Civil Commotion

As everyone doubtless knows by now, Senator John McCain died yesterday. He was 81.

My own feelings about McCain are more complicated than the unstinting praise now raining down on his memory. I admired the John McCain of the 2000 campaign — his Straight Talk Express days — and voted for him. I was shocked by his choice of the painfully stupid Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008, and voted against him. I applauded his emergence as a voice for sane Republicanism in 2016 as Trump recreated the party in his own soiled image.

I do wish there were more men like John McCain in the Republican Party today.

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, I naturally turned to the church for solace. But on the following Sunday, to my surprise, none of the church leaders at Mass acknowledged what had just happened. I was deflated and left feeling empty. Soon after, the sexual abuse scandal erupted.

Naka Nathaniel

In a long piece written by a Catholic who is now a ‘done’ thanks to the sexual abuse scandals (do go read the whole thing), this is the passage that leapt out at me — I suppose because I had a similar experience the Sunday after 9/11.

I was a reluctant churchgoer even as a kid, and never went as an adult until my wife insisted upon dragging me there. It was supposed to have something to do with a wholesome environment for our son, and good playmates, et cetera, et cetera. It’s a good example of how even garish lies can be perpetuated by marketing that’s embedded in the culture itself.

The day of the attack, I called the local church we attended and asked whether the SBC was mounting any sort of relief assistance — maybe a blood drive, at least? A clothing bank? Housing assistance? No.

And even though the parking lot was fuller the next Sunday than it had even been before, or has ever been since, the pastor noted merely in passing that he was certain the attackers would face judgment in the afterlife — and that was it. I don’t recall what the sermon was otherwise about, but it was definitely from notes he prepared before the attack, or downloaded from some Web site somewhere.

I was born skeptical and have never for an instant been a believer, but the inadequacy of that pastor’s response is when I began to realize how much of the work of the clergy is mere rote, and how utterly incompetent so many of them are when summoned to respond to the unfamiliar.

There is an old law of politics that says you should keep your mouth shut when the other side is self-destructing, and for that reason I’ve said nothing about the Pennsylvania grand jury report which found that 300-some priests sexually abused more than 1000-children over the course of decades, and that the church systematically covered it up.

Some random thoughts, in no particular order.

• The Catholic Church’s sex abuse problem has been front page news for almost 2-decades, and has been whispered about for centuries. Recall that St. Peter Damian wrote The Book of Gomorrah w-a-a-a-y back in the 11^th-century. (Nominally, Damian’s work is a protest against homosexuality among priests, but documents extensive and non-consensual pederasty.)

  Consequently, I’m torn between pity for those whose infantile view of reality was rocked by the report — and contempt. How is it even possible that anybody, anywhere, is surprised?

• Forget about the church reforming itself; that won’t happen. The church couldn’t even stop burning heretics at the stake by itself.

• The 1^st-century church was a cult, and the New Testament is the literature of a cult — and it sanctions the cover-ups; it is Christian to protect the church first, and to worry about the children later. (Just as, according to Albert the Pious, it is Christian to put the church first and give your family the leftovers.)

  This is repellent and deserves only contempt – but you simply cannot deny the Christian teaching about these matters.

• Honor the plain, unambiguous intent of the Founders and take away the privileged tax status that churches enjoy.

  Today, all of us subsidize the drafty empty churches; the swift transfers to another parish or, even, country; the pious mewlings about prayers for the victims. All of those things are made possible by money surreptitiously taken from your pocket.

• The Godly folk are not ‘better’ people, and the Catholic Church ought to be hit with some RICO charges.

The Donald issued this tweet, a magical incantation, at about 1:00 AM today:

The last tweet before this one was two hours earlier, at about 11:00 PM last night, and concerned South Africa.

I’m reminded of Nixon’s last days in the White House, when he was walking the halls at night, in the dark, talking to presidential portraits — and tweets like this are sound reason to wonder if Trump is cracking-up.

Do your duty, Congress.