Perhaps it is time for me to say something about the scandal rocking the Catholic church. Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread, I suspect. My perspective is different, being a conservative, liturgical Protestant, a Lutheran, as it were.
First, a few caveats:
- We have only a report from a grand jury, in one state, Pennsylvania. We do not have indictments, let alone convictions. Will they come? That remains to be seen. But there is enough smoke here for all the wildfires in California. Surely the other states, and yes, Europe as well should be looking into this. But it is not yet time to build the gallows.
- However bad it may be, and it appears to be bad, indeed, it remains a small share of the clergy. Do not condemn with a 12″ roller when a trim brush is wide enough.
- But to condemn and punish is not enough, why did this happen, and mind, this is not the first sex scandal in the Church. How to avoid it in the future is the key thing here. In a sense, the past really is prologue.
As I said above, I’m a Lutheran, one of the causes that led Luther to start the Reformation was the sexual conduct of priests in Rome. So it would be easy for me to say, more of the same. That’s a poor attitude, much as it’s a common one these days.
But Rome is the root of Christianity in the west, whether one is Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Baptist, or whatever else. That is where we all started, and but for the Grace of God, it could be (and sometimes has been) any of our churches.
Anybody remember Jimmy Swaggart? Yeah, didn’t do Christianity a lot of good, did he? How about Rev. Tom Bird, a Kansas Lutheran pastor who killed his wife when she became inconvenient to his affair with the church secretary. There are others, big and small. We are all fallen sinners, we can only try. And that’s why we need to weed out these things. And both of those examples, and others, were, they went to prison, as they should.
Matt Walsh, a Catholic, and a columnist for The Daily Wire said with characteristic bluntness…
The Catholic Church in the West is beset by a plague. An infection. A virus that must be rooted out and utterly destroyed. There must be a purge in the Church. And the purge must be ruthless and brutal and uncompromising.
Indeed so, and it must include the hierarchy that covered up the instances. In the examples above, there was little to no cover-up, and no lasting damage was done. As so often, it’s not the crime but the coverup.
Homosexuals have committed over 80 percent of the abuse in the Catholic Church. That is an empirical fact and it is not really up for debate. https://t.co/avWSYFdV7y
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) August 15, 2018
He has a point, I suspect. Kim Hirsch, an LCMS Lutheran writes on Victory Girls Blog,
Many years ago, I read a book entitled, Goodbye, Good Men. Written in 2002 by Michael Rose, a Catholic reporter, it tells how these scandals come from the seminary, where liberals in the church have allowed homosexuality in the name of “tolerance.” There is also prejudice, he maintains, against traditional seminaries.
Here’s what Rose said in an interview with a Catholic publication in 2002:
In bringing the “sexual revolution” into the Church, liberals have welcomed—even preferred—radicalized active homosexuals to orthodox seminarians in the name of “tolerance.” Now that tolerance has been exposed as a toleration of criminal acts.
Mind you, this book is now 16 years old, and we’re seeing yet again another sexual scandal. The crisis will not go away.
Maybe, one of the underlying problems, since this is predominately a Catholic problem, is the celibate priesthood itself, combined with clericalism, of course.
Father Richard McBrien, who was a professor of theology at Notre Dame, believed the church should drop the celibacy requirement for priests. In 2004, he wrote why it’s a problem:
But that requirement of the priesthood will attract a disproportionately high percentage of men who are sexually dysfunctional, sexually immature, or whose orientation will raise the question – are they attracted to the priesthood because of the ministry, or because it is a profession that forbids one to be married?
And there is something else, most of these are young men, and do any of us really think young men do not run on hormones, and those drawn to leadership, more than most?
I don’t know, and as the saying goes, not my church, but some thoughts for you Catholics to mull over, which is my main purpose here. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, but do think why this is so much a specific problem in your church. Part of it is a powerful, traditional hierarchy, as well, I suspect, but the CofE has that as well. It appears to be a distinctive of, and a distinctive problem for, the Catholic Church.
And pray, of course, as we will be praying for your Church as well as our own.
All Along the Watchtower 
There are some issues there, as you say, that are specific to Catholic culture. The problem is that there is also a progression, analogous to the ‘gateway drug’ phenomenon in drug culture: someone starts with something bad, and it leads to worse things.
As you say, evil is everywhere, and this is only a subsection of clerics out of a much bigger group. It is the coverup that offends the onlookers.
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And also, as near as I can tell, the orthodox Catholics.
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BTW: I also wrote today on this problem along the same lines as NEO. If you’d like to take it look it is fairly short: https://www.newsforcatholics.info/what-have-i-done-for-christ-what-have-i-done-for-the-bride-of-christ/
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There is a show…Dateline NBC To Catch a Predator. They set up a sting and the guys start pouring in looking for under age kids. Here is one of the nicest things ill ever say about catholic costumed sorcerers….none of the hundreds of guys who showed up were catholic priests. They are too smart for that kind of madness. Anyway, they have a steady stream of kiddies showing up at their Roman temple. They don’t have to go anywhere to find them. Pedophiles are just simply everywhere and in all walks of life. I just dont understand it.
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I struggle to be impartial with something like this because I have a love/hate relationship with Rome. All of this brings back Reformation talk from so many of us Protestants, and I struggle to suppress it.
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I don’t. Facts are best looked straight in the face. I look at something like this, and often read Luther, and the Patristic Fathers. Nothing new under the sun.
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Maybe it’s being married to a Lutheran, but I have no issue hearing about the crimes committed by the Catholic Church both toward God and Humanity. I do disagree with the theological developments of the Reformation; however, Even if What I view Luther as in err it doesn’t negate the era of those he challenged.
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I disagree with a good many of them as well, as you’ll know. Facts is facts, as they say. We (or you, whichever) ain’t gonna fix it if we don’t define it.
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You and I should have a chat about some of that stuff. I’d be very interested in exchanging views on salvation and seeing if we can get through some of the terms like “justification” etc to see where (and if) our minds meet.
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In short, I’m very Sola Gratia in respect that we do have free will that can cosmologically influenced by God in many ways including prayer, sacraments and all the usuals. I like to explore why God chose David over Saul when both sinned or when Pharaoh’s heart was hardened by God was it habitual ? In many ways, I think it helps better understand why Judas did have free will and could have used it to repent to the resurrected Christ much like Peter etc but the force of habit influenced him.
Just something I’ve been working on in my head.
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I think sometimes it is necessary to step back from the technical lingo as much as possible and walk step by step through the process. I have recently been challenged by a series looking at the traditional evangelical presentation on salvation – “Romans road”, which highlights some translation problems for the NT. E.g. when it says Christ became sin for us, that gives a certain impression – but the verse should actually be translated “became a sin offering”, and that means something quite different. I have tried to think more carefully about the distinction between ritual purification and moral failure. The Levitical system was not for moral failure – there was no sacrificial atonement under Moses for sins like adultery or dishonouring one’s parents – you were just stoned. It is also interesting that where Christ uses the word justified, the parable set in the Temple with the tax collector and Pharisee, He does not mention sacrifice or the Cross. He just says that God forgives the man because he is humble and recognises his need for forgiveness. No complicated mechanics there – God just forgives, as indeed Christ does with the paralytic.
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“Christ became sin for us, that gives a certain impression – but the verse should actually be translated “became a sin offering”, and that means something quite different”.
Personally, I’ve always understood the older translation to mean what your new translation says because as St. Paul says in Phillipians “He he knew no sin…” So, in that respect, one couldn’t be sin. Furthermore, in regards to penal substitution and ransom theory, Christ is presented as an offering either necessary, sufficient, or fitting depending on where one falls in the debate.
Of course, in other aspects of the Gospel, forgiveness and healing is given for two reasons, Faith and Contrition. Now, when I speak to children about grace, I often call it “an invitation” from God. In many respects in the New Covenant, the invitation is the Incarnation and the Gospel. But, again, It’s not a once and for all acceptance, as Hebrews 10:26-29 explains we can lose that sanctification of Christ. As such, I think in the Gospel of John giving the authority to the Apostles to loosen and bound sins is a good explanation for the sacraments and development of habit with other parts of the Gospel such as “how many times should I forgive?”
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I see what has been called “losing one’s salvation” primarily as apostasy, which can of course be triggered by moral failures of various stripes – a conscious rejection of God, and therefore of His forgiveness. Hebrews was written to Aaronides, Levites, and other Jewish people who were tempted to reject Christ in order to fit back into contemporary Jewish society. Since rejecting Christ is rejecting YHWH, that means that they are no longer in relationship with Him. One cannot simultaneously reject God’s Son and expect God to forgive one’s sins and usher one into the court of Christ.
Regarding the sacraments, I see the Church as affirming God’s forgiveness to those who join because they are the covenant community. Binding and loosing in Matthew 16 may be primarily meant as a reference to expelling demons and spiritual warfare in general. Christ’s is the Kingdom, but to exercise Kingdom authority, one must be part of the royal household – the Disciples were the first of the household and were tasked with bringing the Gentiles into it and out from under the Sons of God.
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Well I don’t really see any difference. I think for one we’d have to define what exactly is meant by the word apostasy.
Matthew 5:17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”
John 14:15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
John 15:10 If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.
So, in this respect, when you disobey the will of God, are you then outside of His love?
Furthermore, as the sermon on the mount hints, although we should keep the Jewishness of Christianity in the forefront; Christians cannot, as divinely revealed, cannot look at the God of the Old Testament as anything but the Trinitarian God.
Therefore, I don’t think the historical distinctions matter within Hebrews because it boils down to who is God and what does he command? If you disobey his commands you are outside his communion of sanctification.
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That is an interesting take, but one I don’t share because you could define all sin as breaking God’s commands, but within the Catholic system there are venial sins and mortal sins – venial sins don’t put you outside the covenant community, so by your own logic, you already have to start distinguishing between sins that cost us salvation and sins that don’t and I’m not convinced that can be done in a philosophically rigorous way. On the other hand, saying that rejecting God costs us eternity with Him is logical, even if it presents an epistemological problem practically in knowing who in their heart has done this and who has not.
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It’s not really my take so much as the foundation laid by Augustine in On Christian Doctrine to which I agree.
You could define all sins as such, unless divine re-evaluation either through the Scripture or tradition defines otherwise. The “Catholic system” follows of course the exegesis that some sins cause “death.” So What is the context of this death?
1 John 5:17 “All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that is not deadly.”
Again, what do you need to do in the theological sense of obtaining life?
John 6:53 “Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.”
Follow, in one example, the command of Christ and practice His sacrament.
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*Divine “revelation” sorry autocorrect doesn’t know what revelation is…
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I welcome an outsider’s view on this.
Let me see, however, if I might make a few comments that might make your post a bit more accurate.
It being a Catholic problem is true in the sense that we are different than most Churches; we are a country and we have a corrupt banking system to boot. But when you look to government, large corporations and the other larger church structures the same things seem to keep happening because for one thing people in power know how to get and maintain power by blackmail. It is one of the worlds oldest crafts. They know how to shut people up (like Alinsky taught) and they do it quite well.
They have the mafia code of omertà after all. Funny how they and the masons have a great hold in Italy. The craft is well learned in Rome I’m sure. As long as there is power to be had, money to be had (it costs a lot of money to lead a double life) these things will continue to happen. This is not a 1 off battle that will go away after we get rid of all the bad guys. Bad guys will be back at it within a short amount of time doing what they always do. After all narcissistic behavior is a trait amongst all large endeavors where power, money, lust and the thrill of getting away with something in plain sight is their great allure.
As to McBrien of Notre Dame: he was probably not a good guy to quote. Quite the heretic in fact. So in defense of celibacy, I simply will say that even though the early Church had married priests they remained continent once they became priests. It has been there from the beginning; you simply can’t serve two masters. Many of the priests of old were either widowers or older men who no longer worked and they abandoned the marriage embrace once they became priests. We still have this today in the ordained diaconate. If their wife dies then they live a continent life without getting remarried.
But all in all, I agree with proceeding with great caution. We do not want to kill off good men along with the criminal element. After all, we see how those who are guilty themselves quite often throw under the bus those who are whistle blowers: placing their own guilt upon the innocent. We’ve had 3 highly publicized cases in just the last few years; the most prominent being Pell of Australia.
So good warning, NEO. Much of what you say is on track and it is good to see an opinion from one who is not in the fray at the moment.
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Thanks, Scoop.
I read the history of celibacy differently (no real surprise in that). And our churches have found it advantageous to have married clergy (yes, I know the difference between minister and priest, which is why we abolished the formal priesthood, while we still have monasticism). Like I said, something to think about, and yes, your other examples are true, and lend strength to why you need to fix it.
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Indeed, it has to be an ongoing battle; evil never gives up and men rarely change their sinful ways.
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That is so very true, all we can do is our best, as God gives us to see our best.
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Yes vigilance is the key to success. There is never a time for relaxing and setting things on cruise control.
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Something that we, as Christians, Americans, and Britons, all forgot.
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Seems so, sadly.
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It does, and fixing deferred maintenance is always costly.
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Indeed.
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“it remains a small share of the clergy.”
How small? One percent? One half of one percent? Maybe only two of em. Now you sound like a true catholic.
City by city, when one lifts the lid on the CC, you seen nothing but pervert priests.
Small percent.
“How to avoid it in the future is the key thing here.”
Invite Jesus into your life and stop dabbling in the witchcraft of the CC.
“I’m a Lutheran, one of the causes that led Luther to start the Reformation was the sexual conduct of priests in Rome. So it would be easy for me to say, more of the same. That’s a poor attitude”
What good brother Luther saw was that all the priests were desperately wicked, not just a small few..It is more of the same, it has never changed. Do you seriously think priests of Baal are going to be good godly men? This kind of head in the sand mentality shouldn’t shock me anymore, but it does.
“An infection. A virus that must be rooted out and utterly destroyed.”
If you do that, the faithful will show up for their weekly magic act and their will be no costumed sorcerer. No Holy Father, No cardinals. We cant have that, now can we? Forget Christ, we need costume holymen and a virgin queen.
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Pingback: The Pennsylvania Priest Scandal; an Outside View — All Along the Watchtower – World Faithful Catholics
Church Militant has learned exclusively that the attorney general office of the state of New York is now outlining plans for a Pennsylvania-style grand jury report.
initial reports indicate that sexual abuse and specifically cover-up of that abuse by bishops is every bit as bad as in the state of Pennsylvania
During Broderick’s tenure, Albany became known for accepting and promoting gay seminarians and priests. When Bp. Howard Hubbard succeeded Broderick, the gaying of the diocese accelerated greatly. Hubbard was bishop for nearly 40 years and among many disturbing cases, he was linked to Thomas Zalay, who, in 1978, committed suicide at age 25.
Zalay regarded homosexual acts as sinful. He didn’t consider himself a homosexual and wanted to get away from Hubbard. The only way to escape him, he concluded, was suicide. Zalay set himself on fire at his parents’ home.
Over his nearly 40-year reign, Hubbard became infamous for covering up cases of homosexual predator priests. In the nearby diocese of Rochester, Matthew Clark was bishop from 1979 to 2012, largely overlapping Hubbard’s time in Albany. In fact, Hubbard and Clark were known to be extremely intimate associates. They often appeared together and were seen as essentially inseparable.
As a point of interest, Bp. Clark was the spiritual director to the young Timothy Dolan during his time in seminary at the North American College in Rome.
In one glaring case, Fr. Dennis Riter has three male victims who’ve given evidence of his abuse to the diocese. A witness to one of Riter’s assaults informed the diocese by letter in the early 1990s and the diocese swept it under the rug. The victim was a 10-year-old who had come running out of a rectory with semen on his face and chest.
It was during his time as bishop that accusations against the notorious Fr. Thomas Benestad resurfaced, and according to the grand jury report, Barres made no attempt to remove Benestad from ministry.
Pennsylvania grand jury report: “The Diocese elected to rely on Benestad’s word rather than the word of the victims and the determinations of law enforcement. No attempt was made to remove Benestad from ministry. Benestad was granted retirement, resides in Boca Raton, Florida, and assists with a local parish.”
Benestad is the priest singled about Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro during his Tuesday press conference for rinsing out the mouth of a 9-year-old boy with holy water after oral sex.
https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/episcopal-sodomy-ny-ag-outlining-grand-jury-plans
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I figured id add this little continuation to the story to highlight how the catholic parents actually feed their children to priests.
Priests were routinely shuffled around even after credible accusations of sexual abuse.
For instance, Fr. James Quinn was accused of repeatedly molesting a 13-year-old boy during Catholic Youth Organization trips in the 1960s, where he would get the boy drunk and violate him when he was unable to resist. The victim sued the Syracuse diocese in 2003, but a court barred the lawsuit over the statute of limitations. The diocese then reinstated Fr. Quinn after an internal investigation revealed “insufficient evidence.”
Another victim, raped more than 200 times by Fr. Thomas Neary when he was 10 years old, sued the Syracuse diocese in 2011. The rapes happened in the boy’s own bedroom while his parents were home, the priest telling his parents not to worry if he heard the boy crying.
The priest was supposedly there to offer counseling to the boy on the priesthood and told the parents the boy was crying because “the priesthood is hard.”
It turned out Neary had many more male victims, the total number remaining unknown, but in at least eight cases, when the victims approached Bp. James Moynihan privately to share their stories of abuse, Moynihan gave each of them the same line: You’re the only one who has ever come forward about abuse by Fr. Neary.
ibid.
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You stated – “this is not the first sex scandal in the Church. How to avoid it in the future is the key thing here.” , ” …..one of the causes that led Luther to start the Reformation was the sexual conduct of priests in Rome”
We should do what Jesus would do:
Matthew 7:17
17 So every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, and a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
Mark 11
13 Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. 14 Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it.
20 In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots.
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Indeed so. Sadly easier said that enforced.
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It is so sad that these abuses continue to bring emotional and physical pain to God’s flock. The Apostle Paul warned that after his death men would enter the congregation that would not “treat the flock with tenderness” (Acts 20:29). This problem seems to be systemic and will not be taken care of from within this organization. However, I have faith that Christ will clean this up himself. Matthew 24:44 reminds us to “prove yourselves ready, because the Son of man is coming at an hour that you do not think to be it.” At this time the congregation will be cleaned up once and for all and everyone associated with the mistreatment of the flock will be punished. Jehovah will never allow wickedness to continue indefinitely. I pray for the victims of this scandal and hope they gain the comfort needed to endure until relief is provided.
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