[maryz]

I read Keating’s article this morning. There’s a very moving passage near the beginning of his own experieince as an altar boy: in his life, “. . . the first introduction to the eternal, the sublime, the wonders of a promised salvation, was as an altar boy. . . . If I were special to God in heaven, I’d better act like it on earth.” He goes on:

And that’s what’s stunning and mystifying about the sex-abuse scandal. Didn’t these men learn a thing from ears in the seminary and at the knees of Christ? Didn’t they know they were supposed to be better than themselves? Didn’t they understand that they were expected to be bigger than themselves?

As an FBI agent, my service was to the shield. To fidelity. To Bravery. To integrity. The Hoover credo was brutal but effective. If you partner screwed up and you didn’t report him, both of you were fired. You never embarrassed the shield. You were expected to be bigger than yourself. This same tradition followed me as a U.S. attorney. As an officer of the court, one didn’t condone or suborn perjury. Winning wasn’t everything. You were part of a larger mosaic. You had to be better than yourself.

Naturally, to me in Boston, the description of the FBI in his day was almost as wrenching. And, of course, a lawyer to whom “winning isn’t everything” is a species pretty much unknown to me. Is the Church scandal merely part of a wider corruption, or has corruption in the Church actually infected the larger society?

I believe there are still some good religious orders. However, Keating dealt with some orders while he was on the committee.

The question of whether they were under the Dallas charter occupied some discussion. Then there was the issue of whether a “community” should shelter its own. Should a religious order turn a sex offender over to the police? Should it expel him from the community or should it continue to embrace him as a troubled member, though he stood accused of the rape of young boys?

One representative of the order community passed around a small pamphlet addressed to the accused, detailing ways in which such an individual might be comforted the travails of the accusation and the prosecution process. (One suggestion was that an offending cleric take up woodworking to reduce his trauma.) Nowhere was there any mention of the victims.

Based on the article, I like Keating. He does, BTW stand by his Cosa Nostra comment that so sullied the ears of the pure Roger Cardinal Mahoney (apparently he found it far more offensive than any aspect of the scandal itself). He ends with the quote from St. Catherine of Siena’s letter to Gregory XI, so familiar to us on FR: “So uproot from the garden the stinking weeds full of impurity and avarice and bloated with pride . . . .”

[ninenot]

Well.

This is a tough one. I think Keating is a good guy--but his allegation is serious. I notice that the Tulsa VG did not deny the allegation, nor did he answer the real question.

I hope K's story is not true--because I fear that it IS. I know more than a few snakes who wear collars (living in Milwaukee assures one of that...) and I despise them all, thoroughly. But one sort of hoped that Tulsa didn't have that problem

Question: is Beltran considered to be a 'liberal' or a 'conservative'?