Wash Your Dirty Hands!

By Vinnie Nauheimer
Voice from the Desert
May 12, 2013

http://reform-network.net/?p=21313&utm_source=VFTD...Voice+from+the+Desert...Recent+Posts...May+12%2C+2013&utm_campaign=Recent+Posts...May+4%2C2013&utm_medium=email

Suppose Cardinal Dolan’s recent folksy metaphor about washing hands bespeaks the incredible hypocrisy that is endemic among the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church? Washing hands used as a metaphor has two meanings. The first is to clean yourself up and the second is to remove yourself from a situation vis a vis Pontius Pilate. Consider Dolan’s decision in Milwaukee to pay sexually abusing priests to leave the priesthood. Instead of doing the right thing, he emulated Pilate and washed his hands of the guilty priests. Thinking like that is intrinsically disordered! It is a more or less a strong tendency geared toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder. Can turning sexually abusing priests loose on the public be anything but?

During the past eleven years, we have all witnessed hundreds of documented cases of bishops and cardinals shuffling sexually abusing priests between parishes, dioceses, and even countries. The end result in each case was the destruction of more young lives. Who is the bigger villain, the predator who follows his perverse inclinations or the hierarchy, who controlling the chains of the predators, allow them free reign to rape and plunder the most vulnerable of the church’s members? Yet no one in the hierarchy has ever publicly admonished these offending priests either by forbidding them access to the church, decrying the desecration of the act of consecration, or even for setting and serving Christ’s table with scent of children fresh on their hands. Grievous omissions like this bespeak an intrinsically disordered hierarchy and sense of outrage! It denotes a strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder. Can turning sexually abusing priests loose to prey on unsuspecting families of good Catholics be anything but?

Recently, protesters were turned away from St. Patrick’s Cathedral for attempting to enter the cathedral with hands soiled by mere ashes. Since when are physically dirty hands a sufficient reason for keeping Catholics out of their church? Can anyone ever recall a priest being turned away from a church for having dirty hands because he used to debauch young children? Priests have been turned away from churches for protesting sexual abuse, but never for committing it. Has Dolan ever publicly told a pedophile priest to wash his hands before saying mass? Has he ever told a sexually abusing priest to wash his hands before consecrating a host? Where was his outcry against the heinous sacrilegious crime of violating altar servers in the sacristy prior to saying mass? Refusing to publicly ask sexually abusing priests to wash their hands prior to saying Mass is intrinsically disordered, but not as disordered as refusing to bar them from entering a church.

Though the thought has probably entered the mind of more than one parishioner upon finding out that they had an abusing priest in their parish, it has rarely if ever been publicly discussed. Take the following as one of many documented examples: “Fr. Charles Engelhardt, 64, an Oblate of St. Francis de Sales, is accused of orally sodomizing and molesting a 10-year-old altar boy in 1998 in the sacristy at St. Jerome Parish in Northeast Philadelphia.” The burning question is, “Where were those hands before they consecrated the host and placed it on my lips?” Why hasn’t the question been asked publicly?  The answers are obvious: 1. Because it is too reviling, disgusting, and nauseating a thought to contemplate for even a second and 2. It would lead to questions of faith that no one, especially the hierarchal theologians, want the laity to contemplate. Questions like, “How could a sick perverted priest really perform transubstantiation?” Groups that the question has obviously never bothered are the bishops, the cardinals, and the Curia of the Roman Catholic Church. They simply don’t and didn’t care. Sacrilege as vile as mentioned above was fostered and condoned by bishops who refused to take action and played pass the pedophile. Behavior like that is intrinsically disordered! It proves a strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself and the hierarchy which fostered it must be seen as objectively disordered.

Cardinal Dolan speaks of rules that must be obeyed like washing your hands before sitting at the Lord’s table, but he belongs to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church who, as a group, are notoriously infamous for their dirty hands. As a group, they have defied and defiled Civil Law, the Catechism, Canon Law, the Scriptures and the admonitions of Jesus Christ himself when it comes to dealing with sexually abusing priests, bishops, and nuns. The Cardinal didn’t lock the doors on his mentor Cardinal Rigali, who proclaimed there are no active priests with allegations of sexual abuse against them in the Philadelphia Archdiocese. No, au contraire! He invited him with open arms to speak at St. Patrick’s on Holy Thursday. It turns out the Philadelphia Grand Jury found 37 credibly accused priests still in ministry. Yet, because Rigali is a cardinal, and because he was Dolan’s mentor, St. Patrick’s doors were thrown wide open to him. Talk about hypocrisy and an innate objective disorder!

Most Catholics would rather sit in a church with fellow Catholics of all persuasions than sit in a church with one priest saying mass who was guilty of sexually abusing children. However the hierarchy doesn’t see it that way. No matter how big the stench, no matter how filthy the hands, no matter how foul the sacrilege, they have jumped through unprecedented hoops to keep the doors open for the offending priest. No great effort was ever expended to prevent a priest from either saying or attending Mass and that is more proof of the objective disorder of the hierarchy.

Sadder still is the need that people feel to be part of an institution corrupted from within by a hierarchy that has long since forgotten the teachings of Jesus and the Scriptures. As Groucho Marx once said, “I would never join a club that would have me as a member!” Rephrased and applicable to this situation, it should be, “Why would I want to belong to a church that is run by such an objectively disordered group as the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church.”

Jesus said, “When one or more of you gather in my name, I will be there.” Be guided.