Oversimplifying solutions to the church crisis

In the wake of a tidal wave of sex scandals within the Catholic Church, many falsehoods have been spread both within the Church and from outside the Church concerning the causes of this horrible crisis of spirituality. A considerable, and indeed necessary, amount of debate and outrage has surfaced in the past year concerning the ways in which the situation was and ought to be addressed. “Crisis” indeed describes the current situation of the Catholic Church. But not to worry – the editors of The Daily Free Press have with a single swoop divined a solution to the crisis – admission of homosexuals into the priesthood (“Listen to voices from within,” Nov. 25, pg. 6).

Only the Free Press can get away with creating a solution that’s almost exactly identical to the cause of the problem. No, not all the sex scandals involved homosexual priests, but a vast majority did. The infiltration of homosexuals into the priesthood beginning in the 1970s is one major long-term cause of this explosion. When such wide-scale abuse of the priesthood occurs among homosexuals, one can at least assume that admitting more is not the solution. Tolerance, in fact, was the perhaps well-intentioned, but unmistakably wrong, policy of the bishops.

Therefore, it is astonishing to think that tolerance is the solution to this particular problem. Further-more, it is striking that the church is seen as “far behind” in homosexual participation. These scandals have demonstrated the worst consequences of such participation. But for those for whom diversity trumps all else, even in the wake of a pernicious wave of abuse, only downright encouragement of homosexual priests defines an acceptable level of tolerance.

Even more incredible is that the editors have decided that not admitting homosexuals – and women, too – will have serious implications for Catholicism. The only one that comes to mind seems to be the preservation of a deep and rich religion of which beliefs, and not claims of political correctness, are the basis.

But, not surprisingly, it is not Catholicism that the editors care about. It is their reckless drive for universal toleration and moral relativism that they are trying to promote. Catholicism seems to be one of few remaining obstacles in the way of achieving such a state of “skeptical relativism.” Which is why in witnessing the rampant abuse of the priesthood as a result of a case of unwise toleration, the editors of The Daily Free Press chose to just forget about the scandals altogether. Their panacea reveals a self-imposed blindness to the causes. So in following the prescription of the editors, the Church would certainly – doubtless gradually – self-destruct through a new liberalism so detrimental to traditional religious organizations.

Nevertheless, I cannot muster the cynicism to claim that there were not any good intentions in the Nov. 26 editorial. That said, it is probably unrealistic to think that The Daily Free Press will admit that sometimes unfettered tolerance is not the solution to all problems. But I don’t think it is too much to ask for the editors to briefly stop listening to “inner voices” and start taking a look at the Catholic sex scandals for what they really are.