When I prosecuted attorneys who failed to comply witht the Rules of Professional Conduct, it was not for "mistakes", the kind of human error all professionals make. So for example, blowing a statute of limitations because he or she miscalculated might be malpractice, but it would not be something that the Bar investigated. But blowing the statute because he or she never paid any attention to the case of the client from the moment the retainer was signed or hiding the fact that he or she blew the statute, that was indeed actionable by the Bar. Depending on how serious the knowing or intentional failure, in the latter case, was the effect on the lawyer's license.
My colleagues and I heard many a tale, many protestations if not of innocence, of "misunderstanding" the rules, and a not so little annoyance at the rest of us for requesting that they adhere to it. After all, they were "lawyers" who had taken an oath of their profession, not casually signed onto the trade association that goverened it. And when called on their, shall we call it, "BS?", they became very self righteous indeed and annoyed at the reality of the rules to which they had, purportedly, agreed.
These all too human behaviors and rationalizations came painfully to mind when I read the released records of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles (of which I am a part as an active Catholic) detailing how the then Cardinal and his administration handled the well supported accusations against priests of abhorrent sexual behavior against children. Let me take a little digression here--it seems to me a bit of anti-Catholicism to pretend, as I believe the press does, that pedophilia exists more in this corner of the human universe than it does anywhere else. Simply it does not. So as I write here, I am aware of the agendas on all sides of man made politics. That said, as I read the so called "apology" and explanations of the hierarchy, whose direction often seems less spiritual than Machiavellian in the best tradition of medieval and Renaissance administrations, I remembered my days as a prosecutor of lawyers and the near identity of the BS that seeks to evade rather than to confront wrongdoing. Oh, do I think I'd do it any better? No, I know I would not, but still I am insulted by the lack of recognition of the depth of their own failure. After all, they tell us what to do, and remonstrate with us when we fail.
There are those, Catholic and otherwise, who would call into question the faith itself because of the boundless failure of these shepherds present and past. I have been one of them in my time. I was a lapsi for many years between 1970 and 1983, rationalizing my own difficulties as somehow the fault of the Church in which I had been reared educationally. So, I understand the feeling. Who are these, well, the word that comes to mind in the throes of anger is, "bastards", who exhort me, a single (and likely life long single) middle aged woman, to a life of chastity in the name of a theology that the world finds laughable, while they are accessories to the behavior and sometimes (for example, the bishop in California who had two teenage children by his WIFE, a wife that he presumably was not to have as a celibate) that they wink wink away? Only when they are caught is there sorrow. Or so it seems to the person in the pew agonizing over his or her struggle with sin. To many they aren't walking the walk enjoined on us with authority that is not to be questioned. The authority of course is not theirs. They are intended only as teachers of the Words of the Authority, even if they often confuse themselves with Him and then justify their bad behavior as if somehow they are dispensed from the essences of the faith.
Perhaps in days gone by, when I was younger, and had not yet spent time in reading the Church Fathers or about them, or treatise upon treatise (I say read, but given how complicated some of it is, more, gloss over) I would have rejected my faith after reading about these walking contradictions and the nonsensical purveyors of explanations for bad behavior. But I have read, and while relationship (which I have never been good at) is part of what the Lord wishes us to have, and that relationship includes the best and worst of the people of God, the essence of my faith as a Catholic does not reside with these men, or women to the extent women have engaged in their versions of these failures.
I remembered a quote from a favorite writer about things Catholic, although to read her fiction you would not immediately realize it, the long late (she died in 1964 or 5) Flannery O'Connor.
“You have to suffer as much from the church as for it,” she said. “The only thing that makes the church endurable is that somehow it is the body of Christ, and on this we are fed.”
“The operation of the church is entirely set up for the sake of the sinner, which creates much misunderstanding among the smug.”
I have comfortably attended services over the years of friends and family who are not Catholic. I see much of what I treasure in those faiths; much like my faith, but each lacks the central thing, the Eucharist in which Christ becomes not merely symbolically present, but really, truly, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. As I take Him within me in the form of Bread, the Substance is Him. If I leave the Church, I am not merely smugly leaving behind (as if I were in any way better than the most horrible of sinners) those who failed to model well for me, but the operation of Christ becoming Present to me every time I go to Mass, which these days is more often. That would seem at best self-defeating, at worst, downright spiritual suicide, given the Light I have been given by whatever working of God's Will that brought me to the faith by two parents who were not practicing religion at the time I was born, and well thereafter.
I am reminded of another O'Connor moment. Mary McCarthy (sister of the actor Kevin, you know "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", the original), a rather contentedly retired Catholic in her time, had a dinner party at which Flannery was invited. O'Connor was reputed to be fairly retiring in company and she sat through the dinner in which part of the conversation included the Catholic Church and its quaint ideas that have lasted over 2,000 years--with many catacylsmic struggles. Among the quaint ideas over which McCarthy expressed a bemused tolerance was that of the Eucharist, a nice little symbol for this and other Christian religions. O'Connor interrupted the fine dinner conversation with the statement, "If it's just a symbol, then the hell with it!"
I am enraged at and disappointed at the clerics in control who tried to hide, knowingly and intentionally, the abuse being carried on by some, I say some, of our priests. This was not naivete, given the statements they made in independent (meaning not the LA Times interpretation) documents. I am enraged at their claim of having dealt with the problem, which is by forcing parishioners and volunteers, who were not subject of these investigations in the first instance, into this insurance based program called Virtus, or be restricted from service in ministries which are already short volunteers under the best of circumstances. This includes fingerprinting of all of us, lectors, acolytes, whether, despite the language of their own requirements, or not, the person has contact with children. My attitude is that the training is laughable and only causes good people to fear to be around kids, as I am. A real pedophile will be able to circumvent the rules and the red flags. I am for punishing the bad guys (and ladies), not for punishing those who haven't done anything--always a problem with the knee jerk reaction to evil done by those among us.
That all said, I am a Catholic because I believe that Jesus Christ Himself founded my Church--with all of its human elements mixed in with the Purity of His teaching, which ultimately, "Oh happy fault" transcends our profoundest weakness. I believe that if I walked away I'd walk away from Heaven (which is unity with God) and to Hell (which is not fire, but merely, and this is a horrendous merely, separation from God). I wouldn't have been able to say this as a child, because as a child, and into teen years, the Transcendence simply did not get communicated. The glory of my having "come back" to Catholicism is that I could look at it with the eyes of an adult, not the prism of babyhood.
When I was looking for the quote from O'Connor on the net rather than rummaging through my library, the first thing I came upon was an article from the Most Reverend George Niederauer, formerly the Bishop of Utah and Archbishop of San Francisco. He is a Flannery fan, as I remembered from my days knowing him as Monsignor Niederauer at my parish, and an expert in her writing. It was his article that popped first and it seeming vaguely Providential that this happened, I include his article, which I think expands on the general subject.
http://americamagazine.org/issue/639/article/flannery-oconnors-religious-vision
Will I ever walk away? I pray not, but I know that the Deceiver is very talented and I am very weak. And being a Catholic is many things, but it never has been easy. I can only pray that in the Crucible, however that manifests itself to me in the future, the Grace of His Walk with me in the Eucharist, day after day (and the Grace of Reconciliation) will keep me strong enough to stay.
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