home
about
archives
|
A LITTLE COURAGE, PLEASE
03/28/2010
Two huge things have been in the news over the past week. One is the passage of the health care bill here in the United States. The other is the most recent exposure of the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, and the cover-up by bishops, and even the pope. Both are sources of anger and controversy, and in both cases, the real issues are not being addressed. What is needed in both cases, is a little courage from ordinary people (I mean sane people, not teapartiers who are particularly vulnerable to the rantings of the insane Glenn Beck and the sociopathic Sarah Palin.)
With the health reform controversy, things have gone from absurd to dangerous. For decades, presidents and parties (yes, both parties) have tried to reform health care. For nearly seventy years, there has been broad consensus that our health care delivery system is broken. Unlike most other countries in the western world, the United States opted for a private, for-profit system (provided by employers or purchased individually) that leaves out tens of millions of citizens who cannot afford the increasingly high rates. Insurance companies, in an effort to make exorbitant profits, refuse to insure those with pre-existing conditions and terminate insurance for those who become seriously ill. In this current recession with tens of millions of citizens losing their jobs, and thus their health insurance, even more are losing access to medical care.
So, along comes the new president, Barack Obama, who promises to deliver health care reform. Everyone is excited. Congress gets to work. Then the republican machine kicks into gear and does its best to defeat Obama’s signature legislation with fabrications, lies and fearmongering. They say Obama wants socialized medicine and is going to make America a communist nation, even though the current legislation keeps the for-profit system and is more moderate than some bills offered in the past by republicans. Sarah Palin starts talking about “Death panels.” Chuck Grassley picks it up and says the government is going to “kill grandma.” John Boehner uses the word “Armageddon.” Glenn Beck's label of the day for Obama is socialist or communist or fascist or racist. Tea party groups, funded by republicans like Dick Army, start carrying signs showing Obama as Hitler, or the Joker, or a witch doctor (a clear manifestation of the racism of some teabaggers). People scream “keep the government out of my Medicare,” which is a hoot considering that Medicare is a government run program. But the republicans are so good at fear mongering they actually convince uneducated people that Medicare is not a government program, and the government is going to ruin it somehow.
The truth, of course, is easy to find. It’s all about defeating Obama. Senator Jim DeMint, the deranged senator from South Carolina, revealed the strategy. If we defeat health reform, he told everyone, it will be Obama’s “Waterloo.” And so the republicans stood united to defeat the bill because they wanted to defeat Obama, and they used code words and fearmongering to convince good old white boys and girls that they were in danger and needed to "take their country back" from someone who was "not like us." It didn’t matter that the republicans used to be for many of the things in the health care bill. What mattered was defeating Obama. What mattered was the desire to regain power. So they got their troops in line and made sure there was not one single “yes” vote from a republican, and then they said the bill was illegitimate because it had no republican support.
Even the tea party and republican nonsense, though, does not address the real issue regarding health care. The real issue is the immorality of for-profit health care system. The real issue is that in America, people are allowed to get rich by denying health care to others. This is completely unacceptable in a moral nation. Health care should be accessible to every single American. Health care is a right, not a commodity to be traded on the stock market, and we will never solve our health care problem until we have a single payer, government run system. And we’ll never have a single payer government system until enough people rise up and demand it. And we’re not there yet. Too many people are afraid. Too many people who still have insurance are silent, willing to put up with increasing premiums as long as they still have some access to their doctor. Too many people who have insurance are willing to turn their backs on their fellow citizens who don’t. Until enough people feel the heat, or show some courage, things won’t change, and the republicans will continue to be able to scare the least educated among us to rise up, express their hatred and their fear, and put a stop to progress.
Now, to the second issue: the latest revelations of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests. At least once a decade, the scandal erupts in a new place. First, it was in the United States. Now we find it in Germany and Ireland and Australia. Surely, it is going on in other places as well. And Catholics are taking sides. Some find the abuse and cover-up inexcusable and reprehensible. Others defend the church by making excuses and saying only a small percentage of priests abuse children. The pope has recently compared the criticims of the papacy's responsibility in the scandal to "gossip."
This second side is disgusting. THERE ARE NO EXCUSES FOR THE INEXCUSABLE. In my mind, anyone who excuses a church that has shielded child molesters is as guilty of child abuse as are the priests who have fondled and sodomized and raped thousands if not hundreds of thousands. There is something so evil, so corrupt, so wrong with an institution in which priests are allowed to victimize children that it must be completely cleansed, changed, and overhauled. The point isn’t that individual priests are sick, though they are. Perhaps they can be forgiven by a higher power. The point is that the leadership of the church has become sick in its cover-up of the crimes, its shielding of the offenders and its enabling. It allowed the abuse to continue and that is the worst crime of all. The heirarchy, as such, has failed the people, has engangered their bodies, and should no longer be entrusted with their souls. And we now know that the corruption goes all the way to the top. The pope himself is an enabler, a protector of child rapists, because it was more important to protect the institution, and the money, and the power of celibate males, than it was to protect innocent children.
There is only one solution to this travesty. The Catholic faithful must have enough integrity, enough courage, and enough faith in a good and loving God, that they stand up in a revolt against the hierarchy, demanding the changes that would make future abuse of children impossible. The hierarchy has had decades to fix this and they have failed.
Parents, grandparents and all who care about children would do a great service to the institution of the Church if they would stand up in unison and say “enough.” If they refused to drop even one dime into any collection basket, and insisted on a council, run by the laity, in which new rules and procedures are set in place, not just for priestly contact with children and the reporting of abuse, but for an entire overhaul of the governance of the church, then the change that is long overdue might actually happen. In other words, the people need to make the papacy into, at most, a ceremonial office, like that of the crown in England, and demand that decisions be make by the laity. The system of governance by male celibate clerics, with no input from the laity, is a broken system, a monarchy that has become corrupt, as all monarchies become corrupt.
We’re not talking about a few deranged priests here. We’re talking about a system of absolute power, power that can defy the law, power that would rather shield child rapists than protect children. We’re talking about a system that has such a warped view of sexuality that it has made the use of birth control by the laity a bigger sin than sexual abuse by priests. It has allowed the priesthood to become a place where sexually disordered men can hide behind their clerical collars and their black skirts while they destroy the psyches of children.
If Catholics are unwilling to stand up to the hierarchy, disobey their illegitimate rule, and demand radical change, then I only have one question.
What will it take to finally stand up and protect your children? If the molestation, the rape and abuse of your children, and the protection of those abusers by the authorities in the church – does not cause you to question the very policies and procedures (including a celibate priesthood) that allows such vile behavior to develop and continue, then what will?
All content © 2005 outragedcitizen.com
|
