Having frequently featured the trenchant commentary of Deal Hudson on our website, we must offer some remarks on the shocking news that precipitated his resignation as advisor to the campaign of President Bush. As many of you may be aware, the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) broke a story last week about Hudson’s immoral involvement 10 years ago with an 18-year-old freshman coed while he was a professor at Fordham University.
What Needs to be Said
We first want to address the grossly uncharitable nature of the lurid presentation of details in the story — unconscionable for any publication bearing the name Catholic. While the reporter has denied having any political motive in pursuing the story, the editors of NCR were clearly politically motivated. Their attempt to destroy a fellow Catholic is contemptible and shows callous disregard for the wife and children involved.
The reporter attempts to justify it by taking Deal Hudson to task for revealing that Ono Ekeh, an employee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was hosting a “Catholics for Kerry” website in violation of the pro-life position of the Church. Ekeh subsequently resigned, and the reporter’s sympathies lay with Ekeh, “a father of three young children, [who] had lost his job.” But the well of his sympathy is not deep enough for the children of Deal Hudson. The world is cruel, and with this article archived on the Internet now, it will be almost impossible to shield them from being humiliated by it.
Deal Hudson has admitted to having “committed a serious sin.” The incident caused him to lose his tenure at Fordham and to pay damages in the tens of thousands of dollars. In his response to the story he said, “I recognize that I have let countless people down and have brought scandal to myself, my family, and my Faith. For this, I beg your forgiveness.”
Forgiveness, of course, is what we Catholics are all about, and it is to be had for the asking. But there is more to be said about this than “We forgive.” Catholic League President William Donohue has weighed in with a mass email rejoinder to NCR that from now on he will demand his employees be immaculately conceived. But there is also more to be said about this than a lame, “After all, we are all sinners here.” Donohue’s characterization of the girl involved as “a drunken female [Hudson] met in a bar” and sneering reference to her as “a drunk” neither befits him nor defends Hudson. Donohue is wrong to take a good ol’ boy approach that treats quite reprehensible behavior on the part of a married Catholic professor as though it were a mere youthful folly of Hudson’s pre-conversion past.
Somewhere between, or perhaps we should say above, the gleeful gotcha of NCR and the circle-the-wagons response of Donahue there is an answer to the question of how we, as Catholics, ought to deal with this tragic revelation.
The Truth of Sin
Let us begin there, noting that sin is a tragedy, and contrary to our contemporary notions of victimization, it is a greater tragedy for the sinner than for the one against whom he sins. In the wisdom of the Church — a wisdom reflected even in aspects of civil law — once amends are made for certain acts, a curtain of silence and privacy is drawn over the affair to allow both parties to get on with the healing of their lives. The decision of NCR editor Tom Roberts to rip apart that curtain violated Deal Hudson as well as others harmed in the original incident, and it compounded the tragedy, ensnaring Roberts's own soul.
We have come to the point in this country where the well of political discourse has become so poisoned that even sacred bonds of community no longer restrain those who seek power. This is certainly because the issues we are facing go beyond policy to the very heart of matters: to whether we are made in God’s image at every stage of life; to whether human nature is a fixed kind of thing and marriage along with it; to whether we shall throw overboard the precepts of the very civilization that launched our ship of state.
In giving voice to these issues, defining them with clarity and verve, CRISIS Magazine, with Deal Hudson at the helm, excelled. The revelation of his misconduct in no way negates the truth of these matters. Anyone who thinks that the sins a person commits disprove the truths that person has championed understands neither sin nor truth. Our sins prove the truth of what the Church teaches about us, our fallenness, our concupiscence, our desperate need for grace.
We live with a paradoxical situation: The world that hates our faith, hates us more when we fail to live up to it. It dances at the fall of anyone righteous, but secretly retches at a universe without saints. It taunts Christian morality, but gnashes its teeth at Christians whose moral weaknesses are exposed. It is a world of prodigals, well on their way to the sty, not having yet formed any intention of returning to the father, but who would not want to hear that he has moved and left no forwarding address.
The World Needs Our Witness
We Catholics must give a witness to this world, not only of God’s forgiveness, but of the possibility of holiness. Not only of the surpassing excellence of Christian ideals, but the beauty of their attainment. Perfection will elude us in this life, but integrity is not unattainable and heroic virtue should be an ordinary thing among us who have the Holy Spirit. Scandal — harm to the souls of others — results when we do not recognize the uncommon obligations we have in common.
In his response, Deal Hudson portrayed his becoming a confidant of the Bush team as something he was tapped for rather than as something he actively sought. Be that as it may, it is surely the fact that regardless of whether he put himself forward or was brought into the limelight, he has known all along about this sordid incident lurking in the background, and he could have demurred — it is our opinion that he should have. Poor judgment on his part left his vulnerabilities open to attack, and it is therefore correct for him to say that he let many people down. But even as we forgive, we beg our fellow Catholics to regard this as a cautionary tale.
If you are a Catholic who is vetting someone for a position of trust, especially in the public eye, have the prudence to ask him or her: “Is there anything in your past that might disqualify you? Is there anything that might come to light and create a scandal?”
If you are a Catholic seeking to serve the Church or your country and you have a scandalizing secret that you never want your children to read in the papers or on the web, keep a low profile. There is much to be done — in fact most of the work of building God’s Kingdom is being done — in the background, out of the public eye, and you are indispensable in only two positions: being a husband or wife to your spouse and a father or mother to your children.
It is truly sad that what was once a semi-private sin, a semi-private tragedy, has become national news. We need to pray for all whose privacy has been invaded, whose wounds have been re-opened. May God grant them healing and the grace to forgive. We pray for Deal Hudson, our brother in Christ, with compassion born of knowing that were our sins to be made as public as his, we, too, would need compassion and prayers. And we need to pray for our country, for our elected representatives, for God’s grace to turn back the tide of the culture of death which has brought so much suffering — private and public — to the people of the United States.
