Word: scandal
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Especially not now. In fact, thanks to the ongoing scandal, more than a few friends and colleagues wonder why I haven't given up on Catholicism. I'll still be attending Easter Mass this weekend precisely because I follow Catholicism and not the Catholic Church - because Easter's redemptive message resides not in my church but in my religion. Not even our bishops, try as they have, can shame us away from the Eucharist and the human elevation we derive from it. Our church's disrepute, in fact, compels us to consider our religion's virtues more seriously. For starters...
Like most Catholics, I appreciate Benedict's efforts to confront the abuse scourge. But Rome's moral fallibility (reminder: it didn't definitively disavow slavery until 1888) is particularly apparent when it tries to downplay the scandal by insisting that clergy in the 1960s and 70s were susceptible to the era's liberal mores, or that the rate of pedophilia among its ranks is no larger than that of society in general. Those arguments - We're no worse than the rest of you! - effectively surrender claims to moral superiority, let alone divine direction. As a Catholic, I believe...
This is the most uncomfortable Easter that Catholics have faced since the throes of the U.S. clerical sex abuse scandal in 2002. A new deluge of priest-pedophile stories, mostly in Europe, has cast another Good Friday pall over the resurrection celebration. This time some of the hierarchical cover-up may have even involved, if only indirectly, the man who would become the current Pope, Benedict XVI. And the Catholic Church's defensive response (as persecuted as the Jews?) has once again made it look like a dark fraternity in a Dan Brown novel instead of a luminous shepherd...
...Democrats, the Republican National Committee chairman is the gift that keeps on giving. Hardly a week goes by without some gaffe or scandal involving Michael Steele, from his threat to back primary challenges to moderate Republicans who supported the stimulus bill, to this week's episode in which a staffer was fired for taking young donors out for $2,000 worth of "meals" at a risqué lesbian-themed nightclub. That one had top GOP donors and groups such as the Family Research Council openly calling for a boycott of the RNC, urging supporters to instead give their money directly...
...Vatican's version of the facts is entirely convincing, papal "plausible deniability" - as communicated by aides - is not the kind of leadership this crisis requires. What happened in Munich, with or without Ratzinger's direct knowledge, is exactly the sort of inbred administrative failing that propelled a similar scandal in Boston nine years ago, which the Pope himself referred to in his recent letter to the Irish faithful...