Much as the GOP base lives in a fantasy world that is increasingly out of touch with reality, the Catholic Church hierarchy also lives in some form of sick, morally bankrupt alternate reality where protecting sexual predators becomes laudatory if it means protecting the Church from exposure or embarrassment. The damage done to perhaps hundreds of thousands of children world wide does cause a ripple in the minds of the smug, self-centered, power hungry old queens who inhabit the Vatican and bishoprics around the world. As I have argued before, I believe the phenomenon stems from at least two things: (i) a celibate out of touch and often psychologically warped priesthood that lacks any normal emotional intimacy where children are seen as some different species and (ii) the truly sick obsession with all things sexual that so permeates the bitter old men at the top of the Church pyramid. It is a systemic problem that will not change absent an end to celibacy and a thorough house cleaning of those who have overseen and/or participated in a worldwide criminal conspiracy to protect those who in any other realm are seen as horrible monsters. A piece in The New Yorker looks at the warped world of the Church hierarchy. Here are excerpts:
For a moment, it looked as if Cardinal Roger Mahony, of Los Angeles, might be excluded from the conclave that gathers this week to select a new Pope. Under a settlement with some five hundred plaintiffs, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles had been forced to release the records of its dealings with priests accused of sexually abusing children.
Mahony was then the archbishop, and he and other Church officials exchanged letter after letter about one priest, recommending that he stay away from L.A., where he might attract unwanted attention, presumably from the law; he eventually admitted to molesting the children of undocumented immigrants, and allegedly threatened at least one of them with deportation if he told. Meanwhile, the Church provided the priest with residential treatment and a position in another state.
But last week, as Pope Benedict XVI was preparing to step down, Mahony was sending sprightly tweets from the Vatican: “Good weather forecast for this week in Rome; no rain. Mid 50s during the day, upper 30s at night. Great Holy Spirit weather!!”
Mahony’s defenders say that he is being singled out, and they have a point. Anne Burke, an Illinois judge who served on the Catholic Bishops’ advisory board, told the Times that too many Church leaders had “participated in one way or another in having actual information about criminal conduct, and not doing anything. What are you going to do? They’re all not going to participate in the conclave?”
What is distinctive about child abuse in the Catholic Church is not its existence, or even its coverup; in recent months alone, we’ve seen evidence of similar cowardice at Penn State and the BBC. What is distinctive is that Catholic officials can find a higher purpose—protecting the sanctity of the priesthood—in shielding abusers, and a spiritually rewarding humility in enduring criticism of their conduct. Mahony has been blogging about the public disparagement he has received, and he compares it to what Christ withstood, urging the faithful to join him in exploring what it is to “take up our cross daily and to follow Jesus—in rejection, in humiliation, and in personal attack.” But, unlike the criminal prosecution of perpetrators—or real Church reform—that doesn’t do much to help victims or to prevent abuse.
[Benedict XVI]did not dismiss bishops who had looked the other way, and he did not inaugurate an accountability at the highest levels, as the abused and their advocates had hoped.
Benedict’s term, in fact, has been characterized by an intensifying disapproval of would-be reformers. In a homily last spring, the Pope denounced the efforts of a reforming priest in Austria, where a hundred and fifty thousand Catholics have left the Church in response to revelations of sex abuse in that country, and called upon Catholics to embrace instead “the radicalism of obedience.” . . . . surely a Church that expels a priest for advocating women’s ordination faster than it does men who have been credibly accused of raping children is in some kind of trouble.
[C]elibacy conferred—and, despite everything, probably still confers—an aura of purity, of exalted separateness, that protected priests from suspicion, and earned them the sometimes undeserved trust of parents and children.
Nobody really seems to believe that this conclave will pick a Pope who would consider removing leaders like Mahony or ordaining women or allowing priests to marry. But so many people worldwide—especially those who have been ignored, mistreated, or excluded by a Church they love—would rejoice if it did.
I have no regrets about leaving the Catholic Church. I would feel dirty if I had remained a member. What amazes me is how those who consider themselves decent, moral people can remain a part of an institution whose leadership has so thoroughly been documented to be morally bankrupt monsters. I find it dumbfounding. They are akin to the "good Germans" who claim to have known nothing about the Holocaust even though new research reveals that such claimed ignorance was likely virtually impossible. Doing nothing can and does allow evil to occur.
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