generalspeaking

Roman Catholic Easter Week-End, 2010

It's just as well, this Easter holiday week-end of 2010 that the faithful have the sublime musical masterpieces of the baroque era to soothe their emotions of regret and outrage over the ongoing scandals relating to priestly sexual abuse of children. There has been much in the past several millennia that Christianity might feel regret over in its zeal to convert the pagan heathen to Christ, but the sublime music that Christianity's divine belief inspired in the genius of the composition of Easter Oratorios by the world's most gifted musicians must represent forgiveness on a celestial scale.

Despite which, criticism of the Holy See is growing day by day, as the Vatican has stumbled from one abysmal public relations fiasco to another, in its attempt to stifle the scandal that has darkened its reputation and that of the current pope. Perhaps it's an instance of schadenfreude that even the Pope's Anglican counterpart was unable to restrain himself from voicing his own opinion of the situation. Almost risibly juvenile in the context of Pope Benedict's having earlier invited disgruntled Anglicans to convert to Catholicism. Just as that must have rankled, so too must the now-regretted statement by Archbishop Williams for his 'misconstrued' statement.

However, not only did Pope Benedict XVI himself make an unfortunate reference to the need of the faithful to overlook "petty gossip", but the "Preacher of the Pontifical Household" repeated that unbelievably trite and inappropriate statement. For the simple matter happens to be there is nothing petty about pedophilia, particularly that representing trusted priests preying on trusting children. However, when the analogy was drawn between the media-fuelled assaults on the fallibility of the Pope and the suffering of Jews through rabid anti-Semitism, all reason was tossed to the hot winds of blame assailing the Catholic Church.

Aside from the stunningly incomprehensible absurdity of public blame for inaction and responsibility where it was due on the part of the Church and its current Pope, and finding commonality with the virulent pathology of race-hatred that led to the finality of the genocidal Holocaust, there is also the track record of the Catholic Church itself and its relationship to Jews. From the Crusades to the Inquisition, from the unwillingness of the Church during the Nazi regime to publicly condemn the master plan to obliterate Europe's Jews, to the current lapses in judgement vis-a-vis Church dogma and Jewish sensibilities.

No one, not even the Pope, can hide from 'petty gossip'. Is it petty for the child victims of pedophile priests to demand an accounting from a church which had traditionally known of such vicious predations and did its medieval best to anxiously contain them from spilling into the public realm of knowledge? In point of fact, hasn't the public always snickered at the well-known proclivities of some members of the priesthood in seeking illicit, forbidden sex from trusting and faithful parishioners? And what of those calumnious jokes about choir boys? Do they erupt from thin air?

How can the public and the media be found responsible for besmirching the reputation of a venerable institution through purported innuendo and gossip, which has itself taken a huge hand in the institutionalizing of a huge, unforgivable blemish? Where the church hierarchy has always been complicit in directing the suppression of the very real, most embarrassing incidents of abuse, and intent on compassionately protecting the child rapist while leaving the victims to their own, silent devices and agonies of pain?

There is nothing new about priestly depredations. They have occurred for as long as the church has existed. But sufficient gravity and the will to meet the severity of these pathological and atrocious occurrences being visited upon the vulnerable by the mighty has never been addressed in a deservedly-convulsive determination to rout the rot from the institution. The princes of the Roman Catholic Church have been enabled by the disinterest of their administration to covertly practise their deranged pathologies.

The Catholic Church's huge followers of faith continue to anticipate that their Shepherd will address himself to the real problem, and not continue to rely on his defenders to cast blame on a purportedly hostile media whose trumped-up stories of flawed investigations - revealing the complicity of Bishop Ratzinger in concealing the truth and protecting the child-molesters while abandoning the child-victims - reveal their evil agendas. The choice may be a difficult one, but it is an inevitable one that must be recognized.

The Vatican is quite incorrect in stating its belief that the guilt of individuals who commit heinous crimes cannot burden the Pope or the Church in its entirety. As a top-down institution, one whose social-working infrastructure receives its hierarchical running orders directly from the Pope, himself personally and directly representing the Church, it is his authority that has come under question, along with his fallible reasoning.

Labels: Human Relations, Justice, Political Realities, Religion

posted by Pieface @ Sunday, April 04, 2010