Cardinal sins

Last week’s debate over the relationship between church and state may still be lingering in your mind. Even though I found myself unable to attend, I know it’s still on mine. But these United States have had a great deal of cause lately to ponder what I consider to be a genuine “Axis of Evil,” what with Islamic Jihads, the war between Israel and the Palestinians, and Bush’s constant pursuit of faith-based initiatives.

Many Americans look at what’s coming out of the Middle East and see the merger of religion and politics as the principal cause of all this destruction and hate. Still others think the only real problem is that they don’t adhere to the “right” religion and that if they embraced Christ, things would sort themselves out with relative ease.

But let me present a slightly different perspective for you. Say you’ve got an organization that meets throughout the week to reaffirm its commitment to one another and provide a community that educates and defends one another from harm. This organization has outreach programs that encourage open membership and numerous charities for improving the quality of life around the world. It owes fealty to a larger organization, but it is largely able to operate autonomously except when a crisis threatens the union of affiliated communities.

Now imagine that one of these crises is currently threatening their unity and that it involves the systematic sexual molestation of several members by a series of different leaders for sometimes many generations. If our organization was something like the PeaceCorps, the NAACP or the U.S. Senate, you can imagine that the crisis would be addressed swiftly, if not cleanly, and that all responsible parties would be called to the carpet. But when we step outside of theory and into the real world, we find that those responsible for these crimes have compounded their guilt by trying to buy the silence of the victims and shuffling off the offenders to other communities without some kind of warning about their behavior. This happened in Boston under the direction of Cardinal Bernard Law, one of the Catholic church’s highest leaders.

It would be easy to point fingers at the Catholic church for its insistence on the celibacy of its clergy as the root of this problem, but that’s unfair. If there is an inordinately large number of cases of sexual assault and the ensuing cover-ups coming out of Catholic communities, I suspect it would have a great deal more to do with how vast the Catholic empire is when compared against the various splinters of Protestantism. For instance, even while protesters outside Law’s home maintain a constant vigil for his resignation, the Anglican Church of Canada is still under threat of bankruptcy as the result of settlements made with victims of similar crimes. According to Margaret Spillane from The Nation, while the U.S. Catholic Church has paid out $1 billion in settlements, Washington’s Peace Baptist Church has yet to offer so much as an apology to parishioners for Deacon Robert Tardy’s molestation of his flock’s children.

Spillane identifies that what is at stake here is not any specific piece of Catholic doctrine, but rather the belief that any organization, religious or otherwise, is answerable to no law outside of its own. Law’s behavior since polls revealed the overwhelming desire of rank-and-file believers to see him resign underscores this attitude. He looks at the signs reading “There is no due process in Cardinal’s Law” and decides to tighten the reins on the moral and spiritual life of Catholics. “You are in violation of your faith!” he screamed at one group of women agitating for the right to be ordained two years ago.

Way back in 1992, when The Globe reported on the serial rapes of Father James Porter, instead of condemning the sexual depravity, Cardinal Law said, “By all means, we call down God’s power upon the media, particularly The Globe.” Certainly cardinals must be the bulwarks of Catholic tradition because it is they who must determine who shall lead their believers to salvation in the churches and in Rome, but since when did Bernard Law get the right to make demands on God’s terrible wrath?

Perhaps you believe he has every right to call down the thunder against media and the wounded faithful. After all, he is a cardinal. But when you look at the record of how he rose to the top, you see a little more of the seven deadly sins at work instead of the cardinal virtues. First, you combine the unnatural lust of Father John Geoghan (one of many possible examples), who for 36 years molested children under his care, with Bernard Law’s twisted envy of position. Give Bernard a little taste of power and he quickly fosters the greed and gluttony for more. It isn’t long before his wealthy friends, among them prominent judges and university presidents, help him seal documents that prove the abuses of multiple priests, ostensibly because the truth would harm believers. Law collaborates with this kind of moral sloth, and when called on it by victims and their families, his vanity allows him to go to court with the argument that the victims are just as much at fault as the offenders, calling it “comparative negligence.” Small wonder his anger is such a force to be reckoned with after being wedded so long to evil.

I suppose I’d be lying if I said I didn’t appreciate a little anger every now and again myself. The truth has a habit of making me pretty pissed off. But when enshrined in print above the slander Cardinal Law slings against protesters and believers, I get enough hope moving through me that I can see it for the petty trash it is. Because enough people in Boston and around the world have armed themselves with truth, the situation has grown out of Law’s hands. The pope, in an unprecedented move, has summoned every American cardinal to his side for a private talk. We can only hope that John Paul II will have the courage to prune these diseased limbs from the tree of faith. Either way, it seems unlikely that the throne Martin Luther once described as the seat of evil will be further sullied by Law sitting on it.

Still, as people privileged to live in the strongest and most diverse nation ever conceived, it falls upon us to not give in to any tyrant that tries to set himself above the laws we make for ourselves. Personal faith is as much a part of my life as anyone’s, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to compromise it just because some zealot tries to wrest control of the ship of state over to his religion. Why a believer would want to compromise his faith by mixing it up with politics in the first place I’ll never know. If any of you out there hoping to see faith-based initiatives restore the “moral center” of these United States wants to try to explain it to me, e-mail me at [email protected] or call me at 214-768-5314, and I’ll do my best not to laugh my ass off.