Our Fathers
The title of this DVD, taken from David France's best-seller about the scandal that rocked Boston, is perfect. It is time to shed light on the men of the Catholic Church, particularly those who are ordained as "our fathers". Ordination elevates a priest from the ordinary realm most of us live on. According to their doctrine, priests, while not gods, occupy a semi-godlike status. This was impressed upon all Catholics, including the children, 80% of whom were boys, who were abused by these priests.
Most of the activity that goes on in Catholic churches around the world is done by women. However, the Church, as an organization, is run by men and for men. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Catholic church has, and continues to, lose credibility in the modern world because the men will not give up any of their power and the women, indoctrinated for years to be barefoot and pregnant, won't step up to the plate and take it.
This film is a fascinating study in what happens when power goes unchecked. With all the women whose lives have been altered irrevocably and horribly by the Catholic Church, this film takes a look at the devastating effects on some of their most fervent, spiritual, special boys. Thousands of boys were raped, sodomized, and brutalized by their priests. According to Tom Doyle, the whistle-blower priest, there are over 100,000 victims in the US alone. Even according to the church itself, there are over 10,000 victims. Father Birmingham, alone, raped over 1,000 boys.
These were often viscous attacks by KNOWN men. These were not unknown men, in fact they were adored, elevated, esteemed members of their communities. Their identities were known to their attackers and often their families. And yet this savagery ran rampant throughout Boston, LA and elsewhere for many decades without ever coming to light. Think about how shocking this is. We are amazed that Hitler and the Third Reich could kill six million Jews under the world's nose in the thirties & forties and yet we have something as extensive as this happening in the 21st century in the US.
The seminal problem is a seminary problem. St. John's Seminary, in Boston, was one of the worst breeding grounds. Up until the late sixties, the seminary students were taken from their homes at young ages and put into environments that were basically like Lord of the Flies with rapists for counselors, think of the worst juvenile jail you can imagine. John Geoghan, one of the more prolific offenders, was ordained in 1962, one of the worst "classes" for abuse. Most of the offenders were former victims, as is usually the case.
This knowledge helped me to put less of the blame on celibacy itself. I don't think celibacy does anything to help one's sexuality or spirituality, quite the opposite. It only hinders someone's ability to provide pastoral care and counsel others and it is part and parcel of putting shame and secrecy around sex which is a fundamental problem with the Catholic Church. I mean, who came up with this idea of celibate priests anyway, Paul? I don't remember Jesus advising celibacy to anyone. He was a pretty lively, friendly, flirtatious guy... remember the lady at the well? Remember how he liked to have the ladies around, drinking wine, listening to his stories?
There are those who think deviant behavior is somehow intrinsic to homosexuality. As France points out, well integrated homosexuals are no more likely to rape and attack as well integrated, healthy heterosexuals. It's neither celibacy or homosexuality, in general, at the heart of the church's malfeasance. This abhorrent state of affairs grew directly out of the culture and structure of the church itself.
As with Nazi Germany, it has a lot to do with the expectations and mores of the culture, which elevates obedience over listening to one's heart and thinking critically. The German culture, like the church's culture, is very much a top-down, authoritarian affair. The first promise made by a priest in his ordination is the promise of obedience... obedience to the Pope... period. It's like the military. Even the priests have no autonomy, much less the millions of lay Catholics around the world.
In 1968, when Vatican II came out, there was great hope among Catholics, particularly in the US, that the church would somehow enter the real world and loosen its stance on contraception and celibacy for priests. When the Encyclical letters came out two years later, millions of Catholics left their churches and, over the next few years, over a third of all priests left the priesthood, most, to marry. So, who remained? Mostly the old and the gay, who had fewer good options.
I hear so many people these days saying things like, "I'm spiritual, but not religious". They make a distinction between their spiritual fulfillment and their community life. For me, church is, at best, a place where you can congregate with people who have similar ideas about God and worship and spirituality. As with many of my friends, my ex and I church shopped when our kids were young because we wanted to offer them a spiritual community. We have all enjoyed the many wonderful, spirit-oriented events at our Congregational Church and the people we know there.
What I find interesting about the Catholic Church is that, although I know many Catholics, probably more than any other denomination, I have never known a single person to join the Catholic Church. While many members of our church, including myself, were not brought up as Congregationalists, and you see this overlap in most churches and temples, it is very uncommon in the Catholic Church. Most of the people I know who are Catholic, grew up Catholic, and, although they have a hard time with the church's stance on homosexuality, contraception, abortion, women in the seminary etc., still go and take their kids because that's how they were brought up, it's their history, legacy, family. They are uniformly quite dissociative when it comes to their religion. It's like the schizophrenia you see when talking to people from dysfunctional families that never came clean.
It must be something that runs deep in them because god help you if you challenge them on it, they can get very defensive, and nothing seems to dissuade them. Certainly not the logic of asking them why they want to devote so much of their time and money on an organization that opposes the dispensation of contraceptives to rape victims in Africa and that covers up thousands of cases of rape by its own priests.
Cardinal Law had received many complaints about his priests, he paid each of the families a few thousand dollars to keep quiet and moved the priests around. The church enjoys a limit on damages. No one, by law, could receive more than $20K, no matter the charge. The way Mitchell Garabidian, who represented 186 Boston victims, got around this, was to sue Cardinal Law personally. Law lied to the various families, reassuring them that the priests, who frequently had the audacity to rape whole families of boys, were being sent to office jobs away from children when he was, in fact, transferring them to one unsuspecting, trusting, parish after the next. Almost all of the abuse could have been avoided if these rampant priests had been stopped at the first child, instead, hundreds of innocent children were offered up to these priests, the semi-gods.
Law did everything he possibly could to keep his secrets. He called down "the wrath of God" onto The Boston Globe. The august paper had turned a blind eye to the shortcomings of the church for a hundred years, as had every powerful man and organization in Boston, including the police who often busted priests out of uniform for sex crimes and then turned them over to the Diocese without even booking them when finding out they were priests. The Globe won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for its reporting. Law never apologized, never even listened, never showed any contrition or awareness of the havoc he wreaked on the lives of thousands, he was finally forced to resign, after hanging onto his position as long as he could. Like most of the church hierarchy, he couldn't care less what the press or anyone else, except the Pope, thought. They live in a luxurious, rarified, unreal, world unto themselves, where they are regarded as gods by all around them. I refer you back to my post on Michael Jackson, who lived similarly, and the Pope.
Think about that one next time you drop your money into the collection plate of your Catholic Church. Doyle estimates the total payout the Church will have to cover is a billion dollars. Insurance would not cover the Boston suits because Law allowed the incidents to continue by not removing the offending priests. Do you think your contributions just stay in your local Diocese? Think again. No one knows where the money goes. There is no transparency whatsoever in the Church, no audits, no disclosure. They have a lot of land and buildings, which they are unwilling to sell, even when laying fallow, as St. John's Seminary is now, with only one or two students per class. But, their only real income is donations. Like Enron, they don't really create value or wealth, they just enjoy living off governments that look the other way until devastation reaches the millions and patrons too unquestioning and powerless to do anything about it.
Remember, individual churches have no real autonomy, they all answer to Rome. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. They can be a pretty persuasive bunch. I'll take the modern world, of enlightened attitudes about sex and morality any day. Catholics can come out into the light of day and try to defend or change their church or show themselves for what they are; meek, unquestioning followers unwilling to change your church from the inside by speaking out for what is right. Let's see you defend your new Pope, who bans gays from the priesthood, giving rise, yet again, to shame and secrecy about sexuality which will distort and disrupt the ability of the many gay priests in the church today who will be called on to counsel adults and care for children.
The psychological scars that go along with this type of abuse are deep and long-lasting. Most of these kids were happy, healthy children whose lives were plagued with rage, confusion, guilt, shame, secrecy and lies from the point of their abuse onward. Whole families were destroyed. The men, as adults, had problem marriages and troubled lives; drug and alcohol abuse, inability to work, to function. Many became abusers themselves. Some committed suicide.
The faith of so many people was irreparably damaged. Most people who I know, who don't believe in God, had some negative experience with religion, usually via their parents or church, as a child. When you abuse someone and use the excuse of God to do it, you strip the person of their natural connection to god, you undermine their most basic birthright. It's the most venal of crimes, to strip someone not only of their human dignity but to destroy their innermost integrity. The scope is vast. Not only is the faith of the families immediately affected compromised, but the faith of all Catholics, the faith of everyone of all religions.
One might think, reading this review, that this film is a documentary. It's not. Produced originally for Showtime, it includes real life Catholics Daniel Baldwin and Brian Denehey. Christopher Plummer plays Law way too sympathetically. I think the story is far more compelling as a drama than it ever could have been as a documentary. The two commentary tracks and additional features, which show the real life characters, make this a DVD well worth buying.
Most of the activity that goes on in Catholic churches around the world is done by women. However, the Church, as an organization, is run by men and for men. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Catholic church has, and continues to, lose credibility in the modern world because the men will not give up any of their power and the women, indoctrinated for years to be barefoot and pregnant, won't step up to the plate and take it.
This film is a fascinating study in what happens when power goes unchecked. With all the women whose lives have been altered irrevocably and horribly by the Catholic Church, this film takes a look at the devastating effects on some of their most fervent, spiritual, special boys. Thousands of boys were raped, sodomized, and brutalized by their priests. According to Tom Doyle, the whistle-blower priest, there are over 100,000 victims in the US alone. Even according to the church itself, there are over 10,000 victims. Father Birmingham, alone, raped over 1,000 boys.
These were often viscous attacks by KNOWN men. These were not unknown men, in fact they were adored, elevated, esteemed members of their communities. Their identities were known to their attackers and often their families. And yet this savagery ran rampant throughout Boston, LA and elsewhere for many decades without ever coming to light. Think about how shocking this is. We are amazed that Hitler and the Third Reich could kill six million Jews under the world's nose in the thirties & forties and yet we have something as extensive as this happening in the 21st century in the US.
The seminal problem is a seminary problem. St. John's Seminary, in Boston, was one of the worst breeding grounds. Up until the late sixties, the seminary students were taken from their homes at young ages and put into environments that were basically like Lord of the Flies with rapists for counselors, think of the worst juvenile jail you can imagine. John Geoghan, one of the more prolific offenders, was ordained in 1962, one of the worst "classes" for abuse. Most of the offenders were former victims, as is usually the case.
This knowledge helped me to put less of the blame on celibacy itself. I don't think celibacy does anything to help one's sexuality or spirituality, quite the opposite. It only hinders someone's ability to provide pastoral care and counsel others and it is part and parcel of putting shame and secrecy around sex which is a fundamental problem with the Catholic Church. I mean, who came up with this idea of celibate priests anyway, Paul? I don't remember Jesus advising celibacy to anyone. He was a pretty lively, friendly, flirtatious guy... remember the lady at the well? Remember how he liked to have the ladies around, drinking wine, listening to his stories?
There are those who think deviant behavior is somehow intrinsic to homosexuality. As France points out, well integrated homosexuals are no more likely to rape and attack as well integrated, healthy heterosexuals. It's neither celibacy or homosexuality, in general, at the heart of the church's malfeasance. This abhorrent state of affairs grew directly out of the culture and structure of the church itself.
As with Nazi Germany, it has a lot to do with the expectations and mores of the culture, which elevates obedience over listening to one's heart and thinking critically. The German culture, like the church's culture, is very much a top-down, authoritarian affair. The first promise made by a priest in his ordination is the promise of obedience... obedience to the Pope... period. It's like the military. Even the priests have no autonomy, much less the millions of lay Catholics around the world.
In 1968, when Vatican II came out, there was great hope among Catholics, particularly in the US, that the church would somehow enter the real world and loosen its stance on contraception and celibacy for priests. When the Encyclical letters came out two years later, millions of Catholics left their churches and, over the next few years, over a third of all priests left the priesthood, most, to marry. So, who remained? Mostly the old and the gay, who had fewer good options.
I hear so many people these days saying things like, "I'm spiritual, but not religious". They make a distinction between their spiritual fulfillment and their community life. For me, church is, at best, a place where you can congregate with people who have similar ideas about God and worship and spirituality. As with many of my friends, my ex and I church shopped when our kids were young because we wanted to offer them a spiritual community. We have all enjoyed the many wonderful, spirit-oriented events at our Congregational Church and the people we know there.
What I find interesting about the Catholic Church is that, although I know many Catholics, probably more than any other denomination, I have never known a single person to join the Catholic Church. While many members of our church, including myself, were not brought up as Congregationalists, and you see this overlap in most churches and temples, it is very uncommon in the Catholic Church. Most of the people I know who are Catholic, grew up Catholic, and, although they have a hard time with the church's stance on homosexuality, contraception, abortion, women in the seminary etc., still go and take their kids because that's how they were brought up, it's their history, legacy, family. They are uniformly quite dissociative when it comes to their religion. It's like the schizophrenia you see when talking to people from dysfunctional families that never came clean.
It must be something that runs deep in them because god help you if you challenge them on it, they can get very defensive, and nothing seems to dissuade them. Certainly not the logic of asking them why they want to devote so much of their time and money on an organization that opposes the dispensation of contraceptives to rape victims in Africa and that covers up thousands of cases of rape by its own priests.
Cardinal Law had received many complaints about his priests, he paid each of the families a few thousand dollars to keep quiet and moved the priests around. The church enjoys a limit on damages. No one, by law, could receive more than $20K, no matter the charge. The way Mitchell Garabidian, who represented 186 Boston victims, got around this, was to sue Cardinal Law personally. Law lied to the various families, reassuring them that the priests, who frequently had the audacity to rape whole families of boys, were being sent to office jobs away from children when he was, in fact, transferring them to one unsuspecting, trusting, parish after the next. Almost all of the abuse could have been avoided if these rampant priests had been stopped at the first child, instead, hundreds of innocent children were offered up to these priests, the semi-gods.
Law did everything he possibly could to keep his secrets. He called down "the wrath of God" onto The Boston Globe. The august paper had turned a blind eye to the shortcomings of the church for a hundred years, as had every powerful man and organization in Boston, including the police who often busted priests out of uniform for sex crimes and then turned them over to the Diocese without even booking them when finding out they were priests. The Globe won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for its reporting. Law never apologized, never even listened, never showed any contrition or awareness of the havoc he wreaked on the lives of thousands, he was finally forced to resign, after hanging onto his position as long as he could. Like most of the church hierarchy, he couldn't care less what the press or anyone else, except the Pope, thought. They live in a luxurious, rarified, unreal, world unto themselves, where they are regarded as gods by all around them. I refer you back to my post on Michael Jackson, who lived similarly, and the Pope.
Think about that one next time you drop your money into the collection plate of your Catholic Church. Doyle estimates the total payout the Church will have to cover is a billion dollars. Insurance would not cover the Boston suits because Law allowed the incidents to continue by not removing the offending priests. Do you think your contributions just stay in your local Diocese? Think again. No one knows where the money goes. There is no transparency whatsoever in the Church, no audits, no disclosure. They have a lot of land and buildings, which they are unwilling to sell, even when laying fallow, as St. John's Seminary is now, with only one or two students per class. But, their only real income is donations. Like Enron, they don't really create value or wealth, they just enjoy living off governments that look the other way until devastation reaches the millions and patrons too unquestioning and powerless to do anything about it.
Remember, individual churches have no real autonomy, they all answer to Rome. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. They can be a pretty persuasive bunch. I'll take the modern world, of enlightened attitudes about sex and morality any day. Catholics can come out into the light of day and try to defend or change their church or show themselves for what they are; meek, unquestioning followers unwilling to change your church from the inside by speaking out for what is right. Let's see you defend your new Pope, who bans gays from the priesthood, giving rise, yet again, to shame and secrecy about sexuality which will distort and disrupt the ability of the many gay priests in the church today who will be called on to counsel adults and care for children.
The psychological scars that go along with this type of abuse are deep and long-lasting. Most of these kids were happy, healthy children whose lives were plagued with rage, confusion, guilt, shame, secrecy and lies from the point of their abuse onward. Whole families were destroyed. The men, as adults, had problem marriages and troubled lives; drug and alcohol abuse, inability to work, to function. Many became abusers themselves. Some committed suicide.
The faith of so many people was irreparably damaged. Most people who I know, who don't believe in God, had some negative experience with religion, usually via their parents or church, as a child. When you abuse someone and use the excuse of God to do it, you strip the person of their natural connection to god, you undermine their most basic birthright. It's the most venal of crimes, to strip someone not only of their human dignity but to destroy their innermost integrity. The scope is vast. Not only is the faith of the families immediately affected compromised, but the faith of all Catholics, the faith of everyone of all religions.
One might think, reading this review, that this film is a documentary. It's not. Produced originally for Showtime, it includes real life Catholics Daniel Baldwin and Brian Denehey. Christopher Plummer plays Law way too sympathetically. I think the story is far more compelling as a drama than it ever could have been as a documentary. The two commentary tracks and additional features, which show the real life characters, make this a DVD well worth buying.
posted by Intervision at 7:35 AM
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