sacrilege

Ross Douthat on Podles

April 19, 2012 in clergy sex abuse scandal 33 Comments Tags: Bad Religion, clerical sexual abuse, Ross Douthat, sacrilege

I will do a review of Ross Douthat’s Bad Religion, but I am certain the man is acute, perceptive, and discerning, because he said this:

As Leon Podles put it in Sacrilege (2007), his magisterial [yes!] and sickening [all too true] history of clerical sexual abuse, both “new errors” and “old errors” were at work in the Church’s scandal – relativism and clericalism, permissiveness and authoritarianism, the worst impulses of liberalizers and traditionalists intertwining in an awful tangle of corruption.

Some people told me that they began the book but couldn’t read it – what I was describing was too awful even to think about.

Father Richard Neuhaus hated the book.

George Weigel was sure I was grossly exaggerating – but it turned out it was even worse than I thought.

Archbishop Dolan was introduced to me at a reception; the name clicked, because as he turned away he said “I am familiar with your writings.” The tone, although I wouldn’t characterize it as hostile, was not exactly the friendly tone he had assumed with everyone else.

But at least Ross Douthat saw what I was trying to do.

Bishop Lahey and Sacrilege

October 20, 2009 in Canada, clergy sex abuse scandal, law enforcement, Psychology, repentance, Responsibility, sexual abuse 1 Comment Tags: Bishop Lahey, child pornography, sacrilege

Nightmares are a hazard of those who investigate child abuse, and one of the most potent sources of the nightmares is the explicit sacrilege that is sometimes, perhaps often, involved in the abuse. Some abusive priests have dressed boys as Jesus and then assaulted them.

Bishop Lahey not only had child porn on his computer (bad enough) but, the Chronicle Herald reports,

Court papers state that the image of the “young, naked male” showed him wearing only “a set of black rosary and a set of white rosary beads around his neck.” The boy appears to be nine to 12 years old, court papers say.

A number of other images of young boys were found on the bishop’s laptop, the documents say, and videos show “young males engaged in sexual acts.”

One image allegedly depicts a young naked male who appears to be “hurt, as there are red welts and marks on his stomach and chest area.”

“He looks sad in this image,” the documents say.

It is bad enough that anyone should find pleasure in such images, but a bishop, a successor of the apostles!

Lahey was widely respected, even by sexual abuse victims. The failure of abusers to give evidence of their evil tendencies in other areas of lives is also deeply disturbing. If we see a person doing many good things, we assume that he is a good person – perhaps not without faults, but not concealing abominable evil either. But that assumption is wrong. That realization is also the stuff of nightmares.