The pride of Penn State
November 10, 2011, 3:49 pm
Posted by David Gibson
For my money, it’s this remarkable young man in a video that is making the rounds.
Business Insider, via Dreher.
What an articulate, calm, and thoughtful person he is! I also appreciated the young woman who said, “Bullying? Is that what we’re about? Let the man have his say.”
This kid is on to something. It is a very brave thing to face down a hostile mob intent on venting their anger, fear and frustration at a huge betrayal of the mythologoy that have organize and given purpose and meaning to their lives.
The biggest lesson we Catholics could take away from events at Penn State with its obvious parallels with the sexual exploitation of children that has been roiling the Catholic Church for decades is that in the democratically organized Penn State Univ. (through its Board & Alumni, and state politicians) was able to quickly begin to set right some things that had gone very, very wrong on their campus.
Very justifiably, Penn State Univ. is the pride of the people of Pennsylvania. It is a great academic institution. Through their tax support and political leadership they have cultured and grown a truly great American university.
If Catholics had democratic institutions that could hold run-a-muck hierarchs to account just like they are now beginning to do at Penn St., Catholics could begin to heal the feelings of shame and betrayal that are seemingly overwhelming the entire Catholic culture at this time.
Democracy is not perfect – it is not a panacea for all that ails the Catholic Church. For sure, a democratic Catholic Church would still make mistakes, some very serious mistakes (power and money will corrupt any human being if not checked).
But at least the mistakes will be OUR mistakes. And then, Catholics would have the tools to make things right and not be trapped into being forced to tolerate a corrupt hierarchy and a crumbling, discredited feudal oligarchical hegemony.
My sainted sixth-grade teacher, Sister Mary Adelaide, always warned us: “Christianity is not for sissies.”
We Catholics have to take matters, our future, into our own hands.
Take note everyone. This is exactly what happens when childhood sexual abuse is disclosed. However, it is very important that swift decisive action take place.
It is very sad that these university students are supporting Paterno. They should be called the Legionairres of Penn State, Paterno’s faux macho b.s. along with the entire apparatus that supported it should be dismantled and rebuilt as soon as possible.
I wonder how the victims feel listening to the leaders of our future. Good Lord.
Kudos to the trustees.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
I agree with everything Jim Jenkins says except the bits about democracy. Unless Penn State is organized very differently from all other institutions of higher education, it is not likely to be a democracy. Governance through a board of trustees with proper roles assigned to faculty and others is not properly speaking “democratic,” and in the last analysis the board calls the shots and makes the decisions. What is on view here is not democracy but rather accountability, and the willingness of the board to hold itself accountable — to students, to faculty, to staff, to the people of Pennsylvania who helped to fund it — and to insist that other members of the university hold themselves accountable as well. And above all to understand that accountability travels down as well as up; they must be accountable to groundskeepers, to students, to faculty, and not simply to the governor of PA and whatever politicians are charged with the oversight of the university.
No doubt many will argue that the behavior of the Church’s leaders cannot be compared to those of a secular institution like Penn State. Now, however, the burden of proof is on those many to make the argument.
Like George D., I was horrified by the reports of students not simply supporting Paterno, but by their willingness to use violence — overturning cars and such. If this passes for higher education in the US, we need badly to rethink how we as a nation do it, and what we expect of our institutions of higher ed — students included.
“For my money, it’s [The Pride of Penn State is] this remarkable young man in a video that is making the round”
…and the students gathered around who, though mostly disagreeing with him, respectfully gave him a forum to express his opinion.
Question: Can you imagine the same amount of respectfulness if the crowd had been the mainstream media and the man had instead been Herman Cain? The crowd had been OWS and the man had been Mitt Romney?
This video is heartening after all the violence and excuses by and for the officials involved.
Paterno knew about the 1998 allegations investigated by campus police. Why did he suppose Sandusky retired at 55, when he wanted to be Paterno’s successor? To work with children of all things?
What did Paterno know of any agreement by the university with Sandusky that the university would keep quiet if Sandusky left his post? Let’s see a multitude of questions pursued.
The NYT reported McQueary’s friends indicate McQueary did not spare details with Paterno or anyone else. Let’s see how vague others make McQueary’s reports. Astounding memory losses may surface all over. And what was a strapping young man like him doing slinking out of the locker room that night?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/sports/ncaafootball/aspiring-coach-in-middle-of-colleges-scandal.html?_r=1&hp
PA law requires the reporting of sex crimes to the authorities by a supervising official. Paterno reporting to the AD is almost a laugh, since Paterno practically ran the place. When a former univ president asked Paterno to consider retiring in 2004, Paterno threw the president out of Paterno’s house.
Yesterday, Paterno informed the trustees that he would retire at the end of the season, and told them to get about their other business and never mind him. It was as though he alone assumed power to decide anything, and no trustees would dare countermand him. Arrogant power, all right. Congratulations to the trustees for reminding Paterno who really is in charge, and ought to be.
Accountability, accountability. If only Benedict 16 knew the meaning of that word. The PS trustees stand high above the pope and bishops in many minds today.
Maybe there’s hope for the human race after all. The kiddies on both sides of this controversy were “using their words,” like Mr. Rogers told them to. Is it possible that those liberal pantywaist children’s programs might have sunk in?
Maybe not too much. Let’s not forget the several hundred “knuckleheads” who were elsewhere, supporting Joe Pop by wrecking cars and tearing down street lights.
OK. So the American sports culture needs to be rehauled
That was a beautiful kid. There is hope.
Anyone who hangs out here knows that Catholic Church sex-abuse scandals are closely covered and discussed by the regulars. But I imagine that the scandals don’t receive as much scrutiny and consideration by the populace as a whole. We know that the majority of Catholics in the pews don’t get overly exercised about these church doings, unless it happens to affect them personally. And I would guess that entire sectors of our society, most of which is not Catholic and doesn’t find the Catholic Church a surpassingly interesting topic, tune in even less.
What is notable about this Penn State situation is that, in all probability, it has taught the dynamics of child sexual abuse/ institutional cover-up / popular outrage to large sectors of the population that had not really tuned in to the Catholic stories. My impression is that this Penn State story has received far more mainstream national media coverage than any of the church scandals, even more than Boston in 2002.
If there are any Catholic hierarchs who have hoped that the abuse/cover-up/outrage dynamic would recede soon, and permit the Church to return to the old ways of business-as-usual, I would guess that this Penn State incident has dashed those hopes once and for all. It seems that law enforcement and the media had already learned the new dynamic anyway; now it has sunk into the popular consciousness to a depth that it hasn’t before.
Just my speculation.
Jim, interesting point. I don’t think the PSU scandal has received more coverage than that of the RCC, and there’s always a risk of being parochial, so to speak, but I think the clergy scandal really changed the popular impression of the Catholic Church, and not for the good, of course.
But this Penn State coverage is bigger than anything since 2002 and Boston, and I am wondering if this represents, finally, a broadening of the issue into a national one rather than a problem of religious communities.
The AP’s fine work a couple years ago exposing child abusers (and the lack of consequences) in public education got little traction, nor did the remarkable case against the Boy Scouts.
But this Penn State case seems different, and has the potential — maybe — to widen the area of concern, which could only be a good thing. Of course the RCC hierarchy needs constant surveillance, by parents and church officials and most of all by law enforcement, since there is still no mechanism for accountability. But the topic does need to be addressed in other arenas.
The awfulness at Penn St. will certainly go on.
There is still so much institutional loyalty that purblinds people.
(Just yesterday talked to a faithful alum who thinks Paterno has been overly hurt.)
Mark P.’s comments on the”mainstream media” and Cain show how deepy folks are ivested in protecting their tender pets.
I thought his “question” irrelevant to the Penn St. issue and how we need to change the culture that allows institutions to smooth things over.
Tom Roberts at NCR has called the events at Penn St. a Catholic like scandal, raising the hackles of those who need the urge to protect the institution.
Widening the area of concern wil take some doing.
I will never understand sports or the macho sports culture. Has much changed since the Blue-Green riots in the Hippodrome? Ugh. And what happened to the idea that the university is supposed to feed the mind, not the base instincts?
Hi, David, what I’ve noticed, and what triggered my comment, is that PSU and Joe Paterno have been leading the *local* (Chicago) newscasts and have made front-page above-the-fold headlines in Chicago newspapers. That hasn’t been the case, for example, with the much-discussed-here Philadelphia and St. Joseph/KC diocesan issues that are pending.
Then, too, the PSU story is being carried by media outlets (e.g. ESPN) by whom the Catholic Church would typically not be covered, so I’m assuming this one is reaching at least a somewhat different audience.
Jim Pauwels, I think (and pray) you are right.
Jim, you may be right. Always hard to tell what the world is seeing from inside my own bubble.
Anyway, let’s hope.
I thinkk David’s latest post on Ireland is right on the point – a change of consciusness and getting away from past bubbles are (hopefully?) in order.
Jim Jenkins said: the democratically organized Penn State Univ. (through its Board & Alumni, and state politicians) was able to quickly begin to set right some things that had gone very, very wrong on their campus.
Jim, I hate to knock the second naivete out of you but higer education is not organized democratically. I know because I’ve spent most of my life thus far in it. Do you know how they pick boards of trustees at private colleges? It ain’t democratic. Sure, state universities might be a bit more democratic, but I think the correct word is oligarchic.
I give the young man props, though, given his dress, it appears he’s a bit of an instigator. Just goes to show you, just because someone may be an instigator, it doesn’t mean he isn’t saying something that needs to be heard.
I do not expect the PSU situation will widen the area of concern greatly, that would take a scandal in our public school system that, hate to say this, affects the children of those in the media.
Bob–I do not know what tender pet you think I may be ivested in, or even invested in. My take was that with this thread David was trying to round out the discussion, and show that there are some laudable things going on at the campus. If you read my response carefully, or even not so carefully, you’ll see I was expanding on that.
Joe Pop. Ugh.
He’s an instigator, why – because he has a sports sweatshirt on? It’s black? ???
“Can you imagine the same amount of respectfulness if the crowd had been the mainstream media and the man had instead been Herman Cain?”
When Herman Cain exhibits 1/10th of the intelligence and thoughtfulness that this man has demonstrated, then HC can expect a respectful hearing.
The College Park campus has more than 38,000 undergraduates, plus graduate students. The riot obviously included only a very, very small percentage of them. We should be careful not to conclude that most of PSU students are still die-hard Patorno fans.
As to relative coverage of the RCC scandal and this one, just compare the number of football fans to the number of US Catholics, and that can explain some of the difference.
The good thing that will come out of this is that many people will realize for the first time that it isn’t just clergy who abuse kids, and they’ll likely take accusations against teachers, scout masters, etc. much more seriously.
David G — even the old people I know have been outraged by this.
“This” in my last sentence referred to the RCC scandal.
Oligarchic, JC? Sure. But that is not the point. There are no perfect analogies in this world. Let’s not allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good.
Fact: Penn State had structural and political mechanisms (granted, long dormant) which were able to act quickly to staunch the bleeding. They are certainly not out of the woods just yet. (I wish PS would have canceled this Saturday’s game out of respect for the survivors of Sandusky’s rapes – an educational moment for especially all the campus rowdies who “rioted” at Paterno’s dismissal.)
Now pushed by events and public outrage, Penn State is just beginning to act. That is good!
In contrast to the Catholic Church, there has been no way for Catholics to channel their disgust at systemic corruption of our priesthood and chart a new course. We are nothing more than serfs to the hierarchy.
Penn State is no “pure” democracy for sure – let’s not quibble over unimportant distinctions. But Penn State is able to be more reactive [Penn State at least has a Board of Trustees who could fire a legendary football coach and university president] to pressures from the public for change and reform. [After all, Paterno is gone. Can you name ONE US bishop who has been removed dismissed for complicity in child rape and sodomy??? Name one! Law in Boston doesn't count because he is still holding court over in his Roman palazzo.]
Again, democracy is NOT perfect – but it’s better than all the alternatives [I guess I just too much of follower of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln & Roosevelt to think otherwise.]. Democracy will NOT make humans immediately error free, or corruption free.
But, Catholics would no longer be spiritual serfs to the world’s oldest all-male feudal oligarchy – a feudal regime very well funded by their fat investment portfolios – built upon the charity of generations of Catholics, and I might add, which underwrites and finances their continued hegemony over the church.
Jesus believed us to be brothers and sisters, his equals. Not, slaves. Not, as in the case of women for our Roman hierarchs, less than human.
As my sainted sixth-grade teacher, Sister Mary Adelaide, often warned us: “Christianity is not for sissies.”
We Catholics have a mountain of work to do if our church is to even survive the coming decades – we may not make it to the end of this century if we don’t act now!
We have to do this TOGETHER – and that is as close to a working definition of democracy as I know.
thank you, david, for posting this video. that young man is very inspiring. a voice of calm and reason among the chaos. it hurt to hear him booed, but he seemed to take it in stride. i hope that what he advocated, that those involved be held accountable happens.
Given how contemptible people are finding Patorno and given how quickly he was fired in spite of his power, I wonder if the the bishops will start to realize the contempt that people have for them. Lots of them are football fans, I expect, and have been watching the news. Maybe they’ll finally get it.
(Nah. Too much to hope.)
I wonder what Cardinals Rigali and Bevilaqua of Philadelphia are thinking of all this.
Jim,
I concede your point that more democracy would be better for the church.
I don’t think I was quibbling. Higher Ed may be more democratic than the RCC but that isn’t saying much!
A couple of observations about holding offices in institutions:
1. Some good people are not fit to hold some offices. My wife, who is a good person, is not fit to be president of either Penn State or the U. S.
2. Some people who have the requisite ability to hold some particular office may not have the support they would need to exercise that office well. Even if they have done nothing to lose this support, they still ought not to remain in that office.
3. Institutions ought to have in place some criteria by which to determine the fitness of their officers. This “code” ought to allow some room for interpretation, but ought not to be one that the ordinary members of the institution can’t make sense of.
This list is surely too small to be sufficient, but let me apply it to the question of people serving in the Church as bishops.
I’ve known of two bishops in Louisiana who resigned some years ago. I have no inside knowledge (perhaps Ann can fill in important details. One apparently resigned because it was discovered that he had covered up the sexual abuse of children by one or more priests in his diocese. I have no idea about what pressures might have been brought on him to do so . The other bishop, so far as I know resigned promptly of his own accord after he was arrested for driving while intoxicated.
So far as I know. both of these men were good, competent people who were good candidates when they were appointed bishops. But they were right to resign. They could not have been the effective bishops their dioceses required.
Today we see such scene phenomena as indictments of a monsignor in Philadelphia and a bishop in Kansas City. I have no reason to denounce either of them as bad people, but certainly do not see how they could continue to serve in the important offices they hold.
Perhaps most troubling is the case of Cardinal Law. Again, I have no basis for saying that he is not a good Christian. But how he could have been given the positions he has held in Rome after the Boston disaster is indefensible. The Church owes it to all of us to develop norms for holding the office of bishop that are publicly known and can win the support of thoughtful people, both lay and clergy. It should not be a moral disgrace for a bishop to resign for running afoul of such a “code.” Rather, as we see often enough, honorable people in many secular institutions come to resign when it becomes apparent to them or to their superiors that they can no longer bring credit to the offices they hold.
All of us have a responsibility to make sure that the proper distinctions are drawn between personal moral worth and qualifications appropriate for holding some significant office in an important institution.
Jimmy–
Just because you don’t agree with Herman Cain, that does not mean he is not intelligent. Of course, by virtue of him being a human being, he deserves our respect.
Louisiana bishops:
- Sullivan of Baton Rouge – died in 1982 – confirmed abuser with settlements
- original abuse case w/Gauthe in Lafayette – that bishop, Frey, was replaced by Harry Flynn who reached 75 and resigned in 2006
- R. Tracy of Baton Rouge – resigned in 1974 – involved in an affair; alcoholic; was caught in a set up by LA state police
- Hughes of New Orleans – retired at age of 75 in 1992
- O’Donnell of Lafayette – resigned in 2002
- Jarrell of Houma-Thibodaux – his vicar, Bergeron, was convicted of lying to a grand jury about priest abuse
Graves of Alexandria – resigned in 1982
- Seitz, NO auxiliary, resigned in 1998 over keeping alleged abusive schoolteacher in his job
Did I miss the two bishops you are referring to?
Bernard,
I don’t know anything about the first bishop. The second one was a very good friend of my godmother and her husband. He was from New Orleans, and people here loved him. When he was bishop in Baton Rouge they loved him there, in spite of the fact that it was common knowledge that he had a drinking problem. He did a great deal of good.
I say maybe he shouldn’t have resigned.
I wasn’t sure about Bishop Sullivan. A school was named after him so I guess somebody liked him. After his behavior became known they changed the name of the school. My godmother knew from the beginning that he was weird. His living room was decorated with stuffed snakes. (And doesn’t that sound like something straight our of a Gothic novel! Where does the Vatican get these creeps??)
Bishop Tracy was widely known to have a girl friend or friend who happened to be a woman. Who knows what exactly their relationship was. Because people loved him they gave him the benefit of the doubt. But I guess somebody didn’t love him, and out he went.
Bishop Hughes, of course, was auxiliary bishop in Boston, and moved all those abusers around. Lucky he didn’t go to jail. So you tell me why he was rewarded and Bishop Tracy was fired? Which one did the worse harm???
I forgot about Bishop Frey. I knew him when I was a child. He was a nice man, or so I thought.
What a disgraceful roster, Bill.
BTW, Hughes came out of Boston where he took secrecy to the extreme, keeping vital information from police and prosecutors against a priest charged in court. His handling of another case was “disastrous,” per the MA AG report.
His N.O. tenure was marked by terrible controversy, to the point where Jason Berry said, “I think he turned out to be the worst archbishop since the Great Depression.” Which is saying quite a bit. He practically retired in disgrace, and ironically the house where he resides is within sight of Jason’s.
Frey fills many pages of Berry’s “Lead Us Not Into Temptation.”
BTW, Hughes supervised McCormack in Boston, the go-to guy for data, and received a lengthy report from him about Geoghan’s history in 1991. Yet McCormack said he never knew of Geoghan’s record before he became the delegate for sexual misconduct and got access to secret archives in 1993-4. Yet McCormack had written detailed vivid memos about Geoghan’s conduct as far back as 1989. You don’t need access when you write so many of the reports. Memory loss in deposition?
Some history to fill in the blanks in case episcopal spin gains credence. Yes, there is a broken record quality to my comments, but I hope the facts are a bit more instructive than wearying.
Bill deHaas==
You say that Bishop Jarrell’s vicar was convicted of lying to a grand jury about abuse. Does that mean that Msgr. Lynn in Philadelphia is not the first high level Catholic administrator to be indicted?
Ann and all:
Bill deHaas’s list is certainly dispiriting. It makes it hard to resist the conclusion that this is a systemic problem and not simply a problem that some individuals happen to have.
I don’t have anything else to say, other than that I know that it is my duty to preserve an attitude of unconditional forgiveness toward these, and all, people. Forgiveness is not incompatible with punishing, but it is incompatible with contempt for anyone, whatever he or she has done or is doing.
Well, in terms of Jarrell – it is Louisiana; so they confirmed that he lied but no indictment followed.
Sullivan – started in KC (what a spot where two dioceses just continue to deal with abuse dating back years including the now Wyoming retired and confirmed abuser bishop).
Taught in a high school seminary in 1978-80 – the second year, the Baton Rouge minor seminary closed and moved their students to our high school in Beaumont, Texas. Twice that year we made school trips to Baton Rouge’s old seminary for visits – the second floor seminary dorm’s back door opened into a short hallway to the bishop’s private apartment. A number of lawsuits have now been settled with Sullivan as the abuser (last year, one was settled in Corpus Christi, TX where one of his victims had gone to seminary after Beaumont closed in 1980).
My memories of the bishop are of a very strange man who was fixated on a collection of original vinyl recordings of singers – these are the original templates used to make recordings. Each recording was worth tens of thousands of dollars. The bishop led a few liturgies that, to be honest, were a mixture of pre-Vatican II and his own pieties?? His staff said that these monies were his family legacy; not diocesan funds??
He treated each Baton Rouge seminarian as if they were his own children. Privately asked the vicar, Bergeron, but he was a smooth politican and never answered any questions. I was very concerned about the students during our visits.
Tracey was a good bishop – attended all four sessions of Vatican II. His “faults” alienated a small group that plotted his resignation. In retrospect, his “faults” were minor compared to the likes of Hughes, Frey, etc. Unfortunately, except for Ott, Baton Rouge has not had good leadership since Tracey (first diocese bishop) resigned.
The Bishop Tracy case brings up a point that doesn’t exactly fit here, but I haven’t found any precise place it fits.
I know from my godmother who lived in Baton Rouge that there are lay people, highly conservative, who have the ear of the Vatican/powers that be, while liberals like her (well, no, not like her — she was extremely liberal) just aren’t heard.
So it isn’t exactly true that the laity have no input. The upper echelons listen to whomever agrees with them. Granted, the conservatives should be heard. But . . .
Ann,
Re: “The upper echelons listen to whomever agrees with them.” And, I would add, to major donors, perhaps mostly conservative. The loss of major donor support for Law also coincided with the Vatican’s decision to accept his resignation.
A friend from a very wealthy family spoke of how cardinals, bishops et al were so solicitous of her father, almost best buds, until he moved on to other philanthropy. The cutoff was unmistakable.
Now, who would not wine and dine major supporters, but the tenor of the interaction is interesting.
To add to that – per details from a recent meeting in Rome with B16…..Rode’s investigation of the US sisters was pushed by Law and Stafford and was supported and financied by the US Knights of Columbus.
Bill,
That is just disgusting. Sometimes I think that the bishops are jealous of the high esteem the laity generally have for the nuns.
http://www.onionsportsnetwork.com/articles/sports-media-asks-molestation-victims-what-this-me,26609/
Incredible, Kathy. Some people never learn. I wonder who wrote the story.
I should have pointed out that it’s satirical. One of the bleakest, truest things I’ve ever seen from The Onion.
Thanks, Kathy. I’m just too cynical to start with.
I should have known there wouldn’t be such a press conference.
The plot thickens. The president of the Two Miles foundation has been fired. Also under investigation is the fact that the DA who investigated the case of the first victim back in 1998 disappeared.