Proud To Be Catholic!

by Paul Hein

Day by day, my pride in my religion increases. Because of the priestly pedophiles? No, of course not. Pedophilia is immoral and despicable, and the priests who are guilty of it deserve whatever punishment they get. I’m sure the percentage of priests who prey on boys is as high, perhaps, as the percentage of Protestant ministers who do the same thing, or rabbis. Or coaches, or Scoutmasters. It’s hard to be sure, because none of the media who report, daily, on the latest scandals in the Church seem interested in investigating the incidence of such scandals among other religions or occupations. That’s what’s flattering to the Church: the others don’t count!

In other words, the Church, despite its relentless attempts at suicide, is still taken seriously enough to be considered a threat to the Establishment. Nobody, frankly, gives a damn about the Unitarians, or Presbyterians, Seventh-Day Adventists, etc. The thrust of the attacks upon the Church is to reduce it to another Protestant denomination, singing hymns and sipping grape juice, and utterly without effect in the world. Pedophilia? Why, the National Man-Boy Love Association thinks highly of it, and I haven’t read or heard a word of criticism about that group. The Church’s critics don’t give a rap about pedophilia except as an excuse to attack her.

After all, it’s all about homosexuality, and what could be more exempt from criticism than that perversion? If a homosexual is murdered by normal males, the news, like the news of priestly pedophilia, inundates us. On the other hand, if homosexuals sodomize and murder a young boy, it rates only a paragraph on page ten. The hypocrisy is blinding: Homosexuality is merely a way of life, like vegetarianism, except when the homosexuals are priests. Then, horrors!

Don’t tell me that the difference is that the priests “preyed” upon young boys. I’ve read no reports of any of the alleged victims resisting. Indeed, the daily pedophile accounts are monotonously similar: An altar boy, fondled by a priest, says nothing and does nothing, but may endure repeated such episodes in silence. Years later, after enduring much mental torment, he reveals, usually to a personal-injury lawyer, the depth of his hurt and shame, etc. Am I saying that the victims were active, willing, participants? No, although we don’t know if they were or not. But we do know that, apparently without exception, they offered no resistance, even though some of them were teenagers, and certainly able to do so. In many cases, the abused boy was abused repeatedly. Repeatedly? Doesn’t that strike you as odd? Decades later, the abuse is recalled with anger and outrage, but at the time the boy kept going back for more? That at least merits some suspicion, although not if your objective is not to find the truth, but to castigate the Church of Rome.

In 1961, the Vatican’s office of the Sacred Congregation for Religious issued a directive barring the admission of homosexuals to the diocesan priesthood and religious orders. It stated, “Those affected by the perverse inclination to homosexuality or pederasty should be excluded from religious vows and ordination,” since they constituted a “grave danger.” Obviously, this directive was ignored by the local bishops, who evidently regarded homosexuality as the world does; namely, as an “alternative lifestyle” of no great or particular significance. After 20 centuries, you’d think that the Church would have learned that its role is to stand in opposition to the Zeitgeist, not to embrace it!

Those who rushed to defend President Clinton’s sexual vices are not so inclined to repeat their performance on behalf of priestly pedophiles, even though “it’s only about sex.” Every accusation is assumed to be true, but the abomination need not be rooted out from the ranks of other men. Indeed, when other men do it, it’s not an abomination, or at least not a newsworthy one. It seems that no other group is important enough to attack. It makes me proud!

March 29, 2002