Cardinal Roger Mahony, aka head of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of Child Rape, is having a tough time loving his enemies now that they’ve discovered he’s just another feculent stain on humanity and refuse to shut up about it. I mean, it’s not as if he had any way of knowing, way back in the 1980s, that raping little kids was kind of a problem. Poor guy. But at least he’s got some fight left in him. Despite his own little Calvary and the demands of retirement golf and a papal conclave, he’s managing to find some time to use his personal blog and Twitter to explain yet again that child rape isn’t such a big deal and people should just get off their high horse and quit persecuting him for a little bit of innocent, uh, “rape by instrumentation.”
“Anyone interested in loving your enemies, or doing good to those who persecute you? See my blog for today. Wow, Jesus is demanding,” Mahony posted on Twitter Monday.
Straight out of the “New Revised Standard Apology Bible” chapter 1 verse 3.
“God put us on this earth to suffer [the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or whatever a suitable Biblical equivalent is] and why can’t people understand the victimiser is more of a victim than the victim?
For god’s sake, isn’t getting weepy on TV and saying ‘I’m really sorry people got hurt (including me, why do people forget me?)” enough? Can’t think why the Cardinal hasn’t chosen the True American Christian Path to Forgiveness (TM), aka the Oprah Winfrey show.
All the same, he’s got a point about the amount of purely visceral hatred that’s flying about.
Squirrel: “All the same, he’s got a point about the amount of purely visceral hatred that’s flying about.”
Very true. But Mahony really is Ninth Circle material (allegorically speaking).
I really don’t understand how this works.
I presume they have ‘belief’ when they become a priest…
Then they sin.
It has to mean their faith wasn’t strong enough, or they didn’t have it in the first place. Otherwise how could they live with their conscience?
How can they stand in front of an altar and not be scared to death at the wrong they’re doing.
If, as might well happen they lose faith after they’ve taken holy orders, why don’t they get out?
Is it because wearing the cloth gives them easier access to their perversions?
Di,
In the denouement of one of his cases, the great detective Phillip Marlowe was required to explain how he’d identified the elusive villain. Instead of the expected Sherlockian brilliance, he growled something to the effect that some things are true because they have to be true, that they don’t make sense any other way. One thing that has to be true in that way is that a man who, at the end of a lifetime of successful church politics, finds himself in Mahony’s (or Ratzinger’s) position must, whatever else he is, be a tower of self-righteousness. Expecting a man who has done what they’ve done every day for decades and somehow come out on top in the end to also root out endemic perversion among their own troops is a little like…I don’t know…requiring someone to bake the perfect loaf of bread, and then adding as an afterthought that the finished product should also qualify as a beautiful piece of sculpture.
Another thing that has to be true is that you can’t recruit and train people for a lifetime of unquestioning obedience to an institution and then expect them to rebel against just some of what it nurtures in effective and morally appropriate ways — while all the while reminding themselves that we are all hopeless sinners and can’t (indeed, must not) aspire to anything else in this life.
I can’t sin! I am above sin! I am really and truly sanctified! Whatever I may choose to do, though it might be sin in one unsanctified, with me God will turn it to his glory.
– Sharon Falconer, evangelist, Elmer Gantry
Sure, that’s a Protestant speaking, but I find it very easy to believe those priests, bishops, cardinals, and popes feel pretty much the same.
As someone once in possession of a hermeneutically messy but nonetheless sincere faith (a faith akin, perhaps, to that which it’s the job of the Mahonys of the world to jealously protect), I was always struck by the various types of people who ended up in RC religious life. Some viewed it as a noble calling but, after years of erosion of one sort or another, decided it was just too scary to leave, the perks too captivating. Some were truly committed to the foundational principles, though most of those whom I met were secular rather than religious, or they were women religious who got none of the huge benefits available to male clergy.
And some were downright twisted. I’ve followed Mahony for a while now. Referring to a really horrible pedophile, Mahony once sniffed, “It’s not as if he’s someone I would play golf with.” (Something very close to that.) That was years ago, but I knew at that moment the kind of person he was. He was essentially saying, “It’s not my job to deal with all the sickos under my command. I’m too busy with normal, manly, healthy activities, the sorts of endeavors that keep men like me busy–successful men, movers and shakers, captains of their fields.”
Not all that unlike a lot of the excuses one hears from people in the financial world. Just worse. For all my complaining about Jon Corzine, it’s not as if he countenanced the violent sexual assault of hundreds of children and then got all indignant and whiny when people pointed it out.
Bim,
I think it’s far more likely to find an honest governor than a cardinal who defies the disciplined loyalty his profession demands. In the former profession, everyone grants an element of personal choice. Denying the propriety of that kind of choice is a precondition of the latter.
I think it’s worse than all that. These guys mostly are old enough to come from a place and time where the priesthood was considered just about the only acceptable life choice for a sexually deviant Catholic man of at least some education, because it offered the only structured existence likely to help him to renounce or resist his deviancy -in theory anyway- and if in practice, during his life-long struggle with his desires, he was now and then weak, with a few children here and there, well…. at least he could confess his sin (most likely he would be careful to choose another paedo priest as a confessor, and so remain safe with the conclave) and anyway the children with whom he was weak, they would be regarded in any case as little wanton hussies, whom would hardly suffer any lasting harm. That is how courrupted they were, and are. Right to the to the rotten top of the rotten heap. It’s not just that it wasn’t your man’s ‘job’ to deal with the lowly sickos, he almost certainly didn’t really even think they had done anything particularly sick. And for the institution to admit, and I don’t mean just superficially, but really to admit the abject criminal foulness that went on, will have to have the effect of inciting a catastrophic collapse of self-esteem, on the order that would cause a human being to commit, or want to commit, suicide.
Not that I think the R C. Church will commit churchicide, I don’t. What I mean is I do not believe it has the capacity to comprehend, even now, the foulness it has harbored all these years. They will tear their collective hair and beat their breasts and smear (a few) ashes across their cheeks, but they will never really mean it.
A Steve Bell cartoon.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/uk-edition
Bluthner:
Bluthner:
Isn’t there also a lot of kudos for Catholic mothers if they have a son that goes into the priesthood, or a daughter into a nunnery? Or there used to be.
It was pretty much the done thing that one of the brood would enter the church. Something about gaining extra points for when she jumped the big divide for having handed one of them over to God.
As you may know we have yet another Priest that’s been found out.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/26/anti-gay-rhetoric-of-religious-leaders
Di, of course! I’m not for a moment suggesting sexual deviancy was the only reason any man went into the priesthood, far from it. Only that it was also seen as way to deal with troubled men, too.
Bluthner:
I get what you mean and quite agree. We shouldn’t forget a mother’s instincts about their children.
Evidently they are suffering a shortage of applicants for the priesthood nowadays. The same for nuns…
I read that In Ireland the drop seemed to coincide with the explosion of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy. Less church going too. Mammon evidently wields more power than the church.
It will be interesting to see if, with the financial struggles they’re having now, the number of applicants rises once again.
Bluth,
So we identify two preconditions for the present state of the church: a proclivity to commit the offense, and an institutional inability to resist it. It takes both, or we really would be talking about bad apples and embarrassments and such.
Compare and contrast that to what we acknowledge as politics: their attraction for thieves is obvious, but political institutions can sometimes puke their thieves back up. What political institutions can’t deal with are the evils that would bring them down if they were effectively addressed. Take away the obligation to place all authority in the hierarchy and the church itself would disappear.
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Jabsco,
For some reason I just can’t put my finger on, that strikes me as adorable.
Thanks, guys. I knew if anyone would appreciate my attempts at capitalism it’d be you.
Congratulations, Jabsco.
Natasha,
I once knew a twisted, mean-spirited, morbidly fat priest who thought it was the height of hilarity to say, “I’m just a wretched sinner worthy of hell.” (Let’s just call him Richard, since that’s his name.) This was Richard’s idea of self-deprecating charm, but he meant it, sort of, which is to say he knew, at some level, that he was a twisted, gossipy, mean-spirited and singularly unattractive human being. I eventually came to realize these truths about Richard too. I also understood that his religious sentimentality gave him an out: he didn’t have to do much to try to become a better person. (Kinda like really unattractive people who refuse to do anything to make themselves a little more appealing but then get really bent out of shape when they’re spurned.)
I also met a number of people who fit the Roger Mahony mold. These more capable clerics, less overtly unappealing than Richard, saw themselves as leaders of men who were entitled to all the privileges due to those of superior intellect and creativity: housekeepers, lots of leisure and vacations, freedom from mundane irritants, enjoyable meals prepared by others; a deeply deferential attitude in those whom they considered inferior (i.e., most people). They were not much different than people who are really proud of their business accomplishments – and I think their motives and attitudes were about the same. Mahony’s reaction is kind of like Lloyd Blankfein’s when he was being vilified a year and a half ago, during the whole Occupy thing. Blankfein was upset – and his feelings were hurt – because he saw himself as someone who had done so much to make the world a better place.
I’m not a big fan of utilitarian arithmetic, but I’d say Mahony is on shakier ground than Blankfein.
In any case, you’re right about mindless fealty (if I’m not misreading), but it’s everywhere.
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Nat,
We could classify self-perpetuating hierarchies according to which crimes they will tolerate and which crimes get puked out. A priest with a habit of putting his hands in the poor box too often, rather than down the trousers of the choir boys, might well get puked out of the church, while for politicians exactly the opposite odds might apply.
Once upon a time it seemed as if unlimited campaign finance, for instance, was an evil our system was going to be able to address. SCOTUS seems bent on wiping out the last vestiges of that ability. Because of course money = free speech and those persons, corporeal and fictional, with the most free speech must be allowed to exercise that freedom as they please.
Bim,
Another way of saying it: Mahony was the right man for the job. That remark about playing golf says it all. While Father X is groping the choir boys and Father Y is desperately raising money for the poor and spending half his time down at the lockup begging for another chance for young Jose, Cardinal M is representing among The People Who Matter. He had damn well better know which fork to use and he had damn well better tell just the right jokes while using it. Others may be replaceable but not him — not unless he screws up very, very badly on the job he’s there to do. Among the few ways he could do that is tolerating (never mind creating) any sort of controversy, which would invariably be called putting the Church in a bad light among those for whom a good light is everything. He would do just that by not killing the messenger who comes to tattle on Father X, much less somehow being that messenger himself.
Bluth,
Indeed. A more general formulation that extends beyond crime might be: what does a particular politician have to do to lose his job? If we have to rank them, I’d put gerrymandering ahead of uncontrolled campaign financing as a threat to effective government — but, to be honest, probably only until somebody agreed with me. True, the requirement to raise millions for re-election means turning Medicare over to the Merck Cartel and makes every race a national race no matter what the local voters may think, but safe seats bring you this, from the safely seated Chairman of the House Budget Committee (on the sequester):
But how safe is that seat? Safe enough to unleash that little spasm of nonsense with (at least) impunity, but is it safe enough for its occupant to say anything very different?
When I was 21 or so, Daley Sr. was routinely spoken of as the most powerful man around because he could do anything he said he wanted to do. But he wouldn’t have lasted a month if what he said he wanted suddenly changed very much. This should have been obvious to everybody, but at least half the city (and almost everyone who thought themselves wise and educated) thought he was an unconstrained free agent acting purely out of his own preferences.
If that’s true of people who unquestionably do have a good deal of real power, what does it say of those whose “power” consists purely of the right to say yes to a much narrower constituency? What we’re losing is our traditional balance between controlled institutional corruption and the possibility of quasi-democratic government: vote this way on A and B and you get to go your own way on C, D and E. It’s been a much, much narrower, less flexible and more homogenized game in recent years, and it’s getting so much more so by the minute that the only people who can get want they want today are those who want no government at all in many of the usual senses.
Nat, sometimes I think gerrymandering might act, or at least did act, when we had, as you say, a political class that still acted as if they believed a reasonable level give and take was an essential ingredient of if not good then at least somewhat consistently functional government, as one of a couple of important dampers preventing the entire edifice from swaying too far too fast in any direction, a little like those enormous weights that hang suspended many stories up in certain skyscrapers, that are designed to work against wind-sway, to keep the tower from whipping back and forth so much that the occupants get sea-sick, or, worse, the whole thing falls down.
In the sense that if one party holds power by a very large margin across a wide area, then gerrymandering makes less difference, but it makes a huge difference when margins get narrow. And then that difference hangs around for quite a long while after a population has shifted its allegiance. Until finally the new majority breaks through to power, redraws the districts, and ensconces itself, until eventually, if it happens, the majority swings back the other way, and it takes quite a while to unseat the unfairly over-represented bastards of the new stripe. Same as the complexion of the Supreme Court is for so much of the time a reflection of the predilections of the regime which lost power some time back, as we wait for senility or arterial hardening, or various cancers to re-draw the ‘districts’ up there on the bench.
So even though gerrymandering is maddening (especially when you disagree with the minority who drew the districts) and patently anti-democratic, it has in the past done a job of buffering. And in societies where government can only really function if there is a certain basal level of consensus, such as our own, maybe that kind of buffering, even if it was never intended or written into law, or even admitted to in public by our public office holders very often, maybe it used to bolster the likelihood of consensus. On the Karmic understanding that what goes around comes around.
I think what we are seeing now is the complete breakdown of the Karmic understanding that has been one of the driving engines of the country’s political system since, I dunno, at least since the Great Depression. Because the Teaheads and the Birchers and the Texas Jesus-breathing Oilmen and the racist white rednecks have finally seen the fiery letters burning on the temple wall: what goes around is not coming back around every again, for them. No reason for them anymore to do anything but take because their days of having anything to give are numbered, and the number is way too small for comfort.
Which means this country, sadly, is shit out of luck for any kind of sane and reasonable and good-for-the-nation compromise until some new dispensation arises out of the various interests and groups and individuals who bank with, identify with, church with and otherwise eat, sleep and reproduce on the right. Arises and agrees to quit with the lockdown and get with the old game of give and take (and pocket a nice slice for themselves along the way).
How long is that going to take? Just as long as it takes enough greasy-souled & ambitious pols who call themselves Republicans to do the maths and figure out that there are more votes in doing something than in doing nothing. Which is not yet. And not next week, and probably not next year or the year after that, but soon.
Or is that over-hopeful thinking?
Bluth,
Our traditional gerrymandering where “one party holds power by a very large margin across a wide area” benefits the individual officeholder, who keeps his seat for a long time, becomes a committee chairman and is thus able to shower one kind of pork or another upon his lucky district. In other words, it’s local politics projected nationally, at its simultaneous very best and very worst.
Local doesn’t mean what it used to anymore. More and more, it means “national faction carefully overrepresented here.” That spells the end of you get yours if I get mine, because under no circumstances can I permit you to get yours. Indeed, “mine” has become mostly the prevention of “yours” and very little else: elect me, and I will stop them. And one thing we will never run out of is people whose most important interest is in stopping some particular them.
We’ve always had this but it’s become increasingly apocalyptic. Everything we want, everything we need to stay in office, boils down to the prevention of something our people don’t want, and this is not fertile territory for compromise. There is very little wiggle room left over for anything, so we make up for it by wiggling faster and faster in ever smaller spaces. You can only do this so long before you lose the capacity to act at all.
There is a small group of too-influential people who want to see government abolished in most senses, but the apparent success they’re enjoying right now isn’t due to their vacuous ideas. It’s due purely to a new analog of the old system of dividing the pie: you stop this governmental function for me and I’ll stop that one for you. Neither of us wants to stop all of it, but that’s the only result you can get from a coalition of multiple stop-this-isms.
“Just as long as it takes enough greasy-souled & ambitious pols who call themselves Republicans to do the maths and figure out that there are more votes in doing something than in doing nothing.” This can happen on a national or even on a statewide scale. It can’t happen where the votes naturally fall like rain upon any anointed nominee — anointed solely because of his reliable willingness to use every occasion to stand and holler You Shall Not Pass to some other locally dominant faction’s loathsome, world-ending agenda.