I’ve hesitated to say anything about the disastrous turn of events in the Roman Catholic church lately. I’m a pretty pro-Catholic observer, and I have many friends for whom anything said about the Boston archdiocese would give more irritation than lemon juice in a paper cut. Besides, what is there to add to the obvious: people entrusted with power over human vulnerability in its deepest fundaments betrayed that trust, exploited people who turned to them in hope, and (horribly) turned away from the exploited to cover the posteriors of the insiders. What can damn these actions more convincingly than simply restating them?
But then, but then yesterday morning I contemplated other church crises I have known, crises that have enveloped me, and I recognized more complexity to the Boston catastrophe. In situation after situation—and reflection reminds me that this applies not only to church politics, but to civic politics as well—intelligent, temperate people have preferred to support a leader who supported their interests, even when they knew that leader to be flawed (though more often, they staunchly professed reluctance to believe any ill of the leader in question). I hardly ever, ever see someone say, “He may reflect the opposite side on this or that important issue, but he's a good man,” or “She’s always backed me up, but that doesn’t grant her the right to molest children.”
That’s an unnerving thought. I can supply many reasons, some of which are laudable; for instance, just as everyone accused of a crime needs a lawyer to represent him or her in the best possible light, so every sinner needs at least one minister who will not pass judgment. (It’s sad that the church gets heat both for being “judgmental” and for being insufficiently strict. Of course, the church warrants both those characterizations in different places, at different times.)
On the other hand, mere idle self-interest or fear of boat-rocking can becloud one’s judgment about what the best course might be, can rationalize inaction as “compassion for the offender.”
The hard job requires sizing up the situation, risking one’s integrity on the discernment, and calling balls and strikes as one sees them. Sometimes that call entails sitting attentively at the side of someone one knows to have been wrong, at the cost of appearing to mollycoddle an ogre. Sometimes that call entails naming the ogre’s monstronsity for what it is, when so many others would hush things up.
Often enough, though, people will simply line up behind the leader they figure is on their side, offering rationales for his alleged misdeeds. We’re seeing now all too clearly what happens when people invoke their own experience to minimize or invalidate the transgressions that the favored leader has manifestly committed. Our side’s interest trumps our assessment of justice.
We ought by all means to condemn the venal folly of those who callously betray others. And we ought not suppose that our motives escape examination, nor that those who take an opposite view necessarily endorse villainy. It’s all more complicated than that.
Posted by AKMA at December 16, 2002 11:27 PM | TrackBackBefore speech there is thought. Before thought judgement. Before judgement is perception. And every step of the process is moral - that is the wisdom of George Eliot, in Romola, for example, Middlemarch, and Mill on the Floss. We debase ourselves, and develop debased habits of perception, in pursuit of our own desires, until the tiny habits of self-serving misperception predominate. And then we can say truly, "I never saw it. I never knew. I was quite sincere in my denial."
The whole art of Knavery begins with the eye. The eye is the first Casuist, who whispers his lie to the Brain, who whispers it to the Lips, who stand at the microphone and thunder the lie with perfect sincerity.
We judge by apperances, and reward those who thunder the lie the loudest, with the least doubt, and who appear to be Authentic only because the lie goes through to the bone.
You know all this and more, Father, and have expressed it far better, and more charitably.
Posted by: The Happy Tutor at December 17, 2002 06:53 PMAs you should know Phil, casuistry does have its upside :).
AKMA, this is one of the finest, most sensitive, and noble pieces I've read addressing the bloody mess the Church and all Catholics find themselves in. You take it where it belongs, to the seat of the soul and our wretched habits.
Yes, it's simple, but infinitely more complex than it at first appears, and much of it starts far closer to home than most of us would care to admit.
In the spirit of "Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters", thanks.
Posted by: Mike Golby at December 19, 2002 05:47 PM