We are told not to make important decisions in the heat of the moment; that we should let some time pass before coming to a conclusion about controversial topics. It is good advice.
I can think of more than a few times in my life when my initial reaction to a situation was off base, when I was well served by not opening my mouth too soon.
I received a letter recently from a reader who has followed this recommendation. She has been reluctant to speak out against the current generation of priests and bishops over the priest sex scandals. She waited for the evidence and some explanations from the Church’s leadership about how this situation was permitted to fester for so long. She hoped that she would hear something reassuring. She hasn’t. She thinks it is time for faithful Catholics like herself to make clear their disappointment and displeasure over what has happened to the Church in the United States.
Some of her complaints are familiar, especially her anger over how our donations will be used to settle the lawsuits brought about by this scandal. No question, it will be galling to watch our money going, not to the missions or the Church’s schools, hospitals and orphanages, but to men victimized by sexually abusive priests. But this is a tough nut to crack. The Church’s money comes from the contributions of the faithful. There is no other source to tap. Successful plaintiffs against the Church are going to get paid, no matter what we put in the collection basket or hold back from Diocesan fund-raising appeals. If we reduce our donations, it will be the Church’s many worthwhile activities that will suffer. There is no way around it.
But our letter-writer raised other, less frequently discussed issues, as well. She asked several questions that struck me as poignant and troubling, questions that reveal a profound uneasiness about being a Catholic at this moment in the Church’s history. She asks how it is that these priests could have done what they did. As I write these words, there is a wire-service story in my local newspaper about Paul Shanley, the defrocked priest on trial for raping young boys in the Boston area. In a filed affidavit, a 46-year old man alleges that “Shanley brought him to a monastery, where Shanley would share the boy and his cousin with other men.” Another affidavit charges Shanley with bringing teenagers to gay bars and to parties “for games of spin-the-bottle with older men.”
I once would have dismissed charges such as these as anti-Catholic hysteria, in the same league as the Maria Monk stories about the sexual goings-on in convents back in the late 19th century. Now? I’m afraid I would not jump to cast doubts on the accusers. I can remember how I once defended in my columns the former director of Covenant House from charges that he was having sex with the residents of that facility. I made a point at the time of how we should not take the word of a street hustler over a priest who had given his life to the needs of young men and women who were being preyed upon by older men. The crow tasted horrible.
How, the letter-writer asks, could the authorities and other priests have been unaware of these things? And what about the priests involved? “Did they not know they were committing mortal sins? Did they go to Confession?” Many of the sexual assaults took place on Church property, within a stone’s throw of the sanctuary. “Do these priests believe in the Real Presence?” she asks. “How could they repeatedly commit these horrendous acts within sight of the Blessed Sacrament? Do they even believe in God? Obviously, they do not fear His judgment. Is it that they do not really believe in the hereafter and the rewards of Heaven and Hell?”
Indeed. I hope the Church’s leadership is aware of the implications of this woman’s questions. We could be on the verge of what might be called a “Wizard-of-Oz –moment” for the Church. I have in mind the scene at the end of the movie when Dorothy and her companions discover that the menacing voice from behind the statue is just a huckster with a microphone working the masses for self-advantage. The letter-writer is still a loyal Catholic, but haunted by the thought that the clergy may be like the Frank Morgan character in the film; that they have been preaching a rigorous and demanding Catholicism to the folks in the pews that they do not believe in themselves.
Far-fetched, you say? That no one would stay a priest or a religious if he no longer believed in the central tenets of the Faith? I don’t know about that. Not any more. We have to be candid: Where would a middle-aged homosexual priest go, if he decided that he no longer believed in the teachings of the Church? What would he do for a living that would make his life easier or more “fulfilling,” as that term is used nowadays? He is already well fed and well clothed and provided with the free time and living quarters in a setting that affords him opportunities for sexual encounters. Would his life be “better” as a text-book editor or school guidance counselor than if he goes on pretending to take Catholicism seriously when talking to the Holy Name men and Altar and Rosary Society ladies?
If I am reading our letter-writer correctly, she has concluded that the priests involved in the sex scandals are men who no longer really believed in the Church; that they were going through the motions as priests, repeating the tenets of the Faith for public consumption. Nothing wrong with coming to that conclusion — about them. Except that doing so plants other seeds of doubt. What about the priests and members of the hierarchy who covered up for them? They do not seem to fear the “wages of sin” either. They do not appear to have been plagued by the fear of a moment in their future when God, with Jesus sitting at His right Hand, will judge their souls. A few years ago, a former pastor of mine, a newly appointed bishop and a man I liked and respected a great deal, was removed from his duties when it was learned that he had engaged in a series of heterosexual affairs from the time he was a young priest. He did not seem troubled by any judgment in the hereafter.
If the ordinary Catholic comes to the conclusion that most priests and bishops do not fear the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell, but preach it to their congregations anyway, we are on the verge of a widespread disdain for the Church’s authority that would be comparable to Dorothy’s revelation in Oz. What other teachings that they preach from the pulpit do they not take seriously? Might they be as dismissive of the divinity of Jesus?
It would be a tragic turn of events if ordinary Catholics began to think this is the case. The Church would survive such a turn of events, of course. The Church is still the Church, regardless of how this generation of priests and bishops handles its responsibilities. But the Wizard was never the Wizard again in Dorothy’s eyes, once she was convinced he was faking it.
I am not charging that such a widespread disdain for the clergy would be appropriate. I retain my confidence — somewhat shakier than before — that the priests involved in these scandals were a small minority who managed to cover up their behavior. But I can’t help it: I do not find the letter-writer’s apprehensions irrational. I hope someone in the leadership of the Church has a strategy to stop it from spreading.
James Fitzpatrick's new novel, The Dead Sea Conspiracy: Teilhard de Chardin and the New American Church, is available from our online store. You can email Mr. Fitzpatrick at fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net.
(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)
