The Sampson Papers

DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed in these articles are those of the author only, and do not necessarily represent that of the Dominica Academy of Arts and Sciences (DAAS).

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Frankly Speaking

THE LOSS OF INNOCENCE

Some eighty million Roman Catholics in the United States must endure what is unfolding as an embarrassing soap opera staged before a world audience. It’s a story of betrayal and moral anguish as millions of the faithful must now confront the reality of the human imperfection of spiritual leaders in whom they placed (or misplaced) their trust.

What makes the scandal involving the sexual abuse of minors by Roman Catholic priests particularly troubling is that it is perpetrated by men whom we have put on a moral pedestal, men to whom the faithful look up to for guidance and spiritual nurturing. Instead what we are finding out is that this trust was abused by men who used their priestly vestments to disguise their predatory propensities. And to add insult to injury, their supervisors engaged in a cover up that put hundreds of vulnerable children at risk.

To understand the nature of the betrayal the guilty priests have subjected their flock to, one has only to think back on one’s childhood growing up in the Catholic Church when a priest assumed an almost supernatural presence in our lives. He could do no wrong. He was feared as well revered. Those priestly vestments and clerical collars conferred an aura of spiritual authority and moral rectitude that intimidated us. We could not escape their enormous reach and influence. From baptism to first communion, to confirmation, marriage, and death, the role of the priest as pastor and shepherd could not be denied.

As a seven year old preparing for first communion in the village of Mahaut I received a first hand reminder of the power of the parish priest. As part of a congregation of some fifty children assembled in church for a first communion rehearsal I developed a cold sweat when Father Strykers called me to the front near the alter. I could not understand the reason for my summon. In an instant I saw a lightning flash and my entire face became numb and seemed to have grown in size. The embarrassment was palpable and unbearable. I could not stand to look at my peers. Some were choking with laughter, careful not to reveal their sense of amusement at the humiliation I suffered. What had I done to deserve this? Like any seven year old kid I was simply engaged in some interesting conversation with the person sitting next to me. For this I was treated to a vicious slap across my face which left me stunned and demoralized. You see, it’s one thing to be slapped on the face. It is an entirely different experience when you are slapped in the face by a priest in a church before your peers.

So we grew up believing that a priest should be both feared and revered. Priests, by and large, were thought to be different. I recall an argument between two elementary school students about whether in fact priests have bowel movements, like the rest of us! Later on at high school, we would trade jokes about priests, as if to humanize them. Like this one about the nun who chased a priest in a church and caught him by the organ. Or that it is all right for priests to kiss nuns, so long as they do not get into the habit. But seriously, the power of a priest over his flock was enormous and no one would wish to be on the receiving end of a priestly rebuke especially if it was done from the pulpit. My friend Oliver Cuffy from the village of Massacre can tell you all about this. He had a minor disagreement with Fr. Van Den Berg in the mid 1960’s. To the surprise of the congregation attending Mass that Sunday, Van Den Berg delivered a public flogging of Cuffy from his bully pulpit. You could hear a pin drop. I was seething with anger because even in those days I had a sense of moral justice to understand that there was something fundamentally unfair about one human being castigating another in a setting where the victim could not respond. And to complicate Cuffy’s dilemma, several members of the congregation prevailed upon him after mass to go and apologize to the priest, lest an evil spell fall upon him. He did apologize in private.

I relate these anecdotes to demonstrate the power of the priesthood and to give some sense of proportion of the betrayal felt by millions of Catholics who are discovering that some of their priests have been wearing no clothes. I say “ some of their priests” because so far the evidence shows that what we are dealing with here is a pattern of abuse by a minority of priests, those who are psychologically and morally unfit for their position and have brought much shame to the clergy and embarrassment and confusion to the laity, not to mention the pain of victims and their families. Amidst all the disturbing revelations about the sexual scandals of priests, none is more shocking than the case of a Father Shanley of Boston who has been described as a moral monster, a man who was reportedly treated for venereal disease while sexually abusing teen age boys over more than a decade.

We live in interesting times. Ten years ago it would have been sacrilege to write about a priest with venereal disease molesting a teen age boy even if it were true. Stories of this sort would have been swept under the carpet or relegated to the realm of gossip. But no more. It is as if the veil of protection and silence surrounding priestly misconduct has been lifted. And one thing one can say for sure is that this problem with unfit priests has been going on for years without much public attention. If the dead could speak they would undoubtedly fill volumes with salacious stories of how men whom the faithful trusted, abused that trust in pursuit of personal pleasure.

The other point worth noting is that this kind of moral failing is not restricted solely to Catholic priests. The revelations over the past several months seem to underscore the fact that no religion is exempt from the scandal. Christian fundamentalists know the name Reverend Swaggert is synonymous with sexual indiscretions which were widely publicized and became the subject of satire not too long ago. And the sad reality is that the sexual abuse by religious people of is still going on through out the world as I write this column, especially in countries without the tradition of an open press, or where it would have been perceived as cultural taboo to publicly discuss the sins (and crimes) of some among us who have assumed that their clerical collar conferred upon them a kind of moral dispensation to live lives that are totally at odds with their spiritual teachings.

While some wonder about the future of the Catholic church in the aftermath of the sex scandal, I say we are currently involved in a spiritual cleansing that will leave the church much stronger than before. There is a kind of relief and sobriety that comes from the discovery of hidden wrongs, when we can see things and people for what they really are instead of what we have been duped to believe falsely over the years. It is not unlike a child growing up to discover that there is no Santa Claus, except that it far more traumatic when the deception was perpetrated as part of an elaborate scheme to facilitate a crime, and not merely an attempt at promoting childhood fantasy.

The Sampson Papers

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