Posted on 01/05/2003 12:13:45 PM PST by Incorrigible
Sunday, January 05, 2003
BY RAYMOND A. SCHROTH, S.J.
Associated Press
[Jersey City, NJ] -- A year ago tomorrow the Boston Globe started publishing articles on the Catholic church's sexual abuse scandal, which sent the Boston diocese into a tailspin and had a ripple effect throughout the country.
A few weeks ago, a coalition of the courts, the press, the people, and the parish priests toppled Cardinal Bernard F. Law. It was sad to see his fall; but it is tragic that some bishops, like Law, have carried themselves less as servants than as princes on thrones.
How should the story of this scandal best be told -- and what kind of writer should tell it?
1. The writer should start by describing what happened in the church at the end of the 19th century: Rather than modeling the growing American church on the structures of democracy, the hierarchy -- more political than pastoral -- set the patterns of institutional behavior that remain today, especially patterns of secrecy.
Next, the writer should move to 1983, to Lafayette, La., where a group of families told their bishop a priest had molested their children. Within 20 years this scandal, repeated throughout the country, became the battleground on which progressive and conservative Catholics fought for their vision of the church's future.
The conservatives have seen the sexual acting-out reflected in the current scandal as the natural outcome of Vatican II's opening the windows to modernity, letting Marx, Darwin and, above all, Freud blow in.
The advantage of Thomistic moral philosophy, taught in Catholic colleges until the 1960s, was its moral clarity. The social sciences were the camel's head in the tent, conservatives say, introducing ambiguity, a watered- down sense of personal responsibility, and an implied invitation to experiment, even for vowed religious. In their periodicals, conservatives today argue that homosexuals have taken over the seminaries and corrupted the church's morals and doctrines.
Progressive Catholics, on the other hand, attribute the scandal to the clerical culture: Bishops are chosen only on the basis of their doctrinal purity. This means they are, with few exceptions, company men devoid of courage and imagination.
For progressives, the scandal has revealed the cracks in a system of forced celibacy and the exclusion of women from the priesthood. Married bishops with children would not brush off reports of priests who molested children. Women priests would break up the all-male club in the clerical power structure. The issue of gay priests, they say, is a red herring. Gays can be as chaste and pastorally effective as straights, they argue.
2. Ideally, the book should be written by a Catholic scholar, or, at least, by a theologically sophisticated non-Catholic believer. A number of "lapsed," "raised," "collapsed," and other species of angry-ex-Catholics have used the op-ed pages to settle scores with Sister or Father So-and-So who rapped their knuckles in grammar school. This book calls for a surgeon with a scalpel rather than an executioner with an ax.
3. The writer should get the facts on the sexual behavior of celibates.
I have read of widespread clergy concubinage in Africa and Latin America; but I had long assumed that the overwhelming majority of American priests were both heterosexual and faithful to their vows. Now I read that perhaps half of those entering in recent decades are homosexual and that an alarming number of both gay and straight priests lead double lives. This may or may not be true. The writer needs to find out.
He or she also should consider the possibility that innocent priests have been accused, fired and sent to prison. Good priests, on the basis of a single ambiguous accusation, have been sidelined for the rest of their lives.
4. Many clerical-abuse victims have been willing to testify about their pain. But the writer's challenge will be to get inside the mind of the abuser.
The Rev. Donald Cozzens, author of "The Changing Face of the Priesthood," has chillingly described serial offenders as sociopaths, without remorse. Inevitably there will be chapters on the monster molesters -- like Boston's John Geogan and Paul Shanley -- whose relentless pursuit of vulnerable youths marks them more as moral freaks than as representative figures.
But the greater mystery involves not the pedophiles and serial offenders, who constitute a minority, but apparently successful priests, admired by their flocks, who crossed the line in their relationships with young people -- some only once -- and repented long ago. Even once is too often, but how could this one time have been prevented? What went wrong?
Were such priests just not immune to the virus of a sexually absorbed American popular culture? Did they lack the maturity to integrate their spirituality, work, natural tenderness and need for affection?
5. The writer will understand that villains will emerge, but heroes will be harder to spot.
During the scandal's early stages, victims, parents, lawyers and journalists raised hell; the final surge brought forth the Voice of the Faithful and their priest supporters. But sex, money and power all corrupt. Some priests claim their accusers are motivated by money; some accusations have been found to be false. It will take a wise author to sort out the truth in disputed cases.
Cardinal Law and his coterie of auxiliaries who were promoted to other dioceses are characters made if not for Shakespeare, at least for Arthur Miller -- climbers loyal to a system that had moved them to the previous rung on the ladder and would move them to the next. Each bishop perhaps was tantalized by the same demon that sits on the shoulder of every ambitious cleric: You too could be pope!
They saw the church as a secret society, not answerable to parishioners, the public or the press. Now the laws of an open society have exposed them.
Meanwhile the writer must discover the untold story -- which I read in letters and e-mail messages from all over the country -- of the alienation between bishops and good priests who once kissed their bishops' hands at ordination and now feel betrayed.
6. Finally, this book must speculate on the future of the church.
The American bishops may imagine that they can restore the status quo. Perhaps. This pope will soon pass away. The writer of this book, unlike church authorities, must listen to an international cross-section of theologians and pastors for a grassroots view on what the church should be. A startling picture will emerge. The American scandal has been a match to the fire, and the wind will carry the smoke across the world.
Raymond A. Schroth, S.J., Jesuit Community Professor at St. Peter's College, is author of "Fordham: A History and Memoir" (Loyola Press). His e-mail address is raymondschroth@aol.com.
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
The history of mandatory celibacy is not as settled as some would have you believe.
Its observance has never been universal either, especially in Latin countries.
It's interesting that those who are most vociferously in favor of mandatory celibacy for other men here on FR are not celibate themselves.
Because in my opinion, there's two things going on with the Catholic situation that doesn't apply to these other denominations.
1) The fact that Catholic priests are celibate leads people to view them very differently than other clergy, and
2) There's no allegations in these stories that higher ecclesiastical authorities in these denominations tried to cover up these crimes and transfer the clergy involved to other parishes.
It appears that most of these violaters went to prison, as opposed to the Catholic Church's policy of moving priest abusers from parish to parish.
Ministers were punished; priests weren't.
Well, yes, but the Protestants have been jailing their child abusers for years.
It's about time Catholics are getting in step with the rest of the world.
Since more married men molest children then single men, should we outlaw marriage?
Also cite an instance wherein Jesus seemed to advocate the multitudes or even disciples to go out and baptize and teach all nations what he had taught them.
It's not whining; it's my opinion.
I'll say what I think on a discussion forum, Antoninus. If you don't like it, just pass over my posts.
Have you suddenly turned into a fundamentalist? If it's not in the Bible, it's not of God?
Read some Church history. Priests and even bishops were married in the early Church.
Tell it to the victims. They could care less about the pace of change in the Church.
I would grant that celibacy,which was established much earlier than they are now telling us was one of those "hard" teachings that they tried to avoid. Nonetheless,my questions were not about what the early fathers said,my question to you was:"what do the Gospels say?".
I am beginning to think that some of this scandal was God giving us another oppurtunity to get it right. So please answer my questions,I have asked many Bible only Protestants and interestingly enough they can't answer it either. So don't feel bad.
Come on Sinkspur, you know that isn't the whole story. Church fathers, such as St. Augustine, St. Cyril, and St. Jerome, fully supported the celibate priesthood. The Spanish Council of Elvira (between 295 and 302) and the First Council of Aries (314), a kind of general council of the West, both enacted legislation forbidding all bishops, priests, and deacons to have conjugal relations with their wives on penalty of exclusion from the clergy. Even the wording of these documents suggests that the councils were not introducing a new rule but rather maintaining a previously established tradition. In 385, Pope Siricius issued the first papal decree on the subject, saying that "clerical continence" was a tradition reaching as far back as apostolic times. While later councils and popes would pass similar edicts, the definitive promulgation of the celibate, unmarried priesthood came at the Second Lateran Council in 1139 under Pope Gregory VII. Far from being a law forced upon the medieval priesthood, it was the acceptance of celibacy by priests centuries earlier that eventually led to its universal promulgation in the twelfth century. Even today, the binds it's married clergy in a vow of continence.
This has been my main problem with all of this. Why DIDN'T the parents go straight to the police? If they were cowed by the Church, then they are part of the problem for not doing justice by their children. I hate to be harsh, but for goodness sake, where were their MINDS?
Some might say it was the climate of "Father SO & SO always knows best" Well maybe that was the case in some areas of the country, but I grew up in the South, and never had that attitude about priests, and I learned that from MY parents. They knew, as I know, that priests are first MEN, they are human, and subject to the frailties and temptations of us all. They are NOT God and will never be so.
If the parents of these kids were intimidated, I feel sorry for them, but they need to take some of the responsibility as well. The Church would never have had the ability to move ANY of these men around if their butts had been sitting in JAIL where they belonged!!
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