Sacred Is in the Mind of the Beholder
By Ed Adamczyk
Local agencies of the Catholic Church regularly reveal lists of priests, many long dead, accused of sexual abuse against the young. While I never hung around with many Catholic priests, one I once knew recently appeared on such a list. No, he never got me; I have no claim against him, any more than anyone I have ever met who pitched his or her own brand of salvation. The release of lists of suspected abusers using the church to cover their sins is not new, nor is it confined to Western New York. Australia, for example, is currently reeling from revelations about several high-ranking men within the Catholic hierarchy there, and the resulting civil trials. Yes, out there, courts are actively going after suspected sex abusers in the church. Any large and entrenched organization can, upon investigation, expose irregularities conflicting with its reason for being. Someone once said that employment anywhere for a period of one year qualifies a person to say “You won’t believe what goes on in there.” It goes for General Motors, the U.S. government, any church or school, and notably for families. It goes for any outfit hiding incidents contrary to law or to its mission. The details in church scandals emerge from court papers and victims’ volunteered accounts, which are then boiled down into published stories, in print or online. They typically refer to illegal actions conducted in private, followed by denials, cover-ups, limited admissions of guilt as lives are ruined, deadlines to file claims, and payouts. My own childhood was conducted in an era when many institutions – schools, churches and the government come to mind -- and if there was a conflict of position between them and me, it was assumed the problem was with me. It was the “Leave It to Beaver” model by which any inconsistency could be improved with better adherence to the rules. Later, well…we in the Sixties and Seventies did not invent doubt and disillusionment, but we practically breathed it. It was our idea of liberation. So the church and other bodies wielded soft but significant power over anyone who cared, or was obligated, to believe in its rules. That included those who did not believe the claims made by victims. In reading an assortment of assertions of sexual abuse against various members of the clergy, I have yet to uncover a situation in which the alleged victim’s father punched a priest in the jaw after being informed of an incident. It’s an example, again, of an institution too big to fail, if you believe in it. Since the dates of those alleged sexual attacks on young and naive adherents, this society has been through a lot. Belief models are regularly shattered these days. “It’s easy to see without looking too far that not much is really sacred.” A Nobel Laureate with a finely-tuned sense for hypocrisy, Bob Dylan, wrote that in 1964, after John Kennedy’s death and before Vietnam, Watergate, the Love Canal, the Nixon regime, the savings and loan scandal and any other civic or institutional disappointment you care to add. There is a movement afoot to round up the United States’ millennials, those born after 1980 and who tend to lean noticeably liberal in their politics, get them to vote, and install a government unlike one they believe to be clogged by party disagreement. To these potential voters, issues like Medicare for all and free or severely reduced college tuition are no-brainers. They, too, have a list of things they believe in, and assume they can quickly crash the current government and install one with a new outlook. Assuming they eventually get their way, will their political platform collapse in scandal and recrimination when they find out how hard it is to carry a government on their backs? Hauling ideology can be hard. Taking your children to church and enlightening them on how this country is the best that ever was can be honorable actions, until their doubt, and perhaps your own, creep in, and doubt is an easy-to-find commodity these days. It makes me wonder how the young get through their days, these days. Surrounded by advertising, conflicting advice and the steady acid drip of current politics, I venture to suggest they are better adept than those who preceded them at tuning things out, the way check-out clerks tell me they don’t hear the music in the stores. It makes for a generation familiar with ignoring a lot, except perhaps social media posts from friends. They may be tuning out some important things as well. One spring during my teenage years, we lost Dr. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy to assassination. I learned something from seeing our leaders gone that way: maybe it’s time to stop following leaders. Contact Ed Adamczyk at EdinKenmore@gmail.com
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