Money Talks, Rapist Walks
It's time to stop pretending pedophiles aren't "called by God"
When I was young, I thought of myself as jaded rather than cynical.
“Cynics” were people who wanted things to go wrong so they could say they told you so. I felt like jaded got at the utter lack of surprise at the depths we plumbed as a species and culture.
Then I saw a George Carlin special (I can’t remember which one) where he said something like, “A cynic is a disappointed optimist” and that rang really true with me.
“Being cynical” is comfortable now because of how desperately I want things to turn out well, and how much good I know we’re capable of as a species. I don’t want to say, “I told you so,” I just would rather not have to muster surprise when, say, we get another report about a religious leader raping children.
It’s worse than gun violence, how inured we’ve gotten to child rape among the religious. I think I’ve mentioned that the Catholic Church renamed my high school after living and known child rapist Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.
The courts let him off this week (TL;DR: This was the guy Pope John Paul II helped protect from prosecution and the only Cardinal ever (almost) tried for sex crimes. McCarrick is getting away scot-free because most of his offenses were past the statute of limitations).
That he was a serial rapist and sadist who used his powerful position in the church to silence and intimidate any accusers is beyond question. It should have been a slam-dunk conviction, but he’s old and, since he can’t remember how many children he raped and when, there’s no legal way to hold him accountable.
“Disappointed” doesn’t quite get at it in this case, foaming with rage is a little closer. McCarrick was set free by a Massachusetts judge, which makes me suspect the Catholic Church has a child-rapist punch card. After 10 convictions, the Papists get one free pedophile priest. They spent it wisely.
Congratulations Cardinal McCarrick! I hope one of your victims sets you on fire. I also almost hope you aren’t faking mental incompetence and can’t fathom why they’re doing it. After all, they couldn’t fathom why God wanted you to rape them.
The McCarrick announcement coincided with a raft of “pastors raping children” stories in my news feed last week.
Although I haven’t plugged it in a while, I wrote a book about an online cult that considered these problems. The shortest version I can give is the child trafficking paranoia that gave us Pizzagate has direct ties to clergy abuse, especially among the religious right.
I didn’t want to publish a screed about the delicate subject of human trafficking. Human trafficking is real and awful, but it is not the kind of epidemic some people may think. That is, it’s an immigration issue, not a white-panel van issue.
There are over 70 million children in the U.S. Strangers have taken fewer than 500 children in the last decade. Thousands of enslaved adults and children from around the world live here, but your kid is only a little less likely to be struck by lightning than abducted by a stranger. The likelihood that a child rape is committed by a friendly religious figure or other acquaintance is 60%.
It’s unfortunate that we get in such a tizzy over imagined crimes against kids that we ignore the real ones. Keeping children away from church is demonstrably the most reliable way to keep them from being sexually abused or exploited. Religion is so culturally insidious that we’re comfortable hoping they don’t get raped at church while moving heaven and Earth “protecting” them from men in conversion vans.
Another drop of vitriol
I had an equally difficult time writing this review of Murder in a Mill Town: Sex, Faith, and the Crime That Captivated a Nation by Bruce Dorsey, for similar reasons. It’s the true story of Sarah Maria Connell, a “factory girl,” who was raped and murdered by Methodist rising-star preacher Ephraim K. Avery in the late fall and early winter of 1832. The courts tried Avery in a “crime of the century” case that sparked plays and pamphlets before the ink on the verdict was dry.
That power is exerted and abused by the clergy is almost a boring trope. Archdeacon Claude Frollo came to life in The Hunchback of Notre Dame only the year before Sarah Maria Connell’s brutal rape and murder and we wouldn’t meet Arthur Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter for another couple of decades. The lascivious holy man is a one-dimensional character. It’s telling that we keep trying to give them depth.
We’ve seen meditation after meditation on the dark night of the soul an abuser faces as he tries to overcome his lust. There are always attempts to explain corruption among sanctified men. They’re even humanized in their struggle to reconcile their urges with their ability to abuse their power.
Here’s the thing:
The question isn’t, “What corrupts holy men?” Though religious nuts will claim it’s Satan himself (as I mention in my book), at this point, it’s almost offensive to consider it in those terms. Holy men aren’t corrupted.
The fact of the matter is that no place is safer for the venial and unscrupulous as the folds of Christianity. Believers will protect and advocate for the rapists that betray them with the same “Amen!” enthusiasm they deliver every Sunday. And if you become important enough, there’s no amount of money and influence congregations won’t use to destroy or discredit your victims.
At the risk of spoiling the book, Avery and McCarrick faced the same “punishment.” They were forced to live out their lives in relative comfort, secure in the knowledge that they indeed had done God’s Will.
Keep the Faith,
Tony
PostScript
I just looked the Carlin quote up. He said, “Inside every cynical person is a disappointed idealist” which is close enough.
I’ve got some stuff cooking I’m not ready to talk about yet, but I can see me finishing the first draft of my next book by the end of the month. There will be plenty of teasers by then.
You also might get more emails rather than fewer because I have a couple of weird ideas for audio and video I’ll be kicking off in the coming days. They’re all associated with my new postcard hobby, which I’ll be writing about directly.