Yesterday news surfaced that Bernard Cardinal Law, the disgraced prelate from the Boston Diocese, died in Vatican City. His death wasn't shocking; after all, he was eighty-six-years-old. Still, it marked a milepost in the discussion of sexual predation by Catholic priests.
Law had been in charge of the Boston Diocese at the time priests were abusing young male parishioners. When confronted with accusations against his priests, Law started playing pedophile musical chairs, switching one pedophilic priest with another in a different parish. The parishioners were none the wiser until years later the stories about the abuse came out and the names of the accused were made public. Then Law's cynical game was up and the Church, always anxious to preserve its position, removed Law to Rome in an equally cynical move. Officially, Law was going to Rome to help the Vatican. In truth, his departure put him beyond the reach of American justice, which would have involved Law in extensive litigation against the priests and the Church.
It is possible, certainly, that some accusations against some priests were false or overblown. But the overwhelming majority of accusations, sadly and tragically, were true, and for them, the Church owed the State its cooperation, no matter how hard. Give unto Caesar what is Caeser's, after all. But the Church decided that the best course of action, as it has done, historically, is to determine how best to protect the Church, even at the cost of the parishioners. Or to put it a different way, the shepherd decided that it would be best to leave the field after the wolves went after the flock, because the shepherd might be hurt by staying on the field...even after the shepherd turned his back on his flock while the wolves went after it.
It's disgusting. What moral high ground can the Church claim after taking the position that it did with respect to Law? Sure, it paid out millions to the victims, but did that really compensate them for their injuries? What's more, what about the consequences for Law and his employees? Sure, the employees were put in jail -- at least those who had the misfortune not to die before their crimes were discovered. But Law suffered no consequences but those to his reputation; instead, he got an all expenses paid trip to Rome to live out his life in luxury and style.
Many Catholics are outraged at what happened. I know I am. It's yet another case of the Church using sophistry to justify its actions to protect the Church against righteous accusations of misconduct against its congregation. But this alone wasn't enough to turn me away from the Church.
I read a lot. Some would say I read too much. Perhaps. But because I didn't take any history courses in college that weren't related to Spanish or philosophy -- my majors -- I missed out on a lot. Even since taking the bar exam, I've been playing catch-up. One of the areas in which I've concentrated is the history of the abuses brought upon the Irish people by the Brits. Perhaps the most shocking thing I learned is that the Church -- not necessarily individual priests but the monolith the is the Holy Roman Catholic Church -- oftentimes was complicit with the British government in suppressing the Irish populace so that it could remain as an institution in a land that the British would have preferred to turn Protestant. In effect, the Church, as happened so many times in British history, cut a deal as part of the British strategy of dividing and conquering, so that it would retain its position, however tenuous, at the expense of the individual Irishman. Then, after the Brits were gone, the Church tried to return its hegemony over the Irish populace with draconian measures that meted out punishments almost worse than those the Brits doled out. As with the Law mess, the Church did what it needed to do to protect the Church's position at the expense of the ordinary Catholic.
Then there's the one issue that proved to be the tipping point for me, personally. My ex-wife was unable to have children naturally, so we went the IVF route. It was unsuccessful for a variety of reasons, but one thing I discovered is that the Church finds use of IVF to be immoral. This makes absolutely no sense to me for the following reason:
St. Thomas Aquinas, the doctor of the Church, declared that there is such a thing as a just war. That being the case, man can use the genius to create implements to use in war and take life, which is in direct contravention of a commandment. I don't recall there being an exception to the commandment Thou Shalt Not Kill.
But the use of IVF, which is the fruit of man's God-given genius, to bring into being life is immoral because it's against the law of nature -- something that man has judged, not something that God decreed, but not something that violates a commandment. That's illogical, non-sensical and simply wrong. So if I understand this correctly, it's perfectly fine for the Church to hide a person who had knowledge of and was complicit with pedophilia, and that burdened a people for over a millennium in the interests of political viability, but I'm immoral because I tried to bring life into being??????
Enough.
I'm no longer a practicing Catholic and I don't even consider myself lapsed. I'm no longer a Catholic. I'm a free agent Christian. There are surely some things I adhere to from my past as a Catholic insofar as faith and the Mass is concerned (mostly involving the hymns), but I no longer defend the Church. Have at it. For all its hypocrisy and sophistry, I'm done. I'm not some serf who stands in awe while the educated priest drones on in Latin and cows me with his mystery. I'm an educated, sentient, thoughtful being whom God has created in His image, not in the Church's image.
In some ways, because I'm protesting, it almost makes me a Protestant, but I'm unwilling to go that far. Protestant faiths have their own problems. Check that: Organized religions have their problems. I prefer to worship God as He would want it and in my own fashion. For too long I've been told how to worship by people who have (biased) training on how to worship.
I'm going to live out my life worshipping God the way I believe He wants me to.
And good riddance Bernard Law.
(c) 2017 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles.
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