Looming scandal.

A priest says to a rabbi: "I hear you're not allowed to eat bacon." 

And the rabbi says: "Yes, that's right." 

"Just between ourselves though," says the priest, "have you ever tried it?" 

"Well, I must admit," says the rabbi, "many years ago, I did taste bacon." 

"It's pretty good, isn't it?" says the priest. 

"Yes," says the rabbi, "I have to agree, it's pretty good. But tell me, priests are not allowed to have sex." 

"Yes, that's right," agrees the priest. "We're not allowed to have sex." 

"Between ourselves though," says the rabbi, "have you ever tried it?" 

"No," says the priest, "I never have." 

"That's a shame," says the rabbi, "because it's a lot better than bacon!"

Seems like a lot of our priests and bishops are doing more than eating bacon.

The other day I got sore at a friend (although she didn't know it) who seemed to be poking fun at the Catholic scandal involving active gay priests and bishops, which also includes pressuring others (including minors) into sex. On reflection I don't think she meant it as a joke on this scandal, and I was glad I kept my mouth shut. But I knew it had hit a nerve, good and hard.

I love my church and I hate to see her suffer at the hands of men whose behavior they had to know was awful. The nation has heard about Pennsylvania and now maybe New York getting legally ready to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators, justly, and one assumes that if they can take our whole church structure down with it they will consider it a job well done. I can hardly blame them for feeling that way. The Church in America has not covered itself in glory in the last 20 years.

Of course, no one ever hears about the wonderful things the Church does for others. Partly because that's expected, so it's not news; partly because of anti-Catholic, anti-Christian, or just anti-God bias among our betters in the media departments. But how can I or any of us be mad when they had a juicy scandal with real live victims who deserve justice? Whatever happens to us over this, we will have to take it.

Staunch friends tell us we will get through; that God knew all the wickedness that would follow in the Church founded on Peter, and everything is part of the plan. The Church, some say, will have to get smaller but will get better. Some would make it seem that, because God can bring good out of bad, that bad is therefore good.

I don't know if my staunch friends know what this kind of scandal does to Catholics whose faith is already shaky, to those who find the Catholic obligations onerous and would love a good reason to walk away. Smaller and better is good, but smaller to the vanishing point is gone.

Jesus promised that the gates of the Netherworld would not prevail against the Church, and surely everything from the Manicheans to the Gnostics to Islam to the Reformation to the Enlightenment to Communism to the worship of Science has tried to bring her down over the centuries. But can she survive such repeated, pervasive attacks from within? Catholic corruption is how we got Protestants in the first place.

It's so bad right now that there are conspiracy theories to explain how it happened, a popular one being how Communist Bella Dodd encouraged sexually active homosexuals (not just radicals, as she told Congress) to be planted in the U.S. Catholic church in the 1930s to purposely destroy it from within. Supposedly this was so successful that it accounts for what we're seeing now. I never buy conspiracy theories, but they always tell us something about the people who promote them.

So I have nothing good to say today, I'm afraid. I will go to church, I will support her, I will hope and pray for real faith to come forth from all this darkness and reinvigorate the Church all over the world. But I won't be happy.

As for those who caused all this, those who defied their vows of chastity -- Jesus said in Matthew 18, "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea." This is also seen in Luke 17: "Things that cause sin will inevitably occur, but woe to the person through whom they occur. It would be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he be thrown into the sea than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin."

Looks like we may need to get millstones in bulk.