I think James Carroll thinks the church should be blamed for everything

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Columnist James Carroll cuts a wide swarth when he plays the blame game in his latest column on the evils of the Catholic church. In one fell swoop he takes a shot at the church’s policy on gays in the priesthood and then somehow segways into women’s ordination, celibacy, priest abuse and Cardinal Law, and finally anti-Semitism. The latter subject has become a favorite of his in recent years - witness a book he wrote called Constantine’s Sword in which he recklessly exaggerates the Church’s role with anti-Semitism. As always with his writings, some truth is mixed with hyperbole to paint the most negative picture possible of the Church. By the way, Mr. Carroll is an ex-priest who was unable to keep his vows and a man who has been embittered since his version of Vatican II (sexual freedom without morality, contraception, abortion, women priests, and pro-gay agenda) never came to pass. He once wrote a column reviewing Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ and called the movie “pornographic”. Of course, along with Richard McBrien, the secular media loves to use him as a religious “expert”.

boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/12/05/the_basilica_of_denial/
 
What is the proper response to this?
The first signal was in the Vatican’s own reiteration of the preference of abuser over abused when it appointed Cardinal Bernard Law to the prestigious position of archpriest of Rome’s Basilica of St. Mary Major. Cardinal Law, recall, not only sponsored some of the most lecherous abusers, repeatedly sending them out among the defenseless young, but he betrayed the church’s own most sacred traditions when, for example, he tried to use the seal of confession as a way of protecting the secret of abuse.

Cardinal Law is guilty of crimes and should have been punished. Instead he was honored. In doing that, the Vatican was not so much standing by a favored prelate as it was defending the authority structure over which it presides.
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Carroll obviously has an ax to grind, and is biased. On the other hand, if the church hadn’t given law a cushy appointment in Rome he probably wouldn’t have been able to make this arguement would he.
 
St. Paul got pretty peeved about some guy marrying his stepmother and told people to cut him off from their community. But hey, I guess that’s way worse than helping priests get away with molesting little boys for an extended period of time.
 
Penny Plain:
What is the proper response to this?
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Boston was at the epi-center of the clergy abuse crisis in 2002 after the Boston Globe broke the story of two notorious pedophile priests. Cardinal Law was the head of the Boston archdiocese at the time and took tremendous heat for events that had occurred before his tenure and early in his tenure (1970’s and 80’s for the most part). He made some decisions that in hindsight (and on the advice of prominent psychologists in the field) were flawed. He definitely made some mistakes but none of them appeared to be at all malicious but they ultimately had some serious consequences. In general, Cardinal Law was a devout and holy man who had a tremendous respect for his faith and the need to avoid scandal. We all know that alot of Bishops at the time made similiar mistakes. Law did institute an effective sexual abuse policy in 1992 in response to the abuse cases by James Porter and for the most part they were effective during that decade. He was a scapegoat for the media and ultimately the masses who could have cared less about the nuances and complexities of this sad social phenomenon. Should he have been appointed to be in charge of the church in Rome mentioned by Carroll? Probably not but to completely demonize him is I think unfair and hypocritical (ex., the lawyers who negotiated those cases in the 1980’s were considered heros by the media and they were similarly guilty of non-reporting of those cases to the authorities). James Carroll has an axe to grind and his column is a way to sharpen it.
 
Carroll’s outlook on how Catholics have treated Jews is rather outrageous also. Why any Catholic buys that rag (the Globe) is beyond me.
 
Peace be with you!

I sent the Globe some feedback on this article. I pointed out the idiocy of his allegations of the Church causing the Holocaust and suggested that if the Globe insists on continuing to print columns like this (and that was certainly not the first one like this I’ve read) they should start a new section of the paper for anti-Catholic hate speech. I am awaiting their reply.

In Christ,
Rand
 
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