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	The Position of the Church By Ross Douthat The New York Times March 29, 2010 http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/29/the-position-of-the-church/ New York’s Archbishop Timothy Dolan, blogging on the sex abuse scandal: What causes us Catholics to bristle is not only the latest revelations of sickening sexual abuse by priests, and blindness on the part of some who wrongly reassigned them — such stories, unending though they appear to be, are fair enough, — but also that the sexual abuse of minors is presented as a tragedy unique to the Church alone. That, of course, is malarkey. Because, as we now sadly realize, nobody, nowhere, no time, no way, no how knew the extent, depth, or horror of this scourge, nor how to adequately address it. There is truth to this. The Catholic Church is not unique among large institutions in having a problem with sexual abuse. The American public school system is rife with sexual misconduct, and the same is presumably true of most religious denominations, Boy Scout-type groups and so forth. Any organization devoted to the care and education of the young is going to attract would-be abusers, and provide settings for misconduct and criminality. Nor was the Catholic Church unique in misunderstanding the scope of the crisis it faced from the early 1960s through the 1980s: Catholicism’s abuse problem wouldn’t have spiraled so far out of control if a host of American professions — psychiatrists, policemen, lawyers, judges, etc. — hadn’t been similarly inclined to downplay the risks of abuse and overstate the ease with which the problem could be managed. Nor, finally, is the archbishop wrong to see a certain amount of anti-Catholic and anti-religious animus motivating the media’s often-obsessive coverage of the priest-abuse scandals, and the level of scrutiny that the church receives relative to other institutions. But I wish that he and others would think twice before complaining so vociferously about it. Call out bad reporting, by all means; defend yourself against unjustified allegations, definitely. But don’t spend too much time complaining about a double standard, or griping about being unfairly targeted. Because, after all, the church is the church — not the public school bureaucracy, not the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, not the American juvenile detention system or the Scientologists or any other organization that you might not be surprised to discover has a problem with sexual abuse. Catholic scandals are worse even when they’re the same as everybody else’s, because it’s Catholicism’s business to be better. And the church is a target because it asks to be a target — because it aspires to set a higher standard, and answer to a higher master, than princes, governments and civic institutions. Because it still claims, in an age of religious relativism, to be the one true faith, the new Israel, the only Christian body entrusted with the “fullness of Christ’s salvific mystery.” Because its size, its antiquity, its intellectual, theological and artistic patrimony, and the power it exerts over millions upon millions of souls tend to buttress these extraordinary claims. And because extraordinary claims will always, and should always, attract extraordinary scrutiny, from inside and from without. The Catholic Church has always had enemies. It has always been despised and attacked. Describing the atmosphere of the Roman Empire during the persecutions of Nero and Diocletian, G.K. Chesterton talks about “the halo of hatred around the Church of God,” and that halo is very still with us. But Catholics — and especially Catholic leaders, from the Vatican to the most far-flung diocese — should welcome it, both as a spur to virtue and as a sign that their faith still matters, that their church still looms large over the affairs of men, and that the world still cares enough about Christianity to demand that Catholics live up to their own exacting standards. If the day comes when crimes and cover-ups in the Catholic Church attract the same yawns and per forma stories as, say, scandals in the Anglican Church of Canada or the American public school system, then Catholics will really have something to worry about. Apathy and cynicism, not enmity and persecution, are the greatest threats to the faith.
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