Lies, Common Scolds and Media Bigotry

The Roman Catholic Church, my church, is being lied about, subjected to the obscene rantings of modern-day common scolds, and made a victim of some of the most overt examples of just plain bigotry I have seen in my long life.

During colonial times in New England, certain shrewish women notorious for their constant and unremitting harping about everybody and everything were accused of being "common scolds." Those harpies found guilty of the offense were sometimes tied to a chair attached to long poles and dunked like doughnuts in the nearest body of water until they were choking and sputtering.

What a splendid idea, certainly one worthy of revival in this day and age when our modern common scolds are being given free rein to vent their spleen to their cold heart's content, often on the op-ed pages of America's largest newspapers, or during certain panel shows on television.

Thoughts about this historical practice came to mind when I read pieces about the scandal by two of the nation's premier common scolds, Miss Maureen Dowd, and Bill Clinton's ever-worshipful acolyte at Newsweek, Eleanor Clift.

As reported by Zenit news agency, writing an op-ed piece in the New York Times on March 20 Miss Dowd lumped together in one paragraph "the church subsidizing pedophilia" along with "Taliban obliteration of women; the brotherhood of al-Qaeda and Mohamed Atta´s misogynistic funeral instructions; the implosion of the macho Enron Ponzi scheme."

Zenet further reported that Dowd "returned to the subject four days later, this time to comment on the reference to the sexual abuses made by John Paul II in his Holy Thursday letter to priests. She gratuitously alleged that the Pope 'did not write the letter,' to which she managed to avoid adding her own lines expressing what she thought the Pope really meant.

That didn't stop her on April 14 when Miss Dowd published a parody titled "The text [and annotated subtext] from a letter sent on Friday by Cardinal Bernard Law to Boston priests." Here are a couple of examples cited by Zenit of Miss Dowd's imagination gone bonkers:

* After Cardinal Law´s expression of condolence for the suffering of people, "Like many of you, I have had the ... painful experience of meetings with those who have been abused as children, as well as with their parents, spouses and other family members," Dowd added her own line to show what she thought the Cardinal was really thinking, "(Will they ever stop whining?)"
* His following words of sympathy, "The unbelievable horror of these accounts can only dimly reflect the awful and often ongoing pain of the reality," received this flippant remark from Dowd: "(Thank heavens Rome cares more about the third world. Who needs Boston when you´ve got Lagos?)"

Turning to Eleanor Clift, the Washington correspondent for Newsweek treated the magazine's readers to an expose of her limited - and distorted - grasp of the facts about the Roman Catholic Church in a "Web exclusive" article on March 29.

Readers, Zenet noted, "could have been justifiably confused as to her grasp of Catholic matters. First she compared the Church to Congress: "Congress has made some changes, and maybe the church can, too." Then the abuses were likened to the Enron scandals. A few lines later, Clift compares the Church to the communist parties of old, and then decides, on second thought, that it is really "like the Taliban."

Clift wasn't finished. "For good measure, she quotes an anonymous member of Congress [the article is full of anonymous quotes] as saying, 'Then I think about the pope – and how sclerotic and calcified the church is.' Not content with this, Clift affirms, contrary to all recognized historical knowledge, that "The papacy as we know it is a 19th-century convention." The article finishes with a gibe at the clergy: "The priesthood attracts sexually conflicted men."

An interesting observation from Clift, an unabashed admirer of one William Jefferson Clinton, certifiably one of history's most notorious "sexually conflicted men."

Clift, it appears, can be horrified by sex scandals in the clergy. In the presidency, however, when occupied by Mr. Clinton, anything, including rape, is just hunky dory with Eleanor Clift.

Then there is the matter of lies - outright lies being disguised as legitimate headlines such as those that refer to the "pedophile priest" scandal and to the victims as "children."

Let's get this clear right now. The scandal, bad as it is, has little or nothing to do with pedophilia and little or nothing to do with children. The victims, as Ron Dreher pointed out in a recent National Review Online piece, were minors, some as old as 17, and they were victims of homosexual priests.

How old is 17? Well, when I was 17 I was a United States Marine headed for the Pacific Theater of Operations in World War II. Had any priest or anyone else for that matter, then or earlier, ever tried to molest me I would have fondled his genitals with my right knee. Perhaps teenagers are less combative these days with all this conflict resolution nonsense being drummed into their heads.

Anyway, here's what Ron Dreher wrote: "The first thing to understand about the Catholic Church's pedophilia scandal is that it is not technically a pedophilia scandal. Despite the gruesome example of defrocked Boston priest John Geoghan, whose case started the tidal wave of revelations, the overwhelming majority of priests who have molested minors are not pedophiles – that is, like Geoghan, among the rare adults sexually attracted to pre-pubescent children. They are, rather, "ephebophiles" – adults who are sexually attracted to post-pubescent youths, generally aged 12 to 17. And their victims have been almost exclusively boys."

Dreher quotes New Jersey lawyer Stephen Rubino, who says that of the more than 300 alleged victims of priest sex abuse he has represented, roughly 85 percent are boys, and were teenagers when the abuse occurred. He cites Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons, an eminent Catholic psychiatrist who has treated scores of victims and priest-perpetrators, as reporting that 90 percent of his patients were either teen male victims of priests, or priests who abused teen boys.

"I think we have to ask the question: Why are 90 percent to 95 percent, and some estimates say as high as 98 percent, of the victims of clergy [abuse] teenage boys? ... We need to ask that question, and I think there's a certain reluctance to raise that issue," said the Rev. Donald B. Cozzens, author of "The Changing Face of the Priesthood," on a recent "Meet the Press."

The reluctance arises, no doubt, partly out of a fear of antagonizing homosexual anti-defamation groups, who resent the stereotype of male homosexuals as pederasts, Dreher explained.

"It's much safer to focus inquiry on the question of mandatory celibacy, or the issue of ordaining women," writes Zenit. "Yet it defies common sense to imagine that an ordinary man, having made a vow not to marry, is therefore going to be sexually attracted to boys. Indeed, suppose the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s had admitted married men to the ranks of the Catholic priesthood: Would a single adolescent boy molested over the past 40 years have escaped his fate? Similarly, if women had been ordained, would that somehow have made sexually predatory gay priests.

"The portrayal of the clergy as being infested by sexual deviants, as some reports have done, is also erroneous," Zenit charged, citing Father Stephen Rossetti, a psychologist, who countered that myth in an April 11 interview with CNN. He explained: 'The numbers we have right now suggest that about 1.6 to 2 percent of priests are sexually involved with minors sometime during their career. So what we see is this number is probably the same or maybe even less than in society. So it´s not really a ´priests´ problem.´"

Another charge is that the Catholic Church is more likely than other churches to have sexual abusers in its ranks, because of its celibacy requirement and its view of sexual morality. "But they have little hard data – nationwide statistics or scientific studies – to support their position," observed a March 10 article in the Washington Post.

In fact, Zenit quotes the Christian Science Monitor, which wrote April 5, "Despite headlines focusing on the priest pedophile problem in the Roman Catholic Church, most American churches being hit with child sexual-abuse allegations are Protestant, and most of the alleged abusers are not clergy or staff, but church volunteers." This information comes from national surveys conducted by Christian Ministry Resources, described as "a tax and legal-advice publisher serving more than 75,000 congregations and 1,000 denominational agencies nationwide."

Now the national media know all these things. They are fully aware that this is not a pedophile priest scandal. They know that in all but the tiniest percentage of cases, the victims were not children. Yet they persist in mislabeling the crime and the victims, and they run like scared rabbits at the very mention of the homosexual aspects of the story.

Wrote Dreher: "For journalists, to confront the issue is to risk touching the electrified third rail of American popular culture: the dark side of homosexuality. Yet when we learn that the greatest crisis the Catholic Church in America has ever faced has been brought upon it almost wholly by male clerics seducing boys, attention must be paid to the man behind the curtain."

The mainstream media, almost exclusively composed in its upper, elitist ranks of paganistic Marxists, have showed their hand as bigoted anti-Catholics in other ways, mainly by seeking out so-called dissidents masquerading as Catholics such as one Francis Kissling of the misnamed Catholics for a Free Choice - an organization heavily financed by the abortion industry - for comment on the scandal they know full well will be hostile to the Church.

The other night, for example, CNN featured Kissling in a segment on the scandal. And on Monday night, CNN's Connie Chung presented the Rev. Richard McBrien, a Notre Dame theologian widely known as a man who dissents from Church teachings.

In an article written as far back as 1977, in the June 24 issue of The Guardian, McBrien revealed his agenda:

"Optional celibacy for priests, the ordination of women, policy-making authority for diocesan and parish councils, re-admission of many divorced and re-married Catholics to a sacramental fellowship, and a critical re-interpretation of Humanae Vitae — all of these are issues which, until resolved, will continue to impede the Church's progress toward effective reform and renewal."

Elimination of priestly celibacy is now being touted as the answer to priestly sex abuse of minors, which is about as an effective way of accomplishing this goal as changing your tires to fix a dead battery. There is simply no connection.

And the media know that. They should also know that the Pope has ruled out the ordination of women, and all the McBriens and radical feminists in the world are not going to change what is an immutable article of faith in the Roman Catholic Church. Change it and the church ceases to be Catholic. They don't like it, of course, so they'll continue to take advantage of every opportunity to use it to browbeat the Church.

Perhaps one of the most illustrative indications of media hostility to the Roman Catholic Church has been the speculation that the scandal will somehow destroy a Church that has withstood far greater challenges in its 2,000-year history.

News anchors are leading off their stories about the scandal by calling it "a crisis of faith." It is not. It is a crisis of confidence in the bishops who run the dioceses. The faith of the overwhelming majority of American Catholics is unshaken. They neither seek nor will accept changes in church doctrine. As a priest friend once remarked, "the Church has lasted for 2,000 years in spite of the bishops."

What many are demanding, in addition to changes in diocesan policies on sex offenders in the priesthood, is a return to the more rigid practices of the past. Their reaction to the scandal and the wave of hostility against the Church it has unleashed is a recognition of the fact that Catholics are, and always have been, at odds with the world. It has always been a matter of Ecclaisia contra mundi - the church against the world - which Christ told us is not his kingdom.

The great majority of Roman Catholics continue to receive the sacraments, which are valid even when coming at the hands of sinful priests. They recognize the difference between the structure and the doctrine they embrace. That may disappoint our critics in the media and elsewhere, but it's a fact they are going to have to recognize. You can kill us, but you cannot defeat us, because only our bodies are exposed to you; our souls are elevated to higher things and out of your reach.

In recent years, in a dimwitted and largely cowardly effort to get along with the world whose values and morals are the exact opposite of those demanded of Christians by Christ, the bishops have too often compromised with that world. They have not only allowed allegedly Catholic public figures to openly thumb their noses at such Church doctrines as opposition to abortion, they have welcomed these turncoats at the communion rail and publicly curried their favor.

If anything good can come out of the scandal it will be the reinvigoration of the Church contra mundi - what is was meant to be.

I like most of the article, in fact, because I said almost the same thing on another thread the other day, that this scandal is being used as a vehicle for a larger attack on the Catholic Church as a whole, and by extension, all of Christendom.

Where the author stumbles is in his attempt (rightly or wrongly) to minimize the situation by haggling over semantics and the difference between boys under 12 and boys between 12-17. Trying to split hairs between pedophilia and garden variety boy-buggering to lessen the offense is not helpful.

IMHO, the Catholic Church just needs to take its lumps, be more careful who they ordain in the future, defrock child-molesting priests and hand them over to authorities (after the Church determines their guilt separately in a Church inquiry) and get on with it.

What Eleanor Clift says about anything is irrelevant. The woman wouldn't last ten minutes in a Moslem country, for instance.

This type of scandal is going to pop up from time to time in any organization that has a self-perpetuating hierarchy. Eliminating the hierarchy merely contains the scandal to a smaller institution, e.g. a single church. The RC church probably should not be reorganized as a result of this particular dustup, nor should it's lay members all join the Methodist Church.

Transferring church property titles to lay church committees might help because this would eliminate real estate management from the local bishop's portfolio. This, in turn might enable him to pay more attention to the moral strength of the priests who work for him. (The Orthodox do this.)

Where the author stumbles is in his attempt (rightly or wrongly) to minimize the situation by haggling over semantics and the difference between boys under 12 and boys between 12-17. Trying to split hairs between pedophilia and garden variety boy-buggering to lessen the offense is not helpful.

I agree with you here. It reminds me of the semantics used by X42 to prove he did not "have sexual relations with that woman."

I agree with everything you say here *except* for only handling over molestors to the authorities *after* the Church determines their guilt.

A Church inquiry is fine for determining whether the priest should be defrocked.

But, just as molesting teachers aren't entitiled to a Union run "inquiry" before the police are called, so priests should not get the benefit of such a proceeding to get off the hook.

The Church should be forced to treat these cases exactly like any other person. There is no "freedom of religion" issue involved in reporting child molestation allegations. If a school has to report allegations and a therapist has to report allegations, the Church should have to report such allegations too.

It is up to the criminal authorities to determine whether the allegations are valid---it is not up to the Church to do so. Especially, since the Church admits that their determination of these allegations must include consideration of whether the priest was "notorious" and whether he is "sorry." Neither of these concepts are part of the criminal law.

After the priest has been convicted, the Church can hold their own inquiry as to whether he should also be defrocked. And if the courts find the statute of limitations has run, the Church should still hold an inquiry about defrocking the priest. Molesting priests should not be allowed to remain in the pristhood merely because of a criminal law technicality. In fact, because of the breach of trust involved, the Church should treat them just as harshly (if not more so) than the criminal justice system can.

But such inquiries should not be used to protect priests who might be buddies with the Bishop---or who might have some information the Bishop would rather not be disclosed. Both of those things have happened in the past and that is why the Church is in the trouble it finds itself today.

The police should be called as soon as any allegations are made against a priest.

If anything good can come out of the scandal it will be the reinvigoration of the Church contra mundi - what is was meant to be.

We were better off anyway when we knew who the real enemy was and they thought of us as still potent.

The fact they think us toothless, IMHO, accounts for all the stroking we got in advance of the election and with the indulgence that was asking the Pope's opinion in advance of the inevitable ESCR decision.

I don't remember Bush's leaving his audience with the Pope and announcing (as he did after a meeting with the Log Cabin Republicans) that he felt he was "a better man" for the conversation.

This could explain why the homosexuality (and otherwise "enlightened" approach to all things sexual) is not a factor in the Catholic or Condit sex scandals and politicians still feel perfectly comfortable not only appointing open homosexuals (as did Clinton) but appointing them specifically because they are homosexual, as has Bush.

We are all supposed to cheer W, don't you know? He quotes from Catholics every now and then, and he went to see the Pope. Isn't that good enough? ... gag.

Dr. Alice von Hildebrand in her discussion of spiritual blindness made pointed use of the President as someone who did not have any serious defect of vision but is totally blind in the most important moral and spiritual sense i.e., that right in front of him is the evil of abortion and commerce built upon the murder of children about which he does nothing of consequence and in the face of which he makes a bargain that is sheer parody of Solomon.

Miss Dowd lumped together in one paragraph "the church subsidizing pedophilia" along with "Taliban obliteration of women; the brotherhood of al-Qaeda and Mohamed Atta´s misogynistic funeral instructions; the implosion of the macho Enron Ponzi scheme."

All of these 'Catholic in name only' Catholic-bashers are the very same ones who have pushed organizations like WomanChurch and Call to Action down our throats. These radical 'clubs' are the very ones which have endorsed gay and lesbian ministers, and which have brought us to this point of spiritual misery. Have they just forgotten their past endorsements or are they just attempting to cover their backsides just in case somebody does a Nexis search on them?

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