It's true. I cannot stand Malachy and whenever he is on tv, I switch it. But Frank to me was more complex. His long-practiced narratives about his experiences blunted the raw pain of them over the years, and by the time we read them, they were almost funny anecdotes. As the great Carol Burnett has said, "Comedy is tragedy plus time." But they may remain unfunny in the heart of the one abused, even if he forgave them or made light of them.
In 'Tis, McCourt described an attempted molestation by a priest when he first arrived in America as a somewhat naive 18-year-old. For all we know, it was more than an attempt, and doubtless quite traumatic, just when he thought he was getting out of the woods. Or the story could have been symbolic of what many Irish children experienced. Assuming it was true, that incident and his negative childhood experiences with the local clerics were what I would call "unhealed." The Catholic Church did not begin to address publicly the emotional wounds caused by priest abuse until the past decade. Ireland is only now coming to terms with clergy abuses:
Ireland's Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Releases Final Report (Clergy Abuse News, May 22, 2009)
I am not trying to re-indict the Catholic Church; I believe that the media give schoolteachers a pass on abuse that they would dwell on if it comes from the clergy. But the clergy do have a special obligation to be the ambassadors for Christ's mercy in this world. I can only imagine the confusion the child Frank McCourt might have experienced when shame was combined with the neglect and indignity of poverty due to the father's abandonment, intensified by his role as the oldest, and the "man of the house" after his father left -- a role too big for a child and about which he doubtless suffered resentment, and guilt for leaving his mother, as well. It can make an impressionable child or youth think that the entire morality of the community is based on hypocrisy. That is why those moments he wrote about in which priests understood him sang out to me, even if he did not recognize them himself as tenuous anchors to truth (speaking here about his look of surprise when I pointed one of them out to him-- see post 29).
That said, as one becomes an adult, there is no excuse for laziness about settling spiritual questions by reading the scriptures and making a personal confession. I have been thinking so much about whether in his last years, knowing he had a terrible illness, he straightened out his thinking. ("re-pented"). I do hope so. His book no doubt had helped so many Irish and Irish-Americans to understand their difficult relatives and their tough-it-out mentality -- it did me.
Thanks for your post.