If you ever want to be thoroughly depressed at the state of our society, simply read the comboxes in a public newspaper anytime anybody from the Church says anything about anything. Immediately employed is the Catholic version of the argument ad Hitlerum, wherein the reaction of the public defaults to a sticking of the fingers in the ears and a chanting of something to the effect of "LA LA LA SEX ABUSE SCANDAL LA LA LA!" As Chesterton so aptly put it, "it is generally the man who is not ready to argue, who is ready to sneer."
Such has become the case with Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk of Cincinnati's recent expression of disgust at "Sexploration Week," currently being offered on University of Cincinnati campus, notoriously sponsored by the intrepid sexplorers at Pure Romance. One caption from a photo of the "Pizza and Porn" session reads as follows:
some Students who attended “Pizza and Porn” were asked under what circumstances they would ‘do porn.’ Some would ... with provisions.Curious for more information about "Pizza and Porn?" Here ya go:
At the event "Pizza and Porn," sexuality educator Kathleen Baldwin will discuss how "porn is not necessarily a bad thing," Johnson said. "We're not showing porn, we're just discussing porn."Because porn is not necessarily bad, but too bad to show over pizza, apparently.
Other session titles include "Sexcapades" and "Got the Hook Up?" And if these talks whet your sexual appetites, free condoms and "safer sex kits" (I don't even want to know) abound, along with a free demonstration of products from Pure Romance to help accessorize the experience.
A word coined on Mark Shea's blog the other day aptly sums up the whole fiasco: "sluttony."
Archbishop Pilarczyk, an alumnus of the University of Cincinnati, rightly expressed his disgust at the week's events. Not surprisingly, he was greeted with a chorus of detractors, the content of most of whose comments could be summed up by "stuff it, you molestor!" and "sexual promiscuity is right because it's recent!" Here's a sampling of a few of the comments on the article from the Enquirer, which at last count filled 50+ pages:
"keep sex in the rectory where it belongs!!!"And so forth. Perhaps UC should consider spending their money on a campus-wide grammar and spelling convention instead.
"Mind your O.D.B. Catholic Church and Pilarczyk. Take your pageantry and pedophilia to a cave somewhere. We can all be good people and citizens without that garbage."
"Does the Archbishop realize that his parents had sex too! If not how in the world did he get here? His parents must have had impure thoughts and actions! Just once. Oh MY that may make a mortal rather that the high and mighty one he thinks he is."
"To the archbishop. GO CRALL BACK UNDER THE ROCK YOU CAME from! The only disturbing thing is how you handled the priests you shuffeled from church to church at the expense of the children that they molested. You Danile Pilarczyk are very disturbing to all of us in the city."
The sex abuse scandal happened. There's no denying it; there's no excusing it. But to forget that the scandal happened inside the Church at the same time that the sexual revolution was happening outside is to live in unreality. I hate that the abuse happened in my Catholic Church, just as I hated when it happened in my Nazarene Church, or in my United Methodist Church, or in the schools I attended.
But perhaps what I hate the most about the fact that it happened in my Church is that when someone like Archbishop Pilarczyk rightly expresses disgust at a tasteless display such as "Sexploration," that the arguments he makes are automatically dismissed with the man.
15 comments:
in all honesty i have very little sympathy for the catholic church in this... they ruined their own credibility as a moral authority and seriously damaged their witness for christ with the way they handled the pedophilia situations...
trying to cover up sin and victimization at the expense of justice for the victims is the sort of thing that will make your opinions irrelevant and hypoctitical in the eyes of the public...
and rightly so.
Auret,
Last I checked, the Catholic Church is the easiest institution to point fingers at because it is the most united one. United in our sin, we are also united in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. United not only as human beings, but in the purifying and saving Blood of our Savior.
The Church itself is a miracle, for, it proves that God can take broken people (think Moses, Peter, Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa, Walker Percy...) and somehow, despite their brokeness spread His Gospel through them. And, truly, thanks be to God for that.
the real question is, "who has credibility to speak out against this," or, as indicated here, "does anybody have the credibility to speak out against this?" as a sinner, i welcome responses...
a start in the credibility department would be not being a representative of an organization that has been publicly shown to be actively covering up the sexual victimization of children...
you simply can't do that and ever expect to be given the benefit of the doubt as an authority on matters of morality.
sorry that's just the way humanity works.
if the church did the right thing and took the side of the victim as soon as they became aware of the incidents and did so consistantly in every case... rather than trying to cover their own collective ass... then they wouldn't have lost all credibility...
rather they likely would have been viewed positively for having the integrity to do right even when it was difficult.
the catholic church needs to deal with the consequences of it's own actions... one of those consequences is a loss of moral credibility and authority...
millstones are heavy. that's just the way things are.
which again begs the question, where... if anywhere... can credibility be found?
Honestly, people, look at what cms stated. Take a look at an older example, St Augustine of Hippo. His life was a wreck. No one doubted or contradicted that. No one can, even in our time. He was, even during this time, a Christian (a Catholic), and yet, when he turned to Jesus at last, he became one of the most influential individuals of the Western World. We have seen, as a Church and the most unified presence on the face of the planet, countless pitfalls. One such famous one, the Inquisition, was much likened to this case, only instead of a FEW INDIVIDUALS, entire countries took part. Despite this, the Church rose again. We fail because we are human. Our nature is weakened, but not pathetic. It is our unity in Christ that allows for us to rise again. We may be assaulted much during this decade, the next decade even, or even the decade after that. But, eventually, the people will see that their condemnation was wrongly placed. Was wrong period. Since the time of Christ, the Church has stood as the backbone of morality. It will continue until Christ comes again. But if, heaven forbid it, the Church falls and never returns, humanity as a whole will be lost. Mankind will degrade into nothing more than murderous animals and such cases as the pedophilia situation among a few INDIVIDUALS will magnify until we begin to devolve into the ape-like creatures we once were, not physically, no, but morally and intellectually, yes.
That is all.
you seem to be equating the roman catholic Church with Christianity.
Christianity existed for 3 centuries before catholicism and existed outside of catholicism in one form or another for close to 2 millennia...
if the catholic church has lost its relevance and credibility to society, then it deserves to wane into obscurity...
Christianity will endure regardless.
Credibility, as with many things... reveals it self in time through the lens of balance and wisdom.
Credibility is what one encounters in our young, old, teenage, adult, single, married, divorced, widowed Catholics all around the world who in spite of human weakness, war and politics Choose to believe.
We Catholics who are united in our bond of faith remain so....
Hopefully, through Our Father in Heavens good grace reveal everyday the meaning and credibility of our Catholic church.
The Rose in California
I vaguely seem to remember having this conversation before. . . .
Will the debate now move to Church history, as it did before and seems likely to do now?
(I apologize in advance if any of my off-hand recollections from my time at the Bishops' Conference and my reading of the John Jay study are faulty.)
in response to sixthscale and auret: you seem to be unfairly (and not very knowledgeably) simplifying the Church's response[s] to the sex abuse scandal. The Church is not only the bishops that chose to reassign accused priests and those priests who betrayed their vocation and hurt the vulnerable and cost people their faith. "The Church" is also those who reported abusers, those bishops (like Donald Wuerl) who did the right thing at great pains early on, the bishops who commissioned the John Jay study (which I think is still the single largest attempt by ANY organization to come to realistic terms with the scope of its internal sexual abuse), bishops like Cardinal O'Malley who humbled themselves before the victims of sexual abuse, who chose to see in their pain, not the specter of liability, but the face of the crucified Lord.
(It should also be noted in fairness that some of the bishops at fault only reassigned their priests because they were advised by therapists who had treated the accused that the priests were fit to return to duty.)
The U.S. bishops after the scope of the crisis became known in 2002 also in concert adopted regulations (with a regimen of third-party auditing) for handling accusations that were so harsh on the accused priests that the Vatican had to intervene to ensure conformity with provisions of Canon Law protecting the reputations of those falsely-accused. Regular priests across the country were scared of false accusations (which did happen in the wake of the 2002 Boston revelations) which would automatically occasion their leave of absence and years of ecclesiastical litigation.
Much of the Church hierarchy in the U.S. had certainly encouraged a culture of defensive secrecy over the centuries, a culture which had very destructive results, as it happened, but the Church can't be reduced to its pastors, who also should not be prejudicially held at fault.
As the John Jay study concluded, about 4% (as I recall) of priests were likely guilty of abuse. That is also the figure prevailing in the secular world. The Church ought to be better than that. I as a Catholic am ashamed. Exaggerating the implications of the scandal to the proportions of utter and pervasive moral bankruptcy, though, says nothing about the Church; it does however say something about one’s own prejudices.
To Anonymous,
In response to sixthscale and auret:
Well said and a fine recollection at that.
God Bless our Faithful Priest's and Religious.
A saddened/faithful catholic
Auret:
"Christianity" was not around for three centuries before Catholicism. The early Church WAS the Catholic Church, which is attested by all reputable scholarship. Now that you have blown your credibility on this, should I listen to anything else you have to say?
The Catholic Church had a sex abuse scandal, yes. It involved about 4% of priests over a period of many decades, not 4% of the priests at all times. It was sad and disgusting and horrible, and many bishops did a bad job of being bishops. But I'm sorry, I don't think that that has anything to do with an individual bishop's credibility about anything.
For one thing, public schools have a much higher (and ongoing) rate of abusing children, yet I don't hear any outcry against them OR any refusal to listen to what schools say about anything. Protestant churches have a slightly higher rate of child sex abuse, but I don't hear anything about them either. Apparently children's prisons and detention facilities also have high rates of child sex abuse. By your logic, none of these institutions has anything to say that you are obliged to listen to.
"Sexploration Week" at UC is a disgusting perversion of higher education and a triumph of marketing dollars from The Sex Company We Must All Admire. I agree with the bishop and whoever else says so, because it is true -- not because of who says it.
sorry but plenty of credible scholars agree that the catholic church did not really exist until constantine.
my point wasn't about the abuse itself but about shameful and unchristlike way the church handled the situation...
i also agree that sexploration week is idiotic and shameful...
but the fact is that the church of rome has lost it's credibility in the eyes of the culture in issues related to sexuality because of it's own hypocritical actions...
and policy of self protection before justice for the victims.
imho they lost most of their credibility on the topic long ago with things like some of the silliness that augustine wrote on the subject...
but for most folks the recent scandals were the last straw.
Auret: Your arguments lack substance and are, therefore, reducible to prejudice. Moreover, your persistent reduction of “the Church” to the worst of its offending bishops (a reductionism that has already been refuted in above posts, e.g., Anonymous on +Wuerl, +O’Malley, &c.) is not only irrational but, when backed up by lawyers and the media, destructive. Who has suffered by this widespread, vindictive reductionism? It’s not rich, fattened, offending bishops or diocesan officials (most of whom are dead or retired), but, as this Commonweal article points out (http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/article.php3?id_article=1915), the ones who pay the most are the marginal, struggling parishes, the poor in troubled neighborhoods who rely on private Catholic education and the many aging priests, women religious and lay employees subsisting on church pensions. There is something fitting about that injustice: the Church is communion and, as such, is suffers communally in its contemptible sin and it suffers communally in its punishment.
I would recommend, Auret, that you consider the principle ex opere operato, for it is the Holy Spirit, not the clergy or the laity, that constitutes the Church. The Church left behind Donatist rigorism long ago. Keep your church of saints. Mine enfolds sinners.
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