BishopAccountability.org
	Blind to Their Own Sins By Peter Jackson The Telegram October 20, 2009 http://www.thetelegram.com/index.cfm?sid=296032&sc=86 The news of Bishop Raymond Lahey and his laptop computer has been floating around for a month now, and reaction, while heated, has been largely predictable. Lahey, who resigned his post as archbishop of Antigonish, N.S., shortly before being arrested on child pornography charges, was a former professor at Memorial University in St. John's, as well as a bishop on Newfoundland's west coast. The Catholic Church expressed the usual dismay and sorrow over the news. If Lahey's sins had only been confined to the 1990s, when the extent of pedophilia among Catholic clergy was blown wide open, he could be seen as simply "one who got away." But the fact that he was apparently still indulging his unholy urges in 2009 makes one wonder whether the Catholic Church has really and truly "got it" yet. Very little is added to the debate by lashing out against Catholicism as if it were some evil empire. There are those who see the church as a crumbling relic, and who take every chance to swing a sledgehammer at its weakened foundation. Such sentiments have been expressed by commentators in these pages, on websites and in broadcast media.Neither is there any merit in tired rebuttals consisting of circular, fundamentalist arguments - "the Pope is right because God says so," and such. A recent letter published in The Telegram raised the preposterous notion of a grand resurgence of Catholicism complete with widespread conversion by Protestants. This is not a defence. It is a closing of one's ears and eyes. What's needed is an honest, unhindered examination of the priesthood itself - its structure, its customs and its role in the community. One of the most important questions to come out of the sex abuse scandal is whether the church should continue to demand that its priests remain celibate. It is a question the Vatican is unlikely to even consider anytime soon, but it has been raised nonetheless with increasing frequency. But even without entertaining an end to celibate priesthood, it is long past time that the Vatican should examine the culture of priesthood and determine what measure must be taken to counter this epidemic of abuse. And should one doubt it's an epidemic, the 2002 John Jay report found that since 1950, more than 95 per cent of dioceses in the U.S. had been affected in some way by child abuse cases. And considering the moral disgrace of such acts, it's disturbing that almost five per cent of American priests have found themselves entangled in such crimes over that span of time. One man who has studied the problem in some depth is American writer and historian Garry Wills. Wills, a confirmed Catholic, has written a number of books and articles on the matter. In a 2002 discussion piece called "Scandal," in the New York Review of Books, Wills provides some telling insight into the minds of priests, and reveals why so many of them may be inclined to stray into such horrendous behaviours. Many factors in a priest's life can lead to a distorted sense of self, and a perverted view of Christian morality. Wills talks about the position of power that a priest is given, not just as an authority figure in general, but as a purveyor of God's magic. His fingers magically transform bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. A priest holds a special power over any boy in his charge (and the vast majority of abuse victims are boys). The priest alone is the holder of Christian truth and morality, and he alone knows what is right and wrong. So complete is this delusion that a handful of pedophile priests have felt perfectly consistent in providing counselling to the very boys they abuse. Wills even refers to the potential "infantilization" of priests through their special ties with their mothers, who sometimes press (or are encouraged to press) their sons to become priests at an early age, and who may even imagine a sort of parallel between themselves and the Virgin Mary. All this can lead to a potentially dangerous state of mind, Wills says. "A man without a wife to puncture his pomposity, without children to challenge his authority, in relations carefully structured to make him continuously eminent, easily becomes convinced of his superior wisdom," he says. "Since many priests have been only sketchily educated outside their formal subjects, they feel that the source of their wisdom must be their supernatural powers, not their intellectual development." Wills illustrates this utter detachment from societal norms by citing observations by former seminary rector Donald Cozzens, who investigated and counselled pedophile priests at the time of the U.S. scandal: "I sensed little guilt for their seductions. The only regret I could identify was associated with their being caught. For the most part, the men I worked with were more concerned about themselves and their futures than for their victims." It's time for the church to acknowledge this is not just a case of a few bad apples. The tree itself is rotten, and must be treated or destroyed. Otherwise, the future of Catholicism is a little less bright than some letter-writers may like to think. Peter Jackson is The Telegram's commentary editor. He can be contacted by e-mail at pjackson@thetelegram.com
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