By Newser
Michael Wolff
April 2, 2010
http://www.newser.com/off-the-grid/post/434/i-just-cant-stop-dwelling-on-the-catholics.html?utm_source=otg&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20100402
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Pardon me for continuing on, but I find this story not just to be about sexual abuse but about, practically speaking, the end of history.
The issue in the Church’s almost decade-long sexual abuse scandal is less about priests and boys, and more substantially about its long, defining battle with secular authority.
That’s the message that comes through the clearest: The Church didn’t want to notify the police about the criminal activity of its priests and didn’t believe it had to. And, having enormous sway in US police departments—policing being, peculiarly, an Irish and, hence, Roman Catholic profession—and within governments in Europe, the Church was pretty much free to make that decision on its own.
After all, the Church was a leader in the judgment business, so the actual police were rather superfluous.
Much of the Church’s rationalization about its abusive priests now involves the fallibility of man and his essential sinfulness. The Church seems, actually, somewhat shocked that anyone would have thought better of priests. Indeed, the Church suggests with a heavy heart, its institutional tolerance for pervy priests is just another burden of its ministry. And, given such weaknesses, isn’t it better such sinners be close to a confessional?
As for punishment, what does it really matter, because in the end, there’s God’s judgment, harsher than any prison cell. "I have no doubt that Murphy will face the One who judges both the living and the dead,” said a Vatican spokesman about Michigan priest Lawrence Murphy, whose Church trial for the abuse of deaf boys was halted because of Murphy’s ill health.
It is the Church’s current, uncomprehending position that it should continue to have the same exceptions when it comes to civil law that it has always had (yesterday, in a somewhat panicked mode, the Vatican declared that the pope, as a head of state, had immunity from prosecution). It believes as well that it should be exempt from media consequences. The Vatican posted a long rebuttal on its website to the New York Times story describing the pope’s apparent indifference to the Murphy accusations. The Church, which has occupied a sacred cow status for much of the history of the mass media, reacted similarly—that is, like a stuck pig—to the Boston Globe’s coverage of the American sex abuse scandals early last decade.
For a host of structural and cultural reasons, the Church has for a miraculously long time been allowed a parallel track in history. It was, in some sense, an alterative to modernity, and, as well, a drag on it. It’s separateness, its largely unchallenged authority, have been crucial to its identity.
This is now coming to an end, one which history will judge as perhaps overdue, but nevertheless unexpected and abrupt.
We will tell our grandchildren about it.
More of Newser founder Michael Wolff's articles and commentary can be found at VanityFair.com, where he writes a regular column. He can be emailed at michael@newser.com. You can also follow him on Twitter: @MichaelWolffNYC.
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