Occasionally, I feel guilty I am doing as well as I am, thanks to the effectiveness of my chemo treatment.\u00a0 Some of my fellow patients are not doing as well.\u00a0 A close friend, diagnosed some months after I was, is already presently being transferred to hospice care.\u00a0 Another, having gone through a recent multi-hour multi-specialist surgery, is entering an aggressive treatment protocol combining radiation with radical chemotherapy.\u00a0 A third has declined surgery altogether and is choosing treatment of his cancer through a variety of nutritional and mindful exercises intended to focus his entire physical and psychological strength against the incursion of his disease.<\/p>\n
Cancer, I\u2019ve been reading, is a highly personal disease.\u00a0 Many researchers agree that our cancers become active in response to immune deficiencies, or environmental triggers that are not, even now, well understood.\u00a0 Some researchers suggest that cancer cells are present, latently, in our bodies from birth.[1] \u00a0This makes generalized therapies impossible.<\/p>\n
The current spate of distressing news about the widespread clerical abuse in the Catholic Church is similar in this respect.\u00a0 The abuse of the powerless is a source of guilt far more justified than my quasi-guilt from the positive experience of keeping my cancer at bay.<\/p>\n
As dreadful as it is to think of the hundreds of individual priests, torrentially documented in the press, who perpetrated abuse against others, it is even more shameful to consider the bishops who hid the crimes and avoided accountability for the perpetrators or for themselves.<\/p>\n
The facts of the immoral crimes are difficult to consider, much less explain.<\/p>\n
Contrary to depictions of the abuse we are finding out about, labeling it as \u201csexual abuse\u201d, what seems certain is that the violations are acts of aggression; psychologically misguided expressions of power.[2]<\/p>\n
Were the perpetrators committing their heinous acts because they possessed power over their victims or because they were (or believed they were), in fact, held in thrall, themselves? \u00a0Is there a relationship of their acts of abuse to the rule of celibacy? \u00a0If so, what is the nature of that relationship? \u00a0How is it normally and abnormally expressed? \u00a0When abuses are perpetrated by the very<\/span> powerful, how can we respond?<\/p>\n How did this aberrant behavior spread?\u00a0 Did perpetrators communicate with and influence one another?\u00a0 If so, what were the mechanisms and influences exchanged? \u00a0If not, what does it say about the remarkable numbers of individual perpetrators? \u00a0What is the underlying source of the horrible anger that is evidenced by the events that have been discovered and recorded?\u00a0 What are the structural components that are complicit in permitting (or turning a blind eye to) the behaviors we are learning about?\u00a0 \u00a0How does gender play a role? \u00a0(The recent news in the US media is full of details involving men, whereas the abuses known as the Magdalen Laundry Asylums were conducted, in Ireland, by women.[3]) \u00a0 Does sexual orientation play a role? \u00a0If so, what role?<\/p>\n Do psychological signals exist that can be unearthed by early testing, that can predict the possibility of aberrations of such kind? \u00a0Were they employed? \u00a0With what effect? \u00a0What kind of professional advice was given bishops by contemporary doctors, psychologists or lawyers?\u00a0 How did such advice contribute to permissibility; or was professional advice ignored?\u00a0 Where and how does peer pressure enter in? \u00a0Are there patterns of behavior among priests or bishops that reveal or suggest the likelihood of abuse?<\/p>\n What can\/should be done to help victims?\u00a0 How to explain what happened and why?\u00a0 Given what we know about historical cultural evidence, are there psychological\/cultural influences at play?\u00a0 How to remediate; if remediation is even possible?<\/p>\n There is a widespread ripple effect of learning about such abuse, from the individuals immediately involved to the wider society that suffers because of the overall degradation of trust and exemplary behavior. \u00a0How can we address the scandal to the community of families and persons immediately involved in abuses; to the Catholics only proximate to such crimes; to Christians in general; to the wider secular society who already evidences a distrust of religious instinct?<\/p>\n How do we appropriately respond, on a personal basis, to the revelations that are swirling around us with the result of wide moral and personal distress?<\/p>\n How do we most effectively press for accountability and effective change to eliminate the possibility of ongoing aggressions of a similar nature?\u00a0 How can we proceed with immediacy at the same time as we defend the need for careful deliberateness?<\/p>\n The revelations of clerical abuse evoke strong personal emotions: feelings of shock, betrayal, disgust, disbelief, shame, anger, empathy, and dismay.\u00a0 How do we help our local communities (and ourselves) address legitimate emotional and visceral reactions, particularly given that they\/we may not have participated or experienced, first-hand, the abuses being written about?<\/p>\n These, and many more penetrating and nuanced interrogations must be articulated, investigated, and analyzed in an open scientific and moral inquiry. \u00a0Simultaneously, punishments and calls to account must be meted out to the various complicit individuals. \u00a0Meanwhile, as we proceed, we must be careful to protect the privacy and innocence (until proven otherwise) of individuals who might be wrongly accused.<\/p>\n We need to address and answer all these questions for all those personally involved, as well as for all members of society.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Some people have been surprised at the statement that the \u201cDevil is behind\u201d these extraordinary events. \u00a0Foremost we must recognize a distinction between diverting responsibility to a scapegoat figure. \u00a0Responsibilities are due to individual persons not to vaporous fiendish figures. \u00a0Whether or not one recognizes or believes in an a personified, individual entity identified as “Satan” or “Beelzebub” is irrelevant. \u00a0Though \u201cevil incarnate\u201d might well frighten or disturb, it cannot, itself, incite or unleash some objective evil upon humanity.\u00a0 The truth is that the Devil can only leverage the vulnerabilities and susceptibilities that preexist in each of us.\u00a0 The source of Evil in the world is\u2014like it or not\u2014ourselves.\u00a0 (Recall Pogo\u2019s realization, \u201cWe have met the enemy and he is us.\u201d)[4] \u00a0The evil that we all possess\u2014much as we would prefer to deny it\u2014are like the cancer cells oncological\u00a0 researchers suggest might exist in our chemical and biological cells from birth. \u00a0Evil is a part of humanity in general, and individual humans in particular.<\/p>\n The existence of personal evil has been recognized at least since the authors of the earliest books of the Bible composed the Cain and Abel narratives.\u00a0 Latent evil, exploited in damaging ways, is evidenced in the events that are recorded to have taken place in the Garden of Eden.<\/p>\n Spiritual leaders and writers, over time, have recommended practicing self-abnegation, penance, even the employment of physical disciplines (wearing hair-shirts, denying oneself, flagellation, and other “mortifications of the body”.)\u00a0 These time-honored disciplinary measures are not, to be sure, \u201csolutions\u201d. \u00a0 No less a figure than the Carmelite Saint Th\u00e9r\u00e8se of Lisieux (recognized as a \u201cDoctor of the Church\u201d) cautioned against corporal disciplines, which, themselves, can easily be abused.[5] \u00a0But the goal of such penitential practices were designed to help us recognize our own entanglement with evil.\u00a0 Part of our shame, in this case, is our potential blindness or passivity to the abuses of power.\u00a0 It is woefully easy to be intimidated by power.\u00a0 It is similarly easy to be intoxicated by power.\u00a0 (Recall Lord Acton\u2019s memorable quote \u201cPower tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.\u201d[6])<\/p>\n We have legitimate reasons to express our shame through acts of penance.\u00a0 The abuses that are so shocking are perpetrated by individuals.\u00a0 But as we point blame on individuals other than ourselves, we can identify and admit, too, our own corporate and personal guilt.\u00a0 Admitting our own shame\u00a0may help us respond appropriately to the work in which we each must now seriously engage in order to understand and eliminate the anguishing situation before us.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]\u00a0https:\/\/www.quora.com\/Are-we-all-born-with-cancer-cells Summary Occasionally, I feel guilty I am doing as well as I am, thanks to the effectiveness of my chemo …<\/p>\n
\n[2]\u00a0http:\/\/www.scielo.org.za\/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1015-87582015000100009
\n[3]\u00a0https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/06\/06\/world\/europe\/magdalene-laundry-reunion-ireland.html
\n[4]\u00a0http:\/\/www.thisdayinquotes.com\/2011\/04\/we-have-met-enemy-and-he-is-us.html
\n[5]\u00a0https:\/\/www.osv.com\/OSVNewsweekly\/ByIssue\/Article\/TabId\/735\/ArtMID\/13636\/ArticleID\/8487\/Sacrifices-of-the-flesh.aspx
\n[6]\u00a0http:\/\/oll.libertyfund.org\/quote\/214<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"