Boston Red Sox fans of a literary bent will, with little prompting, quote from John Updike’s October 1960 New Yorker article “Hub fans bid kid adieu,” recounting Ted Williams final ballgame in his storied life.
Ted’s last at-bat was his 521st career homerun. Famously, and to many a fan’s irritation, Ted left the field with his cap firmly on his head. Tipping a hat was not for Ted, and his final-game homerun would be no different. Fans shouted over and over, “We want Ted!” to no avail. Updike’s much quoted observation was a classic conundrum: “Gods don’t answer letters.”
A like hubris appears the cause of my Catholic Church’s disgrace.
Commonweal, an independent Roman Catholic magazine, focuses on religion, politics and culture. In September its senior writer Paul Baumann reported that he’s working on a book titled “Why Do I Go to Church?” Mr. Baumann suddenly has a lot of company in querying this obligation of his faith. Recent reports outlining child sexual abuse here in the U.S., Ireland and Australia are devastating to read and distressing.
Laymen and women like myself find themselves in the awkward and painful situation of justifying our lifelong adherence to a 2,000-year-old church founded by Jesus Christ. The questions are many; answers few. Baumann was responding to a Catholic convert, Damon Linker, a writer for The Week. Linker, a conservative, has written speeches for Mayor Rudy Giuliani. In calling Pope Francis corrupt on his way out the door, Linker is leaving the church with a bang. Baumann reached out to Linker by asking him to contribute to Commonweal, but he refused believing that in so doing would be associating with a stereotypical “liberal” point of view.
We will have to wait for Paul Baumann’s book to learn his answer about staying in the church, but he gave a few hints to his thinking. Paul is taking Linker’s essay as a challenge to the faithful to justify their staying. He makes a few points: “It’s harder to understand why this would suddenly hit home for Linker now, sixteen years after the scandal broke wide-open in Boston. The Pennsylvania grand-jury report, as horrible as the details are, does not provide any evidence that sexual abuse continues to be epidemic in the church. On the contrary, only two credible accusations were reported after 2002, and both cases were turned over to law enforcement.”
If you believe, as I do, that sunshine is the best disinfectant — clerical transparency is the answer. In great ignorance, I first wrote about the Boston child sexual abuse scandal in March 2002. Speaking as a shocked father and grandfather, I wrongly counseled that parents become more involved and “remake our American church.”
Wiser now, I should have said, “Call the cops!”
Yes, today my retort is to hand allegations over to independent investigators. Everything else is window dressing. Conferences are for serious theologians who will do studies until the cows come home. In the interim, it’s become a sacred duty to protect our church by removing the criminally inclined from positions of power.
Paul Baumann chastised Linker for describing the Catholic Church and its people as repulsive. “By that reasoning repulsive institutions would include the Boy Scouts, USA Gymnastics, elite prep schools, Evangelical Protestantism, Orthodox Judaism, and on and on.”
Sorry, Paul, justification using immoral equality hurts your case.
Out here in the pews, brave Mass-goers share their hope by returning with an envelope in hand. Despite many failures, a deep belief in a forgiving God is at one with the faith in our bones.
Kermit the frog sings a personal song by Jim Henson: “It’s not easy being green,” which challenges us via the heart. Kermit compares himself to leaves, tall trees, important rivers and spring itself to find his unique yet ever common color. He boosts his ego and ours by loving all of God’s creation.
I had a thought of how being green could be a metaphor for practicing Christians, Jews and Muslims who hold tight to ancient rituals and traditions despite the despicable failures of all-too-human leaders. Are their sins the cause of swaths of developed countries’ peoples going secular?
God only knows.
We’ve joined congregations gathered in protest of a new war. One year, we answered a local call to remember the awful truth of Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass. Sadly, as November looms, that living nightmare reappears in hate-filled marches here and abroad.
We feel bound to show up to honor traditions like Holy Days, happy weddings or final farewells, which, by the way, Ted Williams was denied. According to a 2003 Sports Illustrated story, his children bizarrely placed his head in a Cryonic freezer in hope of resurrection in a far off future.
In better news: God wrote the world a promising letter: The New Testament.
Writer Jim Cahillane lives in Williamsburg. His remembrance of UMass’s Agha Shahid Ali, “Notes: En glish 780,” is in “Silkworm 11: The Eleventh Hour,” Florence Poets Society.