What do Pope Benedict XVI and the Berkshire Eagle editorial that ran Sunday, April 20, have in common?Both addressed the Roman Catholic paedophile scandal. The Pope, during his recent visit to the United States, expressed on several occasions the pain that our national scandal had caused him.
The Eagle complimented him on his courage in facing the issue and apologizing for it. But neither asked the key question: why did it occur?
Let's address that: How many priests were involved? I don't recall ever seeing a number published. What was published were the amounts of dollars assessed the Church by the courts that heard the pedophile cases. The money totaled in the millions. It follows that the total priests involved must have been numerous.
Besides abusing altar boys, what else did all these errant priests have in common? They'd all taken vows of chastity when as young men they entered the priesthood to devote their lives full time to the service of God. They were special guys but they ended up disgracing themselves and their church.
What's happened to them since then? The Church has apparently abandoned the methods of Cardinal Law (switching the bad apples to untainted barrels). We don't know, but probably the pedophiles have been lodged in secure places for appropriate treatment. Who knows what kind of eventuality they'll face the rest of their lives? In one well-known case, the errant priest was sentenced to a state prison near Boston, where he got stomped to death by a fellow inmate. That was tragic. How his mother must have suffered.
Many church rules, including the chastity rule, are relics of the days when all people in the western world were either aristocrats or peasants. The world has changed in many ways and the Church has adopted many new ways, like computers and jet plane travel, even by his Holiness. But the Church still clings to some of the old ways and shuns enlightenment. For instance, the Church approves of "birth control" as long as it's practiced by an ancient means so ineffective Catholics joke about it. They call it "the rhythm system," a.k.a. Vatican roulette.
God reveals to us little about himself beyond what was said by that busy son of his during his visit to our planet. Jesus sure got our attention. However, there's one thing about God we know from our personal experience. When God delivers our babies, he provides them all, male and female, with the equipment needed to reproduce when the time comes.
Most of us do it, but priests who stick to their vows aren't allowed to utilize all the facilities God gave them. Is being denied that God-given right not abnormal? If God equipped us to produce babies, should we not all be free to do so?
Wait, hold on a minute. If priests did it, the Church would have one heck of a logistics problem. Rectories, where priests live, would have to become apartment houses to accommodate all the families. The Church would have to pay each married priest a family-adequate wage, plus provide family medical insurance. The Church is already closing buildings to save heating costs and the expenses of fixing leaky roofs, etc. Am I outta my mind?
No, not entirely. Protestant clergy have spouses and kids. And how about those Eastern Rite Catholics?
And let it be noted, they don't have paedophile scandals, at least not on the scale we Pope loyalists do.
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