The latest priest scandal: thoughts by a trusting Catholic
A few weeks ago, it was revealed that a priest in Ireland had been sexually abusing children for decades. Then, cases began popping up in Germany. This latest priest- pedophile scandal is horribly painful for me– as an educator, a woman, and a practicing Catholic. The pain of it exists on several levels: the first, knowing that more children have been brutalized in such a vile way; the second, that men in positions of trust have abused and destroyed that trust; and the third, that the secular media, sniffing scandal, is taking every opportunity to raise their diatribe against “organized religion” to new heights.
As a person who has devoted her career to protecting and helping children, more news of the sexual assault on minors is like pouring gasoline onto an already open wound. A great deal of my energy goes to finding ways to keep my hope and faith alive that some small part of my work, and my colleagues’ work, can actually contribute to making the world a safer place for children. My faith is tested daily.
As a trusted adult, students have come to me to share all manner of things: one was gang-raped as part of gang related initiation, another lived in a homeless shelter, another crossed the U.S.-Mexico border by himself, another was a prostitute, another lived in a refugee camp, another was a child soldier. The list of what I have been told goes on and on. Some of the things I have been told have less social shock value, but have been obliterating painful for my students all the same: the effects of divorce, of living in a hook-up culture where having sex with strangers is perfectly acceptable, or of just plain ol’ feeling alienated from classmates. I attribute much of the pain they experience to adults and our sense of entitlement to live out our “issues” at the expense of kids– and I am particularly furious about how irresponsible sexuality affects our children.
The continuum between adults’ insatiable need for constant sexual expression and how our children are sexualized is rarely discussed. By which I mean– where is the firm line between healthy sex and exploitative sex? We live in a world where we consistently divorce our loving, emotive hearts from our sexual bodies: whether it is recreational sex between “consenting adults,” or hypersexual behavior pictured on billboards, TV, the internet, magazines and movies at every turn. Is it really all that surprising that all this cultural training in how to separate the physical sex act from our deepest emotional needs can influence how an unhealthy individual thinks about the appropriate ways to touch children? Is it really surprising that our culture could lead a person to mistake affection with seduction, and cause frustrated desire to become exploitation?
And yet, the secular media– while promoting rampant sexual expression in tabloids, TV, and the internet to great financial gains– is shocked to discover that priests are also susceptible to the insanity that our culture has wrought. It’s the wildest case of throwing stones with one hand, while sinning with the other, that I have ever witnessed. Yes, it is particularly horrific when trusted advisors– priests, educators, mothers and fathers– abuse the children in their care and then cover it up by any means necessary. And, I am the first person to say frankly that there is plenty of misconduct by members of the church–just because one calls him or herself a Catholic does not mean that person is a true believer and has changed their behavior to follow. But the reasons that many journalists are citing as particular to Catholicism, thus making the sexual abuse of children somehow more likely in the Catholic world, are just plain bizarre.
For example, many cite celibacy, and the fact that priests don’t marry, as the cause of their abusive behavior; yet having a sexual relationship with their wives has hardly stopped millions of fathers from raping their sons or daughters. Others take a punch at the priesthood being reserved for men: Maureen Dowd’s op-ed in the New York Times claims that this latest scandal means that nuns should take over the church. Now, we can talk about female leadership in the church at another juncture (and I have written about it elsewhere) but I can’t believe that this laissez-faire claptrap about women somehow being impervious to power corruption is actually still circulating in mainstream opinions. Finally, plenty of secularists like to say that the priest-pedophile scandal is just one more reason that organized religion is bad. (Here, people also love to trot out the Crusades as if this religious war is somehow worse than the European Holocaust, Chechnya, Sierra Leone, or Rwanda). Now, why “organized” religion is inherently evil is a mystery to me. I personally love having an organized schedule of masses, a proper time period to go to confession, and a nice calendar where religious holidays come at predictable times year after year.
In the end, all of this–the pain, the sense of betrayal, and the anger– creates a question for me: will the latest scandal hurt my faith, or lead me to grow deeper in love and imitation of Christ? For yes, evil and suffering exist in the world and it shakes my faith deeply. And yes, Catholicism is a flawed and human organization that fails frequently, and miserably, to imitate pure good and beauty– which is Christ. But for me, the only answer I can give is that I have to continue to follow those whom I trust– the people who follow those people who follow Christ. As Peter replied to Jesus when he asked if Peter would leave him, as all the others had done– “Where else is there to go, Lord? Only you have the words that make me live.” Or, as expressed in a recent editorial:
“it [can be] impossible to understand why the Church can be hard and motherly at the same time with the priests who go wrong. It can punish them severely and ask them to serve their sentence and make amends for the evil (it has already done so in the past, and will always do so),but without snapping, if possible, that thread that binds [the priests to the Church], because it is the only thing that can redeem them. It can ask its children to “be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect,” not so as to demand of them an impossible irreprehensibilty, but so as to remind them of a tension to live the same mercy with which God embraces us (“be merciful as your heavenly father is merciful”). This is why the Church can educate, which, in the end, is the real question being challenged by those who are accusing it (“See, even the priests do wrong, and badly wrong. How can we trust them with our children?”) as if the Church’s being teacher all depended on the behavior of her children, and not on Christ, on that presence which – amidst all the errors and horrors committed –makes possible in the world an embrace like that of the father to his prodigal son…
This is the embrace of Christ, in our wounded and needy humanity, far greater than the evil we can do. If the Church, with all its limitations, had not this to offer to the world, even to the victims of those barbarities, then we would be lost. Because the evil would still be there, but it would be impossible to overcome it.”
I would love to put this column on my Facebook page? What you say is so important – thank you for taking the time to reply for all of us who are speechless.
I am reminded of a very, very holy young priest who told me when he walks down the street in his cassock Mothers shield their children.