UNITED STATES
Waiting for Godot to Leave
Kevin O’Brien
My friend Tom Leith notes that most people view marriage as a legal or consensual arrangement, not as an ontological change. By “ontological change” he means a change in our very being.
There are many of these ontological changes that we go through in our lives. Adolescence is the first big one, one in which we grapple with the great change of going from being a child to being an adult. But we recognize other ontological changes in life as well, if only subconsciously.
When a man becomes a father or a woman becomes a mother, we realize that this changes who we are. At least we used to recognize that readily. Many people are very casual about this ontological change these days and don’t recognize the responsibility suddenly thrust upon them by becoming different people from what they once were. And we fathers are surprised to learn that, foolish and inept as we sometimes are, our children nonetheless view us as entirely different sorts of creatures from every other person on the planet. Mommy or Daddy is something other and something greater than Aunt or Uncle or brother or sister. Our kids see that, sometimes to our embarrassment and chagrin. …
And the higher the goal, the greater the disparity when we don’t reach it.
Take, for instance, Holy Orders. I’m becoming more and more convinced that the majority of bishops and even a solid contingent of priests are not only bad at what they do (which is to be expected, as they are called to be remarkably great), but simply scoundrels, bad men who have adopted a mask that allows them to exercise their badness is ways that normal people can’t.
Here’s a long description of a priest who simply appears to be a predator in a collar. It’s by Peggy Warren of Wichita, a woman who (if her story is true) was preyed upon by a priest and treated with contempt by his bishop, while, because of the whole sordid mess, her marriage and sanity began to crumble around her. I’m not sharing her story to enter into a discussion on the fiduciary duty of priests and to examine how abuse can happen even between adults, when one of them is in a position of authority and the other is vulnerable. I’m sharing it because priests having affairs with married women is much more common than priests molesting children, and this flouting of marriage and the priesthood does an incredible amount of damage, despite the fact that bishops take it lightly.
Note that it’s the ontological change, which is apparently viewed as a mere mask by the priest in the story – it’s this ontological change or alteration of identity that allows the abusive relationship to happen. The priest was able to begin his long process of grooming, he had access to the wife, to the home, to the family in the way that he did because he was a priest. No unmarried guy off the street would have been given the opportunity this man was given. He was operating under cover, a convenient cover that works automatically in the minds of many people. “Father is a priest! He’s a nice guy! Why would I worry that he spends time alone with my wife in my living room after I go to bed at night?”
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