Posted on 05/01/2002 9:38:22 PM PDT by kattracks
WASHINGTON, D.C.-- If I am accurately perceiving the national controversy over pederasty in the American Roman Catholic Church, I have to conclude that the Boy Scouts of America are vindicated. The only logical conclusion deducible from the media's outrage over revelations of pederasty in the pulpit is that the Boy Scouts' ban against homosexual scout leaders is OK.
The vast majority of irregularities reported in the present scandal have been between errant priests and post-pubescent boys. Apparently, the Boy Scouts' wisdom and prudence goes beyond tying knots and putting out forest fires. Maybe now the Boy Scouts will again have access to government facilities and to the largess of such charities as the United Way.
It is only a matter of time before the American Catholic Church adopts the same standards for the priesthood that the Boy Scouts have maintained for Scout leaders, despite the criticisms of the politically correct. Soon, if the spirit of reform in the Church continues, every priest in the church will be able to take the Boy Scout oath without winking. Perhaps Scout leaders will soon be admitted to the priesthood, and American intellectuals will begin to speculate on when the Roman Catholic Church will finally select a Boy Scout leader as pope.
The last few months' revelations that the Catholic hierarchy covered up for hundreds of priests having sexual relations with perhaps thousands of boys provoked anger all over America. Even liberal forward-lookers are angry, though now they are in the weird position of opposing homosexual priests while favoring homosexual Boy Scout leaders. Embracing such contradiction is for liberals their special art form -- but if it becomes too much a strain, there is a remedy to this contradiction, to wit: Liberals could drop their boycott of the Boy Scouts if the Boy Scouts promise to enlist homosexual priests as Scout leaders.
As for the American Catholic Church, its cardinals who recently met in Rome with Pope John Paul II have now adopted a policy for the "dismissal from the clerical state of a priest who has become notorious and is guilty of the serial predatory sexual abuse of minors." That really is not very convincing. For now, Catholic parents intent on religious instruction for their children had best send them to the Boy Scouts, where the young will also learn to identify poison ivy.
The church hierarchy bears a heavy responsibility for this scandal -- a scandal that abounds with ironies in a country that is windswept with conflicting notions of sex. Yet the church's teaching on sex, particularly sex in the priesthood, is not ambivalent. The hierarchy has known about certain priests' misbehavior. The errant priests compose a small percentage of the priesthood, but obviously they have acted with an astounding abandon that should have elicited action from the hierarchy years ago. Part of the problem is that the hierarchy is so insulated from normal Americans. In fact, I am not all that clear it is capable of relating to normal Americans.
At the expense of sounding crass, let me venture the comparison of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church (or any church for that matter) with the faculty of practically any public school system. Both clerics and teachers claim (not without reason) to possess a special expertise. Both claim to be open to the ordinary citizens -- in the case of the church, the faithful; in the case of the teachers, their students' parents. However, in the crunch, both church leaders and teachers follow their own professional interests. Their special expertise inclines them along on that preordained course. Try arguing with a cleric or a teacher about the way either carries out his or her duties.
The church's professional interest has been to avoid scandal and to keep as many priests as possible in the parishes. Thus, it has been ignoring a serious problem. The standard it adopted in Rome falls far short of addressing the problem -- "notorious" and "serial" sexual predators are but the worst of a bad lot. Any priest who cannot avoid sexual activity with young men, or for that matter with young women, has already shown himself to be unable to keep his word. Priests vow celibacy. For those who have broken that vow, the church ought to find a suitable monastery or retirement from the clergy.
The fact is that many dioceses for many years have been ordaining priests who were unworthy of the calling. I have known morally upright priests who have been objecting to this laxness in the church. Most have been ignored and exiled to remote regions. Now, their warnings have been vindicated. Bring back the vindicated critics, and remember how easily it is for hierarchies to lose touch with their constituents and with their purpose. And take the Boy Scouts' oath without winking.
Contact Emmett Tyrrell | Read his biography
©2002 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Unfortunately Townhall.com is not major media except among conservatives.
Yeah, a bunch of Cardinals and Bishops screwed up royally by sweeping these creeps under the rug. Heads should roll, and they probably will. But there is no way that this media pile-on cannot affect the way people perceive homosexuals in general. After years of the left trying to get people to accept "gays", the whole effort gets tossed in the trash for one orgy of religion-bashing.
Tyrell is right: this vindicates everything the Boy Scouts have been saying. And ordinary people -- not media liberals perhaps, but actual folks with brains -- can see this immediately. It wasn't being a "priest" that made those guys creepy, it was the fact that they liked little boys. Only the dumbest media liberal could believe that they can attack these molesters as "priests," and not have people figure out that priests who like little boys are a lot like the other creeps who like little boys. And we should get them all away from kids, not just the ones that happened to join the priesthood.
Isn't it the Anglicans who are so proud of their gay clergy? I guess their turn in the barrel is coming up soon.
Ewww!!! I've heard that joke.
Sorry to say but they're already in.
Associate editor Kathryn Jean Lopez wrote about "various stories of 'butch' counselors who wore men's clothes and had slicked back short hair" and one essay entitled "All I Really Need to Know About Being a Lesbian, I Learned At Girl Scout Camp." Other stories included memories of sleepovers and camping trips that allegedly became testing grounds for lesbian sex. According to Lopez, "Girl Scout staffers writing in the book claim that roughly one in three of the Girl Scouts' paid professional staff is lesbian." [emphasis mine]
America's Fifth Column ... watch PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
Download 8 Mb zip file here (60 minute video)
Should gay priests be allowed to adopt Boy Scouts?
(says sinkspur "Only if they're married.")
Or does he mean morally 'okay'? The Scouts don't need a scandal in the Catholic Church to justify their decision.
Whatever one thinks of homosexuals is really irrelevant isn't it. The Scouts simply have the right to let in whom they want.
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