One of my responders is fortunate enough to live in the parish to which Father Dwight Longenecker is attached.
Father Longenecker in his blog on Con Men has written one of the best analyses of clerical abusers, Maciel being the most famous.
Why do people fall for priests who turn out to be such stinkers? It’s pretty complicated, but it goes like this: first of all, the bad priest himself is usually a complex character. He has deep flaws and serious sins deep down in his life. To compensate he tries very hard to be good, and what better way to be good than to become a priest? Becoming a priest helps him to cover up his flaws. He puts on a uniform everyday which proclaims that he is a holy man. The uniform allows him to play a part. He is comfortable being a good pastor, a caring person, a wonderful preacher, a man of prayer. It makes him feel better about himself and if he is not careful, he soon starts believing his own priestly image.If he is charismatic, charming, debonair and dynamic he is even more attractive. If he is wise and wonderful and eloquent and compassionate and caring and almost Jesus himself, then he becomes even more popular and the real deep down problem is only made worse by the imposture, not better. Have you ever noticed how often it is the priests and pastors who seem the very best and most wonderful who are the ones who fall? Every asked yourself if the reason they were so wonderful is linked with their crash?
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Furthermore, the whole dynamic of parish life contributes to build up the false image. Everyone loves Father Fantastic. Everyone looks up to him. In fact they invest an awful lot of spiritual capital in him. They put him on a pedestal. In fact, the people, rather than learning to love God (which is hard work) love the priest instead. They idolize him and he can do no wrong because they actually want an idol of a priest who can do no wrong. He epitomizes for the their whole religion. All this false religion does is to make the bad priest’s conflict between his inner demons and the outer false image even worse.
(Snip)
Why were so many taken in by Father Maciel? Because so many people wanted to be taken in. It was easier and more exciting to believe the whole fabricated fiction than to take the effort to find out the truth and follow it.
I have noticed that older Catholics literally make idols of priests: priests can do no wrong, they are a substitute for God. One women recounted how happy how dying mother was to have six priests surrounding her death bed. First of all, I happen to suspect that some of those priests were real stinkers; Secondly, while I want to receive the last sacraments, I want t be surrounded by my family when I die. My wife and I were both blest to be able to be holding our mothers when they died.
And Father Longenecker considers only the better class of criminals. There are those, such as Rudy Kos, who were abusers before they entered the priesthood and entered the priesthood so that they would have easier access to victims and the protection of the hierarchy. One document I saw proposed that Kos’s ordination be annulled and I suspect it was on tehse grounds.
Even deeper into evil are those priests who under a holy exterior practice Satanism. A private detective I spoke with had investigated many cases of abuse, and the boys (always boys) said that the priests often used Satanic rites as part of the abuse. The boys’ lawyers told them never to breathe a word of this to the papers or the courts, for fear they would be dismissed as delusory.
The detective thought that the abusers were trying to scare the boys with Satanism. I thought the motivation was more subtle. They did unbelievable things with the boys, so that of the boys described the abuse and the accompanying rites, they would be dismissed as delusory. People don’t do such things – or do they?
Perhaps the priests involved in Satanism were atheists and did these things just to discredit the victims and perhaps add a frisson to the abuse. Or perhaps they weren’t atheists, and really believed they were involved with evil spirits – and perhaps they were.
If I were Satan I know where I’d focus my efforts.
Sandro Magistro is a well respected Italian journalist who has done work for the Vatican. In an effort to discredit the arguments of those who claim the “Third Secret of Fatima” has not been fully revealed, he did a lot of research. In the end, he came to the conclusion that these folks are right and that the secret concerns apostasy in the hierarchy and among the clergy. I don’t know, but maybe satanism itself has entered the ranks of the clergy. In any event, whether satanists or no, the abusers did the devil’s work.
Having followed Fr. Longenecker for a while and perused his lavish website in the past, I wondered when I read this column a few weeks back if maybe the narcissistic pot was calling the kettle a little too black.
There are a lot of issues here. IMO the biggest problem is the charismatic leader. I commented on that here.
http://crowhill.net/blog/?p=7265
I have my doubts about claims of Satanism, but as you say, the very fact that reasonable people tend to doubt such things may be a defense tactic.
I blogged about this general concept. I think the biggest danger is the charismatic leader. (I think you can click on my name and it will link to the post.)
I am skeptical of claims about Satanic abuse, but as you say, abusers might use that very skepticism as a cloak.
As Tacitus said:
flagitiis manifestis subsidium ab audacia petendum
Crime, when revealed, has no support but audacity.
Of all the things that I have found out about the Church, the hardest for me to comprehend was cardinals, bishops and priests who are satanists. And people still love them. And if you told them the truth, even if you showed them the pictures, they still wouldn’t believe you.
I find the worst offenders are the so-called “JPII Generation.” They’ve been trained well in idol worship and have a real problem with truth and reality.
Regarding the WWII era pogram against the Jews at Eishyshok, Yaffa Eliah wrote, “Unpleasant truths are friendless.” Our bishops do not want to know. I don’t know who among them are the audacious criminals and who are the ignorant chumps but between them they have betrayed the very people they exist to serve.
“I find the worst offenders are the so-called ‘JPII Generation.’ They’ve been trained well in idol worship and have a real problem with truth and reality.”
RIGHT ON, DELPHINA!!!
“I find the worst offenders are the so-called ‘JPII Generation.’ They’ve been trained well in idol worship and have a real problem with truth and reality.”
Delphina, you are more spot on than you realize.