Dr. Keyes is founder and chairman of the Declaration Foundation, a communications center for founding principles. Tune into his new television show “Alan Keyes is Making Sense” on MSNBC, Monday through Thursday, 10 p.m., ET.
Question: “What was the practice that you had in place in 1984 when you were archbishop to deal with this kind of allegation when it comes in?”
Cardinal Law: “I viewed this as a pathology, as a psychological pathology, as an illness. Obviously, I viewed it as something that had a moral component. It was, objectively speaking, a gravely sinful act, and that’s something that one deals with in one’s life, in one’s relationship to God”.
“But I also viewed this as a pathology, as an illness, and so, consequently, I, not being an expert in this pathology, not being a psychiatrist, not being a psychologist, my — my modus operandi was to rely upon those whom I considered and would have reason to consider to have an expertise that I lacked in assessing this pathology, in assessing what it is that this person could safely do or not do.”
What’s wrong with that answer? I think everything’s wrong with it. If it came from the manager of a big corporation or a government official, I might be able to understand it. But Cardinal Law is a prelate, a preeminent spiritual leader of a spiritual institution proclaiming itself to the world as the Body of Christ.
Among Christians, it is common to say that judgments can be made according to the flesh — that is, according to worldly priorities — or according to the spirit. One expects spiritual leaders to judge according to the spirit. That is to say that the priorities of the kingdom of heaven, not of the earthly kingdom in which we temporarily reside, should inform the judgments of spiritual leaders.
Cardinal Law’s statement was emphatically in the tradition of worldly judgment. He does not begin by calling the deeds in question sins, placing them in the moral and spiritual context which is their most important reality. He says: “I viewed this as a pathology, as a psychological pathology.” Then, having defined the acts in worldly terms, he adds secondarily that they had a “moral component.”
The priorities he thereby reveals are worldly. And the victims of these sins have paid a great price for this. For had the Cardinal considered the case before him with a spiritual eye, he would have had to understand and to have acted on the truth that the sin didn’t affect only the individual committing it.
To the young person suffering the sin of sexual abuse, the real harm done is an attack upon their moral and spiritual welfare. The Cardinal does not indicate that this harm even entered into his consideration. He spoke not a word about the assault on the moral and spiritual life of the young, about the scandal given to them.
Does such an answer reveal a heart and mind that is looking at the world with spiritual and moral discernment, looking at the world in the light of God’s priorities rather than human, worldly priorities?
It was equally revealing that the Cardinal in his testimony so often replied to questions with, “I don’t know,” “I don’t remember,” “I don’t recall” and so forth. Let us presume his honesty in these answers, and consider the following question: if his clerical subordinates had reported to him that a priest was guilty of physical murder, would he be able, even twenty years later, to say things like: “I don’t recall that day. I don’t remember anybody telling me that. I don’t think about that.”?
News of physical murder would have been shocking. It would have been seared into his mind. I think he would have remembered it because, according to the flesh, physical death is the most horrible evil.
A spiritual leader should respond with equal horror when told that his priests have been sexually abusing young people. And his resolve to prevent them from continuing should exceed the resolve any decent man would have to prevent a murderer from killing again.
It is the destroyer of the soul, not the flesh, who does greatest harm, and a child molester is a spiritual seducer, seeking to lead his victim down a path of moral and spiritual destruction.
For a spiritual leader, that spiritual destruction of the young would have been of the deepest concern. But it was not on Cardinal Law’s mind. That means that his judgment in these cases reveals a fundamental incompetence to be a Cardinal, to be a spiritual leader.
He must resign.
