Coming Clean, Crushing the Infamous Thing

THE JUST RELEASED grand jury investigation of sexual abuse of children within the Catholic church in several Pennsylvania dioceses is yet more evidence that the sickness is endemic and systemic, not merely sporadically incidental. At what point do mountains of sworn testimony become irrefutable proof? In this case, long since. Priestly pedophilia and predation is, and doubtless has been endemic within the mother church for centuries, millennia. Can one imagine medieval clerics behaving any better than our modern ones? Who knows? Tragically, in the current well publicized cases, involving dozens of clerics and thousand of children, the statute of limitations has expired. People are usually incapable of coming forth with accusations of until long after the fact. They are scarred for life. A legal spokesperson for the church dares not deny any of it; the compiled report is too believable, too shocking, too much beyond question or even the slightest doubt. Instead, he offers the limp purgative that, oh well, the church of this century is not the church of the last century. In other words, the billion member Catholic institution has, since the year 2000, purged itself of all evil, and all is well. the problem lies in the past, and should probably be relegated, along with the inquisition, the burnings of witches, the persecution of homosexuals, the casting out of demons, and all the other forms of primitive superstitious nonsense we know so well. to the distant, murky past. the previous century is relatively recent, and is easy to remember. the church would have us believe that it is ancient history. many are the clever means by which the guilty assuage their souls. In eighteenth century Catholic France Voltaire wrote and spoke out against the abuses of clerical power, and was much maligned for it. But he may have had the best idea, when, referring to the church of Peter, who was no saint himself, said: "crush the infamous thing."