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	The Cancer inside the Roman Catholic Church By Bill Westcott The Compass October 20, 2009 http://cbncompass.ca/index.cfm?sid=296116&sc=329 "Let us rejoice that we see around us on every hand the decay of institutions and instruments of power....For it is precisely when every earthly hope has been explored and found wanting...that Christ's hand reaches out sure and firm." - Malcolm Muggeridge from his book, The End of Christendom. How would you feel if you were told without any doubt someone you thought you knew and looked up to was a prostitute? Shocking would not be strong enough I imagine. Well, that's exactly how I was made to feel again on Oct. 3 when I learned about the allegations of perverse conduct of a Roman Catholic bishop from Newfoundland. Raymond Lahey a while back let a tiny ray of light back into the Church when last year he steered the historic settlement for victims of sexual abuse by priests in his Nova Scotia diocese in the 1950s. A short ten months later he was arrested for allegedly possessing and importing child porn. Shortly after that he resigned his trusted and sacred post as Bishop of Antigonish. Not since the shocking revelation about the late Father Jim Hickey some 20 years ago have I been able to keep the faith in the church. Like countless other struggling Catholics I became a victim of extreme doubt. I worked with Hickey at CBC prior to his entering the seminary. My opening reference to a prostitute in this column can easily be applied to events back then as today. Hickey was at the time, as we thought, a respected member of the personnel department at CBNT. When I knew him he was always up front and to be honest with you a nice guy and a fellow worker everyone genuinely liked and admired. Staff associations and union locals gave him a royal send-off with cash donations and appropriate gifts to aid in his new venture to become a priest. The length and breadth Hickey carried his deception and the realization that he was proven to be amongst the most despicable pedophiles on the face of the earth saddened and shocked us. And to think he did it behind the cloak of a supposed servant of God is forever unforgivable in my mind. How dark can things get? How much can we take? Where is the confidence we once had in our church leaders? The answer has to be it is gone. Pitiful images I never witnessed anything so sad as the Here and Now video of those few troubled parishioners sitting and listening to their priest, who no doubt they are perhaps also suspicious of, reading a carefully written personal letter from the archbishop trying to console parishioners' angry and troubled souls. A photo carried in the Telegram Oct. 5 and 8 and showed about a dozen dejected parishioners from St. Ninian's Cathedral in Antigonish, Nova Scotia leaving their church after mass. They appeared like a group of mourners leaving a funeral mass. It seemed so sad as a time of enlightenment obviously turned to confusion and for some depression. This latest Lahey scandal has reignited the whole sexual abuse of boys mess again, and I predict it will be a long while before the cancer with which he infected the Catholic Church is ever eradicated. The latest Bishop Raymond Lahey affair has rocked an already fledgling church from Newfoundland all the way to the Rome. The current events concerning Bishop Lahey will eventually play themselves out with a scoffing world looking on. Regardless of what the outcome, Raymond Lahey has to live with his own conscience. If those widespread allegations hold and if he is convicted of those despicable crimes (possession of and distribution of child pornography) no prison bars could possibly be as hard to live behind as his own reflective thoughts - his conscience. Another bombshell The Earle brothers (Shane and Billy) recently dropped another bombshell. They disclosed that back in 1985 when Lahey took them from Mount Cashel to his home in Mount Pearl on weekends, they saw pornography openly on display there. They said they looked at condoms (new and used) lying around, sexually explicit porn magazines with nude teens in various sexual poses and other graphic forms of video-porn featuring young boys. Although they reported what they had seen to Father Kevin Molloy and he in turn reported it to the then Archbishop Alphonsus Penney, "he (Penney) kept it silent for twenty years," Shane Earle told the news media Oct. 5. All the king's horses Can humpty dumpty ever be put back together again? Not in the current Roman Catholic Church in my lifetime I fear, unless there are some major and dramatic changes made real soon. Celibacy has to go and the doors opened wide to accept married couples and single women to be priests. If not experts suggest, the Vatican and all it represents in Christendom will continue to decay and will eventually hasten the already-planted seeds of its own destruction. Malcolm Muggeridge, the prolific writer on Christianity and about the life of Jesus, (Jesus the man who lives) paints a powerful picture that resembles the current situation in the Roman Catholic Church he willingly converted to in the later stages of his life. He wrote: "God has been abolished by the media pundits and other promoters of our new demi-theologized divinity. We continue to insist that self-indulgence is freedom and novelty is originality. In these circumstances it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that Western man (clergy included no doubt) has decided to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brings the walls of his own city crumbling down." Personal belief As disastrous as recent events have been, although my faith and trust in my Church have again been battered, I still believe in God and profess him as my Higher Power. Although feeling quite pessimistic this week, at the same time I wish to express my infinite confidence in the ultimate purposes of God and of his son Jesus Christ. This, my indestructible belief gives me serenity and courage every day of my life. We must forever keep in mind Christ's teaching, "My kingdom is not of this world." When the events of late do their destructive deed, from the rubble and ash left be assured that Christ's hand will reach out sure and firm to lead the badly needed reformation of the 21st century, not only in the Roman Catholic Church, but of all religious institutions and instruments of power. Hope reigns supreme!
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