[Graham]

This is a post I made at another forum. Sadly, the thread was deleted or made invisible about half an hour after I posted (the forum is professional in nature and has a ‘no religious topics’ rule, even though most of the regular contributors are interested in intelligent conversations on religion). I thought it was a shame to lose the work I put into this post, so I’m reposting it here; perhaps you can offer some criticism on my apologetics. Am I too conciliatory, for instance? Are some of my arguments lacking in strength or clarity? How would you have handled this discussion?

A bit of context: I had written a post connecting the recent massacres and attempted massacres in the US with the loss of virtue and beauty in US culture, and then connected this loss with the loss of Christian and particularly Catholic Faith (a distinction I drew as a concession to the uninitiated) among the people. Someone (whom I’ve called Gideon) challenged me to explain why one should prefer Catholicism to what he called “Old line New England Protestantism”, by which I think he meant mainline Protestantism. I responded to him in a way that could be considered dismissive, so he decided to play the troll, as you will see in the quotations below.

In the meantime, another poster (whom I’ve called Gamaliel) had linked to a Time story on Ireland’s Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, asserting that this showed why the Catholic Church has to be kept out of education. Much of this report dealt with pre-VII conditions in the Irish Industrial Schools, so I felt particularly bound to mount a critique. The story can be found here:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1900120,00.html

My response addresses both of these posters in one. Let’s hope that gives you the context to make the following intelligible. The apologetic post starts now:

In brief, Catholicism is so massively superior to mainline Protestantism that it’s difficult to see how such a question can seriously be asked.

Well, if my sincerity will be questioned anyway, I might as well appear to troll.  

I was not trying to question your sincerity Gideon. Sincere and intelligent people can ask misguided and even laughable questions from time to time. And it is laughable to ask why one should prefer the Universal Church – the Church of the Hagia Sophia, Chartres Cathedral, the Medieval Universities, St. Thomas, St. Louis and St. Joan of Arc – why to prefer such splendour to “Old line New England Protestantism”, laughable because it’s a question that answers itself.

Catholicism may be an old community present on every continent, but its hierarchy is hideous and corrupt.  What could be more opposed to beauty than a massive organization that systematically covers up the abuse of children, and then has the gall to lecture the world against using condoms.

The crimes of Catholic officials in these abuse scandals are great, far too great. I don’t mean that just in the sense that “even one abuse scandal would be too much” (though that is true), I mean that there really have been a lot of crimes.

Even so, and truth be told, the crimes are also exaggerated by a scandal-mongering media for its own anti-traditional agenda. Make no mistake: this is a witch hunt, and the comparative statistics exist to prove it. The American public has been conditioned by a barrage of sensationalist reports (“thousands raped”), false accusations and tendentious historiography to accept all manner of nasty rumours without putting forth even a token effort towards intellectual honesty. Gamaliel’s latest post provides a good example: all he’s required to do is wave his hand in the direction of some vague “history of corruption” and every wag thinks he’s in the know. What is he talking about, the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the sale of Indulgences? I doubt he knows the first thing about the historical circuмstances, justifications, or multi-faceted realities of these events. Even my calling them “multi-faceted events” probably makes some readers roll their eyes at my supposed obscurantism; that type of reaction will only illustrate that these people either know nothing whatsoever of the difficulties of historical study, or have been trained instinctively to disregard natural human fairness when it comes to Church history. But indeed Gamaliel knows so much Church history that he can’t even think of one good thing the Church has ever done, though in the interest of appearing moderate he concedes that he’s “sure they exist”. In your case, as in so many others, you can’t listen to the Church being praised without lashing out using the readiest weapon to hand. This is the intransigence a Catholic has to wade into to deal with these exaggerations, and I have to wonder whether it’s worth it to try in your case.  

Since Gamaliel seems to want attention, and since this is not the time or place to mount a full-scale effort against the accusations, I will just make a few observations regarding the news report on the findings of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse he posted. Here is a decent example of what I mean. The Time story singles out the Christian Brothers, so I flipped to the section of the Commission’s report which describes their history. Here are a few quotations, which will perhaps remind Gamaliel of “a few good things” about the Church:

Foundation: Edmund Ignatius Rice (1762–1844), a wealthy import and export trader in the city of Waterford, opened a school for poor children in that city in 1802. He began recruiting men who shared his ambition to provide a free education for the poor Catholic children of Ireland. […]He was adamant there should be no physical punishment, which he found contrary to his own spirit. […]The new industrial schools fitted in with their charism of educating and helping the poor. […]

In his article ‘Seven Years in the Brothers’, Professor Tom Dunne described the contrast between the juniorate he attended and his old schools as ‘remarkable’:

"Here there was no corporal punishment and bullying was not tolerated. We were treated fundamentally as adults who had taken on immense responsibilities, and as new members of the Community. The teachers were all Brothers, and were among the best the Congregation had. It was all profoundly civilised, carefully disciplined and immensely caring."

There are statements also that the Brothers’ were underfunded by the state, who apparently allotted a pittance for each student enrolled. From what I can tell, thanks to their vows of poverty, they were able to use portions of their small personal stipends to make up the difference and provide livable conditions for the children. Without going so far as to affirm that the Christian Brothers were all saintly men doing their utmost for the poor and abandoned, I think it’s fair to say that there’s a completely different side to this story that emerges when one actually looks through the Commission’s report. Strangely, the report’s conclusions seem intent to ignore anything – even earlier parts of the report – that could substantially alter the image of a "catalogue of horrors" that was probably pre-determined as the key message.

Regarding the Sisters of Mercy:

The Sisters admitted to this Religious Congregation, besides attending particularly to their own perfection, which is the principal end of all Religious Institutes, should also have in view what is the peculiar characteristic of this Congregation: i.e., the most assiduous application to the Education of poor Girls, the Visitation of the Sick and the Protection of poor Women of good character.

Some follow-up questions, Gideon. As a laywer, what do you think of this Commission's procedure, where the testimony of witnesses making accusations of horrendous endemic crime is simply accepted without due process, without cross-examination or standards of evidence, where in fact such details were actively avoided as ‘time wasting’? What do you think of a procedure that anachronistically and selectively condemns Catholic teachers for the application of corporal punishment, when such was absolutely normal for that time and place? That interprets putting students in useful trades as enslaving them? That samples 800 self-selected witnesses out of 170,000 total students, and regards their impressions as objective and representative? What do you think when this horrendously flawed procedure results in a monetary shake-down with the Catholic Church paying more and more into victim funds? Does any of that give you pause?

To reiterate, my goal here is not to whitewash. Particularly following the disastrous Second Vatican Council in ‘65, and the official entrance of liberalism into the Church, a large spate of drastically unsuitable candidates were permitted to enter the priesthood - this irresponsibility has had terrible consequences for the Church and consequently for the salvation of souls, and let me assure you that the whole debacle offends me more than it does you. But it has turned into a witch hunt, and my duty of state extends to defending the Church and its flock from further harm caused by scandal-mongering. I leave you with a final thought:

"When the representatives of a given principle prove to be unworthy of it, the criticism of them [by the subversives] extends immediately to the principle itself and is especially directed against it. Instead of acknowledging that some individuals are not at the level of the principle, and instead of requiring that they be replaced by qualified individuals, it is claimed that the principle itself is false, corrupt, or passe, and that it should be replaced with a different principle."

Whatever the crimes of certain priests and bishops, the Church itself is impeccable.

****

The thread was deleted before Gideon had time to respond. Here is what he wrote me after in a private message:

Yeah, I saw it. I was satisfied at your refusal to play apologist. I don't wish to beat up on the Church. There's nothing wrong with rejecting the sin and loving the faith.

You're right about Catholicism getting a bad rap across history. I don't know what to make of the Irish Commissions, but you're correct, cross-examination is a core due process right. It could only be MORE important when the accusers are numerous.