This has everything to do with that strange coldness that one has seen from the
Boston Archdiocese, both while they transferred those molesting priests from
parish to parish, and when they unilaterally backed out of their settlement with
some victims and threatened that if they don’t agree to a lower settlement that
didn’t encumber the Archdiocese more than they found reasonable, they’d make use
of a Massachusetts law which limited the liability of a charity to $20,000 per
person. And, of course, they still expect to be treated as moral leaders.
In July, 2003, the Massachusetts Attorney General, Thomas Reilly, issued a
report about the molestations which said, “The mistreatment of children was so
massive and so prolonged that it borders on the unbelievable.” This said
that Law “bears the ultimate responsibility for the tragic treatment of children
that occurred during his tenure,” because he was “generally aware” of the abuse
“even before arriving in Boston” as its archbishop. “But by no means does
he bear sole responsibility. With rare exception, none of his senior
managers advised him to take any of the steps that might have ended the systemic
abuse of children.” “There is overwhelming evidence that for many years
Cardinal Law and his senior managers had direct, actual knowledge that
substantial numbers of children in the archdiocese had been sexually abused by
substantial numbers of its priests.” The Rev. Christopher Coyne, a
spokesman for the Archdiocese, responded, “The Archdiocese of Boston reiterates
its commitment that the Archdiocese will treat sexual abuse of a child as a
criminal matter, that it will end any culture of secrecy in the handling of such
matters.” Just like the rest of the human race does.
With all the
molestation, one would expect what was once called a “moral ferment,” meaning
distress and confusion about immorality, as in the early-twentieth-century
statement by the late Professor Benjamin M. Selekman of the Harvard Business
School, “Outside of church circles, I find nowhere so much moral ferment as
among corporation executives and teachers of business.” Moral ferment,
with its spontaneity and decency, has a very Enlightenment quality to it, in the
same spirit as America’s founding principles. The reason why pride then
became a virtue rather than a vice, was so that people would condemn shameful
behavior, not commit it. Moral ferment would certainly allow for an
awareness that if a person could be reformed then it would be best for everyone
to put the past behind them, but would also have a pretty constant awareness of
the destructiveness of sinful behavior. One wouldn’t condemn the
destruction half the time, and invoke the pragmatism or warmth of forgiveness
the other half. Yet that’s what comes from the Boston Archdiocese, that
the Cardinal forgets receiving letters telling of molestation, etc., which
wouldn’t happen if the Archdiocese had the sort of moral ferment which
pedophilia such as Father Paul Shanley’s would have warranted.
From the mid-Eighties onward, women were told that all that they had to do is
get romantically involved with a man who had a history of some sort of
destructive behavior, even if it didn’t constitute a compulsive mental illness,
and by choosing to trust someone with that track record, she chose to let
herself in for his doing the same to her. In fact, she could even be
diagnosed as subconsciously masochistic or self-sacrificing. If her excuse
was, “But I thought that he could be reformed,” this would seem to be classic
codependent magical thinking. Certainly the same would go for any
organization, religious or secular, that put men with track records of
pedophilia, which clearly was a compulsive mental illness, in positions where
kids would trust them. At least the organization’s hierarchy wouldn’t have
to worry that their habit of putting others at the mercy of men with bad track
records, would be attributed to subconscious sadism. Supporters of
Cardinal Law give as his excuse that he honestly thought that the perv priests
could be reformed, though if at that exact same time, women put
themselves at risk using that exact same logic, even if the behavior
problems of the men they get involved with weren’t compulsive mental illnesses,
the women would seem to have “asked for” any bad outcome.
Reilly’s report said that, “These evaluations [of accused priests] also were
used to support the Archdiocese’s strong desire to (1) return priests to
ministerial duties whenever possible; and (2) limit the Archdiocese’s exposure
to legal liability when abusive priests were returned to ministerial duties
after undergoing psychiatric treatment and receiving a clean bill of health from
a psychiatric institution.” Here we can see two big differences between
the standard by which women who marry men with bad histories, are held
responsible, and the standard by which powerful people who trust men with a bad
histories, are held responsible. You could only imagine what we’d think of
women who’d be willing to marry men who’ve molested, so that they could return
to a normal life, whenever possible. Also, if one of these women insisted
that she’s not liable for “letting herself in for it” if her perv received a
clean bill of health from a psychiatric institution, she’d be told that she
should have known that sometimes even the most educated predictions of future
dangerous turn out to be wrong, so she’d seem equally as liable as if she had no
bill of health. She could be practicing exactly the same Christian
forgiveness as the Boston Archdiocese was, but hers would seem neurotic while
theirs just seems inadvisable. A heading in the report says, in bold face,
“The Archdiocese Has Not Yet Demonstrated A Commitment to Reform Commensurate
With the Scope of the Tragedy.” Maybe if the courts assessed their
liability by the same standards by which women who marry men with perv histories
are judged, the Archdiocese would be just as careful as the women are supposed
to be. If a woman tries to return a guy with a record for molestation, to
a normal life whenever possible, and she trusts others when they say that he’s
safe, that would be all it would take for her to seem as if she “brought it on
herself” if she has to suffer the effects of his doing it again. Though
the Rev. Thomas Reese, an authority on the American Catholic hierarchy and
editor of the Jesuit-run America magazine said, “It makes a big
difference when a bishop did something. There was total ignorance until
1984 or 1985. But after 1993, bishops that made mistakes have more
explaining to do,” if a woman who stayed married to a recidivist pedophile
before 1984, maybe even any woman who then married a known pedophile at all,
would still seem to have “let herself in for it” even if she said, “But there
was total ignorance about this then!”.
Another case described in the REPORT ON THE INVESTIGATION OF THE DIOCESE OF
MANCHESTER is that of Father Gordon MacRae. In 1994, he was convicted
of one count of felonious sexual assault and four cases of aggravated felonious
sexual assault, and is serving a sentence of 33½ to 67 years. The House of
Affirmation treatment center had given him an assessment of, “Although he
experiences intense shame and guilt for the behavior, he indicated that he does
not feel in control of such behavior. Father MacRae is in the early stages
of understanding and arresting the inappropriate sexual encounters with minors.
Although alarmed by it and very frightened of legal and personal consequences,
he has little awareness of the impact of the behavior upon the adolescents, and
he has little confidence that he can cease such involvements.” Two
therapists at the Strafford Guidance Center called him “fixated,” meaning that
his pedophilia is deeply entrenched. Of course, he found some people who
had faith in his redemption, including Father David Deibel.
Judge Arthur
Brennan, who sentenced MacRae, said,“ I believe that Father Deibel attempted to
mislead the Court, that he intentionally minimized the behavior of Gordon MacRae,
and that he is not a credible witness. I hope and trust he is not
representative of the attitudes of the governing body of the Catholic church
concerning sexual predators within its clergy,” “Then you raped them again and
again and over and over. And they could not tell anyone. They did
not tell each other. They carried the guilt of your sexual assaults and
they each carried that terrible weight alone,” and, “I conclude that you, Mr.
MacRae, remain an extremely dangerous and high risk sexual offender. The
compulsiveness and repetitiveness of your sexual assault against young boys,
documented from 1979 to 1988, the selection and grooming of vulnerable boys and
families, the deceitful use of both the authority of a Catholic priest and the
corresponding spiritual power that the religion represents, the evidence of your
solicitation and prostitution of young men for the gratification of yourself and
others of your ilk, the evidence of child pornography and multiple victims, your
complete lack of remorse, your aggressive denial of wrongdoing, your merciless
attack on the character of the victims who confronted you, the ruthless
application of your intelligence, education and experience as a counselor to
undermine these children and their families and your total lack of compassion
for your victims and the friends you continued to mislead, I considered all of
these things in deciding your sentence for the attacks on [John Doe XVI].
And I find that the prospects for your rehabilitation are very poor. There
is no credible evidence that you have responded to the treatment that you have
received. Throughout these proceedings, I have listened to your witnesses
and I have watched you closely. I detect nothing in you at this time that
gives me a reasonable basis for releasing you into the community ever.”
Bishop McCormack concluded his response to this, “Some believe his prison
sentence is unduly harsh and lengthy. This is due in part due [sic] to the
way the law of New Hampshire is written, and also to the public sentiment about
such crimes. There are people in prison who are serving much shorter
sentences for very serious crimes [for five of them?]. Furthermore, it is
probable that at the time of his arrest and later conviction that he had his
impulses under greater control and was not longer a serious threat to society.
His lengthy jail sentence is even more inappropriate given his rehabilitation.
I am sympathetic with Gordon MacRae’s concerns in this regard, but do not feel
that the Diocese can publicly advocate on his behalf without risking grave
public misunderstanding about the seriousness of its understanding with regard
to sexual misconduct by clergymen.” If a woman’s husband did the same sort
of things and got the same assessments from others, and she responded, “I am
sympathetic with his concerns in this regard, but do not feel that the I can
stand up for him without risking grave misunderstanding about the seriousness of
women’s understanding with regard to sexual misconduct by the men to whom
they’re loyal,” she’d be told that of course her understanding isn’t nearly
serious enough. Only silly little nitwits don’t realize that remorseless
people can easily act guilt-free, etc.
In the 1980’s, the periodical of the Freedom From
Religion Foundation had a regular monthly section which gave stories of plenty
of preachers, both Protestant and Catholic, who were caught molesting kids.
It was pretty routine for the Catholic hierarchy to transfer pedophile priests
from congregation to congregation when they got caught. This wasn’t just
one person’s idiosyncratic interpretation of forgiveness. Despite all the
ridicule of pedophile priests, clearly the percentage of priests who are
pedophiles is a lot less than the percentage of priests’ higher-ups who, until
recently, would have responded to any priest’s molestations by having him turn
over a new leaf in a new church. Currently, many try to defend such
decisions, from Law and others, by saying that back then many thought that
pedophiles could be made normal. But even then, if a woman married man who
had exactly the same history as any of these men, she couldn’t defend herself
from accusations of codependency, by saying, “but I thought that since he
attended those therapeutic programs, he’s cured.” Even for a man who had a
record of being caught for only one molestation, a woman who got romantically
involved with him would seem absolutely unquestionably responsible for “asking
for” any problems that his pedophilia would cause for her or her kids. If
she practiced toward him a saintly level of the Virtue of Forgiveness, that
would seem to be just another self-sacrificing symptom of codependency.
Yet higher-ups in the Catholic hierarchy could keep trusting priests with
records of molestation, because it seemed that past molestations wouldn’t prove
that he’d molest in the future and because they religiously held to the Virtue
of Forgiveness, and they wouldn’t be held accountable for being
characterologically other-sacrificing. In the 1980’s, the higher-ups could
have justified themselves by saying that their own canon law requires a certain
amount of proof of future dangerousness, before a priest could be considered a
danger. At the very same time, no woman who mistakenly trusted a lover
with the same accusations or proof of past pedophilia, would have seemed
justified by having similar standards of justice and due process.
For example, in 1992, the Boston Globe quoted Beth Griffin, a spokeswoman
for the US Catholic Conference in New York, as saying about perv priest James
Porter, “In past decades, child abuse may have been viewed as simply a moral
failing for which one should be repentant rather than a psychological addiction
for which treatment is mandatory. Today things are different. The
mere hint of such a case is viewed by a bishop with alarm.” But if in past
decades a woman married a guy who she knew had molested but had also repented,
and he ended up re-offending, she’d seem to have “let herself in for” however
this would affect her and her family. Even if he also got psychological
treatment before re-offending, she’d be told that of course she must have
realized that if psychological treatment could get control over pedophilia, we
would have given all the willing pervs treatment, and cured them. A
confidential 1985 report on clergy sexual abuse of minors prepared for the
National Conference of Catholic Bishops, of which Cardinal Law was one of the
principal backers, said, “The recidivism rate for pedophilia is second only to
exhibitionism, particularly for homosexual pedophilia. This is whether the
person has received traditional psychiatric treatment or not,” “Recidivism is so
high with pedophilia and exhibitionism that all controlled studies have shown
that traditional outpatient psychiatric or psychological models alone DO NOT
WORK,” and called pedophilia a “lifelong disease with NO HOPE AT THIS POINT IN
TIME for cure.” The original had those words in upper-case. Maybe
that would allow enough wiggle-room that one of the strong could trust a treated
pedophile and say if he re-offended, “But you must understand; I made a
mistake,” yet not enough that one of the weak could do the same. And if
before that time even repentance seemed to be enough, then why were molestation
and statutory rape against the law? During that era, when what to The
Catholic Church was a matter of repentance, to the rest of the world was a
crime, was the very same era in which Catholic whiners were very likely to
accuse all critics of Catholic-bashing. At least Griffin didn’t refer to
the child abuse as “inappropriate conduct” and “boundary violations,” which, as
the SNAP website says, some “Bishops and their PR staff have consistently used”
to describe child sexual abuse. That makes it seem all the more excusable,
that she said explicitly that, “child abuse may have been viewed as simply a
moral failing for which one should be repentant.”
In about 1997,
when the attorney of a molestation victim asked Cardinal Edward Egan of New York
if he would suspend a priest who was discovered sexually assaulting a minor,
Egan responded, “I would have to know the complete circumstances.” That
would sound extremely creepy if it came from a woman telling her accuser that
she’d have to know the complete circumstances before suspending contact with any
boyfriend who sexually assaulted a minor.
Bernard Cardinal Law, who the Pope
put into office to try to make Americans more conservative, said regarding the
Boston pedophilia scandal, on the first Sunday of Lent, “We do not always make
holy decisions, and we turn to God for the forgiveness he is always ready to
give.” Regarding unconditional agápè forgiveness, Law
certainly seemed always ready to give it. The book From Scandal to Hope,
by Fr. Benedict J. Groschel, could be called a Catholic version of conservative
anti-intellectualism, but Fr. Benedict comes across as very sincere. Near
the beginning, this book says, “One of the bishops who is being ripped to pieces
in the media, a good and devout man who made some big mistakes (or at least his
associates did) wrote to me recently, ‘I know that Our Lord is with us in these
dark times, and that at the end of the day this will lead to a purification of
the Church.’.” If this doesn’t mean Cardinal Law, it certainly means
someone like him, and this certainly would apply to him. If one sincerely
forgives too much, his reckless choices could easily be called “mistakes.”
For example, there’s that paragraph in the letter of Law’s granting retirement
status to John Geoghan, “Yours has been an effective life of ministry,
sadly impaired by illness. On behalf of those you have served well and in
my own name, I would like to thank you. I understand yours is a painful
situation. The Passion we share can indeed seem unbearable and
unrelenting. We are our best selves when we respond in honesty and trust.
God bless you, Jack.” Since by “The Passion we share” Law probably didn’t
mean that he has perv desires but doesn’t act on them, he was probably
reflecting the moral-relativism-becomes-amoral-absolutism aspect of the Doctrine
of Original Sin. Saint Augustine, who came up with the Doctrine, called
all sexual desires that don’t end up in reproduction “concupiscence.”
That’s what “The Passion we share” that’s “unbearable and unrelenting” would
seem to be, whether normal, or perverse and abusive. With an attitude like
that, it would be very easy to make big mistakes in being too lenient to
predators. The webpage
Original Sin from In
the Blood, and others, tell of how Original Sin is basically the opposite of
free will, “As Bishop of Hippo, in north Africa, Augustine disputed with
Pelagius and claimed that humanity had no choice, no free will, but was
programmed to transgress because of the plague of original sin. Sin -
estrangement from God - was congenital and universal.” Naturally the pious
would want to understand the unrelenting forces that such automatons are under.
Larry B. Stammer and William Lobdell, in the Los Angeles Times, quoted a
“churchman” as saying, “The mental health model is being set aside and the
criminal-justice model is being inserted. So all you have for these
priests is a retribution model. My fear is the church is going from being
careless in treating abused children to being careless in treating abusing
priests.” Just like the rest of the world.
As one might expect from a
conservative of a tradition which holds to unconditional forgiveness, this looks
a lot like The Big Lie, in that the worse someone’s sinfulness is, the more that
he’d seem unchangeable so we must accept that that’s the way he is.
Betrayal, The Crisis In The Catholic Church, by the investigative staff of
the Boston Globe, quotes Catholic layman Victor Conlogue as saying, “I
remember back in the 1950s if you ate meat on Friday, did not wear a hat or veil
to church, or ate breakfast before Communion, you could burn in hell for these
sins. How come there is no mention of Geoghan going to hell?”
Because those who don’t perform dumb rituals can be changed so they get the
courageous action, but Geoghan can’t so he gets the serenity. (Of course,
victims of sinfulness would tend to be even more changeable than are the
undutiful, since victims have all-American self-determined practical motivations
to become more well-adjusted.) Also, forgiving someone for not living up
to useless ritualistic expectations doesn’t require any spirituality, but
forgiving someone like Geoghan does.
This forgiveness is indeed a Christian
virtue and spiritual discipline, which shows how much trouble a religious or
secular institution would be headed for if conservatism may require agápè
forgiveness to keep the peace. According to the book Betrayal,
Father Joseph Birmingham molested plenty of boys, including Tom Blanchette when
he was about eleven years old. In his adult years he reflected that
because of the abuse, “One of the things that I found was that I was
short-fused. My cup was always ninety-five percent filled with anger.”
The year before Birmingham died, Blanchette approached him at the rectory.
He brushed Blanchette off, but six months later Blanchette was back at the
rectory. He recalls, “I said, ‘You know, I realize that I’m responsible
for being angry, but I think that has something to do with the abuse that I got
from you.’” He then went on to say that the abuse that Blanchette and
others got from Birmingham was wrong. Blanchette went on to say, “‘Having
said that, it brings me to the real reason why I’ve come here. The real
reason I’ve come here is to ask you to forgive me for the hatred and resentment
that I have felt toward you for the past twenty-five years.’ When I said
that, he stood up, and in what I would describe as a demonic voice, he said,
‘Why are you asking me to forgive you?’ And through tears I said, ‘Because
the Bible tells me to love my enemies and pray for those who persecute me.’”
Our Fathers by David France says that Blanchette went there in order to
do the Fifth Step of AA, to make amends to those he hurt (Of course, the
molestation was what drove him to alcoholism.), and quotes him as saying,
“Having said all this brings me to the real reason I’ve come here. The
real reason I’ve come is to make amends to those I have harmed. Now, I
know I didn’t do outright harm to you. But I’ve come to ask you to forgive
me for the hatred and resentment I’ve felt toward you for the past twenty-five
years.” Matthew 5:44, a direct quote from Jesus, says, “But I say to you,
Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” certainly an
unqualified unconditional fail-safe acceptance of this sinful world as it is.
Both Blanchette and Birmingham then collapsed into tears. The next
time Blanchette saw Birmingham was a few hours before he died, at which time
Blanchette prayed for Birmingham. At the time, Blanchette called
himself “Tommy” though he never had before, and consciously didn’t know why he
did then. The following Monday, Blanchette spoke with Cardinal Law just
after he said the funeral mass for Birmingham. Blanchette told Law about
his encounters with Birmingham, including praying for him just before he died.
Law said to him, “We need men like you in the Church, and you should come back
to the Church.” The quasi-secular version of this would be a
Schopenhauerian, “You’d be more likely to succeed if you realized that you’re
responsible for your own anger even if it’s obvious that something outside of
yourself caused it. Anger about anything that happened in the past
couldn’t possibly change it, and anger about anyone like that probably won’t
change him, so in such cases having a beatitude attitude toward your
persecutors would make you more wise well-adjusted and functional. We
need people like this in America; if all Americans were like this, our society
would operate exactly as Reaganomics says it should. The New York State
Office of Mental Health has a
webpage on ‘Evidence-Based Practices,’ which defines this as ‘mental health
services that are based on the best evidence available and improve outcomes and
quality of life for people diagnosed with a mental illness.’ Under
Reaganist circumstances, Schopenhauerian forgiveness of everyone including
persecutors could lead to the most improved outcomes.”
When a fellow inmate
murdered Geoghan on August 23, 2003, the Boston Globe quoted former
parishioner Thomas Crane as saying,“The religious side of me says judge not,
lest you be judged.” Of course, this would also apply to the murderer.
Maybe if we don’t judge anyone, we’ll have unrestrained competition between
aggressors, and in the end, the best would win.
Law wrote in a letter to molester Father John Geoghan, in 1989 about a disruption following a
molestation, “I am confident that you will again render fine priestly service to
the people of God in Saint Julia Parish,” and in 1996 after his retirement
prompted by his molestations, “Yours has been an effective life of ministry,
sadly impaired by illness... God bless you, Jack,” (though if Law saw this as a
sickness then he saw it as something that could easily make Geoghan do it again
and again) and “These are difficult matters, John. You are in my thoughts
and prayers. With warm personal regards and asking God to bless you.” More
than 20 years ago, Cardinal Humberto Medeiros, Law’s predecessor, wrote to
Margaret Gallant about Geoghan molesting several boys in her family, “While I am
and must be very sensitive to a very delicate situation and one that has caused
great scandal, I must at the same time invoke the mercy of God and share in that
mercy in the knowledge that God forgives sins and that sinners can indeed be
forgiven.” Even when the Pope tried to speak out strongly about Geoghan et
al, the Pope said, “At this time too, as priests we are personally and
profoundly afflicted by the sins of some of our brothers who have betrayed the
grace of ordination in succumbing even to the most grievous forms of the
mysterium iniquitatis (the mystery of evil) in the world,” as if the
problem is the betraying of the ordination, this is sin rather than crime, and
the molesters’ choices to do so is attributed to a mysterious fact of nature.
What other reason would the Pope have for bringing up the mysteries of evil,
other than to say that we’ve got to accept that we can’t get a grasp of evil?
(This should mean that when the victims of the pedophilia sue the Church, the
Pope should Stoically accept that as a result of one of life’s unconquerable
mysteries.)
(Letter from Margaret Gallant about Geoghan, written in 1982.)
Then, on May 3, 2002, the Boston Archdiocese did something else
that was very much in the spirit of Western evasion of personal responsibility.
They backed out of a settlement that they reached with the victims of “Jack”
Geoghan. The Archdiocese issued a statement saying that the settlement
“would consume substantially all of the resources of the archdiocese that can
reasonably be made available” to help the victims of the Archdiocese’s
unreasonable transferring pedophile priests from church to church.
They claimed that the Catholic Church settling their obligations purely on their
own terms would “provide a just and proportional response.” This statement
said that the Church has simply decided that its obligations could be fulfilled
by a “non-litigious global assistance fund” for victims, and that, “Such a fund
is to be in an amount consistent with the resources that can be made available
without crippling the ability of the archdiocese to fulfill its mission.”
David W. Smith, chancellor for the Archdiocese, said that the settlement, “would
leave the archdiocese unable to provide a just and proportional response to
other victims.” He said that when the agreement was reached, the
Archdiocese didn’t think that there were many more victims beyond the 86 they
settled with. “It has become increasingly obvious over the last 90 days that
that’s not the case.” He said that the lawyers told him that 100 more
victims could be filing suit, and that Law wanted the settlement to go through,
but, “He lives and we all live with the painful truth that in this crisis there
is no easy answer.” The statement also said that Law should, “develop a mechanism which
will provide all necessary counseling for the victims and their families,” as if
the judgment of these duplicitous operators, and the counselors who they’d
provide, who’d probably stress unconditional forgiveness, are supposed to be
trusted. Smith told the New York Times, “It’s not a matter
of not wanting to reach a fair and equitable settlement with the victims.
It’s a matter of trying to reach a settlement that is within the bounds of the
resources of the archdiocese, and without crippling the ability to do the other
things the church needs to do,” and “every day you hear something new” about the
perverts, “and every day someone else comes forward” alleging sexual abuse. “The
problem’s expanding. The resources are not. And that’s the issue we face.”
(Since District Attorney Martha Coakley said, “What the young man [who’d just
filed charges against Shanley] alleges is that almost on a weekly basis, as he
was a student in a CCD [Confraternity of Christian Doctrine] class, Father Paul
Shanley who was the pastor at the time, would come to take not only him, but
others from that class for talks. For various reasons, they would be
removed from the class, the priest would take them to one of three locations.
To the bathroom, often across the street to the rectory, or to the confessional,
and that is where the sexual abuse would occur. The young man disclosed
that Father Shanley said to him that if he told, no one would believe him, and
he believed that at the time. He indicated that he was 6 years old, that
he was very fond of Father Paul Shanley, as was everybody in the parish.... “
the genuine problem, not just the victims’ reaction to it, is very big, and this
wasn’t inadvertent; at that time the Archdiocese already had letters about
Shanley’s connections with NAMBLA.)
Smith said that he thought that the
financing of this fund would be determined by, “once a fair and equitable
settlement is reached a large number of the Catholic population will support
it,” with financial donations, “They respond to earthquakes. Why would you
not think they would respond to meet the needs of the people in Boston?”
This is in the classic laissez faire fashion, where the size of the fund
would be determined by others’ desires to donate rather than by fault. If
the fact that general donations to the Archdiocese went down since donors didn’t
want to be paying to fix the damage caused by perverts, means that not many will
donate to the victims’ fund, then they don’t get much. Smith also said
regarding the disgust that the public and the victims had expressed, “There
would be public relations fallout no matter what you do. If you had done
this settlement and then come out tomorrow and said, ‘We’re grateful this
settlement is over and we want to apologize to the rest of the victims who we’re
not going to be able to help,’ that creates public relations fallout,” as if
they genuinely would be unable, not just encumbered. He said that the
Council even went to the point of outlining the parameters of how the money
should be distributed, “in a way that is proportional to the injury as opposed
to the act. There are some people out there who were very seriously
injured by these acts, and there were people who were victims of horrendous
acts, that through the grace of God, are O.K.,” though considering the degree to
which the Archdiocese has acted in bad faith, their judgment as to who has and
who hasn’t suffered greatly, certainly couldn’t be trusted. If a woman
gave that much trust to a man who had treated her with this much bad faith,
self-help books would give her a very global label of “codependent.”
And let’s not forget the fact that very likely, the more sincerely injured you
are, the less that you’re going to have your mind on doing what’s necessary to
prove that you’re injured, and those who’d make the decisions on who gets what,
would likely think skeptically that you’re just a mollycoddle whining for
dollars and attention unless you can prove otherwise. On May fifth, Smith
announced that the Church had unilaterally decided that they’d pay out “$40
million would be in line with what we can afford,” to settle all abuse claims
against the church, and wouldn’t even pay out jury awards against individual
employees beyond what insurance would cover. He said, “By canon law,
parish property falls under the parish. Civilly we have no authority to
pledge it. Further, we are not going to mortgage churches, schools or hospitals.
We just won’t do it.” He also said, “We are not looking to run away from
the victims, we want to help them as best we can.” So we have here the
same tactic that let a tabloid that libeled Rodney Dangerfield, not have to pay
any damages, since all of the tabloid’s property was in the name of another
subsidiary so those who libeled him could act as if they’re oh so helpless to
pay what they owed him. Massachusetts has a charity immunity law that, if
invoked, would limit any jury award to $20,000 per victim, which Smith
unabashedly threatened that the Archdiocese would use, despite the even greater
disgust that the public would feel. (Such laws figure that, for example, a
secular charitable chain of schools would have no reason to keep transferring a
pedophile teacher from school to school because the organization believes in
practicing the Virtue of Forgiveness with the patience of a saint.) “Our
responsibility comes out of social justice and charity but not out of civil
liability,” he said, though it’s pretty much guaranteed that if they try to cop
out of responsibility using loopholes that expect them to use discretion with
their employees, a great public outcry would no doubt take that loophole off the
law books.
In the August, 2002 deposition of Bishop Daily, who promoted Shanley despite
knowing about his advocating man-boy sex, Daily was asked for his definition of
what a troubled priest is, and he answered, “Somebody who is disturbed in one
sort or another. Might have a concern. Might be a legitimate
concern, an illegitimate concern. Person who had a physical condition, a
psychological condition. A person who had responsibilities that put weight
upon him causing him all kinds of stress. Relationships. That kind
of stuff, sure.” He was asked, “Bishop Daily, did you consider Paul
Shanley as of April 1974 to be a troubled priest using the definition that you
just provided to us?”, and answered, “Yes. I would say he was a troubled priest
that needed help.” Any other employer of people who worked with children,
wouldn’t be able to get away with claiming immunity from being a beneficent
charity, if he had this sort of attitude toward the dangers that his employees
posed.
On May ninth, Law told his flock that they should pray the following novena,
which he wrote for the occasion, “Almighty and merciful
God, by the power of the Holy Spirit you raised Jesus Christ, your Son, from
death and filled him with new and abundant life. Then, in accordance with
your loving plan, you sent the Holy Spirit upon the disciples at Pentecost, that
by his mighty gifts they might be joined to the Risen Lord in his Body, the
Church. By a fresh outpouring of the Spirit’s gifts give new life to the
Church in Boston this Pentecost. We beg that the Spirit will bring healing
to the victims of clergy sexual abuse and their families. We pray that the
Spirit will warm the hearts of those whose faith has been weakened by this
scandal. We ask that the Spirit will bestow mercy and repentance on the
abusers. We earnestly desire that the Spirit will renew and reform the
whole Church in the likeness of Christ. Fill every member of the Church
with holiness so that, working together as the Body of Christ, we might be built
up in faith, hope and love in order to proclaim the Gospel with joy. We
ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.”
It seems that he
didn’t have to prevent this problem, so now the Spirit is supposed to cure it.
As in the thinking of Schopenhauerian self-help books, “warm heart” seems to
mean not that the person feels a moral ferment about the children’s suffering,
but that he’s free of resentment. Is mercy and repentance supposed to stop
the perverts’ pedophilia, or just make them into forgiven sinners who now say
that they won’t do it again but tomorrow, who knows? If the goal is for as
many people as possible to be Christ-like, does that mean that those who are
Christ-like would take this sinful world as Jesus did and joyously forgive, or
does that mean that those who are Christ-like would feel a moral ferment when
this would lead to resolute action? In the original Greek, the word “love”
in “faith hope and love,” which is often translated as “charity,” was the word
agápè, pronounced “a-GA-pay,” which means unconditional love, like the
unconditional forgiveness that the New Testament commands. Of course, Law
must figure that even if the Boston Archdiocese refuses to pay jury awards
because the laws give charities a virtual exemption, and the property is in the
name of the parishes, then if this makes people lose faith, they should once
again pray that their hearts stay warm instead. This Christian
spirituality has the same themes as Christian spirituality for self-help.
The wounded are simply to pray or choose that they feel forgiveness, and freedom
from fear that was learned by experience, because if the wounded felt
forgiveness reconciliation hope mercy hope faith agápè and joy, this
would benefit them. Also, very conspicuous by its absence is a normal
moral ferment. Believe it or not,
the fifth chapter
of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, when discussing that “moral”
inventory which targeted resentment, gave as examples of a “self-centered,
ego-centric” “producer of confusion rather than harmony,” “the minister who
sighs over the sins of the twentieth century; politicians and reformers who are
sure all would be Utopia if the rest of the world would only behave,” basically
the same condemnation that Cardinal Law made of good old American moral ferment.
The Christian spirituality of Law’s novena has that characteristic quality of
transcending only legitimately hurt feelings, with absolutely nothing about
resisting temptations by choosing to be joyous without yielding to them. I
formerly thought that using cognitive therapy as a treatment for rape survivors,
would tell them that they should choose not to feel helpless and violated, since
the only difference between rape and normal sex is the trauma that results from
a lack of consent and lack of consent is only a state of mind, but this would be
a reductio ad absurdum. It looks to me like this exactly what the
Christian spirituality of Law’s novena is supposed to do. Also, God
obviously didn’t grant Law the wisdom to know that he shouldn’t expect Geoghan
Shanley et al to be reformed, so somehow even this choice must seem
understandable, though why God wouldn’t want one of His Earthly representatives
to know this, would be anyone’s guess. Yet it wouldn’t seem understandable
if someone says Law’s novena and still remains distressed, and/or says the
Serenity Prayer about a sinful situation and still remains distressed, and says
“Oh, well, God must have chosen not to grant me serenity regarding this
particular situation, since by God’s standards, it goes too far.”
Robert
Morrissey, a Finance Council member and lawyer, said, “When this settlement was
first proposed we didn’t know anything about the magnitude of all the other
cases. It wouldn’t be fair to consume such a large portion of the assets
for this one group, at the expense of all the other victims.” The Times
also said, “Mr. Morrissey, acknowledging that it often takes time for victims of
sexual abuse to come forward, said that part of the idea is to come up with a
plan that makes a set amount of money available, so that someone who is going to
come forward with a claim of abuse should do so now,” so another parameter that
they’re unilaterally setting is that even if, hypothetically, the current
plaintiffs accepted the dictates of the hierarchy, other abused people, those
who hadn’t come forward because they were among the more seriously injured,
wouldn’t seem entitled to anything.
In a sermon on May fifth, Law said, “The
crisis through which we are living demonstrates how pervasive the power of evil
is. Terrible acts of abuse done in secret have absorbed the horrified
attention of the church and of the wider society,” as if he didn’t knowingly
transfer Geoghan and Shanley to new churches as if they’d been completely
absolved. He also said, “I trust you can understand the disappointment,
the anger and even the sense of fresh betrayal which may be in the hearts of the
86 persons. Nonetheless I pray that as time goes on, they may be willing
to help in the framing of a wider settlement which can include the victims who
have only recently come forward,” as if their feelings were something to be
patronizingly “understood,” as if their realization of betrayal was just a
“sense,” and as if keeping to the original settlement would exclude other
victims. In his May 10th sermon, he said about the sex
abuse victims, “We weep and we mourn, we grieve. But we know that here in
the midst of our mourning and our grief, we must not be afraid.” Why the
heck not be afraid of perverts who you could then take preventative action
against?
So it seems that the obligations that resulted from the unreasonable
decisions of the Catholic hierarchy, must be moderate enough that those who made
these outlandish decisions would unilaterally find them reasonable. The
people we’re supposed to worry about becoming crippled, are those who made the
choices that brought this about, and who have access to the resources of a
worldwide organization which certainly wouldn’t sit back and let them become
crippled, not the victims of molestation and rape whose minds and souls became
crippled. Those who don’t go along with this are supposed to be
“litigious,” and are supposed to want an “easy answer.” It seems that
making available all of the Catholic Church’s resources to pay for what
unconditional forgiveness truly costs, is the easy way out. As is very
typical for victim correction as a panacea, responding to massive perversion and
tolerance of it, as one would “respond to earthquakes,” seems logical, since
blame is an anathema, so victims and potential victims are to respond to acts of
people as if they’re acts of God.
Some examples of this are the Me Generation
book Being and Caring characterizing what others might put you through as
gusts of wind, “When a fierce gust knocks me into a tree, that’s something
done to me, not something I do. I’m responsible only for being there
where the wind is blowing,” so potential victims could choose to stay indoors,
codependency books treating outrageous men’s volitional destructive behaviors as
if they’re the inherent toxic properties of a drug to which their lovers or
wives are addicted, and the one I heard directly, “If a tree was falling toward
you, you’d run away, right? Well, what others choose to do which may harm
you is the same thing.” In fact, on this webpage, I could have followed
each volitional choice of the Archdiocese with “Or does that matter at all?”
They knew about Shanley for a long time, or does that matter at all? They
chose to transfer him and Geoghan around, or does that matter at all? They
can afford what they’re saying they can’t afford, or does that matter at all?
If, “every day someone else comes forward” alleging abuse, and “The problem’s
expanding,” then either these people are lying and that’s the real issue, or
every day it becomes more clear how much of a price the forgiveness of Law and
his predecessor, had. When this goes to court and the plaintiffs are
awarded far more than was agreed to in the settlement, this wouldn’t be “at the
expense of all the other victims,” but at the expense of the Catholic Church, as
it should be, since then they won’t just keep effusively forgiving, confident
that if victims sue then this would be litigious and at the expense of other
victims. In fact, self-help books on addiction would hold that to whatever
degree others pay the price of their forgiveness, the perverts and the forgivers
have been enabled, in that they’d know that if they do it again, others would
bail them out again. It may seem that this tolerance of sinfulness leads
to more freedom, but it actually leads to less. To distribute the money
based on the injury done to each victim, might be a reasonable solution, but
that option was made unfeasible by the people who’d decide how much each person
is injured, proving themselves to operate in bad faith.
All of this shows
that strange Flip-Game dynamic, where those who caused a problem are the ones
who can get away with acting helpless, even if it can be proven that they’re
not. It seems that the redbloods are the ones who have rights which must
be defended, while mollycoddles are acting like victims as manipulative ploys,
so those who cause the problems are the ones who get coddled, while the victims
are treated as victimizers who want things to be easy. The term
“priest-ridden” had meant too burdened by authority, not ridden by priests whose
employers think that their own personal responsibility will be on their own
terms, because we must be careful about judgmental authority-based
responsibility. The prayer of St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the
Jesuits, says, “Teach us, good Lord, to serve Thee as Thou deservest; To give
and not to count the cost; To fight and not to heed the wounds; To toil and not
to seek for rest; To labour and not to ask for any reward, Save that of knowing
that we do Thy will,” and one could do this to practice the virtue of
forgiveness just as much as to practice any other, and when this doesn’t seem to
make sense, you could always bring on the Jesuitry. Saint
Bonaventure wrote, “Since happiness is nothing but the enjoyment of the Supreme
Good, and since the Supreme Good is above us, we cannot be happy unless we rise
beyond ourselves,” and this could very easily include rising above our desires
that this sinful world be as we’d have it. From this might come the
codependent belief that such toil and transcendence is a bon adventure.
“One lesson I learned from my early youth is that life isn’t always fair. Since your installation over four years ago, you have done a splendid job of driving this point home.”—abuse survivor Mark Salmon, from a letter to Archbishop Timothy Dolan
hrist’s
absurd reversals of true morality,”
Salesian Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez of Honduras, who was one of the
front-running candidates to be the current pope, said, “Pedophilia is a
sickness, and those with this sickness must leave the priesthood. But we
must not move from this to remedies that are non-Christian.… We must ask:
Where is Jesus in all this? For me it would be a tragedy to reduce the
role of a pastor to that of a cop. We are totally different, and I’d be
prepared to go to jail rather than harm one of my priests…. We must not
forget that we are pastors, not agents of the FBI or CIA.”
According to Conspiracy
of Fools by Kurt Eichenwald, Jeff Skilling said to someone at Enron whose
job was to assess financial risks, and who genuinely wanted to be a
conscientious “corporate citizen,” that his group was being transferred into a
division where they couldn’t keep tabs on Fastow, because “There have been
complaints, Vince, that you’re not helping people to do transactions.
Instead, you’re spending all your time acting like cops,” pause, “We don’t need
cops, Vince.”
