Sex abuse scandal has once again hit the worldwide media. The culprit - no surprise here - Catholic Church priests.
Though Pope Benedict XVI has chastised Irish bishops for irreverent errors of judgment regarding the handling of multiple cases where priests sexually abused innocent youngsters, and bishops from Switzerland to Denmark to Austria have condemned such conduct while urging victims to file criminal complaints, this is a sad story that keeps repeating itself. Uproar is apparent from every part of the globe with many insisting there is a continuing pattern of cover-up by Catholic Church hierarchy and the Vatican as well.
Certainly this author, based on recent experiences, is not surprised that "cover-up" is a part of the equation. While it is easy to focus generally on Catholic Church malfeasance in a general sense, or to even pinpoint the widespread sexual abuse, close examination of how the church protects its sinners is exposed when one considers a single incident, this one involving one of the most famous Catholic monks in history, the gifted wordsmith and author Thomas Merton. Examining what has occurred within the church and the International Thomas Merton Society regarding Merton's transgressions, including the use of censorship to blot out his most blatant conduct, provides a snapshot into what is wrong with the Catholic Church and its defenders as the first decade of the 21st century nears its end.
For those unaware of who Merton is, something this author shared until I attended San Francisco Theological Seminary, learned of Merton, and then wrote a recent book about him titled Beneath the Mask of Holiness: Thomas Merton and the Forbidden Love Affair that Set Him Free, he was the author of more than seventy books including the bestseller, The Seven Storey Mountain (SSM), New Seeds of Contemplation, Wisdom of the Desert, and No Man Is An Island. Dutch author Henry Nouwen called Merton "the greatest spiritual writer of the twentieth century."
Covering up Merton's pre-monastic past was the first order of business when the Church decided he was to be a poster boy for the Catholic way of life. SSM, released in late 1948, and touted as a true account of his life story, was anything but, since Catholic sensors had scissored away such diabolical conduct as being a drunkard, a womanizer, fathering an illegitimate child, participating in a mock crucifixion, committing adultery and being a draft dodger. Despite the book being less than the truth, no one within the Church has demanded its recall, or required that a disclaimer be included causing modern day readers to be hoodwinked, or perhaps more truthfully, lied to, regarding the book content.
If this wasn't bad enough, the powers that be in the Merton Legacy Trust, many of them members of the ITMS, decided censorship should prevail again when Merton's private journals were published in the mid-1990s. Apparently attorneys for the publisher decided some portions of Merton's own words had to be excised, and no one objected. Readers were never told of the censorship, and thus the seven volumes were released to the unsuspecting, all of whom believed the journals were a complete record of Merton's own words. When this author had the audacity to disclose these indiscretions in his book, and to probe deeper than anyone had ever dared regarding Merton's forbidden love affair with a student nurse half his age, another bit of conduct suppressed by the Catholic Church and alleged Merton image protectors, condemnation occurred on all sides from those within the ITMS. They called me "anti-Catholic," and the publication, "a bad book" with a "lurid title." Ugly postings on internet book sites followed with the hope that those who read them would discard any thought of reading a book so "salacious" in detail. This occurred despite reviews and comments to the contrary by such Mertonists as Robert Inchausti, editor of the The Pocket Merton. He called the book, "beautifully written and a real tribute to Merton."
Attacks on the book, something Merton himself would have condemned since he was an advocate of openness and inclusion regarding every point of view about religion and spirituality, and none, are indicative of a sour mindset packed with denial. Protecting the image of the church remains, whether it is covering up sexual abuse, clamping down on dissent, requiring celibacy on a selected basis, or perpetuating the image of public figures like Merton as being saintly in nature. Secrecy and denial still exist, causing concern as to whether incidents of sexual or mental abuse such as the ones recently uncovered continue since few safeguards are in place to prevent re-occurrence. In effect, a code of silence operatives beneath the surface of all the pomp and circumstance of the Catholic religion.
Lack of candor, together with secrecy, are the bywords in what author Russell Shaw, no relation, calls "clerical elitism," triggering a belief among bishops and priests that they are "intrinsically superior to the other members of the church and deserve automatic deference." Shaw traces this disease back to days before Vatican I on through Vatican II, where openness and honesty were replaced with deception and cover-up, resulting in scandals caused by the church's "attempting to control access to truth." Nowhere is this more evident, Shaw believes, "than in the sexual predations of priests that caused the dam of secrecy to break." This was due, Shaw wrote, "to the church's placing priests on pedestals," causing an atmosphere similar to the one where portions of Merton's autobiography were censored in what may be characterized as a rather usual course of doing business, "never give it a second thought-type of mindset." Forget the truth since censorship was necessary to keep Merton's pre-monastic "dirty laundry" a secret, a thought process similar to forgetting the truth when it comes to priests sexually abusing little boys and girls.
Until the Catholic Church wakes up and sheds its attitude of denial, more incidents of abuse will occur. Pope Benedict has the opportunity right now to start a cleansing process that may rid his Church of the stink that seeps into every parish throughout the world? Will he be courageous and act with authority, or simply attempt to sweep this latest scandal under the rug?
Mark Shaw is the author of Beneath the Mask of Holiness: Thomas Merton and the Forbidden Love Affair that Set Him Free. His website is www.markshawbooks.net.
Sander Hicks: The Devil In The Vatican
Catholic Priest Scandal: All Roads Lead to Rome:
http://generationbinary.com/wordpress/?p=175
it should be--
The Catholic Hierarchy: A Hierarchy in Denial--
the Catholic church is its people not its hierarchy and most Catholics are not in denial--contrary to some self-appointed spokesmen--no one as really ever asks the average American Catholic.
That Beachgirl61 is why the catholic church is getting raked over the coals, for sins past and present. The most heinous of those sins being not defrocking abusers and turning them over to the proper authorities for arrest and prosecution.
Until the church gets new leadership at top (pope, cardinals, and bishops) it will continue hemmorage members and have a great many parishioners will contine to look at the institution with a jaundiced eye . The issue needs to be dealt with inopenly and transpareently instead of hiring spinmeisters to say all of the to do is because of an anti-catholic media. Further, it needs to start treating the abused as the victims as they. Their inaction has manged to drive significant numbers of young people away from the church and for that matter, organized religion as a whole,
They failed early on and are still failing. today.
Until the Church can convince a court that it can protect children place a restraining order on all its employees to stay 500 feet away from any child.
I have no doubt that eventually the Church will get its act together but until then there is absolutely no other choice but to hound it to do the right thing.
The ball is squarely in the court of the Church.
There are three levels of legal crimes and moral failures by the Catholic hierarchy
1. The child abuse crimes.
2. The aiding and abetting of abusers by the hierarchy. (So well documented and so many cases that there is no reasonable doubt.)
3. The cover-ups by participants and by those who chose to go-along to get along.
The hierarchy is no better, or no worse than middle and upper management in large corporations such as Citibank or Goldman Sachs. You'd think with their selection process, religious doctrines, prayers, masses, Sacraments, retreats, etc. that they'd be substantially better, but the evidence regarding child abuse handling suggests they aren't. That should give one pause and ask: if all this doesn't make a statistically improved result in terms of morality and ethics, of what good is it?
Are there outstanding priests and nuns, of course, I've known and worked with many in my life; but there seems to be just about as the same percentage of people of the similar quality outside the Church.
That said, the power and authority of the Catholic administration to deny, conceal and strive to resolve out of court, the massive incidents of priestly (and some nuns) abuse is awfully and awesomely massive. Those folks have been doing it for decades.
Sadly, the conclusion of most of the survivors of abuse by priests leave Catholicism in an effort to eradicate denial and dishonesty from their lives....
The devastating aspect of abuse by a priest is that it emerges from someone who, to a child, has enormous authority. The Catholic church is set up to create that authority, I note....... and then, as Old Timer concisely notes, the original crime is compounded exponentially by the massive, consistent, persistent efforts on the part of the Catholic hierarchy to minimize the event, shift the priest to another site, and pretend that nothing had happened. This has been going on for decades.the scandals emerging in Ireland, more emerging in this country, new scandals in Austria...... are of no surprise. One of my colleagues in healing wonders when South America's sex scandals will hit.
I have not the slightest intention of "open season" critiques of all Catholics, but let's be honest and comment that speaking to the realities of decades of obfuscation, denial and secrecy so that priests could go from parish to parish to parish is hardly an act of radicalism. it's calling childhood rape and its concealment for what it is.
Read the stories of men and women abused by priests. SNAP's website might clue you in.
2. Anger and Blame (the victims, the homosexuals, the NYTimes are responsible, not us)
3. Bargaining (if I throw the Irish hierarchy under the bus, may I resume my Pontificate? If we come up with a set of rules, may we American bishops return to business as usual)
4. Depression (Got to make fundamental changes, let go of traditional beliefs and authoritarian processes that define me, accept new. Don't see how I can do it, so get depressed)
5. Acceptance (Take life a day at a time, act with integrity and let the chips fall where they may)
The preceding are the 5 steps we all go through in a process of converting from life as it has been to one based on new realities. It was first discovered and explained by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in her book: On Death and Dying, when she studied the process that people went through when informed they had terminal cancer. Most died before they reached the 5th step, many died in the first step.
The sex-abuse scandal challenges the Catholic Church in its core beliefs. The American Bishops went to step 3 after 2002, threw a bargain out to the public and their own consciences and it pacified things.The Pope and his loyalists are at step 2.... which began decades ago when they first blamed victims.
These five steps apply to each and every one of us challenged to make genuine renewals.
The problem--authoritarian, patriarchal, dominating organizations do not really care about what the followers think. Do you feel proud and respected by the Vatican's response?
This is what you are defending now--the response--the transfers, the cover-up-the blaming others, no matter what good you claim they have done, this is the matter at hand.
do as I say, NOT do as I do.
That = hypocrisy.
Lets have a public flo.gging of these perverts and the higherups who aid and abet.