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{"id":810,"date":"2011-07-31T13:38:35","date_gmt":"2011-07-31T13:38:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/diaryofawimpycatholic\/?p=810"},"modified":"2015-03-13T15:04:37","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T21:04:37","slug":"buddhists-need-own-dallas-charter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/diaryofawimpycatholic\/2011\/07\/buddhists-need-own-dallas-charter\/","title":{"rendered":"Buddhists Need Own Dallas Charter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The Chicago Tribune<\/i> is reporting<\/strong><\/a> that Buddhist<\/a> monks are facing allegations of sex abuse; that monastic authorities have established no system for tracking the movements of the accused, and appear in some instances to be stonewalling investigators.<\/p>\n

According to Meghan Twohey, in 2000, a 12-year-old girl accused a monk named Camnong Boa-Ubol of assaulting her during a \u201ctutoring session\u201d at Chicago\u2019s Wat Dhammarang temple. Temple administrators sent her parents a letter, assuring them that Boa-Ubol had \u201caccepted what he has done,\u201d and would be banished to Thailand as punishment. Now, 11 years later, it\u2019s emerged that Boa-Ubol simply moved to a temple in California. His Chicago superiors made no attempt to stop him, did not warn anyone in California of the charges against him, and hid the information from their own temple\u2019s board of directors. <\/p>\n

In Thai Therevada Buddhism<\/a>, it seems, monastic life is loosely organized, with each temple operating as a law unto itself. At least according to the Tribune\u2019s<\/i> sources, there are no motherhouses, no provinicials and no dicasteries charged with investigating allegatoins against monks. Twohey reports: \u201cMonks are viewed as free agents\u2026Those found guilty of wrongdoing can pack a bag and move to another temple \u2014 much to the dismay of victims, law enforcement and other monks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Temple heads do, reportedly, have the authority to laicize monks, but they exercise that authority only under very narrowly defined circumstances. P. Bonshoo Sriburin, head of Wat Dhammarang, said he found no grounds for laicizing Boa-Ubol. \u201cAs long as we don\u2019t know any sexual intercourse, we have no reason to charge anybody on that ground,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were informed that he just touched body.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a grim business, and my own first impulse is to joke about it, grimly. I can picture Boa-Ubol pleading, \u201cDon\u2019t send me to Thailand! Anywhere but there!\u201d like Br\u2019er Rabbit before the briar patch. At this point, any Catholic can be allowed a certain rotten satisfaction in noting a sex scandal in someone else\u2019s religion. But reading the Tribune<\/i> piece does, I think, have a more serious and respectable purpose: the Therevada sex abuse crisis looks like a funhouse mirror of our own. Many of the same basic variables are in place, but in proportions distorted enough to make comparison fascinating and worthwhile.<\/p>\n

Norms of investigation and dispute resolution alien to those of American legal system? Check? Lag in appreciating the harm of sexual assault on victim? Check. Failure to keep pace with the improvements in the status of children that have taken place in postwar America? Double check. There\u2019s no definitive proof that temple authorities were paralyzed by fear of scandal, or that they extended a loyalty to fellow monks that they denied laypeople, but there\u2019s certainly room between the lines to read one or the other or both. <\/p>\n

Wincing and groaning in recognition yet? Well, knock it off, \u2019cause that part\u2019s over. Now comes the fun part, the lording-it-over-the-other-guy and marking-signs-of-progress part. Unlike Therevada monks, our priests and religious are not free agents; instead, they\u2019re subject to a form of well-regulated top-down management. Once disciplined, a Catholic cleric can\u2019t simply turn in an application at another franchise. At best, he can jump ship to a schismatic sect, like a disgraced Grenadier Guardsman joining the French Foreign Legion. (Hopefully, he\u2019ll have just as much fun.) If those in charge have not always been the wisest stewards of that splendid apparatus, at least nobody\u2019s had to build it from scratch. <\/p>\n

Not only do our Church leaders have the authority to keep order, they have an incentive. Whatever role ranking Therevada Buddhists play in Southeast Asian public life, they seem content to be invisible here. Our bishops strive to serve as prophetic voices, agents in the New Evangelization, shapers of public policy. To meet any of these goals, they first must prove themselves adequate babysitters. Partly toward this end, we\u2019ve seen the introduction of safe-environment training programs and the constitution of diocesan review boards. Generally, these have failed to root out abusers only where they went un- or underutilized. An efficient, press-driven feedback loop now tends to reveal these oversights as folly. Where virtue pales as its own reward, an escape from nasty headlines should fill in nicely. <\/p>\n

The Therevada establishment, such as it is has yet to issue a formal statement on this new media scrutiny. Hopefully, they\u2019ll see it for what it is \u2014 a gift, in the form of a call to reform. No abbot has gone on record complaining about unfair treatment, which sounds like a good sign. Or it could be they\u2019re still smarting over Kickboxer.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"