Or March 20th?). Evil exists because God's plan demands it, but somehow removes the responsibility of God's plan from God.
So, the children were abused by the men acting in God's name because God's plan demanded their suffering, but God owns none of the responsibility because you can't possibly understand the reason that God required the suffering of those children. Nice work, if you can get it.
Free will (in the Catholic tradition) allows the ability to see the harm that actions do upon others, but somehow we are supposed to turn a blind eye to that done under the protection of God. Because those children were clearly not under the protection of God.
Divine Physician, indeed. Physician, heal thyself.
I don’t see anything about the general population, but to bring up schools is whataboutism. Unfortunately predators seek out jobs that will put them close to children. The Catholic Church coverups go up to the chain of command and they continue to let pedophile priests serve. These issues were well known to the church but they let abuse continue and did not turn priests over to the police. Are you not outraged by this? If your son or daughter was abused by a priest who has been abusing others for decades would you not blame the church?
"There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be."
In this case, I would include the majority of Catholics who are oblivious today about the very basics of what the Church believes, much less why, and practice it seldomly on one hand or cliquishly on the other. When the culture becomes hostile to the faith, it is little wonder that many fall away if all that kept them there was vacuous habit and social inertia. Obviously, if your ideas are primitive and stupid, and the culture within the Church enters a malaise, and the promised rewards of defecting and joining the popular chorus seem so enticing, then you will experience defections and apostasy. The intellectual mediocrity of people like Dawkins impresses only the uneducated or the mis-educated.
But frankly, the kinds of apostasies we're seeing in the US are mostly a formality. Those defecting are effectively apostates already. They're just not going through the motions anymore, either because they're tired of faking it, or because the social incentives of putting on appearances no longer seem to exist. You might even fear being seen as a "weirdo", though you will find that most people will admire, even feel intimidated by, a well-informed and educated Catholic who unapologetically and without a feeling of shame or cowardice is frank about his beliefs.
Of course, FWIW, the Church itself is growing in numbers. It is growing rapidly in Africa and in Asia, though Catholics, and more broadly, Christians are the most persecuted group in the world (persecution also tends to produce more conversions). The West is undergoing a period of cultural decadence. Whether it will survive or whether the carcass will rot out completely, I don't know. At the moment, it looks like the future of the Church is on those continents.
Feser has written a few other books that others might also find useful. I have greatly enjoyed his writing. Some find Peter Kreeft, himself a convert, a good introduction (his "Apologetics" for instance), and I've heard some good things about Scott Hahn. These are probably good entry points before venturing into the vast literature of the last few millennia.