Tea at Trianon: The Abuse Scandal: Fact and Fiction

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

The Abuse Scandal: Fact and Fiction

Separating fact, fiction and anti-Catholic bias . To quote Chronicles editor Scott Richert:

Until now, I've held off on writing anything, because it's hard to separate fact from fiction, let alone account for anti-Catholic bias. Much of the reporting is mixed with commentary, and it's all rather sensationalistic. Otherwise respectable news outlets, such as Slate.com, have given professional anti-Catholics such as Christopher Hitchens carte blanche to write pieces that viciously attack Pope Benedict XVI by making connections that really aren't justified by the facts as we know them.

None of this is to suggest that the vast majority of allegations aren't truthful. But the conclusions that are routinely drawn from revelations of sexual abuses are often wrong (e.g., celibacy is the problem, or sexual-abuse rates are higher among the Catholic clergy than, say, rabbis or public-school teachers) or deliberately provocative (e.g., Pope Benedict's brother admits to slapping boys when he was a choir director, therefore it's certain that he knew that a previous choir director had sexually abused some boys, and thus obviously Pope Benedict engaged in a cover-up to protect his brother).

In every country where widespread allegations of clerical sexual abuse have emerged, it's clear that the Catholic hierarchy has handled the situation very poorly. The new regulations for the reporting and handling of allegations put into place here in the United States several years ago were designed to put an end to such mismanagement, and the consistent drop in sexual-abuse allegations since 2004 indicates that those regulations are working. The U.S. regulations have become a model for other countries, including Ireland.

One thing that is often forgotten is that not every allegation is true, and a priest, like anyone else who is falsely accused, deserves the opportunity to defend himself. Indeed, canon law, as much as civil law, gives him that right. But some who have other axes to grind against the Catholic Church (such as the aforementioned Christopher Hitchens) insist that every accused priest is guilty until proved innocent. (Read More.)