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The Catholic Church is often criticized for its bloody and intolerant history, and the most common examples cited of this are the Crusades and the Holy Inquisition. Heathens were persecuted, infidels were burned, Church coffers were lined with gold, and the influence of the Papacy peaked. Today, though, the shoe is on the other foot. Now the Church is under fire from all sides, including internally. And while there might not be a Tomas de Torquemada leading them to the stake, the opposition is legion indeed.
The Church is on the bad of the latest Crusade, the goal of which is to get rid of all the pedophile priests. It's a worthwhile goal that has taken too long to materialize, mainly due to church cover-ups and shifting of the guilty parties to new diocese. It's a sad spectacle reminiscent of teachers in public schools: they can't be fired, so the problem is relocated until it surfaces again.
It's long past time the Church was called onto the carpet for this. I remember hearing allegations of Catholic priests molesting young boys and girls while I was still in elementary school. Yes, I went to Catholic school (for twelve years, in fact, and ended up an atheist), but no, we never had any of those priests. Not that we knew of, at least.
And therein lies the problem. There are priests who have been preying on children fro decades now, and their bishops, archbishops, and cardinals look the other way. If the problem is really bad, they'll send the priest to another diocese with a glowing letter of recommendation and no mention of the fact that he's a depraved individual who sexually abuses children. Bernard Cardinal Law has been accused of this, among other crimes. The Church has its own good ol' boy network in place, though instead of tacitly condoning racism, this network explicitly condones serial pedophilia.
This is not a new problem. I remember hearing about it when I was young, and reports of pedophile priests predate me by a healthy margin. In fact, it's reasonable to say that there are just as many pedophile priests then as there are now - we just hear more about them now due to the ubiquitous nature of the news media. Why, then, has the Church taken so long to start doing something about it? Why has a Church that has condemned alternative sexualities not taken a stand against its own priests who molest little boys? Why does a Church that cares so much about children before they're born seem so indifferent toward them after they're born?
These are all valid questions, and none of them have been adequately answered. The Pope's conference with American cardinals is a small step in the right direction, but a lot more needs to be done. The Church seems to think they can sweep this under the rug with lip service and a few dismissals. Sadly, a good portion of their congregation will probably let them get away with it. The rest of us - the part of the country actually capable of independent thought - should not.
Any priest with one provable instance of pedophilia should be fired. Evidence of the crime should be turned over - by the Church itself - to the police. The former priest should then be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and jailed for his crimes. It's time the Church got tough on these priests. The vast majority of Catholic priests are good and decent men who have chosen a life of servitude that few people are truly cut out for. Atheist though I may be, I can't honestly say one bad thing about any Catholic priest I've known.
I know the Church hierarchy doesn't want to turn on its own, but their loyalty should not lie with a group of warped criminals. They must be loyal to the young victims of these crimes, and to the laws that protect them. Only by expelling its pedophiles and leaving them in the hands of the criminal justice system can the Church look like it's actually doing something about the problem. Rebuilding trust will be difficult, even for the most exemplary of priests.
None of this gets to the root of the problem, though: how can the Church stop its priests from sexually abusing young children? The answer is obvious: let them marry. Priests of every other Christian faith are allowed to marry, but Catholic priests must conform to the passed-down image of a dozen men who lived in another part of the world and died 2000 years ago. What an intelligent policy. Tradition is one thing; blind stupidity is quite another. I know the Apostles were supposedly single (and how many women do you think they could get, following some guy a lot of people thought was a nut?), but a lot has changed since then. It's time the Church remembered its priests are men, in addition to being servants of their god. They're still men, and no amount of shouting about tradition or duty or chastity will change that.
Some priests will still be twisted pedophiles, of course, and allowing them to marry won't change that. I think it would alleviate the vast majority of the problem, though, and go along way toward both modernizing the Church and repairing its image. Don't look for it anytime soon, though. It took the Church 500 years after the death of Latin to make the mass in the vernacular, after all. Hopefully, they'll abandon their typical glacier-speed reform pace and realize the urgency of this situation. Everyday they fail to act decisively, more trust is lost, both in the Church as an effective institution, and in its priests.
How much more can the Church afford to lose?
5 May 2002