Not Good Enough

The apology of Pope Benedict XVI for the Church’s sex abuse scandal is not good enough.

Not by a long shot.

His words remind me of what a child says when he or she is caught taking the toy of another child. The personal shame and repentance may be real. But is anything really changing?

In this case it’s clear nothing is changing. This is certain because we haven’t heard of the Church doing anything in the other countries where it works. The Church is acting like this is some sort of American aberration, when the only aberrant thing about it is priests here were caught, and the Church as a whole was held to account.

"It wasn’t just sexual abuse, it was spiritual abuse," one victim told CNN, but he wasn’t the only one spiritually abused. His whole family was, and his whole congregation was.

There are few crimes in this world whose impact can compare with that of child sexual abuse. It happens every day — in every denomination and creed — and it destroys everyone it touches.

This isn’t a gay crime. It’s a crime of power.

When done against a child by a person who claims authority from God, it’s even worse. The chance of the victim opening up to anyone, and seeking a cure for the hurt and anger inside them, drops to near zero. And the resulting scars last a lifetime.

I was shocked to come face-to-face with it, once, after a funeral.

While wandering through a reception for the bereaved, I came upon two pictures of a young person. I suddenly realized they were pictures of the same person, the person we were mourning.

One showed a very young child, laughing eyes and open mouth, running about and playing. The other showed an older child, stern, the mouth straight, the eyes cold.

It was the second face I recognized. This was someone I’d known. This was a person who had often confused me, who caused me consternation, who seemed to have an awful hard time connecting with people. What happened, I wondered.

When that realization struck home, of why that smile became that line, of how and when, I was first hurt, then angry, and finally filled with an overwhelming sense of sorrow and loss. I still am. I always will be, to the end of my life. Even though I’m so far removed from it. Even though the victim, and most likely their victimizer, are both now in the ground, and far beyond pain.

Within the American Catholic Church, the Church I grew up in, you can multiply all that by several thousand. If one priest has been caught, chances are 10 haven’t. Then consider the hundreds-and-hundreds of millions of Catholics, outside the U.S., to whom this has doubtless happened. Consider their families, their friends, their communities, their lost lives. Consider that none of those abusers have been caught, none charged, and that the cover-up of what are doubtless an ongoing series of horrible crimes against children is still ongoing.

What is the Catholic Church doing about that abuse, that abuse which doubtless exists all over the world? Nothing. The same thing it did about the American abuse, before so many priests were caught, and so many bishops caught covering up, and so many immense jury awards were given, that the Holy Father himself had to address it. With an apology.

Nothing else is happening..

An apology? No investigation? No change in policy? No more openness about the reality that trying to claim millions of men will go their entire lives experiencing no sexual pleasure, and no sexual desire, is patently ridiculous?

When a child is abused they have no choice. Male or female, Catholic or Mormon or whatever, they are compelled to acts which are shameful, which take away their youth, and which leave lasting scars on everyone — themselves, their families, the community. Don’t listen to the words of those FLDS women. Look into their eyes. Those are dead eyes, and will never see joy again.

The men who continue to ignore this are truly evil people. The men who attempt to justify this are truly evil men. Their faces are the faces of Satan. Satan is real.

And often he wears a robe. The Bible says the Anti-Christ will come to you as a man of God. What the Bible doesn’t say is how many guises he has, how he lives in all of us, of how power can set him loose, and how absolute power sets him loose absolutely.

An apology, and a renewed worldwide cover-up, can never be good enough. I’m an adult. I’m free to walk away from that church, as I have, and as I will continue to do for the rest of my life.

God damn the child abusers, and all who cover for them.