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	Maciel, Partisanship and Blindness By Rod Dreher Beliefnet February 4, 2009 http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2009/02/maciel-partisanship-and-blindn.html It's my view that Father Neuhaus so vigorously defended the vile Fr. Marcial Maciel, and ran down the reputations of his critics, because it was so difficult for him to accept the possibility that priests of the Church who were openly and rigorously orthodox could have done these things. Neuhaus was well known for his argument that there's nothing wrong with the scandal that "fidelity" couldn't fix. Technically he's right: if one is faithful to Catholic teaching, one doesn't molest children and violate one's vows of celibacy, and the rest. But that's also a truism. What the "fidelity, fidelity, fidelity" view doesn't address are structural and psychological barriers to identifying and stopping abusers who pretend to be faithful, faithful, faithful, but who are living a double life. Most Catholics, though, and most people in general, have a very difficult time seeing that their own side is capable of doing terrible things. Before the scandal, I was what you might call a political Catholic. Yes, I knew that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, but in truth I believed that the real problem in the Church was the liberals. And I could give you a lengthy catalog of the bad they had done to and in the Church. Though I'm not a Catholic anymore, I don't think I was wrong about those things. What I was wrong about, though, and very, very wrong indeed, was assuming that "our side" was therefore blameless. I really did think ideologically. Once, when I lived in Washington, someone brought up then-Bishop Charles Grahmann of Dallas for some reason. "Is he orthodox?" I asked. Yes, came the answer. And that settled it for me: Grahmann was one of the good guys. No more questions needed to be asked. In fact, as I would find out once I got here, Grahmann was one of the bad guys in the Church. His public orthodoxy, while commendable, told us very little about the way he governed the Catholic Church in Dallas -- which, as it turned out, was terrible. As I was beginning to report on the Catholic sex abuse scandal, I was warned by a reputable and deeply knowledgeable Catholic priest, a man who has been made to suffer for his orthodoxy, that I better not assume that just because a priest or layman claims to be orthodox, that they're trustworthy. Many villains hide beneath the cloak of orthodox Catholic piety, he told me. It's a feint they use to throw people off their scent. Trust me, he said, I've seen this a lot. He was right, as it turned out. You could not find a greater example of that than the disgraced Maciel. The thing is, the Catholic left is just as blind. They view the real problem in the Church being the orthodox, or the conservatives. It is very, very hard for them, in general, to grasp the sins and failings of their own team. They think ideologically too. What I found in actual experience is a mixed bag. I found liberal Catholic laymen and priests with whom I agree about little theologically, who were absolutely heroic in the scandal. I found conservatives with whom I agreed about most everything who were cowardly. What I found mostly, though, was that a man's true character could not be reliably discerned from his theological orientation. It was so much easier to be able to separate the sheep and the goats by ideology. But it's not real, and to give into that temptation is to set oneself up for humiliation, or worse, the perpetuation of evil. This is not, obviously, just a Catholic thing, or a Christian thing, or a religious thing. This is human nature. Republicans today who looked the other day when Bush and his crew were doing intolerable things will suddenly find themselves vigilant against Team Obama's depredations. We will also find liberals who rode Bush hard finding all kinds of excuses for Obama in the months and years to come. It is so difficult to try to see people as people, and to deal with them on that basis. There is little emotional satisfaction in it. And there is a lot of money to be made and power to be gained in training people to see the world ideologically. But it's false, and not only false, it's dangerous. It's a temptation every one of us faces -- and if you don't think you face it, you are setting yourself up for a fall. I'm not saying there is no such thing as good and evil, right and wrong, or that all sides are always equally culpable in wrongdoing. What I'm saying is what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said: the line between good and evil runs right through the human heart. As soon as we forget that, we're in trouble.
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