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	Scandal in the Catholic Church: Sex Abuse and Text Abuse By Peter C. Boulay The Oregonian April 13, 2010 http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2010/04/scandal_in_the_catholic_church_2.html Cultural Studies is the name of the rapidly expanding new discipline being offered in today's liberal arts colleges and universities. I tease my daughter, who has a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies, that it is the one academic field that bestows the duty of criticizing everything -- literature, history, social phenomena, religion, advertising, the media, politics, life as it is lived anywhere, even the phenomenon of shopping centers and how they reflect archetypal values. Kate was born for this. Jacques Derrida and Walter Benjamin are two big names in cultural studies. They gave us deconstruction, an important means of analyzing and understanding cultural phenomena. All this is by way of approaching the words of Archbishop John Vlazny of Portland as he canceled his subscription to The Oregonian recently. In a letter to the priests of the archdiocese, the prelate provided his own text analysis, in which he falsely assumed that his revulsion for the state's largest newspaper and its opinions would be universal. It shows that we all inject our own biases into the material we read. He clearly assumed that his quotes from these writings about the church would be instantly recognizable as execrable. Not so in my case. I had seen the editorials and the editorial cartoon and had thought of them as declarative and piercing, but not spectacular, overarching or objectionable in the face of the Catholic cataclysm we are experiencing. As a Catholic I was pleased, like many other Catholics, to see that the world was noticing the macabre affair of priest-rapists and episcopal whitewashers. Now I went back and performed my own, simple textual criticism a la Cultural Studies. Here are some samples: First, no one is free of bias, and mine were these: I am well into my eighth decade as a Catholic and I recognize and resent anti-Catholicism when I see it. I am also a former newspaper reporter and editor and a magazine editor and publisher. And I simply do not believe that The Oregonian presently bears an anti-Catholic bias. I have discussed this with one of the editors of The Oregonian who told me that the Oregon press did at one time in its early days display an anti-Catholic bias. It no longer exists, in my opinion. I am aware that my pastor and other Catholic priests are convinced such a bias still exists. The archbishop cites in his letter to priests the following items from The Oregonian: Editorial, March 31. The archbishop complains: "The editors arrogantly scolded the church for its past failure in handling this matter of child abuse and, in an insulting and unfair attack, chose this most holy time of the year, during our church's Year of the Priest, to connect the practice of celibacy among our clergy with the problem of child sexual abuse, when everyone knows that most abusers by far are married persons." The bishop's argument rather resembles a snit. Everyone caught by the media in a humiliating circumstance tries to blame the media. Kill the messenger. And, by the way, for the deniers among us, the rate at which priests were accused of sex abuse of children over the half-century covered was 11 times the rate found in the general population of males. There was neither arrogance nor unfairness in the text or intent of the editorial. Syndicated column by E. J. Dionne Jr., March 29. I read it and liked it. It tells the church that "acknowledging the true nature of our sin is the one and only path to redemption and forgiveness." Since only a few bishops have apologized for their own civil crimes of cover-up, I commend Mr. Dionne. He said what needs to be said. Here, it is the bishops not the newspapers who are the culprits. Editorial cartoon, March 30. Archbishop Vlazny said the cartoon depicted Pope Benedict as deaf to demands that he "do something about pedophile priests." The cultural analytic view: The cartoon is not offensive (no more than every other cartoon ever published in a newspaper). It does indeed suggest that the pope, in his earlier job, was deaf to the extended pleas of Bishop Moreno of Tucson, as well as to the pleas of others who wanted offending priests to be curtailed when he was archbishop of Munich and when he was the head of the office of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. That he was deaf to these pleas is the kinder interpretation. What if he actually heard the pleas but ignored them? I hope the good archbishop also canceled his subscription to The National Catholic Reporter because that liberal and worthy publication said virtually the same thing as The Oregonian in an editorial on March 26. What can the church do about all these problems? Or what must the church do? Some suggestions: –Don't blame the media for a half-century of sex abuse of youth by priests and a half-century of episcopal cover-up (a criminal act in every jurisdiction in America). –Ordain women for heaven's sake. It's simple. Here, let me spell it out. Just insert this as Canon 349B in the Catholic Code of Canon Law: After the death of a pope and prior to the election of a successor, the senior member of the College of Cardinals shall appoint whatever number of male or female cardinals is required to equalize the genders in that body. All members who meet the age requirement shall be eligible to vote. All members shall be eligible for election as pope. –The members of the National Review Board and its diocesan counterparts should resign. The national and local boards should be re-constituted as lay-elected, independent, public domain, official observers at the national level and in every diocese. –Own up to the logical fallacy of Pope Paul VI's encyclical, Humanae Vitae, whose major and minor premises do not compel his conclusion (that artificial birth control is wrong). Encourage artificial contraception as a Christian duty at times (they build dams, don't they?). –Re-study papal infallibility and realize it is a metaphor for papal authority and cannot be taken literally. –Encourage priests to marry. –Encourage our nuns to continue to improvise in their conventions and in their apostolates. Suggest to them that they ignore Bishop Leonard P. Blair of Toledo and Mother Clare Millea. Blair is the Vatican-appointed Grand Inquisitor for Nuns and Mary Clare is the prosecutor. The nuns should refuse to answer their questions. What? Are they going to burn nuns at the stake in Toledo once again? –Establish and endow chairs in Cultural Studies and Theology named for Hans Kung, Charles Curran and Thomas Reese at American Catholic universities. Invite these gentlemen to fill the chairs as scholars in residence for their lifetimes. If the bishops don't wise up, let's not leave the church. Instead, let's exercise some muscle. Let's resign from the Vatican mindset. Ordain women, recall priests who have married, name our own bishops, toss out Humanae Vitae and infallibility, and do whatever it takes to get rid of leaders who don't understand the present crisis. It's a start. It's the new, loyal, American Catholicism.
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