UNITED STATES
Voice from the Desert
By Vinnie Nauheimer
Suppose Cardinal Dolan’s recent folksy metaphor about washing hands bespeaks the incredible hypocrisy that is endemic among the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church? Washing hands used as a metaphor has two meanings. The first is to clean yourself up and the second is to remove yourself from a situation vis a vis Pontius Pilate. Consider Dolan’s decision in Milwaukee to pay sexually abusing priests to leave the priesthood. Instead of doing the right thing, he emulated Pilate and washed his hands of the guilty priests. Thinking like that is intrinsically disordered! It is a more or less a strong tendency geared toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder. Can turning sexually abusing priests loose on the public be anything but?
During the past eleven years, we have all witnessed hundreds of documented cases of bishops and cardinals shuffling sexually abusing priests between parishes, dioceses, and even countries. The end result in each case was the destruction of more young lives. Who is the bigger villain, the predator who follows his perverse inclinations or the hierarchy, who controlling the chains of the predators, allow them free reign to rape and plunder the most vulnerable of the church’s members? Yet no one in the hierarchy has ever publicly admonished these offending priests either by forbidding them access to the church, decrying the desecration of the act of consecration, or even for setting and serving Christ’s table with scent of children fresh on their hands. Grievous omissions like this bespeak an intrinsically disordered hierarchy and sense of outrage! It denotes a strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder. Can turning sexually abusing priests loose to prey on unsuspecting families of good Catholics be anything but?
Recently, protesters were turned away from St. Patrick’s Cathedral for attempting to enter the cathedral with hands soiled by mere ashes. Since when are physically dirty hands a sufficient reason for keeping Catholics out of their church? Can anyone ever recall a priest being turned away from a church for having dirty hands because he used to debauch young children? Priests have been turned away from churches for protesting sexual abuse, but never for committing it. Has Dolan ever publicly told a pedophile priest to wash his hands before saying mass? Has he ever told a sexually abusing priest to wash his hands before consecrating a host? Where was his outcry against the heinous sacrilegious crime of violating altar servers in the sacristy prior to saying mass? Refusing to publicly ask sexually abusing priests to wash their hands prior to saying Mass is intrinsically disordered, but not as disordered as refusing to bar them from entering a church.
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