"Of the temporal and the eternal. The Vatican responds”
Since the year 2002, when the pedophile abuse scandal rocked the foundation of the Catholic Church in Boston, we have followed closely the events that followed. First it was the accusations of hundreds of victims; next the disclosure of priests names that in other circumstances would have been leading into famous sainthood but were now part of a list of the infamous; last, a well-known and well-liked Cardinal we have met on several social occasions found himself in an untenable position within the church hierarchy and with his parishioners and was forced to resign and become an exile in an humble church in Rome while millions and millions of hard collected dollars were endangered in order to pay legal restitution.
And, of course, the disgrace did not stop there. Ever since that fateful date, as we had warned and anticipated in most of our articles back then, we have seen not only many of the most heavily populated Catholic cities of the country pony up with more of the same, but we have also witnessed a similar outcome all over Europe and even parts of Latin America. The Reformation pales in comparison.
Don't get me wrong, I did not find solace or joy when those horrendous facts surfaced. And it is not my job to pursue pedophiles, priestly or otherwise, or emit judgment. But having been raised a Catholic and spent ten years of my childhood and adolescence in a Jesuit educational institution and then working with local Catholic groups as an adult, it was not easy to see the leaders of my faith being accused, caught, judged, and proven guilty of so many offenses that went above and beyond the venial sins we were asked to confess day in and day out as we grew under their watchful eyes. These were not sins; these were sacrileges.
Finally, after the long 323 words of introduction, I arrive at the reason for this article. If there was something I and many others who had more at a stake on this issue than me were hoping for, it was a solid response coming from the Vatican and its main universal representative: The Pope. There are hundreds of millions of Catholics in the world and they deserve full moral and responsible representation in our civil society. Like to most observers of the ongoing crisis, it was painful to see the Church hierarchy pretending that the abuse problem did not exist or that it was first of all an American problem, not a universal problem. And when it came to Ireland, the Irish priests were even suspected of having the abuse gene in their blood. Then, as the sickness continued to spread through its ranks, it was attributed to a higher incidence of homosexual priests amongst their ranks, a convenient excuse that came very handy.
That one did not go particularly well not only with the gay communities, but also with those who questioned an acknowledged inability of the Catholic Seminaries' to weed out those they later blamed for the crisis burning their hands. But, of course, it wasn't. Gay priests had nothing to do with pedophilia; there is no evidence that gays do. You can accuse them of having sex with other gay priests if you want, but little boys and little girls are not their targets. And then, finally, after an intensive campaign of accusations against bishops and cardinals for having looked the other way while abuses remained in the dubious category of personal sins and not in the more evident category of criminal violations, the Pope now speaks. You may ask whether this is a case of too little too late or not. I say the eternal or the temporal is the real question.
The problem, as I see it, is that the recent response came as a defensive and at the same time opportunistic aggressive list of issues muddled together to be posted in the confessionary for penance but hardly on the outside walls of a church for public condemnation and retribution. In other words, abuse led to sin, to confession and repentance, but not to punishment by society where it should have been. And here is my evidence.
Included at the top of the "new" list of offenses considered by the Vatican in response to the sexual abuse scandal is the issue of heresy. Unless you have dropped from another planet since year one of the current era, I don't have to explain to you what heresy means. Perhaps someone will consider this article a heresy. All I know is that heresies have been around in many ways or another for almost two thousand years, the first Church Councils meant to cleanse the doctrine from its effect. The Church did not like to wait patiently for some heretics to burn in hell eventually and in many cases they burnt them at the stakes much earlier to speed up the process. Why wait, right?
And, as we know, some of those heresies became accepted truths much later. If you want a list I can send you to Google to read about Copernicus or Galileo, even Miguel de Cervantes of Don Quijote's fame. You can also revisit Pope John Paul II's apology of the year 2,000 for the Inquisition and many other crimes committed in the name of the Church through the ages where so many heretics met their fate.. I can make a really long list (by the way, the names mentioned above suffered persecution but not execution), but my point is that heresy has been around for centuries and did not need a spruce up from the Vatican to give them present value. It was an old worn out hat. If you worship at a non-Catholic Christian church of any denomination you are sitting on a bench that went heretic by Catholic standards some time during the past twenty centuries.
In the next issue of the agenda, and to make sure we have not forgotten it, the Vatican decided to include in its response to the abuse crisis a repetition of the role of women in the priesthood. That one is also an old problem they can't deal with no matter how hard they try. No woman has been made an "authorized" Catholic priest, ever. The male dominated Catholic Church of today that inherited its one-gender power orientation from a society where women were not even admitted to all the sections of the temples, finds its rationale on the fact that Jesus never had a woman Apostle. I have always believed that in the Jewish society at the time of his life, for Jesus to bring the issue of having a woman in the ministry would have been a heresy of the greatest magnitude and he would not have been crucified for "pretending" to be the son of God, but for "subverting" the masculinity of the religious tyranny. Besides, Jesus did not wear shoes either and remember, many Jewish women of the time wore "burkas" a la Taliban style to hide their charms.
So the Church restates its centuries "old" heresy and women ordination rules of violations and includes the new catch up policy definition of the "young" child abuse scandal trying to make us believe that such crisis is recent, perhaps a 21st century aberration driven by pornography and the materialistic nature of the society in which we live. Sorry folks, but no cigar; you cannot have it both ways. Either you have the cake or you eat it, but not both. Pedophilia in the priesthood is probably as old as the other two listed "offenses." Sexual abuse is an exercise of absolute power.
It is not a Church reflection of pornography or the deterioration of the family and gay liberation of any time period. If you want me to believe that in the past two thousand years of religious activities, Christian or not, there have been no "documented" or "reported" cases of sexual abuse, I will believe it, after all the printing press was invented in the fifteenth century by Johannes Gutenberg and the Internet in 1996, but don't tell me they have not occurred and still are not happening in the world. That is not an issue limited to priests by the way. On July 20 of this year the Boston Globe published an exhaustive article about a sexual abuse accusation and punishment of a Jewish Rabbi. Not that it should be a relief to the Church, on the contrary; this is not religious pollution, but it should come as a reminder that abuse is a human issue and, as far as I can tell, all priests are human.
So let's be a little human please and face the music.
And that is my point of view today.
Would you like to read this article in Spanish so you can practice both languages? Click Aquí.
Recently, as I watched the Senate proceedings about the well deserved nomination and eventually best deserved appointment of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the US Supreme Court, I witnessed time and again statements by some Senators, unfortunately all of them Republicans of course (*), accusing the nominee of activism and of using empathy in her judgment. I say “of course” with disappointment. After two hundred and thirty three years of freedom we still have some members of the Senate who don’t seem to get what that freedom means for the rest of us.
A woman in Azle, Texas, recently displayed a "Hispanics Keep Out" sign on the front of her home that stirred up unease for some residents in that Tarrant County neighborhood. "Well, you know, I don't care," said a 72-year-old woman who answered the door at the home. "I'm upset about them coming over here illegally, too." The woman did not want to disclose her name. "We think this is our privilege as an American to protect our property," she said, "This is our property." Empathy, anyone? I had recurring images of Native Americans posting signs on their huts back in the sixteen hundreds that might have read: “Pilgrims Keep Out.” That would have been noticeable then, wouldn’t it?
Just so you know something about her town, let’s visit and quote from their official Web site: “Azle is located on SH (State Highway) 199, fourteen miles northwest of downtown Ft. Worth and straddles the Tarrant/Parker County line. It has an estimated 10,950 residents…. Azle is a master planned community that offers a quality of life that everyone can enjoy (My note: Not Hispanics, please). Surrounded by hills and trees, with the eastern portion of the city limits bound by the shores of Eagle Mountain Lake, Azle provides ideal settings for peaceful neighborhoods. Azle is a great place to relax whether you visit one of its city parks; enjoy water activities on Eagle Mountain Lake; read a good book at the Azle Memorial Library, or enjoy the challenge of playing golf at its 18-hole municipal golf course, Cross Timbers Golf Course.”(Source: http://www.ci.azle.tx.us/)
She is not alone, of course (here is “of course” one more time.) Some Senators, including Senator John McCain, who recently tried to convince Latinos to vote for him as President in a national election, decided to vote against the Judge one more time. Wanted consistency; he voted against her when she was nominated to the lower court before. Being there, done that, he probably said. Empathy again I suppose, “of course.”
That “empathy” word kept popping up in my mind while those senators used their constitutionally given right to oppose the woman’s appointment to the court. They can dress their opinions anyway they want, but in my aging “wise Latino mind” all I see is racism, “of course,” plain and simple. But let’s give these folks a break, shall we? I will leave alone the racist point and revisit their empathy comments that appear to be so outrageous.
According to the dictionary, “Empathy is the capability to share and understand another's emotions and feelings. It is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes," Empathy does not necessarily imply compassion, sympathy, or empathic concern because this capacity can be present in context of compassionate or cruel behavior as well.” (Source: Wikipedia.)
So according to these Senators, a Supreme Court Judge cannot be “empathetic.” According to these Solons the justices are only supposed to issue clear deductions that come from previous constitutional principles and not “create” new laws. Well, let’s use a couple of cases that may show some light.
Sitting at a restaurant dinner table with my lawyer son-in-law, a glass of wine at hand “of course,” his constitutional law interest in Law School behind him now, we discussed this issue of empathy in the justices. He was beside himself trying to make some sense about that issue in the minds and voices of the senators who opposed Judge Sotomayor. We quickly settled on two examples where it was evident that the Justices were revolutionary in concept and philosophy, perhaps even empathetic, not simply copying from before.
The first was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. That landmark decision handed down on May 17, 1954 unanimously stated that state laws that established separate public schools for black and white students denied black children equal educational opportunities and were inherently unequal." As a result, de jure racial segregation was ruled a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This victory paved the way for integration and the civil rights movement that still seems to bother that woman in Azle, Texas. For our information, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, right after the Civil War. For eighty six years, the Amendment stood silently while school segregation was taking place and not being spotted by non-empathetic justices.
Another decision of the Court, and one that is controversial as controversy can be was the famous Roe v. Wade abortion decision of January 22, 1973. Now, I don’t want to get in the middle of the discussions between opponents and supporters of that decision because it is quite sensitive from many angles, including religious beliefs. But it is a law, and all I want to say and to point is that nowhere in the original US Constitution I read a statement specifically supporting, or denying, the right of a woman to have an abortion. The court declared, however, “The abortion statutes void as vague and over broadly infringing the plaintiff’s (Roe) Ninth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.” They added the following: "The Constitution] is made for people of fundamentally differing views and the accident of our finding certain opinions natural and familiar or novel and even shocking ought not to conclude our judgment upon the question whether statutes embodying them conflict with the Constitution of the United States."
The Ninth Amendment, adopted in 1789, one hundred and eighty four years before Roe v. Wade, reads as follows: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” Did the Justices adopt, adapt or create? I am not a constitutional attorney and leave that answer to them, but it is clear to me that this was new legislation and not simply carbon copying the constitution. If you have any doubt ask those who are still trying to change the law passionately.
Were the Justices feeling empathy for someone in either of the cases listed above? You be the judge this time. As for the senators who so vehemently accused Judge Sotomayor of playing the empathy game, I believe most of them, if not all of them, claim to be good Christians. Christianity is based on the belief that Jesus died for all of humanity because he felt divine empathy for that humanity as well. What is wrong with that feeling? “To err is human, but to forgive is divine;” Alexander Pope, great English Poet.
And that is my Point of View today, of course.
(*) In fairness to Republicans, some of them voted for Judge Sotomayor.
