Sins of the Flesh

[Lucky]

Just as the Vatican is demanding that the recently un-excommunicated bishop who denies the Holocaust recant his views, it is being revealed that one of the most conservative Catholics ever led a double life.

Marcial Maciel Degollado was the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, a religious order that was acclaimed by Pope John Paul II. Before he died a year ago, the new pope, Benedict XVI, forced him to leave public ministry because of accusations that he had sexually abused more than a dozen men when they were his students.

But that was apparently only part of it, as now it is being revealed that the priest, who died at 87, had an affair with a woman too, and she was the mother of their daughter. The order had a very strict interpretation of Catholicism, so the new revelations are quite shocking to his followers. More information can be found in the NY Times article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/04/us/04leg...ref=todayspaper

For me, I wonder if there are any institutions left in which one can place some level of faith, or at least confidence. Obama is having trouble finding an honest man. People are looking for sources of strength in their lives, and if a guy who held the most conservative of religious views couldn't live an honest life,, what hope is there for the rest of us mere mortals?

[AdamSmith]

For me, I wonder if there are any institutions left in which one can place some level of faith, or at least confidence.

Do you really want institutions to be that repository? How about (this is too naively High Romantic, but anyway) individuals, and individual human nature, uncorrupted insofar as possible by the tendency of institutions to arrogate power to themselves in ways that so often contradict & negate their original ideals? Such as, here, the Church, and churches generally. And certainly likewise the United States' founders recognized that tendency and, in working out the Constitution, put vast effort toward making sure the new central authority was strong enough to effectively provide for the common defense, etc., but could nonetheless could be stymied from multiple checkpoints when it would, in their view inevitably, try to overreach.

I recognize that here it was the individual priest himself who violated the principles of the order that he had ordained. But my muddled thinking still finds most suspect the fact of an order being established & gaining adherents that institutionalized the (dehumanizing & destructive, I think) prohibitions that he ended up unable or unwilling to obey.

Also, when you say "any institutions left," do you really mean that things in this respect are worse today than they used to be?

[Lucky]

Well, you've got me there. Studying history reveals that men have always been flawed. I guess that I miss the youthful days when I could look up to the church and the government as the institutions I was taught that they were. Those teachings were more fantasy than reality. But, even now, I am still surprised when I hear stories of the hypocrisy of religious and government leaders. I know people who have values. What happens to them when they become leaders that they cannot maintain those values? Is it so impossible to have power and use it wisely, not to mention fairly? What makes a man tell others to lead lives that he himself cannot live?

[caeron]

Surprise. Human sexuality wins again. These stories will stop when the sexual phobia that drives people to try to deny themselves stops. I'm not holding my breath.

[Guest zachary]

lucky and caeron,

u make good points, but it is not just denial of sexuality and it's not just the institutions; re the denial of sexuality, there's not much more to say about that than already, either u believe it is a source of problems or u don't, and like the others, i do.

re just the frigging lack of character, morals, integrity, etc., i believe that statistically, there was a higher incidence of this in the past, but i have nothing to back this up with. sure there have always been throughout history the same things as today, but i still think they're more prevalent now.

i keep trying to figure out what's happened in america, but it strikes me that society has become so rootless, so mobile, that there is no longer any shame or any fear of shame in front of one's fellow citizens. or is it just that everyone assumes everyone is doing it and ur foolish not to reach for ur own share.

i can't figure it out. i told this story the other day, i was in college, traveling overseas and when i got back my father told me that i had a post card from a specific person, so i got the card off the table with my mail and then asked my father how he knew who sent it? and he was ashamed that he had read the postcard, and to be frank, i was screwing with him. under our rules, he came to my bedroom twice for discipline in the course of his whole life, and never went through my drawers, read my mail, listened to calls, etc. he believed that even a rat had the right to his own space and don't corner them, or that was the joke. but the point is, he had such dignity, so quiet, never gossiped, always saw both sides of an issue, and strongly encouraged character. and he was southern.

but i find america more and more discomfiting.

re sex, i asked my father once why there was incest, and he thought a full minute and then told me that a stiff prick has no conscience. i believe that answers the first part of this thread. the other, i'm still wondering, i can think of 10 reasons, but they all suck, but i don't blame dr. spock.

[caeron]

I don't know if it's getting worse or not. I don't think it is, but it could be that with the growing sexual freedom elsewhere, closeted priests are doing more than they would once.

But I think the answer to this is not more shame and the "good old days". The answer to this is less shame about sexuality. People need healthy, sane, legal ways to express a fundamental part of their identity.

[AdamSmith]

I don't know if it's getting worse or not. I don't think it is, but it could be that with the growing sexual freedom elsewhere, closeted priests are doing more than they would once.

This remark sparks the thought that if it looks like things are getting worse, it might be not because there is more low behavior today, but because we find out more about everything today than ever before. E.g., press was complicit in minimizing exposure of FDR's paralysis; JFK's canoodling was kept more or less under the rug despite being an open secret in many quarters; and so on. All things that today would never fly.

Were the good old days better, or worse? For all the talk about the coarsening of public life & discourse, etc., I think all this openness is, on balance, a lot more good than bad.