Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Above the Law

I was raised in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, and still consider myself 'culturally Catholic' to a large degree... though that has as much of a (multi)ethnic rationale as a religious-tradition based one. I was never molested by a clergy member, and do not personally know anyone who was, though when I was in high school, a priest who turned out to have fondled a couple of teen boys landed in our local parish (and was hustled out when a congregant who worked for the archdiocese asked questions about why he had been in so many parishes in such a short time).

After that preamble, I now note that Cardinal Bernard Law, the archbishop of the Boston archdiocese who presided over the worst of the sexual abuse coverup in the US, has died at the age of eighty-six. He died in a hospital in Rome, having avoided any penalties for his malfeasance. I have to say that my drift away from Mother Church was largely a result of this horrendous scandal, and the fact that I had seen the families of LGBTQ friends torn apart by doctrine-based bigotry.

Sexual abuse of minors is, of course, not limited to the Roman Catholic Church- all religions have had their sex scandals, typically among the fundamentalist sects- the Protestant Bible-beaters, the ultra-Orthodox Jews, the Wahabist Muslims. In the secular world, we've just witnessed a scandal which tore apart US gymnastics. In the case of Cardinal Law, the sin was compounded by protecting the abusers, allowing them to continue their depredations. It was an utter failure to protect the most vulnerable of his flock.

It's fitting that Law, who evaded the law, died in the midst of a societal shift on sexual misconduct. Gone are the days when powerful men could victimize women, children, and yes, even other men, while able to rely on a conspiracy of silence. Law is gone, let's hope that the toxic culture that he fostered will follow him into oblivion.

3 comments:

bowtiejack said...

People sometimes ask me if I'm a "fallen away Catholic".
No, I reply, I jumped.

In other news, what's the difference between Roy Moore and an Islamic fundamentalist?
A cowboy hat.

mikey said...

Yes! Nicely done.

Powerful men will always exploit the power imbalance to take advantage of the people under their purview. The church - organizationally and institutionally - built that kind of power imbalance into every aspect of life within not just the organization itself, but the communities it 'served'. The difference - we'll see how far it goes and how long it holds - is that there is suddenly some accountability for these kinds of actions. It's spotty - in Hollywood, in Congress (to some extent), but not within Law Enforcement or Finance.

But to your specific point, this is another example of why I evolved into one of the 'shrill' anti-religion atheists, out of the Harris/Dawkins/Hitchins school. Organized religion by definition is vested with a unique degree of power - based on the coercive indoctrination necessary to make otherwise intelligent human beings believe seven impossible things before breakfast - and being just other humans in funny outfits, many of them will be venal predators who will use the mythological structure itself to prey on their community.

The answer is in accountability. Consequences. When people pay a price for their behavior, most will decide not to take the risk. I KNOW there's a bunch of money in the local bank, but I don't steal it because I don't want to pay the consequences. That's the rule of law - justice for victims, harsh penalties for victimizers.

I'm just afraid that we're going to get distracted by events and let the moment pass....

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

People sometimes ask me if I'm a "fallen away Catholic".
No, I reply, I jumped.


I say that the church left me, with a combination of the sex scandals and a hard right theological turn.

But to your specific point, this is another example of why I evolved into one of the 'shrill' anti-religion atheists, out of the Harris/Dawkins/Hitchins school. Organized religion by definition is vested with a unique degree of power - based on the coercive indoctrination necessary to make otherwise intelligent human beings believe seven impossible things before breakfast - and being just other humans in funny outfits, many of them will be venal predators who will use the mythological structure itself to prey on their community

The weird thing is that the entire power structure requires so much buy-in from the marks... the coercion is based on something that there's no evidence for, at least in most of this country and Western Europe.