A decade ago, it was virtually impossible to get fired as a priest for molesting children. But as Fr. John Conley found out, it was easy to get fired if you told your bishop you were going to accuse a fellow priest of molestation:
In November 1997, [Fr. John Conley] came home early one evening to his parish, only to find his pastor wrestling in the dark with a young boy. Conley, a federal prosecutor before becoming a priest, believed he had witnessed an act of sexual abuse. According to depositions and other legal documents, he reported the incident to San Francisco archdiocesan officials and told them he was going to file a report with civil authorities, as required by law. Conley said one official asked him, “Now, are you sure you want to do this?”
The archdiocese backed the priest suspected by Conley of molesting the boy, and Conley was soon removed from active ministry (church officials said his demotion was unrelated to his whistle-blowing). Eventually, the accused priest admitted that he had sexually abused several boys, and Conley filed a whistle-blower lawsuit against the Archdiocese of San Francisco, winning a large settlement in 2002. William Levada, now a top official at the Vatican, was then the archbishop of San Francisco.
In his deposition, an angry Conley said he asked the vicar of clergy to relay a message to the archbishop: “The message was to tell the archbishop to grow some balls and start acting like a man.”
—William Lobdell, Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America—and Found Unexpected Peace (2009), p. 164-5
These stories never stop making me angry. I hope they never will.
“The message was to tell the archbishop to grow some balls and start acting like a man.”
I hope the archbishop heard that.
The pervasiveness and persistence of molestation in the church is baffling. I don’t understand how it continues to happen and be swept under the rug.
It certainly does seem to support the idea that there is something systemic about it.
Something in the way that priests are self selected, something in the clergy culture, something. I would think the church would really want to figure that out.
They would, if they weren’t so busy hiding it. Moving priests between parishes is a lot of work.
They would, if they weren’t so terified of how far the rot goes. And if the ones at the top didn’t see abusing young boys as their getout-clause for the celibacy thing.
I think you’re right: there’s something systemic – and systematic – about it.
Lobdell compares, or rather contrasts, it to schools, asking the reader, do you think a school, upon reports of abuse by a teacher, would cover it up, fire whistle-blowers, continue to promote the teacher, and if publicity forced it to remove him from the school, simply place him in another elementary school in another area?
Yet that’s what the Catholic church does.
To be fair there is a different perception in the way sexual abuse in schools is treated compared to the churches. The latter is considered a “black mark” against the whole system, whereas the former is accepted (to a degree) in that the best thing we can do is minimise the chances of it happening and does not reflect on the system as a whole. Given this it’s possible to see how covers up occur i.e. weighing up the damage done to the church and its reputation vs. the injustice of moving a sexual abuser on to do the same again. Now you may feel that this is a pretty screwed up set of priorities but this still doesn’t make school vs. churches a good comparison.
… oh and maybe a better comparison would be against a public school as that is a single institute and parents do have a choice of whether to send there children there or not.
Experience shows no archbishop or anyone in a position of executive power within the church wants to touch this, even though they may want to stop the monstrous abuse. Maybe out of loyalty to the church, and maybe because they can be sure it’ll end their career.
The RC church is rotten to the very core, and it’s really disgusting to observe. They claim themselves to be a divinely mandated authority on morality, but the lie in this is in plain sight.
They might, if they thought that it was actually a heinous crime. However, it’s *much* more important to them to spend their time excommunicating the doctors, mother, and anyone else involved with allowing a 12 year old girl who was pregnant by rape, by her stepfather, to procure an abortion. The stepfather wasn’t excommunicated.
Child rape apparently just isn’t seen as that big a deal in the Catholic church.
According to biblegod she should have married her rapist. Problem solved.
If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days. — Deuteronomy 22:28-29
Yes, but the rapist is also her father. She can’t marry her own father, so she should be stoned. To death.
That case disgusted me to death, especially since it happened in my country. I’m moderately proud of our courts for telling the church a big “fuck you” in that (and other similar) cases.
“The message was to tell the archbishop to grow some balls and start acting like a man.”
Yeah, why not add some gratuitous sexism to the already rage-inducing pile of Catholic fail? FAIL!
It’s an expression… Fortunately, some of my friends would change the equivalent sentence in my language “to have balls” (direct translation) for “to have ovaries”. Language is sexist but it is evolving
“Grow some gonads”. It’s not often used to mean ovaries, but the word “gonads” does refer to both ovaries and testicles. Problem solved.
Yeah, but *I* would say “be a decent human being”/”at least pretend to be a decent human being”. You can tell people who are thinking withing a certain framework by the language they are using. It doesn’t even really matter that he obviously didn’t intend to make a sexist statement.
Hint: Catholicism (like most religions) is not a cool religion if you’re female.
You can tell people who are thinking withing a certain framework by the language they are using. It doesn’t even really matter that he obviously didn’t intend to make a sexist statement.
You can also tell a lot about a person by which language tropes trigger emotional reactions.
The cultural notions of masculine and feminine are distinct from the biological structures of male and female. One can point to positive cultural attribution of transgenderal attributes as an interesting development in the ongoing struggle of humans to acclimate to being hormonal sexually driven creature, or one can choose to bemoan the continual and haphazard adoption of language to modern cultural contexts as an atavistic callback to clearly misogynistic historical periods.
For some people, the glass is half-filled, and for others, the glass is being violated and needs to be empowered. I tend to think one of these approaches to feminist analysis is more constrictive than the other.
The message was to tell you to grow some breasts and start acting like a woman … or something like that, it’s all rather confusing.
That was directed at Nope to save any confusion …
It’s hard to tell what the message is sometimes. That’s why it’s better to just let those hormones rule you.
Well I think the message is treat every one equally and it will all work out fine. I used to know someone who couldn’t understand why I would hold the door open for men and women and not just women.
By a new caring and sensitive man but also kick the crap out of the guy who just pinched my bum!
As soon as I started reading the article, I immediately thought of Lobdell’s book. Had to read further to see it was a passage from its pages.
I read it earlier this summer, and found it excellent. I highly recommend it. The dedication is “to all those harmed by religion”, and I count myself among them. So it’s also dedicated to me! Mine was psychological harm though, the kind that comes from making all your actions and planning your life around irrational, harmful beliefs. (Remember those letters you wrote to poor damned souls, Daniel?)
The kind of harm Lobdell writes about is so incredibly devastating. Including the fact that, astoundingly enough, the Catholic church doesn’t condemn it and strongly, immediately put a stop to it! Can you believe it!