The Scandal of Pedophile Priests and their Prelate Protectors

An essay of Raymond Fontaine, PhD - December 2002

    Early in life, millions of Catholics accept without question the following six religious beliefs. God created the world. Later a Jewish girl named Mary gave birth to Jesus who is divine like his Father in heaven. During three years, Jesus frequently healed people like the lame and the blind. After dying on a cross, he arose from the dead and ascended into heaven. When his mother died, she joined him in heaven. After death all good people go to heaven and live forever without sorrow and pain. These core beliefs bring solace and hope to millions of Catholics.       

   Where and when are these beliefs instilled into the minds and hearts of Catholics? The majority first hear about God, Jesus and Mary at home from their parents. Then the parish priest takes over their indoctrination. At Christmas the priest celebrates the birthday of Jesus. The creche and the hymns in church rekindle that memory. Then every Sunday at mass, the priest recalls miracles of Jesus and his message of love. On Easter Sunday, the priest reminds the people that Jesus, after dying on the cross, rose from the dead. Forty days later, the priest recalls that Jesus ascended into heaven. On August 15, the priest celebrates Mary's Assumption into heaven. She too lives in heaven and answers prayers for help. Then on November 1, All Saints' Day, the priest assures his flock that those who loved God and their neighbors on earth now rejoice with God, Jesus, and Mary in heaven forever. Week after week, the priest in church keeps those beliefs alive in the minds and hearts of his people. 

   None of those mysteries, however, can be verified. They are accepted as true on the word of trustworthy persons. For example, as a child I fully trusted my good and loving parents. Later in the seminary during 14 years, I never doubted the kind and devoted priests training me for the priesthood.

   Some years after my ordination, I became suspicious of the Pope's infallibility. I carefully reviewed the history of the Catholic Church. The bloody Crusades, the cruel Inquisition, and the rampant immorality of the medieval popes and bishops proved beyond a doubt the fallibility of the Church. I lost confidence in the Church and its clergy. I no longer believed in the doctrines that I had accepted solely on their authority. At fifty years old, I left the Church and the priesthood in 1967.

    The current scandal of pedophile priests does not match that of the medieval profligate popes. These miscreants shattered the confidence of sincere Christians who left the Roman Catholic Church in droves. The clerical crimes exposed this year will surely affect the faith of many Catholics. Some may be simply embarrassed and brush it off. Others will take to heart the conviction of criminal clerics and endure lingering doubts about other priests. This scandal will strike a fatal blow to the faith of many good people who will lose all confidence in the Church's sincerity, authority and teachings.

     Having been deceived for so long by seemingly sincere priests, some people will be suspicious of all preachers of religion - and with good reason. None of these religious  promoters can prove the truth of their teaching since there is no possible evidence of supernatural realities, events and places. Like the Catholic Church, other organized religions are based on reputed revelations of God to ancient persons and are preached by humans who demand blind faith from their followers. 

    Catholics who have lost faith in the Church can still believe in God. His existence is verifiable in nature. The designs, structures and laws in nature can be observed by humans. The physicist Einstein uncovered the universal law of relativity expressed as E=MC². The biologists Watson and Crick discovered the helix structures of DNA in cells. All humans can observe acorns evolving into oak trees and caterpillars changing into butterflies and single cells developing into babies These beings and billions more reveal designs, structures and laws that did not come from nothing, nor by chance but from an intelligent Being. This Someone made what eventually evolved into our universe and nature.  

    After realizing that Nature manifests the existence of God, many people no longer need Holy Books and their purveyors to learn more about God. His works are everywhere in nature. Each and every creature on earth reveals that God exists and that he is intelligent and beneficent. A baby gurgling in his crib glorifies God more than priests preaching in pulpits. What the baby reveals about God is entirely believable: God exists. 

    This essay's first paragraph listed the core religious beliefs of Catholics. Nature does not testify to the divinity of Jesus, nor to his resurrection and ascension into heaven. Nature reveals nothing about Mary's Assumption into heaven nor anything about the afterlife whether in heaven for the good or in hell for the bad. But nature does manifest the first and most basic belief that God created the world. 

    The pedophile priests and their prelate protectors have totally discredited themselves and, to some extent, the Catholic Church - but not God. They could not cast doubt on God's existence and beneficence as evident in nature. God is not responsible for clerical scandals. He let them happen as he does earthquakes. These take place because of faults in the rock masses deep within the earth. Similarly moral scandals result from faults of individuals and institutions. After a devastating earthquake, many victims move away to quakeproof ground. A safe moral ground for people badly shaken by the scandal of pedophile priests is a personal relationship with God based on his wondrous works in nature.

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