The Dish

The only word for Father Paul Shanley is evil. I am relieved he is finally in jail. But the church hierarchy must be terrified. It appears Shanley attempted blackmail before; what he could say in a trial or other venues could make our current knowledge of this systematic pattern of abuse and cover-up seem mild. Another omen: 52 percent of practising Catholics in the New York Times/CBS poll believe that the pope himself has known of this problem of child abuse for a while, yet did nothing about it. If we are to believe the accusers of Father Maciel, that could indeed be true. I hope not. But the sky is darkening with every passing day.

LIBERALISM AND RELIGION: Not exactly a new topic, but since I mentioned Frank Rich’s crude attack on John Ashcroft yesterday, it behooves me to point out a subtler and deeper treatment of the subject. Check out my friend Peter Berkowitz’s wonderfully lucid account of the role of faith undergirding both Kant and – surprise! – John Rawls. As Peter puts it,

No one is saying that liberalism requires you to be religious or that religious people are more amply endowed with the liberal spirit. But for those who care about understanding liberalism, a more precise knowledge of its foundations should be welcome.

No intelligent liberal who wants to understand the roots of his political tradition more precisely would ignore the singular role of religion – in both creating liberalism and defending it.

WHILE I’M AT IT: My favorite modern playwright, Tom Stoppard, has a diverting piece in the Daily Telegraph. Stoppard is a real liberal (which is why he is often dumbly described as a liberal or a libertarian). What I’ve al;ways loved about his work, apart from its breath-taking erudition and sheer fun, is the love of freedom that imbues all of it. Perhaps the fight against terror has led more people to restate that love of a free life in a free society, but Stoppard puts it nicely here:

To take away freedom is to take away humanness. A society in which the individual is beset by ranks of nannies, secret policemen and a hundred kinds of authority joined together to make you behave in the way you would, according to authority, voluntarily behave if only you weren’t so misguided and ignorant, is, the Romantics insisted, a deeply immoral society. “The essence of liberty is not that my interests should be tolerated, but that I should tolerate yours.” When we look again at this seemingly anodyne sentiment in the light of what the Romantics preached, it does take on a tremendous force, something not too far distant from Auden’s “We must love one another or die”. It makes tolerance not simply a desirable virtue, but a necessity.

Ah, but the virtue of self-restraint required to make such a statement is not so easily attained. Especially not when life gets easy and utopia seems so temptingly reachable.

THE FULL MAHONEY: A devastating account of the cover-ups of abuse in the arch-diocese of Los Angeles is laid out in excruciating detail in Los Angeles’ alternative New Times. More dreadful evidence of the Church’s moral decay.

LUCKY HITCH: Classically lovely little review by Christopher Hitchens in the current Atlantic (yes, I know they just won three National Magazine Awards, but don’t hold that against them). It’s of one of my favorite novels, Kingsley Amis’s “Lucky Jim.” Good cheerer upper, if you need one. Nice little hors d’oeuvre:

Just as a joke is not really a joke if it has to be clarified, I risk immersion in a bog of embarrassment if I overdo this; but if you can picture Bertie or Jeeves being capable of actual malice, and simultaneously imagine Evelyn Waugh forgetting about original sin, you have the combination of innocence and experience that makes this short romp so imperishable.

As bogs of embarrassment go, this one is worth sloshing around in.

THE PEDOPHILE CRISIS HITS HOME: It’s my nephew’s first Holy Communion soon, and he’s rightly excited. He’s one of many in his Catholic elementary school in England, and the Church had a celebratory poster-board up with photos of all the children about to have their first encounter with the Holy Sacrament. And then the pictures went missing. Someone apparently took the photos of the little boys – and last week, they were discovered by the police in a man’s home. Not only has the man not been charged with anything, the priest has told the parents there is nothing that can be done. The law in England apparently protects the man’s identity, but my sister has been told he’s a member of the Congregation, although the priest refuses to give any details. The priest’s a good man, apparently, genuinely distraught, and is only doing what the law requires. But my sister has to decide whether to let my nephew go to the mass with the awful possibility that this man might actually be in the church – watching, stalking. With no-one identified, she can’t even seek a restraining order. No crime has been committed so far, except theft. But the simple thought that my little nephew could even conceivably be put in harm’s way makes my blood run cold. Again, I ask myself: how could anyone, anyone, allow any similar children to be placed in real danger? Let alone a man of God? I think this is what makes some of us unable to understand why the leaders of the church aren’t on their hands and knees begging forgiveness for what they have allowed to happen. And I’m not even a parent.

Well, the first reviews of Much Ado are in, and I’d say we’re pretty roundly trashed. Okay, maybe that’s too harsh. Washington’s City Paper has the following to say about my effort: “Overall, he’s not bad.” Woohoo! (Can’t find the reviews online yet. But I’ll post when I do, if you care less.) Of the two reviews I’ve read (the other one was in the local gay paper, MW), the criticism is mainly of the direction. For these two critics, the production isn’t sufficiently light, funny, airy, comedic. Fair enough. But the director wasn’t trying to do that. He was deliberately trying to put on a dark, deconstructed “Much Ado” which emphasizes the nihilistic “nothing” at the heart of the play. City Paper’s Bob Mondello -easily the smarter of the two reviewers – says the “nothing” needs to be “something” to work. Again, fair enough. I can’t disagree with a subjective judgment like that, and I’ve never seen the play as an audience member would. And I’m not the director. Still, I have to say I found the directorial schema really interesting and challenging. If you’re going to do an off-off-off-off-off Broadway show, why go the conventional route? Why not take risks – even moving the audience into three separate spaces, breaking up traditional relationships, adding surrealist touches, new music, video, trap doors, and so on? The risk is that critics will hate it – as some obviously have. But far better to take the risk and lose some more conservative critics, rather than take no risks at all. Moi, je ne regrette rien. Maybe I have a new slogan for the site: “Overall, he’s not bad.” Compared to some of the critics of my writing, that’s almost a rave. And now: another weekend of performances.

“In fact, Andrew McKelvey’s network [Americans for Gun Safety] kind of operates and sounds a lot like Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda. A billionaire with an extremist political agenda, subverting honest diplomacy, using personal wealth to train and deploy activists, looking for vulnerabilities to attack, fomenting fear for political gain, funding an ongoing campaign to hijack your freedom and take a box-cutter to the Constitution. That’s political terrorism, and it’s a far greater threat to your freedom than any foreign force.” – Wayne LaPierre, at the NRA Convention last Saturday, according to Americans for Gun Safety, cited also in the Hotline.

ANTI-SEMITISM WATCH: At Berkeley, no less, simply horrifying posters comparing Israelis to the Ku Klux Klan and with the slogan “Kill Jews” written over them. I never thought I’d see this in my lifetime in America. Good for blogger Angry Clam for posting them.

ISN’T IT RICH? A reader points out something quite revealing about where liberalism has come in the last few decades. Last Saturday, Frank Rich sharply criticized attorney-general John Ashcroft for daring to say publicly that, “We are a nation called to defend freedom–a freedom that is not the grant of any government or documents, but is our endowment from God.” Rich commented, “So much, then, for that trifling document that defines our freedoms, a k a the Constitution. By wrapping himself in sanctimony as surely as he wrapped the Justice Department’s statue of Justice in a blue curtain, our attorney general is trying to supersede civil law on the grounds that he’s exercising the Lord’s will whatever he does.” Now, I’m no fan of John Ashcroft, although it seems only fair to point out that his record as attorney-general has been far from what some liberal interest groups predicted during his nomination fight. But what he was saying is simply what the Founders clearly believed and what modern liberalism was founded on: the notion that some rights are inalienable, and that the source of their inalienability is God-given. It’s possible to defend those rights without believing in God, but it’s not illegitimate or somehow counter to the notion of the separation of church and state to give voice to this original belief. Here, after all, is what John F. Kennedy said in his inaugural address: “And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe–the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.” Does Frank Rich believe that Kennedy was a would-be Torquemada? Or is the point here not a defense of secularism but a partisan shot at the left’s designated enemy number one?

PRO AND ANTI-ISRAEL: Bob Wright complains, with some reason, that opponents of Ariel Sharon’s policies shouldn’t be deemed “anti-Israel.” They may believe, as Bob does, that alternative policies are in Israel’s best interests. Fair enough. But I think he misses a pretty important point here. Israel is currently at war with groups and countries who clearly want to see it not merely defeated but extinguished. Very large majorities of Israelis support fighting this war, which is Sharon’s current (and quite successful) strategy. In that war context, isn’t telling Israel to stand pat while its citizens are murdered a little more than loyal criticism? Bob says in response that this isn’t a war:

[T]here are two problems with finding precedent for the current “pro-Israel” usage in wars like World War II. For one thing, Ariel Sharon himself would insist that the West Bank incursion isn’t a war since calling it a war would imply that the occupied territories belong to the Palestinians. In Sharon’s view, this is just a policing exercise. And the New York Times and Washington Post don’t equate support of a nation’s policing policies with support of the nation. Neither paper would call foreign politicians “pro-America” or “anti-America” depending on whether they think John Ashcroft is too zealous in rounding up Arab immigrants.

Sorry, Bob, but Sharon doesn’t think of this crisis as a police action. As he said on March 31, “Citizens of Israel: the state of Israel is at war, a war against terror.” And when some commentators demand that Israel tolerate terror in ways that they would never expect of other nations (including this one), and when the terror is evidently designed to bring about Israel’s extinction, then one can understand using the term anti-Israel to describe them. I’m not saying Bob is anti-Israel. But wars polarize. Sides must be taken. I know which one I’m on.

DISTRESSING COLLUSION: “You note the “distressing collusion of interests between the anti-Jewish Muslim fascists and the left-leaning intellectual classes for whom criticism of anything from the Third World is unthinkable,” an unprincipled collusion that is all the more remarkable because it has happened before. The Iranian revolution was an amalgam of Communism and Islam, working together to expel Western influences. Once the Revolution was secure, the Mullahs began ridding themselves of the Communists. From VS Naipaul, Beyond Belief, pp. 146-147, “Mehrdad remembered that at the beginning of the revolution the cry was the communist one of ‘Nun, Kar, Azadi,’ ‘Bread, Work, Freedom.’ Within a year it had changed to ‘Bread, Work, and an Islamic Republic.'” – this, a defense of Indian intellectuals, and Father Maciel, all on the Letters Page.

BEAGLE UPDATE: In a worrying sign of emotional attachment, I’ve called her Euclid, from the street near where she was found. She ate a small bowl of puppy food last night, and then proved that she either has some temporary bowel/bladder problems or has never been house-trained. Nothing like waking up to pee and poop everywhere. But she is a sweet-tempered little thing, very quiet and mellow, and when I opened up her crate this evening, her little tail thumped rhythmically against the side. I took her to the vet today: her worst problem is an acute case of whip-worm and hook-worm, which is partly why her ribs are poking out from her sides. Also: an ear infection, a common beagle malady. I’ve started her on worm medicine, which should improve her food intake and therefore health immensely. The vet says she’s probably five or six, and may have had several litters. Her distended teats and age make her highly unlikely to be adopted. I’ve contacted the Beagle Rescue Education and Welfare group, and, with any luck, may find her a home. Thanks for your many helpful leads and suggestions. I’m going to get her health better before any more decisions (as I write this, I can hear her snoring). Dusty has been saintly, by the way. No tantrums, although when I took Euclid to the vet alone, Dusty howled badly. Understandable.

HOME NEWS: Traffic for the month of April was a total of 242,000 unique visitors for a total of 898,000 visits. In a short month, when I was preoccupied with the stage for a couple of weeks, this was still a record. Thanks so much. And keep spreading the word.

How else to interpret the following passage from William F. Buckley’s latest piece in National Review? Here it is:

A commitment to First Amendment rights requires the protection of religious freedom, and the Catholic Church, while not condemning the man or woman who has homosexual inclinations, does condemn the practice of homosexual sex. This inevitably gives rise to a level of prejudice that the Catholics have to come to terms with. If all Catholic homosexuals are expected to be celibate, then the Church is in effect imposing on the entire Catholic homosexual community standards of behavior reasonably demanded only of priests who take voluntary vows.

Buckley is intellectually honest and personally unimpeachable. His prose can be hard to understand at times (and there’s a chance, reading this piece, that he means something different). But he surely makes a good point. The church tells us gay Catholics that it’s not our fault we’re gay, but we should be completely chaste and without any physical or emotional intimacy, even if, unlike priests, we have no higher vocation to make sense of it all. Got that? A life utterly without real intimacy – as a Christian vocation. In practice, I know of no priests who can tell real, breathing gay men that this is a feasible way to live without going nuts or turning into the kind of twisted neurotic that turns out to be typical of some gay priests. Anyway, thanks, Bill, for at least a modicum of compassion and an attempt to see things from the uniquely difficult position of the gay Catholic. Such honest empathy is a sign of a civilized and decent soul.

SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: “These people are for the most part rip-off artists. Notice that they’re all gas and oil men from Cheney, to the two Bushes; I think Rumsfeld also. And what this is really about is oil, and it’s Central Asian oil, which is what we’ve got our eye on. We do have practical motives every now and then. It’s not just for the sheer glory that we get into a war like the Afghanistan. Afghanistan is the entranceway to Central Asia and five republics that used to belong to the Soviet Union that are now the largest suppliers of gas, natural gas, and oil. He who gets his hands on that will really control the world for a while… As long as it’s somebody else being killed, they don’t mind that as much as if they might be put at risk. But when we gave up the draft after Vietnam, and it’s-it’s a mercenary army, basically, and one of the conditions is, no member of Air Force, Army, Navy, is to be hurt. [Laughter] And this is difficult to do, but one result is the Air Force planes fly at 35,000 feet…. Where you can’t see anything. That’s why orphanages and schools are the targets whereas the military supply centers might not be so easy to get at. It’s a weird world. A mercenary army that is not to be hurt, blowing up innocent countries, relatively innocent, like Afghanistan. But we do it.” – Gore Vidal, as quoted on Brink Lindsey’s blog.

IN A BOX – FOR NOW: I was walking the beagle today up 16th Street when an emaciated little beagle with distended teats (nipples?) limped towards us from the other side of the road. She nearly got run over. A woman chased her down, while I looked for an owner. None in sight. The woman, who lives in a nearby building, said the dog had been loose for days, and she’d been feeding it a little and had de-loused it. Perhaps, the dog had produced the required puppies and been abandoned. What to do? I couldn’t leave the little thing there, so I brought her home. I gave her a bath, offered her food (which she politely declined) and tucked her into a box with some blankets. Now what? So far, Dusty hasn’t minded. But I’m not sure I can take on another dog right now. Do I give her to the pound where she’ll almost certainly be euthanized? Do I put up posters for possible owners? I’ll take her to the vet tomorrow for a check up and see what they say. But if you live in DC and have lost a beagle, let me know. If you want to adopt one, ditto.

MACIEL AND NEUHAUS: I should have known that Richard John Neuhaus, who has been leading the charge for equating homosexuality with the abuse of minors, might find some accused child molesters worth defending. Here’s his essay – written earlier this year – dismissing all of the serious charges against Father Maciel, the influential conservative cleric now credibly accused by many men of molesting them in the past. Neuhaus, a close theological ally of Maciel and Ratzinger, circles the wagons. The allegation of abuse against Maciel, according to Neuhas, is “both repugnant and implausible. There is something to be said for consigning it to the trash bin and forgetting about it.” Thus speaks the voice of the current hierarchy. How dare anybody, let alone people who might once have been victimized, raise their voices against someone so eminent? At least, that’s Neuhaus’s attitude: “You don’t want to know the specifics of the charges, although Berry/Renner go into salacious detail about rude things allegedly done with young men, things that have become all too familiar from sex abuse stories of recent decades.” Neuhaus doesn’t factually rebut the charges – except to say that one out of nine alleged victims subsequently recanted their tale (that leaves eight former Legionaires of Christ, Maciel’s order, sticking to their guns). Such issues of evidence are not as important as issues of authority:

It counts as evidence that Fr. Maciel unqualifiedly and totally denies the charges. It counts as evidence that priests in the Legion whom I know very well and who, over many years, have a detailed knowledge of Fr. Maciel and the Legion say that the charges are diametrically opposed to everything they know for certain. It counts as evidence that Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and others who have looked into the matter say that the charges are completely without merit. It counts as evidence that Pope John Paul II, who almost certainly is aware of the charges, has strongly, consistently, and publicly praised Fr. Maciel and the Legion. Much of what we know we take on trust. I trust these people.

The trouble is, from what we now know, trust is not enough. People (including Neuhaus) used to trust Cardinal Law. We now know that trust was misplaced. False accusations are still possible, of course. But in the current atmosphere – with eight former members of his order making the allegations – it seems to me that dismissing these serious allegations simply because of Maciel’s high-powered conservative friends and allies doesn’t pass the sniff test. Not even close. Or are the theocons only interested in investigating abuse cases when the priests involved might be liberals?

DEMOCRATS AND TAXES: A pretty devastating account of the state of the opposition on the tax question from TNR’s always-valuable Michael Crowley.

SILVER LINING WATCH: Nick Lemann, in an insipid New Yorker profile of John Edwards, seems to think that a millionaire trial lawyer is the kind of populist the country now wants. No, I’m not making that up. (Alas, it’s not online.) In fact, Edwards isn’t simply running as a populist trial lawyer. He’s almost entirely funded by them. Take it away, Wally Olson!

WHAT AMERICAN CATHOLICS THINK: We’ve long known that American Catholics were more liberal than most other Americans, but the discrepancy is really quite striking. Newsweek’s poll this week finds the following: 59 percent think screening out gays from the priesthood would not make much difference in curtailing abuse; 44 percent back legal same-sex marriage, compared to only about a third of the general population; 51 percent would have no problem with an openly gay priest; 73 percent favor married clergy; 65 percent favor women priests. Many more Catholics would be happy with a gay priest in a committed relationship than non-Catholics. This is the gulf the current hierarchy is struggling to bridge. No, the church is not a democracy, and shouldn’t be. But when it reaches this level of cognitive dissonance between official doctrine and actual belief, you’ve got a real problem.

Michael Barone shares my faith in Bush’s Middle East strategy. It’s the Saudis who should be worried, not us.

It’s not the finest hour for the church when its leading guardian of orthodoxy – the man who wrote the document that calls gay men “intrinsically disordered” – petulantly slaps a reporter’s hand for daring to ask questions about a close ally of the Pope who is credibly accused of being a serial sexual molester of boys. Ratzinger’s fit of pique is a function of his past. He isn’t used to any serious questioning or dialogue. He pronounces doctrines that affect the lives of millions, but when one of his close allies (and one of the current pope’s closest confidants) has been accused of hideous sexual abuse, he buries and ignores the charges, and then is offended even to be asked about them. The Vatican official thus accused, Father Maciel, denies the allegations. You can see why the Church must hope he’s telling the truth. After these charges were made and buried, the Pope appointed Maciel as his special representative to a conference of Latin American bishops. Maciel’s case links this scandal directly to the papacy itself. Hence Ratzinger’s rattled response. The theoconservatives will be leery of touching this one – because it might taint their theological hero, Ratzinger, a man who is second only to the Pope in his influence on the current direction of the Church. At some point in the next few months, my prediction is that this scandal will indeed hit Rome. Indeed, one reason the Vatican is resisting any peremptory discipline for the American cardinals is the precedent. What do they do if a more senior cardinal is discovered to have shielded serial molesters of children? What happens if the pope himself is implicated either directly or by association? These men are terrified. If you had shielded minor abusers for years, wouldn’t you be?

BURUMA DISMEMBERS ROY: Whatever you do, don’t miss Ian Buruma’s as usual superb dissection of Arundhati Roy’s facile anti-Americanism in the latest New Republic. here’s a strikingly acute passage:

There is one verbal tic that keeps recurring in Roy’s writings that may help us to understand her feelings–for that is what they are, more than coherent thoughts. She refers a great deal to India’s “ancient civilization,” usually to show how humiliating it is for an ancient people to defer to a jumped-up, uncivilized place such as the United States. About President Clinton’s visit to India, she observes: “He was courted and fawned over by the genuflecting representatives of this ancient civilization with a fervour that can only be described as indecent.” This speaks of the same snobbery that informed Roy’s remark on American television about Mickey Mouse and the mullahs. Rich, rampant America shows up the relative weakness and backwardness of India. This is hard to take for a member of the intellectual or artistic elite, educated by nationalist professors, whose thoughts were often molded by British Marxists from the London School of Economics.

Yes, it all comes to down to ressentiment. It’s true in the Middle East as well. How must those failed Arab polities feel when they look at tiny little Israel, a country that started from scratch, is minuscule in comparison in population and land-mass, and yet has left all its Arab neighbors in the dust. Talk about humiliating. And what more familiar panacea for humiliation than envy and violence? It was ever thus, and ever will be. But it doesn’t make it any more defensible. Or any less pathetic.

CARDINAL LAW’S CONTEMPT: Say this for Bernard Law. He knows where his power comes from. Who knows what deal he has done with his mentor, Pope John Paul II? Rumor has it that he will soon be given a high-class sinecure in Rome – as a reward for sheltering child-abusers. (I believe the rumors.) In return, he reminds us that any final policy on sexually abusing priests will be up to Rome, and that any thought of lay people having more input into the Church is verboten. As the New York Times reports,

In a letter faxed to priests in the archdiocese by one of his top aides, Cardinal Law said that a proposed association of parish councils organized by lay Catholics would be “superfluous and potentially divisive.” Instead of organizing themselves, laypeople must live “within the hierarchical structure of the church,” said the letter, which was sent by Bishop Walter J. Edyvian, vicar general of the Boston Archdiocese. Priests should not “join, foster or promote this endeavor among your parish pastoral council members or the community of the faithful at large,” Bishop Edyvian wrote.

Then there’s new evidence that Law is still daring, through hideous legalese, to blame children for their own abuse. I’m beginning to think that all the dire predictions about what all this will mean for the Church are wrong. It’s not worse than we think. It’s far, far worse.

LET THEM SPITE JEWS: Chris Caldwell’s report from France on the surge of racism – from right and left – makes some excellent points. It helps me understand France’s desire to appease Islamo-fascism. Their own country is a hotbed of Muslim hatred; and appeasement is always the default French position. Then there’s a strange and distressing collusion of interests between the anti-Jewish Muslim fascists and the left-leaning intellectual classes for whom criticism of anything from the Third World is unthinkable. Chris is too crude, I think, by labeling this Jew-hatred part of the “left.” Those terms are a little pointless when talking, for example, of passionate, indoctrinated, Islamist ideology. But he’s sharp on how hatred of Israel and Zionism, demonization of the strong and vibrant Jewish nation, is a new sublimation of an old hatred, cleansed by the thought that now the Jews are no longer the victims. I liked this point particularly:

For anyone who inhabits Western culture, the Holocaust made that culture a much more painful place to inhabit–and for any reasonably moral person, greatly narrowed the range of acceptable political behavior. To be human is to wish it had never happened. (Those who deny that it did may be those who can’t bear to admit that it happened.) But it did. If there’s a will-to-anti-Semitism in Western culture–as there probably is–then the Arab style of Judeophobia, which is an anti-Semitism without the West’s complexes, offers a real redemptive project to those Westerners who are willing to embrace it. It can liberate guilty, decadent Europeans from a horrible moral albatross. What an antidepressant!

It’s still an amazing achievement to me that France is able to sustain a wave of both anti-Arab and anti-Jewish sentiment at the same time. Who says they’re not still a great power?

STATISTICS FOR THEOCONS: “As a mathematician, I’m certain that purgatory isn’t a place; it’s a class. Purgatory is a course in statistics for theocons. Theocons claim that the higher incidence of same-sex molestation of post-pubescent minors by priests is “by definition” a homosexual problem. However, a statistical experiment can only demonstrate preference if it presents an alternative. As a statistical experiment, Catholic culture presents no such alternative. During relevant decades for the sexual abuse crisis, Catholic secondary education was sexually segregated. Priests taught at all-boys schools; there were no girls to molest. There was no choice between mal
e and female victims. Among the post-pubescent minors victimized by priests, the preponderance of males relative to females cannot be said to be a matter of sexual preference. Rather, it is a matter of opportunity – just as the rape of men in prison is a matter of opportunity for the rapist. Therefore, the statistics on priestly molestation can never be said to support the conclusion that homosexual priests are more prone to molest than heterosexual priests.” – this and defenses of Paul Krugman and virginity, all on the Letters Page.

DOES WEIGEL WANTS EXCEPTIONS FOR STRAIGHTS?: Another piece from the theocons, glibly equating the abuse of minors with homosexuality. How can I put this simply: just because the vast majority of these priestly sexual abuse cases have been (so far) between men and post-pubescent male minors, it doesn’t follow that the problem is homosexuality. The problem is abuse. I just cannot understand why this isn’t obvious. The only way in which it isn’t is if you believe that gays are more likely to molest minors than straights. There’s no evidence of that whatsoever, as theocon George Weigel concedes in this piece. So why this insistence? My suspicion is that these theocons really do believe that all gays are prone to pedophilia, but even they feel a little ashamed to pass on this argument in print. I just wish they’d be honest and say it instead of getting into these bizarre contortions of logic. My favorite example is in this piece. Weigel doesn’t seem to want zero-tolerance for abuse cases, and backs the Cardinals’ fudge. But the tough case he uses to illustrate his point for leniency is the following:

[S]hould such a “one strike and you’re out” policy extend to a priest who had a brief consensual affair with a woman a quarter-century ago and has led an exemplary life since? Most Catholics would probably say no, and they would be right.

Huh? The issue is not sex with adults; it’s sex with minors. It’s the old theocon bait-and-switch technique again. Or maybe Weigel is implying that breaking celibacy is forgiveable of you’re straight but not if you’re gay. Or maybe Weigel honestly sees no moral difference between sex with an adult and sex with a minor. I guess if all sex is wrong, why distinguish? I wonder what his view would be on zero-tolerance of non-celibacy if the consensual affair was with another adult man? And what would his view be if the affair were with a minor girl? My suspicion is that Weigel is okay with straight sinners but not with gay ones. My other suspicion is that he considers abuse of a male minor worse than that of a female minor. If he believes that, he should say so, and explain why. If he doesn’t, he needs to say so.

KRUGMAN – HOME AT LAST: Which European newspaper would reprint Paul Krugman’s recent column in which he compared le Pen’s strong showing in the recent French elections with president Bush’s electoral success? Le Monde, no less. And on Monday’s front page! Well, they would, wouldn’t they?

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!

Another odd omission on Jim Romenesko’s allegedly objective media news site. Yesterday there was no reference that I could find or see to Byron York’s story detailing CBS’ and the New York Times’ indirect sponsorship of People for the American Way. Here are some of the stories Romenesko linked to instead: Wall Street Journal thumb-nail sketches being sold on eBay, a defense of George Stephanopoulos, and the Wichita Eagle’s gaffe about Barbara Bush’s several alleged “breast sizes.” Romenesko is a must-read because he performs a very useful service in running a blog of stories about the press. But his ideological biases – perfectly defensible in a blogger – are less well-known. Just pointing them out.

CNN’S MISTAKE – AND A CORRECTION: Yesterday, I cited CNN’s official transcript for the Thursday Crossfire exchange in which David Brock allegedly said on air, “I have not been on Fox at all.” If you listen very closely to the tape rather than the transcript, across chatter and under cross-talk, you can just about hear Brock say in a near-whisper “on prime-time.” No-one on the show seemed to notice. Tucker Carlson said he couldn’t hear it. The transcriber didn’t hear it. But it’s there. Two things are worth saying: firstly, relying on several people who had heard the show and then double-checking the official CNN transcript is good faith journalism, not sloppiness. This correction is consonant with my policy of swift amendment of unintentional errors. Secondly, Brock is still spinning. As Tim Noah has pointed out, Brock chose to make this distinction in an aside, fomenting the impression that indeed he had been blacklisted by Fox. That was certainly the impression almost everyone had when hearing the show and it was the impression Brock let stand. Carville responded with the unequivocal question: “But no one invited you on?” Sotto voce asides are not the mark of candor but of a continuing attempt to spin and duck. The distinction between “Fox” and “Fox Prime Time” also strikes me as somewhat strained. For the record, I share many of Brock’s concerns about some on the far right who targeted president Clinton for all the wrong reasons. My record testifies to that. What worries me is Brock’s long record of deception and personal abuse in matters large and small. In this particular game of “gotcha,” Brock played the game like a pro, even gulling CNN’s transcriber. He’s getting as good as Clinton. But my apologies for an innocent error nonetheless.

Say this for People For the American Way. They’ve been doing a terrific job lately. Almost single-handedly, they killed the Pickering nomination and almost certainly will be central in any upcoming judicial fights. (I should say here that, despite many political differences, I’ve been good friends with some PFAW staffers and admire the professionalism of their work, however much I deplore their partisanship. Hey, politics isn’t everything.) But I’m a little taken aback that several media organizations have been indirectly funding this left-group, including CBS and the New York Times. Byron York has the skinny. CBS and the Times, of course, have no political agenda in their reporting, and their news organizations remain strictly neutral. It’s just that they help fund some of the most partisan liberal groups in Washington.

You know that Paul Krugman is devastated to find out that the economy seems to be recovering quite handily. Bob Kuttner must be so depressed to see people getting jobs and seeing their incomes rise again. But the dark-linings-on-a-silver-cloud award must surely go to the New York Times’ Washington Memo today. The headline is priceless: “Economic Revival Poses A Problem For Bush.” Sure, the piece makes some good points, but the editorial impulse is mistakable: how can we spin this story against Bush? And before the good news comes out? (Update: Just saw that Mickey Kaus beat me to the punch on this one. Blogger Blissfulknowledge beat both of us. It’s getting more competitive these days, innit?)