Posted on 02/26/2002 2:08:01 AM PST by 2Trievers
P> It's like being a 25-year-old Saudi Arabian in the first days after 9/11. That's how somebody I know described being a priest in the archdiocese of Boston today. Are you good ol' Father Joe, or a sexual terrorist? Do you head out boldly now in your Roman collar, or slink out incognito in khakis and jeans? You see a priest's picture in the paper dispensing ashes to a 12-year-old. You see Cardinal Law greeting teenagers at some weekend confab. It may be irrational and it's surely unfair but it's there nonetheless: that sense of oh-my-God-let's-hope-everything's-on the-up-and-up. The second-guessing: What are the teenagers and the 12-year-old really thinking? And the priest dispensing ashes: Is he being hyper-vigilant with his blessing hand lest anybody suspect him, too? These days, speculative ``impure thoughts,'' as we used to call them in the Baltimore catechism, can turn the most innocent scene into something sinister. Some weeks ago at a rite of First Reconciliation - the new name for what Catholics used to call first Penance or Confession - one mother tapped the shoulder of the mother in front of her in line. Both women had 7-year-olds in tow. Both were waiting to send the children into the small room where each child would meet with the priest - alone. ``Can you see the priest through the window?'' the second mother asked the mother ahead of her. ``My husband told me not to let my son in there if I can't.'' This mother had no reason to suspect the priest. He was just swept up in the bigger net, a suspect without cause, the symbol of the other, real ``evildoers,'' as George Bush just can't keep himself from calling terrorists, over and over again. Like the 25-year-old Saudi Arabian right after 9/11, he'd done no wrong. He just looked the part. And now looking out at us from this week's Newsweek is the red-capped visage of Cardinal Law. Right beside him is the screaming headline: ``Sex, Shame and the Catholic Church - 80 Priests Accused of Child Abuse in Boston.'' ``Is this what's going to dispel the problem?'' So asked one local tourism type fretting over the continued local after-effects of the World Trade Center attacks. The glorious Patriots' Super Bowl win, he lamented, was but a blip in a steady stream of dismal national news coming from here. At least, the magazine focused too on virtually volcanic eruptions of pedophilia in dioceses elsewhere, from Philadelphia to Tucson to Portland, Maine. ``So we're not the only ones,'' he said. But if we had ever expected to see our own cardinal grace Newsweek's cover, it was as a newly selected pope, not as scandal-enabler. This decidedly dismal state of affairs let some priests take heart in what one called the ``kick-ass'' denial yesterday in Lowell by the Rev. D. George Spagnolia. Accused, too, Spagnolia - to parishioners' thunderous applause - insisted he did nothing wrong and demanded due process from the church. And then, there are the priests like William Mullin of St. John the Baptist in Quincy - that rare reverend who's long spoken his mind, who both stunned and pleased parishioners when declaring from the pulpit long before all this began that it's high time priests married - not as a solution to pedophilia but to the near non-existence of new recruits. ``Even little old ladies,'' Mullin recalled, ``said, `Father, it's a good idea.' '' Mullin posed the question to Law at the Park Plaza convocation of priests in January. ``It's not a divine law. It's a human law,'' Mullin said. ``For the first 1,000 years, we had married priests. Peter himself,'' said Mullin, referring to the apostle who founded the church, ``was married. Jesus went to his house to cure his mother-in-law, remember?'' As for his brother priests suffering the effects of pedophile profiling, Mullin said: ``Look, this is a tragic situation. I know lots of priests are feeling really tarnished. But I wear my collar all the time. I haven't felt hostility. I was ordained 37 years ago. ``I guess I just love being a priest. . . . I guess there is nothing I'd rather be.'' Margery Eagan's radio show airs noon to 3 p.m. on 96.9 FM-Talk.
"I know we're not saints or virgins or lunatics; we know all the lust and lavatory jokes, and most of the dirty people; we can catch buses and count our change and cross the roads and talk real sentences. But our innocence goes awfully deep, and our discreditable secret is that we don't know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don't care that we don't." ~ Dylan Thomas ~
A married priesthood won't work, as the numerous but rarely reported cases in the Episcopal church proves. Indeed, since some liberal church seminaries have thirty to fifty percent gay students, one wonders where the reports are in those churches? But of course, those churches don't oppose abortion or the pc agenda.
As for Law, he is a moral weakling. "let's all get along".
Yet I can't help but think that there's a flip side to the scandal. When I look at how weak the Church's response has been to those lay persons who defy its teachings on matters sexual (the Kennedys come to mind), I wonder if the supposedly "pastoral" approach taken by churchmen like Cardinal Law has really stemmed from a guilty conscience--or a fear of exposure of the Church's own misdeeds. If so, all the publicity may actually result in a very beneficial purging of the Church's current leadership.
This tragic failing of the Heirarchy has been going on for years and the real Problem is the way Cardinal Outlaw and His Henchmen have been handling the problem.
If one reads the reports, there are no two Dioceses in America, who have the same policy towards this Disaster.
All Dioceses handle it in Secrecy which only exascerbates the mess and creates less trust, not to mention, the lack of trust in the priesthood.
A Lay Board must be set up to handle the problem Nationwide with a common and strict policy with immediate review and immediate sanctions toward verifiable abusers.
That some diocese have no coherent policy and some states don't require reporting of abuse would be laughable if it werent so devastating to the victims.
Based on All the Empirical data available it is obvious that the Heirarchy of the Church cannot or will not handle the problem with the expertise necessary to protect the children and cure the church of the sick Priests.
As a start Law, and his complete staff,lawyers,bishops and hired supporters must go.
Look at the diocese of St. Louis and Belleville with Bishop Gregory at the helm, they seem to be doing the right thing since the early 90's.
Card Outlaw knew of the Bellville/St Louis since bishop Gregory is the President of the Conference of Bishops.
At the risk of poor taste, this is wrong on several fronts. Within Catholicism, sexuality is required to be within a married relationship, exclusive as to both partners, open to procreation and thereby serving both unitive (love) and procreative purposes. If the idea, as suggested by Fr. Mullins is to achieve orgasm by whatever means possible, with due repest, Fr. Mullins is in the wrong Church and the wrong business.
If you believe that sexuality justifies orgasm by any old means at all, with whomever or whatever, and by whatever means, you think that man is just an intelligent animal (not too intelligent, but never mind). In practice, as our liberal friends have pointed out, most men have "preferences, the overwhelming majority of them have a "preference" which is exclusively heterosexual.
A normal heterosexual male, deprived by his occupation and vows such as priests, who are weak and determined to violate those vows will not lack for consenting adult female cooperation (often in very skilled and seductive form). Although it may be a major surprise to the Boston Globe, some remarkably attractive women, married and single, have been hitting on priests and vice versa, for a very long number of centuries.
Does anyone here know any really normal heterosexual men who, deprived of such comforts as those to which they have become accustomed with wife or female paramour will turn to the neighborhood ten-year old boy for what he may be persuaded or forced to offer? Neither do I.
This current campaign exposing the homosexual pederasts in the clergy, while meritorious in that they must be removed from the priesthood and enough sunshine will do the trick, may yet backfire on those promoters of the campaign who may be motivated by a desire to tear down Church authority by somehow painting the Roman Catholic Church as a lavender institution. A thoroughgoing purge of the lavenders togather with an investigation of seminary practices that PURPOSEFULLY turned away straight men in favor of homosexuals and child molesters, will not help the liberal termites in middle management.
This is about the liberals attacking the church; which is why the remarks about married priests is important. You see, if we allow married priests, then the liberals in the church hirarchy can take over (and allow abortion, gay marriage, divorce, women priests etc). Ironically, it is the same liberals in the middle management who (according to Andrew Greeley and Andrew Sullivan) allowed gay priests to be ordained and serve during the 1970's and 80s. Most of these incidents occured then, when some gay priests hit on older teenagers. (pedophiles are usually pre teen sexual predators; many of the accusations, if you use the math, are from kids who were over 13 or 14: where most gays become sexually active). A married priesthood won't work, as the numerous but rarely reported cases in the Episcopal church proves. Indeed, since some liberal church seminaries have thirty to fifty percent gay students, one wonders where the reports are in those churches? But of course, those churches don't oppose abortion or the pc agenda.
A survey of inner city teenaged boys in the Journal of the AMA shows that 10-20 percent had homosexual sex with older men by age 16. So I doubt that the priests were doing all the seduction. And many "gay" prostitutes are 14 to 16 year olds who hustle sex to buy drugs.
Maybe you should wonder why only priests are being accused, not the teachers, ministers, social workers etc.
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