Opinion: Abuse excuse?

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The editors of the British Catholic magazine The Tablet (full disclosure: I’m an occasional contributor) are passing along to their readers a quotation from Cardinal Mahony that first appeared on the Daily News’ opinion blog. The quote is music to the ears of liberal Catholics on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Tablet notes that ‘while many church conservatives maintain that the increasing societal acceptance of homosexuality — and, sometimes, the reforms of the Second Vatican Council — contributed to the abuse, Cardinal Mahony said that ‘many of the priests’ accused in his archdiocese ‘came out of the [so-called] good old days — Latin-only, cassocks-only.’’

To be fair, Mahony’s comment came in response to a question from Chris Weinkopf about whether the scandal resulted from a ‘lack of discipline and orthodoxy in the seminaries.’ But both the question and the answer touch on a fault line in Catholic opinion.

I have written before about the way the scandal has been seized on for point-scoring purposes both by conservatives (who blame the supposed ‘anything-goes’ ethos of Vatican II) and liberals (whose preferred explanation is the celibacy requirement for priests).

Each side, moreover, has its own bogeyman. For conservatives, it’s Paul Shanley, the defrocked Boston priest and convicted molester who was described by the Associated Press as a former ‘long-haired jeans-wearing street priest.’ For liberals, it’s Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the octogenarian founder of the traditionalist Legionaries of Christ, who was invited by the Vatican to lead ‘a life restricted to prayer and penitence, renouncing any public ministry’ after he was accused of molesting several men when they were young. (The Legionaries noted that Maciel has long ‘declared his innocence,’ but said he decided — ‘following the example of Jesus’ — not to defend himself.)

Obviously both ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ priests can abuse children — as can clergy of other denominations, not to mention teachers, scoutmasters and parents. To find ‘larger meaning’ in the scandal for the purposes of intra-church polemics is another kind of exploitation.