The Roman Catholic church is taking flak from the mass media. The most recent attacks follow revelations from a grand jury in Philadelphia, described by Pennsylvania’s Attorney General as the "largest, most comprehensive report into child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church ever produced in the United States."
According to the report, more than 300 "predator priests" in six Pennsylvania dioceses have been credibly accused of sexually abusing more than 1,000 child victims over 70 years -- prior to 2002, when scandals involving Cardinal Bernard Law in Boston forced the U.S. Catholicbishops to adopt new rules for reporting abuse.
The reaction has even led to demands that the Pope himself resign, for failing to act sooner.
Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a former Vatican ambassador to the U.S., claimed he had personally warned the Pope about allegations of sexual misconduct in the U.S. hierarchy five years ago. The Pope did nothing about it, Vigano claims.
A litany of misdeeds
During his recent visit to Ireland, Pope Francis apologized for centuries of failure to protect the most vulnerable members of the church community. He did not deal with specific allegations. But there was no doubt in Irish minds that he was referring to a massive exposé of Catholic orphanages and hospitals.
CNN gleefully listed some of the Catholic Church’s alleged transgressions, worldwide:
• Sexual misconduct investigations in seminaries in Boston, Nebraska, and Philadelphia.
• Resignation of the former archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick, after accusations that he molested seminarians and an altar boy.
• Conviction by a civil court of a Catholic bishop in Australia for covering up abuse.
• Resignation of six bishops from Chile after church investigations.
• Accusations by Ireland’s former president, Mary McAleese, that Vatican officials pressured her to "protect" incriminating church documents from investigation by civil authorities.
Excuse for a rant
The litany of accusations led Think Magazine’sAnthea Butler to vilify the church as “a criminal syndicate… a pedophile ring.”
“Sexual abuse has been institutionalized, routinized and tolerated by the church hierarchy for decades,” Butler ranted. “Church authorities who documented the cases for internal use never used the word ‘rape,’ only ‘inappropriate contact.’ … Housing and funds were provided for priests, even when it was known they were raping children. Priests were moved from the area only if their communities found out, to other communities where the abusers and abuses were not known. Most importantly, the hierarchy was instructed to not inform law enforcement about abuses reported by parishioners, but to consider any such case an ‘internal personnel matter.’
“Rules, it seems, were for the Catholics who continued to sit in the pews, not the ones who stood at the altars. The former were supposed to refrain from premarital sex, same-sex relationships, abortions, and masturbation. The sexual prohibitions of the church did not extend to the clergy raping children, and priests in Pennsylvania even got a passto pay for abortions for young girls they got pregnant.”
Mis-directed anger
The criticism has been directed in two areas: first, at the sexual abuse itself; second, at the decades-long cover-up.
I think they’re not being fair.
The problem is not the Catholic Church, but any large institution. Churches, corporations, charities, military, even governments – I’m sure that a serious probe into any of them would reveal examples of the same exploitation, abuse, and cover-up that the Catholic church is accused of. Consider Hollywood’s movie industry, if you doubt me.
Institutions are not physical things, even if they qualify as legal entities. You cannot imprison a corporation; a charity cannot catch colds; an army never sleeps.
Institutions are legal fictions, the products of human imagination. But that doesn’t make them any less real. Humans create institutions as compulsively as ants build colonies, wolves form packs, and fish gather in schools – all of them real, but not.
Institutions involve hierarchies. Hierarchies give some individuals more power than others. And some of those individuals will inevitably abuse that power.
Theoretically, a society’s laws hold those individuals to account. But only if the institution accepts outside authority. If, like the church, the institution holds itself accountable to a higher authority – anything from God to maxxed profits -- secular laws will be largely ignored.
The first reaction of all institutions, from hockey leagues to Walmart, is to defend themselves. They close ranks, squelch rebels, and profess innocence. Any investigations are internal, never open to outside examination.
With rare exceptions, a corporation will ever act to imperil its own survival. Big Tobacco didn’t, despite the evidence against it. Big Oil still hasn’t.
And the bigger the institution, the less likely it is to acknowledge its own shortcomings. And to change accordingly.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.
To send comments, to subscribe, or to unsubscribe, write jimt@quixotic.ca
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YOUR TURN
Last week’s column was a difficult one to write; it felt so bleak and hopeless to offer those two options
a) to reduce energy use per person
b) to reduce the human population.
Most of the responses agreed with me, more or less. One or two didn’t.
The first letter came in from Wendy Ross: “Loved your succinct and well researched column this morning! Thank you. As I am sure you know, tons could be changed by humans changing to a mostly plant based diet and quitting shopping as a pastime!”
Frank Martens lamented, “It is such a shame, Jim, that all those people, like yourself, who advocate for a better world through a better understanding of the future that is facing us if we continue along the path we are now following, are too few in number to overcome those people who through ignorance, selfishness, greed, and superstition will continue to deny the existence of climate change and over population.”
Cliff Boldt suggested, “We have not yet developed sufficient vocabulary to describe what climate change is starting to look like. To call it ‘the new normal’ is to suggest that nothing can be done, and that is a fallacy. Using that term makes it OK for us to keep on having ‘fossil fuel fun’ because everything is normal.
“Well, I don’t want to leave a new normal to the future generations. I have an individual, and we have a collective, responsibility to do better.”
Tom Watson felt more hopeful: “Yesterday, for the first time, I heard about thorium -- one possibility as a future energy source. I have no idea whether or not thorium is a key but, as you suggest, finding alternative energy sources is critical. However, will anything beyond moderate attempts to find and develop those sources occur as long as vast amounts of money continue to be made from those we currently use?”
Hugh Pett disagreed with my conclusion that "We either have to lower each person’s energy use, or we have to lower the number of persons. Period."
Hugh wrote, “[It] ignores the major alternative that has been vigorously discussed for the past ten or more years: reliance on solar, renewable energy.
“The term ‘solar energy’ includes several technologies, most prominently solar panels to generate electricity, and large wind turbines in windy places. Both technologies transform the sun's energy that arrives at the surface of the Earth; they do NOT add to the amount of heat. They avoid releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, thereby reducing the trapping of incoming solar energy that raises temperatures.
“Weather extremes result from changes in local and global availability of heat. A thunderstorm is a very local heat engine, that uses the heat of the ground and air to generate towering clouds that produce high winds, lots of rain, and static electricity that neutralizes itself as lightning strikes.
“All solar energy technologies require storing the (usually) electricity produced. The cost of doing so has dropped to about 10% of the cost of 10 years ago, and there is no end in sight to cost reductions. Check out this recent development in hard-hit Australia: https://reneweconomy.com.au/tesla-big-battery-officially-switched-on-in-south-australia-55285/
“Jim, there is a bright, better future ahead. A large number of industrial and commercial dinosaurs must die off first. And they are big and mean, so the process will be messy. But it is already beginning.”
Robert Mason agreed in general, but questioned one specific in my column: “I think there's a misunderstanding of the impact on the Great Barrier Reef. While the majority of the cause of the reef dying off is from the increase in ocean temperature, this has taken place since 1979, according to Australian studies [and therefore much more recent than the Industrial Revolution: JT]. Having myself gone diving on the reef back in 1981, I can't imagine what the impact of the last four decades has been like.
“You conclude that we either have to lower each person's energy use, or we have to lower the number of persons. There is no other option. This is frightening to consider, because it is virtually impossible for us humans to so significantly reduce our use of energy, while it is similarly impossible to reduce the number of persons on this earth. Our population continues to grow while in previous centuries natural disasters like the Black Death in the Middle Ages and the Spanish Flu in the early 20th century resulted in significant reductions in population. Even though nowadays disease can be spread more rapidly with so many people using air travel, world population continues to grow. Also with our advances in medicine, we have stopped the spread of many diseases such as Ebola, AIDS, and others, so population can only grow more rapidly.”
Finally, there was a very moving letter from Alan Reynolds, a friend and mentor for decades, now suffering from late stage Parkinson’s Disease, about my previous week’s column on the pianist dying of ALS: “If you never write another word, this column is worth all your efforts. Until recently, having Parkinson’s was interesting -- you could never know how and where it would show itself. Now it's becoming difficult. Thank you. You understand.”
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TECHNICAL STUFF
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PROMOTION STUFF…
To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. (This is to circumvent filters that think too many links constitute spam.)
Ralph Milton’s latest project is a kind of Festival of Faith, a retelling of key biblical stories by skilled storytellers like Linnea Good and Donald Schmidt, designed to get people talking about their own faith experience. It’s a series of videos available on Youtube. I suggest you start with his introductory section: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u6qRclYAa8
Ralph’s “Sing Hallelujah” -- the world’s first video hymnal -- is still available. It consists of 100 popular hymns, both new and old, on five DVDs that can be played using a standard DVD player and TV screen, for use in congregations who lack skilled musicians to play piano or organ. More details at wwwDOTsinghallelujahDOTca
Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. <http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca>
I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom
Alva Wood’s satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town -- not particularly religious, but fun; alvawoodATgmailDOTcom to get onto her mailing list.
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom or twatsonATsentexDOTnet