According to the Washington Post, the deal that got Arafat out of Ramallah and Israel’s terrorist targets firmly in jail was the result of Bush’s efffective if quiet private diplomacy. Who knows for sure? Beats me. Besides, it’s no big news that Bush is most effective utilizing the quiet personal touch, as well as tackling issues privately away from the megaphone of his office. The deal is a tiny advance, but a defensible one, and a sign that a breather may be in store for a short while. On a related matter, I sympathize with Israel’s reluctance to let the prejudiced U.N. commission go into Jenin to find evidence of a massacre. Charles Krauthammer’s Friday column was entirely persuasive on this point:
Three people have been chosen by the United Nations to judge Israel’s actions in Jenin. Two are sons of Europe, and one of those is Cornelio Sommaruga. As former head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Sommaruga spent 12 years ensuring that the only nation on earth to be refused admission to the International Red Cross is Israel. The problem, he said, was its symbol: “If we’re going to have the Shield of David, why would we not have to accept the swastika?”
Neverthless, some independent body really must investigate – and soon. It does Israel no good to be seen to be covering up an alleged atrocity, esepcially if Israel is innocent of the charge. Fight the composition of the team, Mr Sharon, not its existence.
FRONT-PAGE EDITORIALS: Can someone see the difference between Patrick Tyler’s “News Analysis” piece in today’s New York Times and an actual editorial? I sure can’t. Nothing wrong with that (the piece makes its points well), but maybe the Times should simply say more clearly that it is putting editorials on the front page to accompany news stories. On the website front page, the description of the piece even has an imperative tense: “The Bush administration must now get the Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table, where expectations for U.S. pressure remain high.” The drift toward didacticism disguised as “analysis” accelerates.
“FATHER, I’M READY NOW”: It was a phenomenal issue of the New York Times yesterday on the Church’s sex abuse scandal. Particularly fine, I thought, was Garry Wills’ comparison of today’s Church leaders with St Augustine, who dealt with a far less grave brouhaha centuries ago. But the piece I still cannot get out of my head is Paul Hendricksen’s account of his time in an Alabama seminary years ago. Among one of the rituals he and apparently dozens of other seminarians would undergo weekly was the following:
I’d go in, sit in a green chair beside his desk, unzipper my pants, take up a crucifix (it was called the Missionary Cross, and it had a tarnished green skull and bones at the base of the nailed savior’s feet), begin to think deliciously about impure things and then, at the point of full erection, begin to recite all of the reasons that I wished to conquer my baser self and longings. “Father, I’m ready now,” I’d say. Having taken myself at his prompting to a ledge of mortal sin, I was now literally and furiously talking myself down, with the power of the crucified Jesus in my left hand. My director was always there, guiding me, urging me, praying with me.
This is a fascinating case, in its way, because the spiritual director never touched the seminarians, and the exercize was designed to overcome “impure thoughts” rather than indulge in them. Hendricksen still refuses to see his old seminary as a depraved place. In fact, he still thinks of it as holy ground. So where do we put this kind of experience in the discussion we’ve been having about the role of sex and sexual abuse in the current Church?
SEX AS A HUMAN GOOD: Perhaps the biggest delusion we currently have about the sexual dysfunction gripping the very core of the church is that we have two clear alternatives before us: the choice of successful celibacy on the one hand and simple wantonness on the other. The truth is clearly more complicated. It seems clear to me, for example, that the horror of sex, the fixation upon it as the source of so much evil, the kind of obsessive concern with sexual “impurity,” is surely a contributory factor to the abuse. A priest, simply by taking a vow of celibacy, cannot humanly take a vow that ends his sexual being. He is ordained, not castrated. The sublimation of all this sexual desire can, in some, be a wonderful way to express a relationship with God and his people alone. But in human terms, it would be quite remarkable if this suppression of sexual intimacy, the restriction of sex to purely fantasist or asocial or masturbatory expression didn’t lead to some pretty warped personalities. It’s those personalities who can end up committing abuse; and just as importantly those personalities, motivated by shame and identification, who cover it up.
THE MORALITY OF NON-CELIBACY: I think of the choices, for good or ill, that I have made in my life. I was completely celibate until my early twenties. It was a struggle but my faith told me it was what I had to do. But what that meant was not that sex disappeared from my life. In fact, what happened was the opposite. Sex for me became more and more abstract in my head, more fetishized in a way, more elevated, more obsessive in ways that have taken years to try and undo. At the same time, I began to exhibit all the familiar personal tics of the sexually shut down. I had swings of depression, I became neurotic and fixated on maintaining order in my life and others’, I was increasingly moody, cranky, awkward and at times miserable beyond words. I looked ahead into the decades that lay before me and was terrified by what might happen to my very soul. Cramped, frightened, neurotic, unpleasant to be around, I increasingly found my faith a source not of liberation but of white-knuckled desperation. In an emotionally and physically empty life, it became the only grim solace I had. When I have attempted to explain my subsequent gay sex life to fellow Catholics who feel that I am simply being reckless or self-serving, I’ve tried to explain how in a real life, these are not often the options in front of us. I’ve tried to describe how my life was emotionally born again in adulthood by reconnecting my soul to my body through sexual expression and physical intimacy. There is absolutely no question in my mind that I am a better, fuller person as a result. That’s not to say I’m a saint, of course. I’ve done some truly stupid things in my sex and love life; and I’m not proud of a lot. But as a simple practical matter, I know that the alternative would have been worse – not less pleasurable (diverted, obsessive, guilt-laden sex alone can be deeply pleasurable), but less humanly open to my fellow human beings, less open to God, less constructed and clogged in my soul. In the depths of my being, I know that a celibate life would, in practical terms, have been, as a practical matter a less moral life for me. Maybe it’s possible for others, and I certainly believe that celibacy can be an amazing gift for some, which is why it should always play a part in the spiritual life. But for most men, this isn’t attainable. Clinging to it for all priests (or for all gays, for that matter), insisting on it, never questioning it, imposing it without recourse, stigmati
zing and covering up lapses – all of this leads to real human sickness of the soul. Reading more and more of what has been going on in my own church for years, I’m beginning to believe that celibacy – especially how it has been enforced – is indeed a major source of the sheer sexual disorder that now cripples the insititution most of us still love. This issue must be addressed. The current sexual fixation must be changed. Or we will have treated the symptoms of this horror without even tackling the disease.
GUNS AND POSES: A reader notes the following little piece of revelation in a story in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times. It’s about the question of how on earth a gun-control culture like Germany can produce a mass-shooting. Reporter Sebastian Rotella opines that, “As crime has dropped in the United States in recent years, it has worsened in much of Europe, despite generous welfare states designed to prevent U.S.-style inequality and social conflict.” That’s a first: boost entitlements to solve crime! Why didn’t Clinton think of that? It’s Third Way nirvana.
CARDINAL SADDAM? Someone fire the guy at the picture desk!
The Dish 