Abortion cannot resolve pregnancy after rape

My purpose in these posts is to bring a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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THE DOUBLE OUTRAGE OF RAPE ON YOUNG GIRLS

Much is being made in social networks and online advocacy and pressure groups about the pregnancy of a 12-year-old girl from Paraguay. I am so in sync with everyone over the great wrong of the sexual abuse of children. It is totally unacceptable in all places and at all times that anyone should forcibly impose sexual relations on a unwilling partner, most especially on minors and other vulnerable people. Rape in itself is an outrage, but the rape of a young child is a double outrage.

FAILURE OF HUMANITY, OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

Those who do such things demonstrate a profound deficiency in their humanity. They are so absorbed in themselves that no others, not even  vulnerable children, are persons to them... they are unable or unwilling to respect children as persons, to treat them with the most basic of respect as independent persons. Such people are very dangerous and are a menace not only to the vulnerable but to families and society as a whole.

WE MUST CARE, ALL OF US TOGETHER

Young girls who are discovered to be pregnant require the most competent and sensitive of care. I am all in favor of doing all we can to support such girls and their families and communities. It was bad enough that they were in all likelihood traumatized by the experience of forcible sexual relations without their consent or even understanding of what was being done to them. It is imperative that we not add to their trauma by forcing upon them another traumatic experience, which abortion most certainly is, witness the countless women who have come forward in recent decades to relate the long term painful consequences of their abortions. When mature women experience abortion as a trauma, can you imagine how a young girl would experience it?

EXTREME CULTURAL VARIATIONS REGARDING SEXUAL MATURITY

Regarding pregnancy at a young age, we must be careful of the cultural biases we all carry within us, myself included. We in the West consider women under eighteen too young to get pregnant. However, in different societies and different times, it was and still is considered normal for women to marry and bear children not so very long after puberty. Christians have no trouble accepting that Mary of Nazareth conceived Jesus at or around the age of fourteen. In Québec and many other nations until not so long ago young women could marry without special permission if they were fourteen or older.

DELAYED MATURATION OF MODERNS

It is well known today that our commonplace "teenage" phase of life did not exist before World War II. It was the sudden affluence and leisure after the war that introduced "teen age" in our Western society. Before then, it was not unusual for children after puberty to be seen as adults and to leave go out to work and even leave home. My own parents entered the workforce at 13 and 14 years old, and my paternal grandfather started his working life at only ten.

ABORTION CANNOT RESOLVE RAPE

All people of good will acknowledge and agree that rape is an outrage. Regarding abortion there is not such a universal consensus. I thoroughly agree that stern action must be taken regarding rape under any circumstances, but I cannot be in sync with those who propose abortion as a solution to an unwanted or unexpected pregnancy, not even in the case of rape. I know, that sounds shocking to me too. Part of me freaks out at reading these words, let alone writing them; so I understand if they freak you out, but please bear with me for a moment and hear or read me out.

The child growing in the womb, even of that 12 year old girl, knows nothing of her being forcibly raped nor of our categories or ideologies or anxieties or inconveniences. No matter what might motivate us, to abort that unborn child would be a great wrong. That child is alive and deserves to live, and none of us have the right to snuff out that life. That is why abortion is a great wrong. One great wrong can never be considered a viable solution to another great wrong.

A WRONG CANNOT BE MADE RIGHT BY ANOTHER WRONG

Aborting the child produced by a rape can never resolve the rape. The rape has already taken place and nothing can make it go away. Adding another great wrong will not make it any better but will only compound the consequences, making them even heavier. Imposing abortion on that girl or convincing her that abortion would be better for her would be to mislead her. Taking the life of the most vulnerable among us, the unborn being even more vulnerable than young girls, can never be a solution to any of our uncomfortable life situations, not even unexpected or unexpected pregnancy. To take the life of another, no matter the circumstances, carries consequences that are dire and permanent not only for the one killed but also for the one who snuffs out that life.

HUMAN LIFE IS OF INESTIMABLE VALUE

The unborn child carried by that 12-year-old girl who was raped by her stepfather is nevertheless a human life with as much right to existence as you or me, and this right to life is the most fundamental of human rights. If we are unwilling to honor this right, then all our other rights collapse like a house of cards. The fact that we are alive at all to experience the difficulties we have in life is itself a great good, an inestimable value. Despite all our difficulties, life is eminently worth living.

HOW ABORTIVE WOMEN EXPERIENCED THEIR NATURE AS WOMAN

This is without even saying anything about the harm that abortion does to the women or girls who undergo this procedure. When advocates of abortion first proposed it as a viable choice for women and girls decades ago, we didn't know then what we know now after so many women have come forward with their testimonies of dire repercussions they suffered following their elective abortions. I understand that those who are committed to the right of women to choose have great difficulty admitting the harmful effects and long term consequences of abortion, but denial doesn't make the truth evaporate nor the facts go away. Women who have suffered after their abortion tell us that the abortion violated them in all that is most fundamental to their identity as women, even though they freely chose the abortion themselves.

They realized too late that as a woman they have been designed to give life. Their whole body is geared to nurturing and giving life, and when they interrupt a pregnancy - no matter the reasons or motivations - their whole body goes into suffering and grief over the interruption as a loss and over the decision they took and the action they have taken.

After one or more abortions, women tell us that they came to realize the truth that when their pregnancy was wanted, from the very first moment they realize they might be pregnant they relate to their fetus as a baby. It was only a fetus as long as they didn't know about its existence. In a completely different register of discourse, when their pregnancy was unwanted they were encouraged to think of the fetus as mere "product of conception". It was convenient for them, as they were convinced by others, to think of the fetus as though it were inanimate and impersonal. They were encouraged to think of it as a mere extension of their own body. As the saying goes, a woman enjoys exclusive freedom and authority over all decisions regarding her body.

The pain began for these post abortive women when the penny dropped, when they realized these two opposing experiences don't add up. They found here two outlooks that are completely divergent and contradictory while the biological reality and truth of the matter is only one. What is conceived by human beings can only be and therefore is a human person in the earliest stage of development, but an independent human individual all the same. Nothing further is added to it except for nourishment from the first moment of conception as the process of cell division and diversification attends to itself.

ZERO TOLERANCE FOR RAPE AND ABUSE OF CHILDREN

Let us stop here for now and reiterate that it is incumbent upon all of us to do all we can at every level of society to enforce "zero tolerance" policies and taboos to strike the "fear of punishment" into those people who are so deficient in their humanity that they represent a real danger of rape for our vulnerable children and women.

ALL WOMEN AND GIRLS DESERVE OUR COLLECTIVE CARE AND SUPPORT

We must also do all we can to support those women and even girls who find themselves with an unwanted or unexpected pregnancy. Pregnancy, birth, and child rearing are the responsibility and also the blessing of the whole human family, and we are all responsible to attend to the entire process. The burden of responsibility should never rest exclusively or even mostly on the shoulders of the pregnant woman or girl.

I am willing to continue this dialogue with those who may be interested to do so. Thank you.

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My purpose in these posts is to help spread the contributions of a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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© 2004-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2004-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC 

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Sexual abuse 2 - is eroticization gone awry

My purpose in these posts is to bring a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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Sexual abuse is a crime against humanity...

because it violates the free will, dignity, integrity, and health of the victims... and it manifests the disintegration of the perpetrator's humanity. 

In our previous blog reflection we began to discuss the nature of sexual abuse by clergy and that it is, sadly, but the tip of the iceberg of human society. We began by noting that

"The sexual exploitation and abuse of one human being by another is a crime against humanity because it is a violation of who that person is in their very identity as a sexual human being. Our sexuality is an integral facet of who we are in our distinctiveness as human beings. We are living beings with a capacity to not only relate to others and to care for them but also to do so in a great variety of distinct ways, with degrees of intimacy and expression appropriate to our age, gender, the nature of the relationship, what it is that we want to express or give, all of which is deeply tied into our freedom as individuals and our capacity for meaning and responsibility. Sexual and other forms of abuse are particularly heinous when committed against children and other vulnerable, fragile, or innocent beings. They become doubly tragic when those perpetrating the abuse are themselves the distorted product of having in their turn suffered sexual or other forms of abuse, often at an early and deeply impressionable age." 

It is admittedly impossible to thoroughly understand our human nature, including our sexuality, and even less it its distorted forms, unless we acquire a more fundamental and evidence-based grasp of what we are as human beings and how we come to be, to become, the beings we are when at our best or at our worst. What many factors enhance our free will to live lives of purpose and integrity on the one hand or on the other hand debilitate that ability and cause us to become mere shadows, shameful and even dangerous counterfeit human beings?

The role of "eroticization" in becoming a human person

Distorted human beings - undeveloped or "petrified" persons

to be continued....

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My purpose in these posts is to help spread the contributions of a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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© 2004-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2004-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC 

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The Case Against the Pope - the Church is taking responsibility for those who have been abused by clergy.

My purpose in these posts is to bring a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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I was profoundly moved by the "Culture Project" presentation recently in New York of "The Case Against the Pope" on the Internet after being directed to it yesterday by the "Center for Constitutional Rights". The panel consisted of Gerard Mannix Flynn who wrote and performs "James X' spoke to "How James X Came About", a play that came to him in which he expresses the suffering inflicted on a person by sexual and other forms of abuse and in particular by trusted authority figures such as priests and their struggle to emerge from that dark place into the light; Pam Spees who spoke to "CCR Involvement in James X"; Gabriel Byrne who spoke of his "Motivation for Directing James X"; and Mary Valier-Kaplan who spoke on "How Art Confronts Society".

Each of them also gave personal testimony in the course of addressing their involvement with this 75 minute theater play "James X" which runs without intermission. I was quite taken up by them and found that each panelist came across as entirely authentic, particularly as they confided their personal testimony, and an honest and deeply motivated desire to seek human progress in putting a stop to the abuse, torment, and torture of innocent children at the hands of adults, especially those who are in positions of public trust and for that reason particularly dangerous as predators.

I could not find fault with anything each of them said about the sad realities of abuse and what untold suffering it causes the victims and all those related to them; nor would I want to find fault given that a person's personal experience is of inestimable value. The challenge then for all those who seek to help and intervene in any way and work collaboratively for progress in this troubled area of human existence is to establish the objective truth in both the facts of each case as well as the person's subjective experience of those facts, on the one hand, and on the other hand, to better understand all the players involved, in both their nature and intentions, from the plaintiffs and those representing them to representatives at all levels of the Roman Catholic Church.

I found the experience of listening to this panel very compelling and stimulating in part because they addressed something that deeply distresses not only me but I think most if not all of us alive today on this planet who have any degree at all of sensitivity to the suffering of others, especially vulnerable and innocent children of any generation, whether it be decades ago or only this week. There seem to be many complications around these issues given the time it is taking to achieve workable solutions to the essential problems - both the rescue of and caring for victims of abuse and establishing clear protections for children and other vulnerable people in the present and for the future.

As I listened to the panelists' passionate pleas for progress on these issues - the key motivation in the CCR's action to put the issue to the Vatican officials named at the World Court in The Hague - I came to understand something for the first time: the rampant human emotion of fear on the part of all parties involved in these issues and their attempts to resolve them.

Plaintiffs, those who care for them, and those who seek to represent them, are afraid of the apparent power wielded by the sheer number of individuals and institutions comprising the entity called the Roman Catholic Church - including the "secular arm" called the Vatican City State and the "Holy See" designating the Pope's own ministry and that of all those individuals and groups and services that assist him - and fear for past, present, and future generations of children and other vulnerable people who may risk abuse at the hands of some elements of that authority and power. They fear, and I think rightly so as fear goes, that the harm done may not be redressed and that further harm may be done, and that we may continue to be helpless to stop it. These are legitimate fears that are crying out for our considered attention and timely and concerted action I think.

What was new to my awareness as I listened to the panelists' eloquent pleas for progress in these urgent matters was that fear may also be present and exerting undue influence within the ranks of the Church's own authorities, and servants, and within its numerous international and national primary and subsidiary institutions. Understandably, there may be some fear of being overwhelmed by the sheer number and gravity of the complaints, and some of those fears could likely be assuaged by proper formation and procedures and protocols for attending to the complaints as to both the victims and the alleged perpetrators. Further fears would be generated by concerns for the welfare of the victims of whom many have lost faith in the Church itself, generating a sense of helplessness in those who would be most apt and motivated to offer help. Thirdly, and these fears I think are the ones most likely to obstruct a proper meeting and dialogue with civil entities representing victims and their interests, which fears I would categorize under the impression of a general threat to the very existence of the institution of the RC Church itself.

There exist unquantifiably massive amounts of verifiable evidence and testimony in support of the Roman Catholic Church as an institution bringing untold benefit to humanity - in response to daily human needs as well as to spiritual needs - in just about every nation on Earth, and that in a consistent if progressive way over the past two millennia. When suits are brought to court at various levels by plaintiffs and those representing them, it seems apparent that all too often those suits are brought with such force and in such a way as to trivialize, ignore, or even deny the value of the Church as an institution - as though it were entirely criminal in a totally indiscriminate way or that the fact of the crimes of abuse of themselves could cancel the existence of the entire institution and all of its actors and members - such that one can be justified in taking from these suits and actions and the manner in which they are brought forth the impression that the desired intent or effect, directly or indirectly, intentional or unintentional, of such suit and action would be the destruction of the Church itself.

So on the one hand we have the plaintiffs - the victims - those sympathetic to them and representing them, for the most part afraid of the danger that certain elements of the Church - disturbed and unbalanced clergy or religious or responsible laity - have in the past and continue in the present to represent. On the other hand, we have members and servants of the Church who are afraid that the suits in their lack of discrimination will in effect bring about the destruction of the Church.

Consider those dioceses where the bishops have shown great openness to receive the complaints, to accept responsibility for them, to express appropriate and sincere regret for them, and to accept to fulfill the court's requirement of compensation. Many of them were brought to the brink, if not actually over the brink, of bankruptcy. After all, what is the Church, really? Unlike multinational corporations whose purpose is the amassing of assets, profits, and dividends to shareholders, officers, and employees, the Church's purpose is public service. The vast majority of dioceses have few if any investments, and generally these are to offset obligations of services, often social services, and their only other assets are buildings with their accessories, and people, both employees and members, many of whom are volunteers.

Granted, some church buildings are more lavish than others, but they are generally recognized to contain and represent cultural artifacts of lasting and historical value to the whole human race, not only to those who happen to be using and responsible to maintain them. Then there is the vast range of other assets established for the purpose of public service: hospitals, schools, orphanages, soup kitchens and shelters, to name only a few. Compare the benefits to officers of multinational corporations and you will find that bishops, priests, and religious are working and living as relatively "poor cousins". Some enjoy more benefits than others, but the vast majority of priests and religious live poorly and are horrified by the crimes committed by abusers.

From a civil law point of view, local churches or dioceses are incorporated in the person of whoever holds the office of bishop. The bishop is the corporation, not him personally, but him the officer. It does happen that, human nature being the damaged thing that it is, that on occasion a bishop may not properly fulfill his obligations. In countries where a member of the tribe who succeeds in life is then expected to come to the support and aid of his whole tribe or clan, some ethnic bishops have wrongly used diocesan funds to support their tribesmen. We westerners are shocked by such actions, but it is difficult to judge impartially from the outside of a particular social reality. I'm not condoning such misbehavior but just saying that I understand how it happens that people can do such things.

The point that I am trying to make here is that if the Church has any assets anywhere, those assets are the property of the faithful, the ordinary Catholics - the vast majority of whom are poor - and not the property of the clergy who are alleged to be and when proven to be guilty are in reality the abusers of their long suffering victims. Financial compensation of victims comes about by taking from those ordinary Catholics, making new victims of them, as it were, though certainly not in their persons, but still, in a true way, in their investment in their church. When a suit alleges that one or more bishops failed to take proper action to rescue the victims, prevent further abuse, and to attend to the victims' needs, there again, financial compensation takes from Peter to give to Paul or Pauline.

As long as the whole apparatus of action to seek redress for the victims of sexual and other forms of abuse bases its actions and its legal suits on a misunderstanding of what the Church is as an entity that exists in society for service to that same society, then those suits can be expected to continue to generate fear within the institution, fear among its officials, its members, its servants, and its many subsidiary institutions at every level: neighborhood, municipal, diocesan, provincial, national, and international. We all need to become far more astute in our mutual understanding if we are ever to attain a more open and effective dialogue and subsequently achieve together actions and safeguards that will bring both comfort to the afflicted and safeguard to the vulnerable.

As a Roman Catholic man, Christian, and priest myself, I could see here and there in panelists' words some further lack of understanding of the full nature of the RC Church and how it works. Unlike multinational corporations where directives are sent out from the top to all degrees and levels of the company and its subsidiaries with the practical expectation that they will be carried out, the Church does not and cannot function like that. Employees and officers of a company who do not follow directives are disciplined or fired or transferred, and one way or another, no failure to carry them out is tolerated. People earn a salary and are expected to "tow the line". The CEO and their officers have direct authority over employees at every level of the company.

Not so with the Roman Catholic Church, at least, not entirely. While it is true that the Roman Pontiff or his officers do follow up on some outstanding issues or roles carried out by certain individuals such as bishops, priests, Catholic professors, this tends to be in response to complaints that regular authorities have tried and failed to obtain redress. The Vatican in that sense is a kind of ombudsman. The Pope or any other officer of the Vatican - whether the City State or the Holy See - have no authority whatsoever over any bishop or priest's salary, not directly. It is true that a bishop or priest can be disciplined with varying degrees of severity and that these sanctions would then have some practical effects. However, this authority is only morally binding and not legal with civil force.

When a company fires someone, that employee generally has little recourse if the firing was handled astutely and properly in accord with the law. A guilty priest or bishop could be suspended and even excommunicated, but such severe sanctions have rarely until now been employed to stop abusers in their tracks and for understandable reasons. We enjoy in our day unprecedented progress in how we understand the human person and the functioning of all our faculties. Until some decades ago, sexual misconduct was seen entirely as a spiritual problem, one that required confession, penance, and repentance. The fact that sexual abuse by its nature tends to remain hidden and difficult to prove if not difficult to believe in great part led Church leaders to take the part of the accused.

Progress in psychotherapy and counseling has brought to light the experience of the victim and has also brought to light the different kinds of profiles of abusers, the most dangerous being pedophiles - those who abuse prepubescent children - who typically are living in total and unconscious denial. It is even impossible for experienced therapists to help them because they are clinically unaware that they have done anything wrong. Unlike them, those who abuse teens or adults are generally completely aware they have done wrong and generally deeply guilty and repentant, though still in need of help. All this to say that the time has come to assure that authority figures at all levels of the Church are brought "up to speed" on these issues and that proper protocols are put in place and proper formation given on a continual basis, because the Church is an institution in constant transition of personnel as well as of members. People age, become experienced, grow old, die, and are replaced. Those who die bring their wisdom with them and the task must begin ever anew.

The reality also is that each diocese throughout the world - there are currently some 2,846 diocese or local churches worldwide - is autonomous and independently responsible for its normal and ongoing operations. It would be literally impossible for the Pope or the Vatican offices to "micromanage" these dioceses which offer services to the world's 1.2 billion Catholics. Nor would it be in accord with Jesus' will that the bishops be controlled by a central autocrat or autocracy. It has always been understood by Catholics that Jesus gave his authority in name to Peter so that it be exercised by all 12 apostles under the leadership of Peter at the service of all. Peter himself was wrong when he denied Jesus and later when he was corrected by Paul, and it is understood that Jesus' guidance continues until today and will continue until the end when the apostles act as one under Peter. It is Catholic understanding that Jesus continues to unfailingly guide his Church and that this can be seen in the unity of the bishops with the Bishop of Rome and the faith of all the faithful.

So what do people do in the face of sexual and other forms of abuse with complaints against priests in particular? How can we understand how the various instances of the RC Church have handled such complaints in the past and how they are handling them today, and what redress can we seek when the response of Church authorities is deemed to be insufficient or even non-existent? I believe that we will make significant progress on these urgent matters only when both parties - the complainants and the representatives of the Church - manifestly show their agreement on the value of the Church as this value is already manifest worldwide and on the timeliness and need of their concerted collaboration on the healing of the abused, the protection of the vulnerable, the strengthening of the innocent, and the prompt and effective containment, treatment, and sanctioning of abusers.

These thoughts are offered in the interest of advancing the cause for the benefit of all parties and of humanity as a whole. Peace to you, reader, and to one and all. Please feel free to comment here or on my Facebook account.

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My purpose in these posts is to help spread the contributions of a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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© 2004-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2004-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC 

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Sexual abuse - let's make room for the truth, all of it and avoid misdirected anger or rage

My purpose in these posts is to bring a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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The truth will better serve the safety of children and all those at risk from abuse of all kinds.
Any children or anyone hurt by us priests or bishop need our immediate protection and help.
Anyone responsible for hurting others must face the consequences, but they need help too, since most often such heinous acts are not only crimes, but they are also manifestations of profound psychological dysfunction and illness.

If the media feeding frenzy turns its voracious appetite on people like Pope Benedict XVI, who is leading the way for us in dealing with sexual and other forms of abuse, it is not surprising. This time of year we commemorate and enter deeply and personally into the events surrounding Jesus of Nazareth, because through these events He has obtained for us salvation, rescue from our mortal human condition. The feeding frenzy existed then, as it will until the end of time, and though He was perfect, that did not deter the sharks from devouring Him. Once He was swallowed up by hatred, evil, sin, and death, He burst out and destroyed their hold of fear on us.

We must be wary. The unfettered frenzy with which we turn on others, at even the possibility they may be guilty, may be a function of our own fear of being caught, or if not guilty of the same thing, then of being found out to have at the very least thoughts and temptations of which we are not proud. The most likely person to accuse others is the one who refuses to accuse himself or herself. As Jesus himself said, our vision can only become clear enough to see the truth about the other once we have taken the log out of our own eye, that is, once we have admitted to ourselves and to others our own faults and sins.

Then beyond our actual sins, there is always the realization that in the end I am capable of doing much harm, and the only thing that saves me is opening myself up to the grace and mercy of God. You remember the saying, "There but for the grace of God go I"? Lord, have mercy on us, on our children, and on all those among us who carry from infancy or childhood hurts that twist our personalities out of shape and make us dangerous. As a Church, as a society, as a family, as parents, as pastors, as any with responsibility to care for others, open our eyes to see those around us in need of protection and in need of help, and those in need of careful, strong boundaries, for the safety of those in vulnerable states. In Jesus' Name we pray.            Fr. Gilles

Please check out the Ottawa Citizen via the link at the end of this piece.

Pope deserves better credit

 

 

BY DAVID WARREN, THE OTTAWA CITIZENMARCH 28, 2010 9:57 AM

Palm Sunday is as good a day as any to be defending the Catholic Church against the latest onslaught of media smears, and the tireless efforts to tarnish Pope Benedict personally.

I desisted from writing this column for St. Patrick's Day, when the issue was whether in 1979, Joseph Ratzinger, then Archbishop of Munich and Freising, had knowingly transferred a pedophile priest to another assignment where he could abuse more children.

The truth was that he had removed the offending priest from his station promptly, and sent him into therapy; and that without Ratzinger's knowledge, that priest's parochial vicar, no doubt falsely believing he was "cured," later put him back in a parochial setting. To suggest that Ratzinger had knowingly put other children at risk was a calumny. But I notice the journalists are still combing old cc'd memos to find mud that will stick.

As I write, the latest -- originating in the New York Times, amplified by the BBC, and thus carried in some uncritical form on most wire services -- is that as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in the 1990s, Ratzinger had failed to reply to a letter about a child-molesting priest in Wisconsin. The story is self-refuting: the Vatican did not intervene because U.S. civil authorities had themselves dropped the case.

The BBC website headline reads: "Pope Benedict faces child-abuse cover-up queries." I have written before about the deceitful journalistic practice of waving such insinuations about in headlines and leads. Only those who read carefully to the end of the piece discover how empty, and how unsubstantiated, are the implied charges. But the great majority of readers, who merely scan with half-attention, are left with the impression of accumulating grievous wrongs.

Here in Canada, the National Post gave prominent play to a characteristically smug, malicious and factually reckless attack on the Pope by Christopher Hitchens, which originally appeared in the Slate web magazine. Readers who believed a word of it should be referred via Internet to a carefully referenced point-by-point refutation by the Canadian Catholic layman Sean Murphy.

As Mark Twain (himself notoriously fast and loose as a journalist) is purported to have said, "A lie can travel half-way round the world before the truth has put its boots on." Or words to that effect. I am inclined to stone my reader with innumerable other quotes about the salience of half-truths -- how, like half-bricks, they are easier to hurl than whole ones, etc. But in the end the world is the world.

These half-brick thrusts are mounted from the top of a much bigger groundswell. A number of past cases of pedophile priests, and other male and female church figures, have been exposed in Ireland, and the journalistic taste for uncovering more has spread across Europe.

While the ground is littered with allegations that are hearsay, and while the scandal has been magnified by a routine failure to supply qualifications and context, it must be painfully admitted that there is also much truth mixed in with the charges.

The best way to appreciate this is by (actually) reading the Pope's excoriating letter to Irish bishops, sent on the Solemnity of St. Joseph (March 19) to emphasize its gravity. The letter was airily dismissed in the liberal media with, "Pope Offers Apology, Not Penalty, for Sex Abuse Scandal" (New York Times). This is a total misrepresentation of the contents of a document that is proposing to tear the Irish church apart in pursuit of malefactors and of the people who covered for them.

Nor is it an empty threat, given the scale on which North American dioceses, seminaries and religious congregations were scoured by "apostolic visitors" after scandals came to light here.

Pedophilia is by no means confined to the Catholic Church -- and the Boy Scouts -- though they are the exclusive institutional targets of liberal media. Nor is there evidence, beyond the selectivity of news coverage, that the plague is not worse in secular institutions. It is a problem to be confronted throughout our society, wherever children are left in trusted adult care; and it is a problem that would seem to have been vastly compounded by the collapse of traditional sexual morality over the last couple of generations.

Rome has, in fact, taken the lead in dealing with it, and has already put in place the most exacting safeguards against the depredations of sexual perverts inside the Church. Pope Benedict has, personally, done more to this end than, so far as I can see, any other living human, and is thus the least appropriate target for attacks.

Within the church, the need of renewal remains much deeper than the pedophile scandals. In the time both leading up to and since Vatican II, the faithful have experienced one of her greatest historical crises: a catastrophic retreat before, and compromise with, the "Zeitgeist" of modern worldly "libertarian" moral values and norms.

The answer isn't more retreat and compromise. The answer is to return to the splendour of the Mandate of Christ. And this necessarily involves implacable opposition to that Zeitgeist.

David Warren's column appears

Sunday, Wednesday and Saturday.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

 

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My purpose in these posts is to help spread the contributions of a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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© 2004-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2004-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC 

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The Interrogation of Michael Crowe

My purpose in these posts is to bring a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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I stumbled upon this 2002 made for TV movie about a true story that happened in the San Diego area of California in the years prior to the film. My revulsion and outrage surprised me, as I don't recall ever having such a strong reaction to the testimony about a true story, at least not with this intensity. I've heard and read many times before about stories of erroneous accusation and conviction, and my own faith is based on Jesus Christ, who was falsely accused, summarily sentenced and executed around 33 A.D. I need to write as I reflect and attempt to understand the nature of my outrage. 

How is it conceivable that policemen, detectives, representatives of the law would torment an innocent boy until they succeeded in breaking him and extracting from him a phony confession to suit their own hasty theory to explain the murder of his little sister? Mind you, long gone are my illusions that torture and the extraction of phony confessions only happened in the Middle Ages, or today only happen in "third world" countries, or totalitarian states. 

Could it be that in some ways America fits into one or both of these categories? Unthinkable, or is it? For more than two days the detectives mercilessly manipulated and tormented the boy, without his parents' knowledge, and demonstrated they had no interest in discovering the truth about his little sister's murder, because in their genius brains, they had already come to an absolutely certain explanation of what happened. No element of evidence or testimony that did not fit their theory mattered or merited their attention or investigation. 

What kind of person or character does such things? Most of the Americans I've ever met were wonderful people. What I don't understand is how their America has evolved to no longer represent them. Take for example their latest debate over health care. It seems evident to any outsider who knows of America and listens to the debate, as it is to many Americans, that some form of publicly funded health care system that would take the monopoly for health care out of the hands of insurance and health business interests would be better for the whole population, especially the 75 million plus citizens who can't afford insurance, let alone health care. 

Yet no one expects it to change, because America seems irrevocably committed to capitalism above human beings, profit over life, corporate health over human health. I've always heard the americanism that money talks, and I never believed it until now. Those who can afford lobbyists in government circles can wear down and tie up legislators and under the threat of paralysis influence legislative outcomes in their favor, and the ordinary citizen is powerless to do anything about it. 

American cities begin to look more like "third world" cities all the time, with the sharp contrast between desperately poor and desperately rich increasing. We read articles about the disappearance of the middle class in America. Perhaps part of what has come to be is simply the fruit of what was in the beginning, when, as in Canada, European settlers invaded the land inhabited by the first nations, spread contagion among the native population, and engaged in "ethnic cleansing" exercises whenever they could get away with it. 

Then again part of what we are derives from the arrogance with which we set ourselves apart from our European ancestors and as morally superior. Part of what outrages me about the tragedy visited upon the Crowe family by those police detectives who didn't do their job is the arrogance with which they decided what the truth was in advance of a thorough investigation. Why is that? 

Have they become so accustomed to dealing with real criminals that they can no longer recognize a normal person when they see one? What could possibly explain the way in which they mistook the boy's distraught state over the death of his sister as the guilt of a murderer? His behaviour didn't fit their image of a grieving brother. His mother noted that they didn't know him. Isn't that part of the reality of life, that we cannot possibly tell whether a person is telling the truth or not unless we know them well? 

Actions speak louder than words, and the parents knew the boy couldn't and wouldn't have done any harm to his sister, no matter what disagreements or rivalry there may have been. In the world of science, scientists are also investigators, and they are true scientists when they follow what is called the scientific method. Facts precede theories that are to be elaborated in order to explain the patterns detected in the facts. 

Any scientist who starts out with a theory before investigating is limiting, narrowing his field of investigation, consciously or subconsciously eliminating fields of data potentially hazardous to his precious theory. That is bad enough in science, but in law the results are extremely damaging to real people. It wasn't enough that the Crowe family experienced the devastation of the brutal murder of their little girl. The police department, who are supposed to be able to tell the difference between the victim and the criminal, trampled all over this family, doing them further harm. 

I understand that laws have been made brutal in order to deal harshly with hardened criminals, lest these do unending harm to society with impunity, but what happens when these brutal laws are applied to innocent citizens? What would happen to these macho detectives were they to be subjected to their own tactics, I wonder? Take away all their supports and rights, torment them for days on end, lie to them about what is happening and fabricate all kinds of evidence and testimony against them.... and do it in convincing and brutally intimidating ways.... I wonder whether their arrogance would take a hit, whether they might change. 

However, the 1969 movie starring Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis comes to mind.... "The Out of Towners". I had always remembered that the man in the story wisened up at the end and began listening to his wife and to others, but I watched it again recently, and he didn't really change. What is it about people that causes them to love the sound of their own voice, as they go on and on making judgements about everyone and everything as though they alone possessed all the truth and no one else knows anything. I found it hard to watch the movie this time and had to fast forward through most of it.... 

I just couldn't take the abuse with which he treats his wife, putting her down as though she were stupid and never listening to anything she says. At least a dozen times, if he had shut up and said, "OK dear, let's try your idea." their troubles would have come to an end and they would have gotten some rest and comfort, but no, he just wouldn't do it. 

Perhaps there are psychopaths who are that way because they suffered a major arrest in their psychological development in infancy or childhood, and perhaps there are psychpaths who are made that way by some of the institutions we have created in society that intimidate, threaten, and hinder people from behaving, feeling, thinking, and speaking like true human beings. I shudder to think that some of the people keeping the darkness at bay as members of our police forces are institutional psychopaths, people who no longer listen to what their ears hear, no longer see what their eyes look at, no longer feel what their heart observes. 

If such people take over, then no one is safe anymore, not even in their home or in their bed. We are not far from those places in the world when they come and take you away in the night, sometimes even with the pretention of doing it in the name of society, the government, or some political or religious ideal. The KKK may no longer be thriving, but some of its principles and strategies seem to have wormed their way into mainstream society, and into the forces of law and order. 

What was motivating the detectives who badgered, tormented, brainwashed, and extorted the young Michael Crowe? Did they need to fill their quota of convictions for the month? Did they have a personal issue with "Dungeons and Dragons" through some family connection or personal experience? Can they not tell the difference between a moody or shy teenager and a teenage criminal? How could they be so cocked, trigger happy, obsessed with their theory that they cut short and botched their investigation? How could they be so callous as to feel nothing themselves for the state of the victim's family and become impervious to what the members of that family were feeling? 

There's a black hole of unanswered questions here that beg to be answered. Despite the good nature and character of so many Americans, I am troubled by the America that has a love affair with its guns and weapons, that is "high" or "hooked" on authority, with wearing a badge, with being part of a uniformed service. They may have been through a gruelling and mind-numbing formation process, but they have no right to spend the rest of their careers passing the abuse and manipulation on to the very people they are called to protect. 

I've met a few American lawmen, police in Massachusetts when my car was stolen, and a state trooper who drove me home, and they were wonderful. I now wonder whether they would have been just as wonderful if I had resembled someone on a poster or a description of someone who had committed a crime they were investigating. America's love affair with power and might, with influence and right, seriously question me about ever wanting to set foot there again.... 

I have long have been troubled with France's love affair with the guillotine, and their legal system that convicts you as guilty simply upon accusation, granting you the right to prove your innocence, but if you can't, then, well, off with your head. From this side of the border, it doesn't look like American law is much better. If the police think you're guilty, then your chances have suddenly been shrunk to close to nothing. I'll close on this thought. 

At one time, during sleepless nights, I'd watch some of those American late night infomercials. One of the get rich quick schemes had to do with buying up property for back taxes and then making a killing on resale. I began to wonder, how can people get rich doing that unless there are a lot of properties in that situation. Most of these are homes. Why are so many Americans, living in the richest country in the world, losing their homes? 

Then while on sabbatical in Chicago in the Fall of 2004 I found out one of the reasons: no health care insurance. People get sick, are in an accident, or give birth, and suddenly they find themselves penniless and homeless. Why would anyone want to live in such a country where anyone can take away your livelihood, your very life, with full protection of the law and even the encouragement of the whole society? Well, simply put, because of America's love affair with being a "land of opportunity". 

Here as in the ocean, the sharks do best. Americans live in a society caught in a stranglehold at the hands of lawyers, health care and insurance industries, and every corporation that can afford lots of lawyers and lobbyists in the capital. Why must the Crowe family go on suffering? Why won't the police simply give them the closure and satisfaction they seek? Because everyone is scared to death of the lawyers.... life is worth nothing where money matters. 

To my mind, that is a novel definition of hell. Yes, indeed, there is such a place after all, and not just on Earth.... I admire this family for standing up for themselves, for their dead daughter, and for their son, who in addition to being tormented with grief for his sister was cruelly tortured under false pretenses and falsely accused by police who were hasty and sloppy, and psychopathic with their institutional blindness. Bravo to the producers, directors, and most of all, the actors who brought this human tragedy to the light of day which it deserves and long awaited. 

Perhaps someday, the good American people I have known will be represented and protected by officials worthy of the best among their citizenry. As I said above, I have no doubt there are marvelous people of great integrity in the courts, in police stations, in the military, and in government, and it's a shame that there aren't more of them, and that they have to suffer the indignity of such poor representation. As a Roman Catholic priest, I know what it feels like to be poorly represented by the weakest and most depraved among us. It is, sadly, part of our human condition, for which we have only one Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory now and forever.

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My purpose in these posts is to help spread the contributions of a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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© 2004-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2004-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC 

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