Here’s an example of how ways of thinking play out in daily life that reject the concept of the natural, and therefore common sense, in favor of technological conceptions and controlled rationalized organization: one woman’s account of Catholic parish life post-Scandal. Because of the scandals resulting from episcopal protection of clerical pederasts, a group for teenaged girls and a group for 3-6 year olds weren’t allowed to meet in adjacent spaces. The older children might molest the younger ones. A woman was told that if a child came to her in tears while she was alone she should run out of the room. Better to avoid the appearance of impropriety. And so on, and on, and on.
The basic point seems to be that you can’t distinguish people and situations in a commonsensical way—that would be prejudiced and ignorant—so everyone must be treated as a threat to everyone else. And you have to have a comprehensive program that an insurance company can look at and feel happy about because it removes all risk, and that relieves the bishops and everyone else of all personal responsibility. Anything else would be irresponsible and not serious. The result, at the local level, is a compulsory obsession with remote possibilities of abuse that makes it impossible to do anything in a way that makes sense. Sounds great for the kids.
Protecting God’s Children
Oh yes, this is exactly right.
In the Archdiocese of St. Louis, the lawyerly policy teaches children not to trust men, and men not to trust children. It pretends that pederasty and SSAD have absolutely nothing to do with each other, pretends that pederasty and pedophilia are synonyms, pretends that the legal fiction “age of consent” is not fiction, and so forth. But mostly it teaches women, children and men that all men are threats, that all are equally likely to sin in this way. This is not about protecting God’s children, it is about defending the Devil’s lawsuits and obfuscating the source of the scandal. Bishop Vasa has it right.