BishopAccountability.org
	When Public Preaching, Private Practice Conflict By Tommy Tomlinson Charlotte Obsever May 8, 2010 http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/05/09/1424849/when-public-preaching-private.html It's a natural law, as simple as shaking up a Coke. There's only so long you can repress what's bottled up inside. Eventually, somehow, it explodes. The Catholic Diocese of Charlotte is paying $1 million to a former altar boy who was molested by a priest at St. Matthew Catholic Church in 1999. The Rev. Robert Yurgel, who served in Charlotte about two years, later pleaded guilty to a sex offense and was sentenced to nearly eight years in prison. Locally and globally, it's clear that Catholic leaders are now taking sexual abuse by priests seriously - in the Charlotte Diocese alone, more than 23,000 employees and volunteers have gone through an awareness program. It's equally clear that for decades, the church knew that sexual abuse was a problem but denied it, covered it up and failed to punish the criminals within their walls. Many of the stories are out there now, and Catholics will decide if their leaders are acting with the proper speed and force. The deeper question is the terrible conflict between belief and desire. Another story from the last few days reminded me of the same thing. There's a Baptist minister in Florida, George Rekers, who has spent years trying to turn gay people straight - he's on the board of a national group designed to provide treatment for homosexuality. Well, news reports revealed that Rekers went on a two-week Caribbean vacation with a male escort hired from a website called Rentboy.com. Rekers said he just needed somebody to carry his luggage. The escort says otherwise. The two cases are very different, of course. Yurgel committed a criminal act on a child, and Rekers was involved with a consenting adult. And if Rekers is gay, that might be an issue in his church, but otherwise it's his business. The common thread is preaching one thing in public and practicing the opposite in private. There's nothing illegal about that. Many of us are hypocrites about one thing or another. But both the Catholic priest in Charlotte and the Baptist minister in Florida spent their lives counseling others not to do the very things they were doing. It's an act of denial worthy of a psychology textbook. It's trying to rid the world of you. That's where the pressure comes in. People join the ministry, or the priesthood, for many reasons. Among those, for a small minority, is the hope that the weight of the church's words will tamp down their desires. And sometimes, it might even work. Surely there are stories of priests who felt the same temptations, had the strength to beat them back, and died with none the wiser. But there are dozens of cases and hundreds of wrecked lives that show how many times the demons win. That's not an indictment of Catholicism, or religion. Although where sexual abuse is involved, covering up criminal acts can't possibly be the path of God. It's about a struggle that can't be resolved in court, or settled with a million-dollar check. That's because it's not tied to an institution. It's personal, and intimate. It's about which part of us has the strongest grip - who we are, or who we wish we were. Contact: ttomlinson@charlotteobserver.com
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