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When the scandals broke out yet again about priests sexually abusing childen and subsequent cover ups by Catholic Church officials, my mother mused, wondering if my maternal grandmother were still alive, what would she have thought of those scandals? How would she have handled them? I never answered, that is, until now.
My maternal grandmother was a devout Catholic who strictly adhered to Catholic church doctrine. She went to church every Sunday, she was a member of the ladies’ auxiliary, she sent my mom to an all girls parochial school, she didn’t serve meat on Fridays, she never even thought of even looking at another man following the death of my grandfather. She was from that old generation where they believed the teachings of the Catholic church were never to be deviated from and they never questioned it. To them, people who didn’t follow church doctrine well…as such, they lived in denial, that is, until the baby boomers came along; my mom’s generation. Leading that kind of submissive life also put them in a permanent state of denial.
So, to answer my mother’s question, my grandmother would never want to hear about those children being abused at the hands of priests and nuns. I seriously doubt she even spoke of the children of Duplessis during the grande noirceur. She would be in denial of the situation.
My grandmother, of course, back then, would have been in denial over illegal abortions; do it yourself knitting needle, wire hanger specials. Non-professional vultures too lazy to get real jobs performing abortions with unsterilized equipment in flop houses in back alleys most gangsters would be scared to show their faces. Desperation is a concept many of those too wrapped up in their own religious beliefs wouldn’t understand.
It appears that Cardinal Marc Ouellette’s latest comments about the need to recriminalize abortion including to those who were victims of rape and incest:
“But there is already a victim,” he said. “Must there be another one?”
Well, I think folks on the pro-choice side of the argument would agree with that statement. In fact, Cardinal Ouellet made our argument for us. Of course we don’t want ‘another victim’ of any rape. It’s one reason why safe, accessible abortions must remain legal, so another unwitting victim doesn’t have to suffer the indignities of being a constant reminder of that rape. Those children often end up the victims of some kind of abuse or another.
But then, Cardinal Ouellet would know something about that, wouldn’t they? I’m not just talking about priests who molested children neither. I’m also referring to residential schools where futile attempts were made to convert native children; children who were abused by their cleric teachers for simply being left-handed because they were taught that the left hand was the hand of the devil? Who could forget the poor orphans of Duplessis during the grande noirceur in Quebec? All such acts covered up, justified or both.
It’s something I will never get: they have no problem with children being abused even blaming the children themselves for their own demise in some cases, but they will go all bombastic about protecting clumps of cells; the fetus fetish.
What I also fail to understand is that clerics like Ouellet are ready to condemn women who have had abortions, but beg the public to be forgiving of those priests who abused these children.
It is also mind boggling that those guilty priests are not only sheltered from our secular justice system nor are they defrocked but even transferred to other parishes where there are children but would defrock a priest who was simply caught having sexual relationships with other consenting adults.
To best summarize exactly how the Catholic church is bungling things up these days is this over at CC HQ. Basically that someone as high up in the Catholic Church who has a hand in the cover up of the child sex abuse scandals doesn’t have the moral authority to lobby for the recriminalization of abortions. In fact, he doesn’t have the moral authority over anyone on any issue, period!
Here’s a hint, Marc, backwards and inflammatory statements along with your denials and cover-ups are just going to drive more and more away from your church. If you thought it was hard now to recruit seminarians and postulants, it will be even more impossible.
Speaking of backwards: more from that backwards house frau of the Natty Po; the sexually frustrated and wannabe hack Babs Kay jumps to the defense of Cardinal Ouellet by jumping on the rest of us mere mortals as well as playing pop scientist to justify her own fetus fetish. However, refuting her junk biology is another discussion for another time.
Once again, with feeling: if you don’t have the female parts (yes,look at Babspic and you’ll see she looks androgenous and must wonder if she does have female parts), and/or you’ve never raised children, you don’t have any right to prevent any woman from excercising her reproductive rights.
What is unfortunate, is that, like many religious groups, good works in social justice and charitable efforts led by many good people by Catholics are being overshadowed by intolerance, prejudice, cover-ups of bad acts by their own and condemnation of mere mortals for much less. This very attitude is what will keep driving out more and more Catholics away.
