I have come to the conclusion that the intense criticism of the Holy Father by the secular media is motivated primarily not because of any role of his in the sexual abuse scandals but because the critics want to reduce the effectiveness of his teaching in the world. For people like Sinead O’Connor (the Irish singer), Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins (the militant atheists), Hans Kung (the perennial dissident theologian), the editors of the New York Times and Der Spiegel (the German magazine) and others like-minded people who have called for the pope’s removal or resignation, the abuse scandal is a convenient pretext to try to get rid of Pope Benedict XVI and his teaching. I have said this before: the sexual abuse by priests is a terrible scandal for the church. But Pope Benedict XVI is not a source of the problem; rather he has done more to counteract the scandal than anyone else in the church.
Unbiased reading of the record suggests that the problem is many times worse in public schools of our country and in various youth groups. An Associated Press report a few years ago noted that between 2001 and 2005 some 2,570 educators had their teaching credentials revoked, denied, or sanctioned because of sexual misconduct. These were the ones who were reported. And it is said that the most dangerous place of all for abuse is in homes, especially where there is a foster-father or boyfriends of the mother. Noting this, however, does not mean that we excuse in any way the failures of priests. But most of the abuses cited in the news took place decades ago. Last year in the United States only six new cases of abuse were considered plausible (from among the 40,000 priests serving in the United States). Even one failure, or course, is too many.
But to come back to my main point. The secular world is trying to use the abuse scandal as a way of discrediting the teaching of the church and the pope, the strongest voice in the world on behalf of moral truth. The pope continues to express the teaching that abortion is wrong, that condoms are not the answer to AIDS in Africa (or elsewhere), that the homosexual life-style is sinful, that same sex “marriages” are not true marriages, that laboratory procreation is not God’s plan for the human race, that embryonic stem cell research is immoral and that sex before marriage is not right. Look at these issues and you will see the current agenda of the secular world. Anyone in opposition must be side-lined and silenced.
I was reminded of all of this during the past week by an essay written by the eminent bioethicist Wesley J. Smith. He reported on an article in the winter issue of the Lahey Clinical Journal of Medical Ethics. A transplant surgeon, Dr. Paul Morrissey proposed in this Journal that kidneys from brain-injured patients ought to be removed before death in order to have the organs in good condition. Morrissey argues that it would be a better procedure to wheel a brain-damaged patient on life support into an operating room, remove the kidneys and then return the patient to the Intensive Care Unit to suffer cardiac arrest and to officially die. Currently an organ donor must be first pronounced dead and then only after that can he or she be brought to the operating room for removal of organs. The new proposal reverses the process: “First take the kidneys and then remove the life support,” explains Smith.
Dr. Morrissey argues that the patient is going to die anyway, so why not facilitate the organ removal process. What is the harm in that? There is plenty of harm in that. The proposal would allow doctors to legally kill their patients. The role of a physician is to heal not kill. Furthermore records show that some patients when life support is withdrawn continue to breathe on their own and are eventually discharged from the hospital. In one survey it was 13 percent of the cases.
My point is this: who will continue to speak out against proposals such as these besides the Catholic Church? There will be others, yes, but often it is the pope and the church whose voices are loudest and strongest. And because of that we hear the cries that the Holy Father should resign or be arrested in Britain this summer and brought to trial before the United Nations for crimes against humanity. That will not happen, of course. (It would be a crime against humanity to do so!) We Catholics must not be intimidated by the secular world seeking to impose its own moral agenda upon us.
Father John Leies, SM, STD, is president emeritus of St. Mary’s University and was formerly head of the Theology Department there.