06 Apr 2010, Posted by Alex Shofner in Articles,General, 1 Comments

Everybody wants to be a victim these days

As most of you probably know, last week was Holy Week for Christians around the world. It stands in commemoration of Christ’s last days on Earth, his crucifixion, and resurrection.

As I’m sure you also know, the Roman Catholic Church and the papacy has come under fire in recent years for what many see as a systematic hiding of child abuse scandals. This tension has shifted into high gear with the recent revelation that the Pontiff himself, when he was still known as Joseph Ratzinger, probably knew about and covered up the abuse of children at a school in Germany.

On Good Friday, the commemoration of the crucifixion, the Pope’s personal priest Raniero Cantalamessa gave a homily in which he compared the recent “attacks” against the church by the mass media to “the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.”

Yes. You read that correctly. He compared priests coming under fire for raping young altar boys to the Holocaust. And let’s not beat around the bush. Too many articles use more euphemistic terms like “abuse”. It’s a trusted figure of authority taking advantage of a minor. And raping them. To call it anything less than reprehensible is, itself, reprehensible. And yet Vatican City is silent on the issue.

I would think that, to use Rev. Cantalamessa’s metaphor correctly, the group representing the Jews, the one that has had unspeakably heinous crimes committed against it by figures of authority while others stood by and did nothing would be represented by the abused children, not the priests. His metaphor would actually make the priests the Nazis in this case. And honestly, the Nazis, as awful as it was, were only around for a few years. The group that led the charge to oppress the Jews for the last few thousand years, the ones who called them Christkillers, that group would be the Roman Catholic Church itself.

If anything, a more apt comparison to this issue regarding the Pope would be to liken him to Richard Nixon. Like Benedict XVI, I don’t believe that Nixon was that involved with the break-in, but he sure as hell was involved in the cover up. All Nixon did was hide the theft of a few strategic papers. And he was forced to resign the presidency.* What should the Pope be pressured into for not doing everything in his power to stop acts unspeakably worse than theft? A lot of people, even some Catholic priests, think he should resign. I’m not so sure, it’s hard to make any sort of judgement without the facts (though we all do it all the time, including me).

So what does this have to do with movies? Well, they can offer a few morsels and lessons, clouding the issue in the correct ways and deepening the conversation. John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt deftly shows, as its title suggests, the difficulty of determining truth in a bureaucracy as complex as the Catholic church. If you haven’t seen it, I strongly encourage you to. I also advise you to check out a heart-wrenching documentary called Deliver Us from Evil, about an American priest who was relocated to several various parishes in the 1970′s and raped dozens of children.

One of the biggest problems with people is the tendency to form an opinion about something and then gather facts that support it, rather than gathering facts and drawing an accurate conclusion. It’s easy to vilify the church for these abuses, but at the end of the day, cases of abuse occur in a very small percentage of parishes.

Another huge problem with people is a tendency toward apathy. An inclination to just accept things because “that’s the way they are”. Nothing will ever change if everyone is status-quo apathetic. And we simply cannot stand by and watch a system of abuse propagate itself.

Cases of priest abuse in denominations where their leaders are permitted to marry are significantly lower than cases where they are required to be celibate. Maybe it’s time to toss the time-honored tradition of celibacy with the realistic acknowledgement that people like to have sex, and if you don’t allow them to do it in a societally normal and non-detrimental way, they will find other means. Some may be offended by this declaration against the celibacy vow. But they should be much more offended that the policy has catalyzed these unforgivable transgressions.

If the Roman Catholic Church does not strive to update themselves and march into the 21st century, they risk making themselves irrelevant to society. Let’s start a conversation.

– Alex Shofner

*For a comedy about Nixon and Watergate, watch Dick. For an excellent drama, watch All the President’s Men.