Why I single out the Catholic church

I've been watching in utter bemusement as various Catholic church authorities and fellow travelers try to flip the child-molesting/raping-priests scandal on its head, portraying the church and its representatives as victims -- including a deeply offensive Holocaust comparison -- and plaintively wondering why they are being picked on when such horrible things go on within other groups as well.  Dan Savage nails it:

We expect God's representatives on earth—men who claim for themselves the power to absolve other people of their sins and who believe they have a divine right to place limits on other people's sexual and reproductive freedoms (including people who do not ascribe to their faith)—to hold themselves to a slightly higher standard when it comes to CHILD RAPE than, say, school teachers who make no such claims.

I am quite certain that child molestation happens among people of many different religions as well as in schools and among families and anywhere else you have adults in authority positions over children.  So why do I single out the Catholic church as uniquely worthy of attention as an entity?  Two simple reasons:

(1) The Catholic church appears to be acting as if the medieval benefit of clergy were still in effect and priests immune from civil prosecution.  Child rape may be, in Catholic parlance, a sin, but it's also a crime, and criminals should not get a pass just because they are ordained in a particular religion.  The fact that members of the Catholic hierarchy have actively protected and quietly transferred around criminals (including across international borders) suggests an arrogant perception that the law simply does not apply to them.  Why aren't these people being prosecuted as accessories or as part of some sort of international criminal conspiracy?

and

(2) The Catholic church actively meddles in my government and dares to claim the moral high ground in attempting to restrict my freedom via its pro-rape, pro-slavery, forced-childbirth, anti-equality positions.  As Dan says above, people who believe they have some sort of divine moral mission had better be above reproach themselves.  Otherwise, they're raging hypocrites (along with criminals) and deserve all the extra opprobrium they get.  All the whining in the world about how other groups are just as bad -- even if true -- doesn't matter.  You can't claim to have a unique connection to the divine while simultaneously claiming to be no worse than anyone else.  To make the former convincing, you have to be better.  Much better.

So, yeah, the Catholic church is being singled out.

And it's deserved.

Comments

[Marilee J. Layman]

I think the part where they get defensive and say they're being abused is silly. The problem isn't that they have rotten priests -- pretty much every religion or group has rotten leaders -- but that they try to hide it.

[Serge]

Their solution to sexual abuse reminds me of the 'good old days', when parents of victims to keep things hushed up and to impress to the perps that they should go away. That may have given me a sense of closure, but what happened to someone else after that? Displacing the problem isn't a solution anymore, but someone should tell the Church.