Catholic and Enjoying It!
Interesting piece by an Aussie “well and truly lapsed” Catholic who recognizes that priests have become the latest in a long line of figures on whom a deranged culture heaps its sins rather than confront them:
Women were scapegoated and tortured and murdered as witches in the Dark Ages, Hitler used the Jews as scapegoats, McCarthy the communists, Muslims are scapegoated as terrorists, Marx blamed capitalism, Freud sex. When we scapegoat someone, we characterise an entire group of individuals according to the unethical or immoral conduct of a small number of individuals belonging to that group. This is also known as stereotyping. Scapegoated groups throughout history have included: genders, religions, people of different races or nations, and people with different political beliefs. The chosen individual, or group, becomes the scapegoat, or sacrificial offering, and their public flogging, exile or death becomes the redemption for the larger group’s real unacknowledged problem that remains unaddressed and dormant. Until the next time.
He has intuited the theology of Rene Girard. It is what brought him back to the Church, the recognition that Jesus willingly submits to our demand to pile our own evils on to somebody else. He lets it wash over him, absorbs it, takes it without down to the grave, and leaves it there: bringing only mercy with him up out of the tomb. It is fitting that his innocent priests do likewise. It will be through such sacrifices that the scourge of guilt and shame for these crimes against innocent children are atoned for.
Not, of course, that this excuses us for scapegoating innocent men.
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