UNITED STATES
Washington Post
Posted by Melinda Henneberger on February 14, 2013
John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt” is a great play — both sturdy and subtle, and as open to interpretation as the title suggests. Set in a Catholic school in the Bronx in 1964, it never quite spells out whether likable, open-minded Father Flynn is as guilty as fusty old Sister Aloysius suspects he is of taking an inappropriate interest in a particularly vulnerable 12-year-old boy, the only black student in the place. And that ambiguity is the power of the piece.
There’s no such shading in Shanley’s New York Times op-ed this week. In it, he voices at the top of his lungs the popular view that Benedict XVI personally implemented the coverup of predator priests. I understand the anger in his column and others like it; if the rape of children doesn’t make us scream, nothing will. Yet it’s so wrong in the particulars that it misses some of the most important lessons of the scandal.
In our all-or-nothing, right-or-left, with-us-or-against-us opinion culture, taking any issue with the way Shanley and others view Benedict will be seen by some as defending the pope — or, worse, as defending the abuse itself, though I’ve been writing about the horror of it for years.
But it’s because we can’t afford to bungle the takeaway that we shouldn’t pin so much of the blame on Benedict. “Pope Benedict XVI quit,” Shanley begins. “Good. He was utterly bereft of charm, tone-deaf and a protector of priests who abused children. He’d been a member of the Hitler Youth. In addition to this woeful résumé, he had no use for women.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.