Cardinal Egan considers the idea for a second or two, and offers a smile more suggestive of steel than humor. Wall Street titans sit on his finance council and study his ledgers. The cardinal sees no point in public inspection.
“I am transparent to the best possible people,” he said in a rare interview in his 20th floor office on First Avenue in Manhattan. “So when you say, ‘We don’t know,’ well, my ‘we’ knows.”
The best possible people. How Eganesque. In a world of uncertainty, it's good to know some things never change.
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Susan, no genuine Catholic hates homosexuals and/or wishes them harm. I, too, have had homosexual friends, but, never became close friends with them because I abhorred their lifestyles and they, of course, sensed it. But it didn't stop us from respecting each other as children of God or from working together, cracking jokes about it, etc.. Sometimes it just broke my heart to see how they smiled through their interior pain. Unlike you, however, I WAS hit on by homosexual friends, and more than once. So I know the revulsion you felt when men in white collars hit on you. Moreover, as a 13 year old, I barely escaped molestation by a homosexual because, when he started, it really made my blood boil and I wasn't going to let the bastard get away with it. There were attempts by semi-strangers, as well. So, you and I will never see eye to eye on the subject of homosexuals, much less on their being the primary cause of the harm done to my beloved RC Church. While you get all warm and fuzzy about them, and say you would prefer it if all priests were gay, I feel like vomiting when I think about the horror and broken lives they have caused. Never mind the damage to our Church. I rudely said as much to my bishop during an hour-long, one-on-one lunch. The poor man was merely pointing out that gays had been given a heavy cross to bear when I let go with both barrels. "Pedophiles", as you insist on incorrectly calling them in order to avoid the homosexual scandal issue, are less of a problem in the Church than they are for society as a whole. Ditto for horny priests who hit on women. That, my poor Susan, leaves homosexuals who rape and sodomize our young men and, to a far lesser extent insofar as the scandal is concerned, their allies--Socialists-- as the Church's primary bedevilers. Since you profess ignorance as to who the Socialists may be, pick up a few rocks in the Liberation Theology movements and their American equivalents with fancy names, and you will see them scurry out. My point is that you could be as certain as I am about identifying the cause of the scandal if you wanted to be. P. S. I pray every day for people like Rom (and you and me).
Well, I came back around, Susan, and I'm glad I got to read that moving tribute. To me this tail end of the thread has been the best of it, like the late hours of a big party, when the din and the disputation have ceased, and only a remnant are left, sitting around the table amid dishes and crumbs and polishing off the last of the wine. To tell the truth, I haven't had a very good day today. Sometimes these topics bring up thoughts that cut just a bit too close. It's best if I don't tell any of the stories I'm reminded of. I seem to push people's buttons even when I don't intend to! But, in the name of all the dearly beloved homosexuals, socialists, atheists, Buddhists, Jews, heretics and apostates in my life (and yes, the pious conservatives too--and all the saints with execrable musical taste and strange liturgical crochets as well)--I will lift a glass with you to the memory of your friend Rom, and wish that we may all meet in Heaven.
. . . The sight of the company of Heaven before my eyes/the conversation of the company of Heaven on my lips! Amen.
Never post without previewing after having an especially good wine with the late movie. In the penultimate (and dysfunctional) paragraph of my 12:59 am post, I meant only that actual pedophiles and horny hetrosexual priests ain't the cause of the scandal.
Ah, Cleveland. Thanks for that last course correction. It took some of the sting out of coming down to the scene of the party this morning to find the dishes still needed doing and there was a note from a departed guest that was a bit of a buzz killer. (I m still indulging in my party metaphor here.) I was rooting for you as you described your journey of faith, and I was happy for you that you had found a safe haven in the Church. I think you and I agree about a number of things. I don t like Cardinal Mahony either, for instance. And I agree that both liturgy and education have been a sorry mess that tries the spirit.
When you talk about homosexuals, though, a couple of thoughts come to mind. I m not at all discounting your experience. How awful to be subjected to molestation at such a young age! I thank God that you were able to escape, but I imagine that suffering the attempt alone still makes a painful memory. You may be right in saying that priests who molest girls or hit on women are not as much of a problem in the Church as in society at large. The hierarchy seems to agree with you, since they ve paid little attention to some very scandalous instances of rape and sexual abuse of nuns and schoolgirls in Africa, and they choose to ignore what I hear is widespread concubinage in Africa and Latin America. I m not sure it s fair to say this problem exists only in the Third World. I suspect it happens pretty often here, too. I suspect that one reason the recent scandal has grown to such proportions is that it did involve so many boys. It s considered much more shocking when boys are molested than when girls are. I ve already had the discussion, upstream, about why it is technically less objectionable when men molest girls, because it is natural. I don t want to go there again--I do understand the argument, I m just not very impressed by it. However, it did lead me to this line of thought. My sister moved to a tropical Asian location with her husband, a federal employee. After a few years there, he dumped her and their two children to move in with a foreign national he met there. Over the ensuing months, every single man who had been in their small social circle did the same. These were educated, church-going men in positions of trust--lawyers, scientists, FBI men. They broke their marriage vows and abandoned their children to frolic with bar girls and hookers. My sister came home traumatized and expressed her feeling that you simply couldn t trust men--any men. They wear suits, you see them in church, they are clean, upstanding, law-abiding Scout leader types--but in their hearts, they re all the same. Once they see a chance to get consequence-free, cheap sex, they ll go for it. I tried to persuade her that there might be some men who weren t like that. Maybe, she said. But how could you tell?
It s hard to argue with her experience. Yet I m sure you would feel that it was not fair to judge all men by the ones she had known. This experience is wide-spread among women--I dare say, more so than your experience with homosexuals. Yet women have to acknowledge that maybe all men are not like that. And yet, many people--not just you--feel free to judge all homosexuals by the bad examples they ve known. Or even by bad examples they haven t known but have heard about. You speak of homosexuals who rape and sodomize our young men. Both proportionately and in absolute terms, the problem of MEN--period--who rape and sodomize our young women is enormously larger. Yet we don t feel free to speak of men ruining the Church. We recognize that not all men are rapists. Yet some seem to feel free to declare that all homosexual men are would-be molesters of youth. I m not asking you to discount your own experience. I m just suggesting that you consider the thought that your survey sample may not be wide enough to justify such sweeping conclusions.
Sigaliris, if you're not a defense attorney, you missed your calling--you're obviously a little smarter than the average bear and you're darn good at crafting non-relevant truisms calculated to shift the jury's attention away from the facts of the case. FACTS OF THE CASE: (1)The rape and sodomizing of post-pubescent catholic boys by homosexual priests which occurred during the past 40 years.(2) The cover up by false-shepherd bishops who were/are homosexuals themselves and/or who were more concerned with their careers than the welfare of the kids in their charge. (3)The cover up of the cover up by gay psychologists in, for example, Arizona and Maryland, who took money for saying "you're OK, I'm OK, now go to whatever new parish your bishop sends you with my clean bill of health, and stay out of trouble". (4) The Pink Palace seminaries after the hijacking of Vatican II/American Catholicism by homosexual and Socialist forces.
NON-PERTINENCIES: (1) Susan's, mine and your experiences. (2) Sick people who lust after OPPOSITE SEX PREPUBESCENTS (pedophiles). (3) Gay and straight priests are good people. (4) The Iraq war.
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