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 hose
who think of Christ as "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild" have
read the New Testament very selectively. Christ had many words of
comfort for the afflicted; but He also uttered harsh words of condemnation
to the impenitent. And there is no judgment more terrifying than
His warning to anyone who attacked the innocence of children that
"it were better for him, if a millstone be tied around his
neck and he be cast into the depths of the sea."
But there was
apparently a shortage of millstones in Boston over the last three
decades. In that time, the Catholic Church harbored several priests
who repeatedly molested young boys. One priest, now defrocked, John
Geoghan, has been convicted of serious assaults in that period and
awaits sentencing. Other names are surfacing now that the courts
have ordered the Boston archdiocese to disclose its internal documents
on Geoghan. And newspapers speculate that as many as fifty priests
may eventually be accused. That is almost certainly a large exaggeration.
But suppose that the true figure is five. Would that not be shocking
enough?
As the church
documents have already shown, however, priestly sexual abuse is
the lesser scandal. What has shocked Catholic Boston still more
has been the apparent willingness of church officials, including
two cardinals and five bishops, to allow priests whom they knew
to have abused children to return to their parishes, or to be assigned
to new ones, after the most cursory period of psychological "treatment"
and without informing either the police or, on one occasion at least,
the parish priest who would be supervising their pastoral work.
And in Geoghan's case, the bishops committed this extraordinary
blunder — one might call it by harsher names — on repeated
occasions, never apparently deterred by their past disappointments
or by his almost flamboyant recidivism.
One reason
for this, given by the current Bishop of Brooklyn, was fear of "scandal."
But that defense surely falls on both moral and prudential grounds.
It was imprudent to conceal priestly child abuse at the risk, now
realized, of provoking the far greater scandal of an ecclesiastical
cover-up. And, morally, it set Father Geoghan free to corrupt more
innocent children.
No worldly
cynic would have behaved as stupidly as the elders of the Church
did. He would have handed Geoghan over to the cops and sought the
moral credit of dealing honestly with the Church's most embarrassing
problems. And everyone, including Geoghan, would have been better
off.
So weak is
the argument of avoiding "scandal" in this case that one
is inclined to treat it as the rationalization of a deeper failing.
And that failing is a bishops' lack of faith in their own religious
mission and message.
What, after
all, did they think pedophilia was? Was it a sin, a crime or a medical
condition? Child sex abuse certainly is a crime — and a very
serious one at that. Handing its perpetrators over to the authorities
therefore falls under the injunction: "Render unto Caesar the
things that are Caesar's." Yet the Church bureaucracy did not
treat it as a crime. At no point did the various bishops and monsignors
seriously seem to think of calling in the police even though they
knew Geoghan was committing a series of felonies that carry heavy
prison sentences. If you or I sought absolution for murder in confession,
it would be granted only on condition that we admitted our crime
to the authorities. For a priest, child sex abuse is an act of similar
magnitude. Faced with a crime in its own house, however, the Church
acted to a lower standard than those it imposes on the faithful.
Nor, however,
did they treat what Geoghan did as a sin. To be sure, the bishops
occasionally used the language of sin, repentance and renewal in
their correspondence with him about his new postings or brief hospitalizations.
But there is little sign of the stern moral condemnation that a
serious sin invites; nor of any demanding inquiry for evidence of
Geoghan's "firm purpose of amendment." On the contrary:
after one sordid episode, he was given $2,000 and a trip to Rome.
All in all, he was treated more tenderly than the parents of the
children he abused.
What emerges
from the internal documents is that the Church truly believes in
psychiatry. Its belief in psychiatry, indeed, is as the belief of
little children or of primitive tribes or of early twentieth century
intellectuals. It regarded Geoghan's pedophilia almost blithely
as a medical condition which a good psychiatrist might cure. Admittedly
it did not employ good psychiatrists to do so, merely those it could
trust to be discreet. (One of them, as luck would have it, has been
accused by a woman patient of sexual abuse. It's been a bad week
at the Bishopric.)
But even a
good psychiatrist would have made little headway with Geoghan because,
as good psychiatrists know, pedophilia is one of those conditions
that can be "cured" only if the patient desperately wishes
to recover from it (and perhaps not even then.) Psychiatry can cure
those mental and emotional illnesses that are the result of physical
causes such as a chemical imbalance in the system. But it can only
assist the patient to overcome those conditions such as alcoholism
and pedophilia which, even if they arise from genetic predispositions
or early childhood experiences, are nonetheless embedded in the
mind and will. And there was little clear evidence that Geoghan
ever really wanted to be "cured" and was prepared to embark
on the hard business of disciplining his own will. His illness was
more a moral failing — that is, a sin — than a medical
fact. It was therefore in the Church's own territory of sin, repentance
and reform. But the Bishops lacked the faith to see that or to propose
their own hard spiritual remedies.
Christ himself
would have spoken far more harshly to John Geoghan and the other
priests who destroyed the innocence of those in their care. Yet
in speaking harshly He would have loved them more. For He might
have turned them away from the sins that corrupted their souls and
attacked the bodies of children in their charge. Geoghan himself
can only hope to find in prison the stern but loving Christ whom
he evaded all too easily in the Boston Archdiocese.
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