Holy Week and the Nonsense Continues

It continues from the Church and its defenders, desperately trying to alienate further multitudes.  And it continues from anti-Catholics and the anti-religious who want the institution brought to its knees, some justified because of personal betrayal but many out of sheer, gleeful contempt.Ross Douthat, a conservative columnist for the New York Times, blames the crisis, in part, on the sexual revolution of the 60’s and 70’s.  The insinuation is that some of the abuse, particularly long term abuse against post-pubescent boys by priests, is explainable by the (literally) “revolutionary” effects of that era.  Douthat, in a blog post, attempts to shore up his argument by citing the formidable John Jay study that I’ve referred to here previously.  Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, makes the oft-heard but no less despicable argument that homosexuality is to blame, since most of the boys abused were post-pubescent.  Donohue doesn’t even attempt to cite the John Jay study (which belies his central claim) or anything else.  He’s got his scapegoat and an army of the uninformed applauding his analysis.  Finally, many liberal Catholics and anti-Catholics continue to see the roots of the crisis in priestly celibacy, which has clearly “warped” so many of these priests and turned them, through repression and obsession with the forbidden, into predators.Nonsense, all of it.The Church has a problem with predators because predators have found in it a haven, period.  Whether these predators prefer boys or girls, pre-pubescent or adolescent, has nothing to do with society’s temperature on sexual expression or the sexual preference of the predators.  They prey where they can, like any hunter does.  Non sex-offender priests with homosexual urges, throughout the ages, have taken adult lovers within the priesthood or without.  Were they emboldened to do so more during the post Vatican II sexual revolution?  Probably.  Nevertheless, they did not and have not feasted on the emerging, volatile sexuality of adolescents by betraying their trust, destroying their faith, and using as a weapon the very thing the child was brought up to turn to in times of crisis and discomfort.  That’s what a predator does.  And what they have done over the centuries, let alone in the decade and a half of the sexual revolution, should never be dismissed or excused as free-love experimentation between otherwise “well meaning” or “normal” priests and minor children.  Well meaning priests, gay or straight, who struggle and fail with celibacy turn to adult lovers, period.  Priests who manipulate, con, groom and then molest even older adolescents are sex offenders, period.  The Church has more than its fair share not because she is manufacturing them but because she has proven to be the best and largest hunting ground of perhaps any institution known to man.If the current Pope or anyone else involved in the shame and tragedy of this cover-up can be forgiven at all, it’s perhaps because of three things:  The fear and distrust of outside, civil authority because of past persecution, an over-reliance on the power of psychotherapy and treatment to “cure” the problem, and the doctrine of reconciliation through confession that the Church values so highly.Let’s be clear:  None of these things excuses the ocean of evil and resultant misery.  Even the lofty and still appealing idea that a person can enter a confessional and come out clean and ready to do better does not excuse the reckless judgment calls the Church hierarchy made over the years, at the expense of her most vulnerable followers.  But these points, when fairly considered, provide a slightly less cynical view than that peddled by anti-religion enthusiasts like Christopher Hitchens (although he does make some fair points in a recent Slate article).  Still, the Pope is not, as Hitchens claims, a “mediocre Bavarian bureaucrat.”  He is in fact a remarkably intellectually disciplined and erudite man as was his predecessor.  But this makes his missteps and continued ignorance on this subject harder to accept, not easier.  I don’t fault the Church for not understanding sexual predators earlier.  Our understanding of them now is still emerging, and good research is only decades old, if that.   The Church has been victimized by predators also.  But now she is gambling with her future by looking for a scapegoat in homosexuality and refusing to come to terms with the countless victims whose lives these infiltrators have stained forever.This crisis has been the spiritual heartbreak of my lifetime.  Armed with the professional knowledge I’ve been blessed with from working with the finest minds in the business, and being utterly powerless to affect any change from the pew I kneel in, makes it that much worse.  And the nonsense continues.