UNITED STATES
Waiting for Godot to Leave
Today, I spent lunch with my friend and Theater of the Word actor Dave Treadway of Steward Media and I was on a tear, complaining about many things, especially this. “Dave,” I said, “I used to think the liberals in the Church caused all the trouble, until I met the conservatives in the Church. Now I’m getting used to rampant hypocrisy on both sides of the spectrum, from left to right – Catholics who are as bad as I am and worse, regardless of the number of devotions or novenas they pray. I am hurt by, but used to, leftist Catholics who ignore Church teaching and right-wing Catholics who despise the Catechism. I am used to, but hurt by, bad liberal bishops and bad conservative bishops. I am used to, but hurt by, my own infernal sinfulness, which keeps rearing its ugly head again and again.
“But what really bothers me at a fundamental level is how many conservative Catholics there are who are making excuses for rape and child abuse.”
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To wit (from comboxes, blogs or other published material of the past two weeks) …
In cases where priests molest children, Fr. Benedict Groeschel stated in an interview published in the National Catholic Register, “A lot of the cases, the youngster – 14, 16, 18 – is the seducer.”
As a response to this comment, I posted what I thought was a simple explanation of What Rape Is , pointing out that a 14-year-old, for example, while he or she can act seductively toward an adult, can in no way seduce an adult; pointing out that statutory rape is indeed “rape”, since a minor does not have the capacity to consent to a sex act; and after I did so, the dam burst in little trickles, including a Facebook friend who asserted, “Statutory rape is a legal fiction.” How little I suspected then that this is the attitude of many, if not most, Catholics.
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