Moral authority

I cannot make up my mind about the most recent Catholic child molestation scandal. I grew up in a marginally Catholic household. My father was brainwashed by it as a child – he was, and remains, even in death, the only member of his clan, which my mother called the ingrown toenails (doesn’t that sound like a punk band?) to marry outside of the church. My mother despised the Catholics. Once we were driving through town and the youngsters from the Catholic grade school were waiting to cross the street. “Oh look at the little Papists,” she said. “Wouldn’t it be a shame to run over one of them?” Her bitterness was not without cause: my father’s people regarded her as a damaged subordinate, and if their loathing of her represents Christian compassion, sign me up for atheism. My father parted ways with the church in a understated, mostly wordless kind of way, although they did get a nice check when he died, which bothers me to this day because some of that cash was my mother’s. We went to mass from time to time. I loved the stained-glass windows and the fleshy, faggy goth artwork all over the place. I’ve been to mass a few times in Portland, believe it or not, at a cathedral where it’s still said in Latin. I have no idea what it means, and I don’t care. I went seeking ritual.

I am completely conflicted about the sex scandals. On one hand, my first thought is to think of myself and millions of others like me who had the courage, or the foolishness, or perhaps just the hormones, to acknowledge the fact that I am a homo. Why, when someone who has chosen a life of wearing robes and issuing judgments and never having to worry about the bills, be a part of my parade when he gets caught inflicting his weird shit on some boy unfortunate enough to be at the wrong place at the wrong time? That’s selfish of me, to be sure, but seriously, a good portion of what the gay movement struggled against over the years took form within the pope’s palace.

On the other hand, I find myself wishing the media would amp up the gay angle a bit more. The other night I watched two stories about the latest cases – one on CBS, the other on the PBS Newshour – and I fail to understand why the reporters do not preface their story with, “Even though they condemn homosexuality, yet another senior member of the Catholic church has been caught having sex with a boy …” or something along those lines. I was particularly surprised by the interview Gwen Ifill did with a guy from the National Catholic Reporter. Why someone from that newspaper was chosen is baffling to me, but as I thought about it, maybe the other molestation experts were already booked on other shows. She asked him about the ramifications of the scandal and he began his response with an appropriately superior, “Well, if what you mean is this most recent scandal, centered in Europe …” Yes, that’s what she meant, pretty clearly, I thought. (Sorry, but I have no patience for people who preface an answer with “If you what you mean …” Quit posturing and answer the goddamn question.) The thing that really got me laughing, though, was the guest’s response to a question Gwen Ifill asked him about how this will impact the current pope, into whose orbit the latest scandal has glided, or crashed. I couldn’t tell if he was being ironic, or sarcastic, or humorous, but the reporter said that the impact of this latest scandal is that it will erode the pope’s moral authority.