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Grant Gallicho 10/04/2006 - 6:04 pm contributor

The person whose nom de Web is “mlj” asked in a comment I accidentally deleted, “How does this post contribute to the Catholic conversation?” Not knowing what he means by “the Catholic conversation,” but also not wanting to walk into yet another of his “Commonweal: not Catholic enough” traps, I’ll just say the following. Commonweal covers a range of issues directly related to Catholic matters and not. The magazine reviews, for example, TV shows like “Studio 60″ and “The Office.” But this is a blog, and since the Foley story has developed, we’ve seen him claim that he was molested by a “clergyman” when he was between 13 and 15 years of age. He was raised Catholic. What’s more, how the institution he worked in handled the knowledge of his interest in teenage boys may hold lessons for our evaluation of the church’s own mishandling of similar cases.

mlj 10/04/2006 - 6:58 pm

So what clock is ticking?

(Point of fact: Turns out the poor kid harrassed by Foley was an adult at the time.)

Grant Gallicho 10/04/2006 - 7:54 pm contributor

You mean kids.

Joseph F. Gannon 10/04/2006 - 8:10 pm

I don’t know about ticking clocks, but the cover up aspect of this sounds very much like business as usual. As for Foley’s story as presented by his attorney, I prefer to keep an open mind until some credible evidence emerges. There is something awfully neat about tracing the man’s problem’s back to an unnamed molesting clergyman.

James Keegan 10/04/2006 - 8:38 pm subscriber

I believe that there is credible evidence now. As to mlj, I’m not sure that we are making related points, but I don’t find the blog particularly Catholic.

Gene O’Grady 10/04/2006 - 11:08 pm

Two points:

(1) In find the weblog fairly Catholic — I’m not sure what those who don’t find it so would consider “Catholic conversation.” Any suggestions?

(2) As to the current Foley situation, some forty years ago a good friend of mine, also Catholic but from rather a different background, assured a non-Catholic mutual friend that I could be trusted for a certain amount of sexual decency because I was a “good Catholic.” I mention this not to assert my own dubious virtue, but because we have gotten to a situation where no one would be likely to say a thing like that except as a rather tasteless joke. How we got here may be worth discussing (as opposed to arraigning the usual suspects).

unagidon 10/05/2006 - 5:54 am

However one feels about this episode, one key Catholic point to me is the question of whether it is allowable to do something like Hastert has done (in covering for Foley) to protect the larger organization. And I am not trying to load the question here. The larger question could be something like “if one thinks that one or one’s organization is doing good, can one perform a “lesser” evil in order to protect the greater good?”

I think that this is the operative rationale in this (and similar) cases and is something that I seem to see operating on a much wider scale in our politics these days in general.

Barbara 10/05/2006 - 8:18 am

Unagidon, I have several responses:

1. There is always a difference between protecting an “organization” and the “good” that it does, but it is very easy to conflate the two in order to justify not taking action — just look at ow quickly you conflated the two even within your single paragraph

2. Doing right and protecting the organization were never mutually exclusive undetakings — the issue was, how expensive, how much work would it take to protect Foley’s seat, not that it couldn’t be done such that the organization would inevitably be compromised. In any event, he’s just one Congressman so it’s really hard to see this situation in that light.

3. “Covering up” is almost always a short term solution unless one simultaneously explicitly commits to make real changes — but it is usually impossible to make such changes if those who are required to go along have no idea that there’s a problem because you did such a good job covering it up.

Sean H 10/05/2006 - 9:13 am

I think there a few “elephants in the room” that we, as a society, refuse to address.

First, Foley, and many of those who have behaved like him, including priests, is not a pedophile, he is a sexual predator who took advantage of a power relationship, and he was a homosexual, which many, if not most of the priests were. The pedophile label is a handy way to diffuse the sexual orientation issue. I have prosecuted pedophiles, and sexual predators who take advantage of post-pubescent teens. There is a difference and sexual oreintation matters.

There is, within the gay subculture, a significant and aggressive portion that promotes sex between adult men and young teen boys.

The gay male subculture is extraordinarily promiscuous. Studies by the CDC confirm this.

I believe the reaction to these statements will prove a point.

Grant Gallicho 10/05/2006 - 10:33 am contributor

Who said anything about pedophilia?

Barbara 10/05/2006 - 10:45 am

Sean H, you must realize that there is also well-entrenched subculture in which heterosexual men exploit underage girls. Indeed, I don’t even know if it really needs to be called a subculture, as it rises so close to the surface of mainstream culture. Dateline NBC anyone? Trafficking in female children for use in the sex trade is also a huge problem. I am not questioning the seriousness of homosexual abusers, but focusing on the “gayness” aspect is, sorry, a sideshow.

mlj 10/05/2006 - 10:58 am

I’m still confused about what ticking noise I’m supposed to be hearing.

Eugene McCarraher 10/05/2006 - 11:03 am

According to my brother-in-law, a psychotherapist, the evidence is overwhelming that straight men are far, far more likely than gay men to be pedophiles or sexual predators. So Sean H. is right, ironically — “sexual orientation matters.”

As for the ticking noise, I think the bomb has already exploded. The G.O.P. leadership has finally been exposed as the callous and ruthless cabal they’ve always been, under both De Lay and Hastert. The National Intelligence Estimate disclosures, together with the Woodward book, have put the final nails in the coffin of the Bush Administration’s credibility. Here in PA, very few Republicans in my neighborhood believe a word that comes out of Bush’s mouth any longer, and they’re angry as hell about l’affaire de Foley. The problem is, once the debris settles, it’s not at all clear that the Democrats have a credible plan for rebuilding.

Robert Nunz 10/05/2006 - 11:57 am

I thought the most interesting part of this thread had to do with institutional protection.

“It’s better that a millstone was placed around one’s neck,” begins the master, but we seem to rationaize away the Gospel lots of times. not only the perps. but also their abetters.
Even in secular terms, most institutional ptotection I “ve heard of or experienced is really CYA.
We say we want accountability and responsibility, but it’s easier to give a free pass to secrecy and “doing good” on the whole

Jimmy Mac 10/05/2006 - 12:10 pm subscriber

There is, within the straight majority culture, a significant and aggressive portion that promotes sex between married men and women other than their wives.

If one thinks that one’s church is doing good, can one perform the lesser evil of preserving the faithful sheep from scandal in order to protect the greater good?

Now you know what b.s. smells like when it takes on other ramifications.

Jimmy Mac 10/05/2006 - 12:38 pm subscriber

In support of this ….

According to my brother-in-law, a psychotherapist, the evidence is overwhelming that straight men are far, far more likely than gay men to be pedophiles or sexual predators. So Sean H. is right, ironically — “sexual orientation matters.”

…. see this:

http://www.malesurvivor.org/News%20&%20Events/winter05.pdf

mlj 10/05/2006 - 12:40 pm

>>There is, within the straight majority culture, a significant and aggressive portion that promotes sex between married men and women other than their wives.<<

But there is no major political push to normalize said relations, such as there is with homosexual sex. When there are think-tanks, lobbies, academic departments, and major political parties dedicated to normalizing adultery, then we can start using the language of moral equivalency.

What is depressing about too many Catholic discussions about homosexuality is our unwillingness to use the primary language of sin and redemption. I do not sense that many Catholics are especially worried about the salvation of those in disordered sexual relationships.

Barbara 10/05/2006 - 1:50 pm

I didn’t think this was a discussion about homosexuality but a discussion about institutional self-protection and cover ups. It seems to me that making it a discussion about homosexuality risks avoiding (1) the larger issue (inaction borne of opportunism) that probably increased the threat posed by this particular malefactor, and (2) the fact that by and large, heterosexuals are responsble for most of the inappropriate sexual contact involving minors.

Sean H 10/05/2006 - 2:30 pm

This shows some of my point. Even the suggestion that sexual orientation and victimization are linked brings on this circle the wagons mentality. What would all of these people who are screaming about protecting our youngsters have said if, based on a couple of non-sexual but “creepy” e-mails, the leadership launched an investigation into a well-respected Congressman that everyone on Capitol Hill knows is gay? With hind sight we know there was more to find, but what if there wasn’t? Can you spell witch hunt? I’m sure the NY Times can.

When the John Jay priest report came out you saw this reaction – the victims were predominantly post-pubescent males, but we must not make any assumptions. As the father of two teenaged boys this emphasis on political correctness at the expense of protecting our kids was infuriating. Saying there was a connection between priestly celebacy and a priest raping a 15 year-old boy was perfectly fine, but to suggest the rapist was a homosexual – how dare you!

I live in Boston, and with the exception of Father Geogahn, a true pedophile, most of the notorious cases involved priests who abused 12-17 year-old boys. The most famous one, Paul Shanley, was a member of NAMBLA, and well-known among those who knew him as a homosexual. Let’s not make any assumptions.

My point isn’t even that homosexual men are more likely to abuse teenagers than heterosexual men, even if that’s what I believe. It’s that there is a concerted effort to squelch any suggestion that men who abuse these teenaged boys are homosexual or have homosexual tendencies.

With all due respect (a sure sign that it’s not coming), what pyschologists and pyschotherapists think carries about as much weight we me as what Madame Gloria the Psychic does. As a group, they have become so politicized that any “science” that ever backed up there findings has long since been abandoned. When I hear that the APA is considering whether people who have sexual identity disorder really don’t have a psychological problem (its all society’s problem apparently), I think the rational science train left the station a long time ago.

Grant Gallicho 10/05/2006 - 2:36 pm contributor

No one took your bait the first time, Sean, and I suggest no one take it now either.

Jimmy Mac 10/05/2006 - 2:48 pm subscriber

mlj: No one of any consequence if pushing to normalize relations between gay men and minors, NAMBLA excepted. NAMBLA is as despised by the vast majority of gays that I know as by anyone else.

The serial monogamy culture in the US wherein D-I-V-O-R-C-E has effectively normalized adultery.

I’ll relieve you of your great pressing burden: don’t you worry your head for one moment about the salvation of my soul and that of my partner of 34 years in our “disordered sexual relationship.” We don’t. Let go and leave it up to us and God, OK?

mlj 10/05/2006 - 2:57 pm

If I understand correctly some of the responses to Sean H, then it seems that the one unwelcomed response to this post is precisely the Catholic response. It is permissible to speak in ideological terms or legalese or any number of vacuous moral grammars. But Catholic language and thinking are not welcome.

Jimmy: I won’t stop praying for the salvation of others. I hope you will do the same–especially for embarrassments for the Church like me.

Grant Gallicho 10/05/2006 - 2:59 pm contributor

To repeat: do not take their bait.

Barbara 10/05/2006 - 3:01 pm

Sean H, there’s no need to pigeonhole a perpetrator’s sexuality in order to protect his victims. No classification is necessary to adopt common sense measures that reduce opportunities for abuse. The truth is, especially for priests, it’s almost impossible for us to know whether someone’s sex life is (or would be considered) “disordered” — and there is enough inaccuracy in our predictions that we cannot rely on them, out of fairness to those who are misjudged and out of an abundance of caution for protecting children.

Every compliance program I’ve studied for daycare centers starts with the assumption that anybody might be a bad actor — the goal is put a structure in place that identifies known perpetrators AND that makes it hard for would be perpetrators to find the opportunity to do harm. And this is true for all kinds of abuse, not just sexual abuse.

mlj 10/05/2006 - 3:05 pm

Jimmy,

The case in question apparently involves two consenting adult males. This is not NAMBLA stuff.

Robert Nunz 10/05/2006 - 3:25 pm

Someone in here said this iasabout institutional proterctionism. Yet we get a continuing repetitive drum beat that the problem is homosexuality.

!)My professional line experience in criminal justice was that most of the pedophiles I dealt with were not gay, but very disturbed fixated people who oportunistically took advantage of innocent people.
2)My experience in worrking in policy development on sex abuse problems (with experts far more qualified than I) was that the issue was not one of orientation per se but power/control in a given situatioon.
2)In that same context, it was also clear that there was a problem in confronting the problems of sex abuse, child abuse and domestic violence because of ethnic , religious or cultural prejudices which deeply colered many folks approaches.
To say noone here is listening to the Catholic aproach is absurd. To say that folks have left behind The Causes And Context report delivered to the Bishops doesn’t make sense.
the rational train has left, but by those who just want homosexuality to be the problem.

Sean H 10/05/2006 - 4:07 pm

As I said, my point ultimately is not about homosexuality as a “cause” of abuse. My point is that even the slightest whiff if it begins an avalanche of indignation and protest. It was in this environment that Hastert and others were operating, and as someone ealier pointed out, they are politicians and react to this stuff. If my kid had gotten these creepy e-mails it would set off “normal people” alarms. But we have so conditioned ourselves to treat normal reactions to these things as hate-filled bigotry that it should surprise no one that people in any organization hesitate to act when faced with an uncomfortable, but ambiguous situation.

And Robert, I don’t think homosexuality is “the” problem. But in the face of the evidence, reasonable people might conclude that it is at least part of the problem.

unagidon 10/05/2006 - 4:12 pm

I don’t think that the ticking was for Foley but for Hastert. Since most indications are that Hastert is straight, the ticking issue would seem to have to do with Hastert not appropriately acting when he found out about Foley.

I agree with what Barbara said in response to my post, except to say that I believe that people like Hastert believe that the Party is the bearer of something larger than itself that needs to be protected by protecting the Party. I don’t think (or perhaps don’t want to think) that Hastert is simply personally corrupt and is acting only to protect himself. Or rather, he thinks he is protecting something larger than himself.

The reason I am asking (and this is my “Catholic” reason for asking) is that I am interested in any moral basis for all of the lying, spinning, etc. that we have been seeing in our politics these last six years.

Robert Nunz 10/05/2006 - 4:48 pm

I thought I’d give the Speaker (who I agrre the ticking is about) until today:
he say’s he’s responsible because “the buck stops here,” but adds he won’t step aside.
What does he mean by taking responsibility? Like our bishops who say they’re sorry about the acts they let continue, the words are empty!
He adds he wants to get to the bottom of things, but in listening to him, the message I got was “who leaked this?” (and caused me all this trouble.) Some responsibility!

Barbara 10/05/2006 - 5:09 pm

unagidon, It’s just so easy to conflate righteousness with self-interest and self-preservation. On the other hand, it can sometimes be legitimately difficult to obtain truly disinterested advice. In the case of the Church, those who were “in the circle” probably suffered from groupthink, but those outside of the Church might not have provided an effective counterpoint. I think if there’s one point that is hard to accept it is how long it took many to understand that silence and support eventually would become, and would be viewed as, covering up and enabling. That’s still a little shocking to me.

Bill Mazzella 10/05/2006 - 5:59 pm subscriber

The ticking is indeed about Haster but the reason he may fall is not so much the true scandal which it is . The fact that it is about sexual abuse gets people’s attention which was not given by the more dastardly things done by Delay and Abramohoff, for example.

Sex sells indeed. Even in reverse order.

Donna 10/05/2006 - 6:35 pm

I must have taken stupid pills this morning because Sean H, I still don’t see what you’re trying to get at.

The elephant you wish to talk about as far as I can gather is the elephant that says homosexuals are promiscuous, and have a subculture that is aggressive about having sex with young boys.

So are you saying that promiscuity and an aggressive tendency towards sexual attraction to young boys is an innate characteristic of the homosexual male? Is this why you say “sexual orientation matters”?

Or, are you just trying to point out that given how homosexuality hasapparently factored into the sexual abuse cases both in the church and elsewhere (going by the numbers), we should be doing more to figure out what the relationship between homosexuality and sexual abuse really means? Are you saying that we need to analyze the higher than expected ratio of homosexual to straight abusers more seriously, particularly given that homosexuality does not cause abuse?

I don’t mind talking about the elephant in the room as long as I know I’ve got the right elephant and I’m in the right room.

Jimmy Mac 10/05/2006 - 6:39 pm subscriber

For those who think that the gay communities are circling the wagons in defense of Foley, think again:

http://www.ebar.com/openforum/opforum.php?sec=editorial

The BAR is a San Francisco gay newspaper.

Sean H 10/05/2006 - 9:41 pm

ARGGHHHH

Of course, Jimmy, everyone is indignant about Foley. It’s easy to be angry about the bad guy when you have already seen the end of the movie. Everyone is now piling on Hastert because he didn’t “do anything” about the creepy e-mails. The point is that because Foley is gay, and they knew it, they didn’t know how to react. If they go after him and find nothing, many of the same people who are now waxing indignant about the lack of action would have condemned him for bigotry. Hastert didn’t have the luxury of knowing how things would turn out.

Jimmy Mac 10/05/2006 - 10:43 pm subscriber

Sean:

Argghhh, yourself. The reason Hastert and sludge didn’t go after Foley is because they want to win above anything else! He could have been a hermaphrodite with a preference for one-eyed transexuals and they still wouldn’t have done anything about him.

Your obsessions with homosexuality as the cause of the downfall of the Western world is a bit ridiculous.

unagidon 10/06/2006 - 6:02 am

Quote: “unagidon, It’s just so easy to conflate righteousness with self-interest and self-preservation. On the other hand, it can sometimes be legitimately difficult to obtain truly disinterested advice. In the case of the Church, those who were “in the circle” probably suffered from groupthink, but those outside of the Church might not have provided an effective counterpoint. I think if there’s one point that is hard to accept it is how long it took many to understand that silence and support eventually would become, and would be viewed as, covering up and enabling. That’s still a little shocking to me. ”

Shocking to me too. But I find the Hastert scandal interesting because it seems to me to highlight a more mundane moral issue; the question of pursuing the “lesser of two evils.” There are a few things that I believe (or perhaps that I want to believe) when I hear about lies, spin, and coverups like the Hastert thing. First, I want to think that Hastert actually does think that he is pursuing the good by pursuing the lesser of two evils. (Let’s put aside the question of whether keeping his party in power actually constitutes the good). Second, that no matter how ugly it looks to other people, this sort of thing indicates at least a residual propensity to move towards the good. In other words, Hastert isn’t being evil as such. Hastert is showing a misguided lack of virtue in an attempt to be virtuous.

I think that following the lesser of two evils has somehow become a sort of virtue of its own these days. Isn’t that what the recent posts about abortion and the support of the Republican Party was all about? “Lesser of two evils” is really a shadow of the virtue of prudence. But it isn’t the only virtue that is being bent by being pulled away from the unity of the virtues. When we see Hastert being praised for simply sticking to his guns, we are seeing the shadow of the virtue of fortitude. (Stubborness expressed as fortitude also seems to me to be the “virtue” trotted out most often for President Bush.)

I know that I am putting a very heavy conceptual load here on an action by Hastert that can be explained in other less complicated ways. I am outraged by Hastert at a visceral level (I live in his district), but I am also interested in how bad things come to look like good things.

Sean H 10/06/2006 - 8:19 am

Jimmy,

I am not obsessed about it, but I do believe what the Church teaches about it.

Which people, exactly, are “sludge”?

Carolyn 10/06/2006 - 8:26 am

mlj: Foley approached multiple high school students over multiple years. Hastert and the rest of the Republican leadership knew about his actions for several years.

But this goes far, far beyond Foley.

This is about power and its abuse, about silence which allows evil to flourish, and about the increasing attacks on any and all (including the children of fellow Republicans) who would criticize or question members of the current Republican leadership.

Dennis Hastert’s “Majority of the Majority” has morphed into a truly evil policy that any critic of this administration, be they child or adult, Republican or Democrat, citizen or foreign, Christian or atheist, must be attacked and destroyed so that this administration can remain in power.

Hastert fired his entire ethics committee to protect DeLay and shut down Congress for a month; this is not a man who leads by opinion polls. This is a man who fronted gay-bashing Alan Keyes as a senatorial candidate, who said al Qaeda wanted Kerry to win, who SPONSORED the extraordinary rendition bill, who says priests who give food and water to illegally-entering immigrants are felons, who said New Orleans shouldn’t be rebuilt. The idea that he was so squeamish about potentially being called a gay-basher that he hid a sexual predator is patently ridiculous.

This is about power at all costs. Hastert’s legacy will be turning the Speaker’s chair into an extension of the Executive branch, and for changing the House to what Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann characterize as a “neoparliamentary structure.” Republicans and Democrats alike who are concerned with the survival of the first branch of government should be very concerned indeed about the ticking of this particular clock.

Barbara 10/06/2006 - 8:43 am

If Hastert has insufficient fortitude to weather an accusation of being anti-gay, then his constituency will be even more disappointed. Coward or hypocrite — you decide.

Robert Nunz 10/07/2006 - 10:30 am

Some responsiibility -part 2
So Hastert goes on Rush Limbaugh to blame the Democrats.
That’s really taking responsibility: it’s the same old ideological partisanship that matters and the tender pets who protest that they’re only concerned about the Church’s teachings have big credibility problems!

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