Posted on 06/28/2002 11:17:26 PM PDT by kattracks
Edited on 07/12/2004 3:55:02 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
The appalling story of the pedophile priests deserves all the negative press it has been getting. But is the press critical of them because they are pedophiles or because they are priests? After all, there are many other pedophiles, some of them with their own organizations, and they are welcomed on our leading academic campuses, as well as getting a free pass in the mainstream media.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Hannah Arendt said that the great achievement of 20th-century totalitarians was to turn questions of fact into questions of motive.
C.S. Lewis, in an essay written in 1941 (expanded in 1944), noted the same tendency; he called it "Bulverism," after one imaginary Ezekiel Bulver who heard his mother say to his father in an argument, "Oh, you say that because you're a man!"
Lewis, however, would have the totalitarians share the credit with the Freudians:
In the old days it was supposed that if a thing seemed obviously true to a handred men, then it was probably true in fact. Nowaddays the Freudian will tell you to go and analyze the hundred: you will find that they all think Elizabeth [I] a great queeen because they all have a mother-complex. . . . And the Marxist will tell you to go and examine the economic interests of the hundred; you will find that they all think freedom a good thing because they arte all members of the bourgeoisie. . . . Their thoughts are 'ideologically tainted' at the source.
The Church is, of course, the one organization that is supposed to value Truth (the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth, one might say). I think the "big T" Truth is the only thing that, ultimately, can keep the "small t" truths from getting lost.
"Bulverism" is, of course, easier. The problem for debate is that, as Lewis points out in the same essay, two can play at that game.
All "successful" heresy (literal and figurative) depends on the fact that it takes a piece of the truth, which gives it an appeal it does not deserve, and distorts or overemphasizes it at the expense of the rest. Motivation is, of course, real, and many people do have ulterior motives for taking a particular position. We must recognize the tendency in ourselves -- and keep bringing ourselves back to seeking the Truth/truth (bishops, take a lesson!).
A much bigger problem for our whole society is how we have become unwilling to protect ourselves in a thousand ways from a thousand dangers — ranging from pedophiles to weapons of mass destruction — because we are so easily intimidated by epithets.
I think what we have lost is common sense.
Thank God someone has said this in print. This review board headed by Keating is supposed to be serious, but, no doubt, there will have to be a review board to study the review board (and so on). Just because it is finally up to the pope to decide (canonically) whether any specific bishop should go does not mean that a lay board (or any priests or bishops) cannot recommend in an issued statement or document proposal that bishops who covered up should resign or step down for other ministry work.
I did see Bevilacqua on a PA cable TV interview in which he did clarify that while the Church does teach forgiveness that "forgiving" a priest for sexual sins does not necessarily mean you keep him in active ministry. He can be forgiven (sacramentally) and also be removed.
They are going to have to deal with the homosexuality issue and whether certain prelates should step down. There also needs to be a clear statement about clergy who publicly defy the Church's teachings on sexuality. The gay agenda does not belong in parishes, seminaries, Catholic colleges, high schools, or religious orders. Least of all at USCCB meetings. All homosexuals are free to attend Mass and comply with Catholic teachings WITHOUT forcing everyone else in public gestures to approve of their homosexuality, something which is on very shaky ground ethically.
The faithful laity may need to consider how to stop funding any institution or ministry which refuses to honor Catholic teachings and restore dignity and morality to the institutional life of the Church.
Anyway, if you have the book, I was struck by pages 37 through 41 and the conversation between "the Slavic Pope" and the "Fox of Europe" - the conversation detailed why the Slavic Pope (to be) felt that he would tolerate dissention and agree to head "a Church already firmly, irretrievably and bureaucratically commited to a global sociopolitical agenda which would have been considered by the vast majority of his papal predecessors as totally alien to the Church's divinely decided mission."
Even as regards the pedophile priests, the media shy away from the plain fact that these cases are primarily cases of homosexual abuse of children. Fear of the homosexual lobby always seems to immobilize our crusading journalists...
The blaming of celibacy in the priesthood for the sexual exploitation of children has been a red herring. Most of these pedophile priests did not go after females. They wanted boys....
... no one seems to want to reconsider the widespread denunciation of the Boy Scouts for refusing to hire homosexual adults to be in charge of boys.
No one has to believe that every homosexual is a pedophile to believe that there is such a thing as a "fail-safe" policy in favor of children, such as the Boy Scouts maintain. In the current climate of opinion, anyone who even sought to do an honest study of the incidence of pedophilia among homosexuals would be jeopardizing his career.
As a conservative black academic, Sowell earned his stripes the hard way -- he's not going to knuckle under now!
I have heard about this woman for years, quoted by authors I respect. I have never read her.
Note to self: Read some Hannah Arendt
It may be that in the atmosphere of "ecumenism" surrounding and following the post-conciliar apocalpyse there was such a giddy enthusiasm to try to please everyone (including non-Catholics, non-Christians, secular liberals, socialists, Marxists, etc.) that some leaders in the Church left the drawbridge down. They forgot that Christ's "kingdom" is really not "of this world" and that there is a central drama of struggle between the powers and principalities of the world and the Holy Spirit. We are going to have to recover some sense of the spiritual mission and of the drama between good and evil which have always formed the basis of the Church's understanding of salvation. We need leaders in the Church who are spiritual men and morally mature individuals of great character. They will need unqualified dedication to the Christian faith in the orthodox sense. Not compromisers, appeasers, liberals, dissenters, and PR hams.
All you have to do is ask, "What does the bishops' Dallas charter protect children from?" The answer? Mostly, being sodomized by homosexuals posing as priests.
Agree with that wholeheartedly. Maybe it needs to be with letters to the editor -- approved by your priest or bishop??? Or directly from you????
... or is it because they are catholic? The media insists on using the term pedophilia when in fact the majority of sexual abuse cases involve male priests and young teenage boys.
From all that I've read over the past few months, the protestant religions are dealing with a much greater number of pedophilia cases amongst their married clergy. Yet we read little of this in the mainstream media.
Clearly, their agenda is to attack the catholic church. Which raises the question of motive. Why us? Is it that they despise the papal stance on abortion, or celibate male priesthood? Or is the agenda an even greater one ... take down the pope?
1.Corrupt the clergy.
2.Take down the Chair of Peter.
1.Corrupt the clergy.
Please get a grip.
The media may be powerful, but you surely cannot believe that CNNNYTWASHPOSTetc are the source of your church's problems, can you?
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