NEW YORK
Patch
By Bob Marrone
Even within the free speech venue that is WVOX, some subjects require special handling, if you will. Religion, race and the subject of Israel, when not articulated carefully, can bring a lot of negative feedback and result in suspension or even the loss of one’s job.
Yes, speech in such matters is free; the consequences, however, can be very costly.
Nonetheless, I have charted a course on the radio of criticizing the Catholic Church’s problems with respect to sexual abuse and what I believe to be, at minimum, the contributing factor of celibacy. As I prepared to return to the air from my break, I began to wonder if I didn’t have a little of Joe Paterno in me.
The local papers noted the fall from grace of Iona College’s former president Brother James Liguori; the recent arrest of the former leader of the Salesians, Reverend Richard McCormick, on rape charges; and the comments of Father Benedict Groeschel, also of Westchester, that it is young people who seduce clerics into child abuse. Indeed, maybe I—we—have grown too tolerant and too respectful of the church to acknowledge this problem, even as it has manifested itself right here in Westchester.
At times, when I have introduced this subject on the air, I have been met with the accurate, though irrelevant, feedback that I am picking on the church and that the issue of child abuse exists in proportion throughout society and in other religious organizations. I buy that it exists all over society and I have written about it here. But I no more accept the notion of proportionality than I do the argument from my liberal friends that there is just as much crime in suburban areas as there is in the inner city. Both are either polite notions of political correctness or undue deference to the status of religion.
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