Written by Carlos T Mock, MD   

I had a very troubling interchange with my sister, who is a practicing a Puerto Rican Catholic in Connecticut. The conversation started because a bill in Connecticut's legislature that would remove the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse cases has sparked a fervent response from the state's Roman Catholic bishops, who released a letter to parishioners Saturday imploring them to oppose the measure. My sister is strongly opposed to the law and, as we talked, she accused The New York Times of starting a smear campaign against the Catholic Church. I pointed out to her that this was not a vendetta from the NYT against the church. The article that talked about the law in CT was written by CNN News. I even brought up an editorial from the Financial Times which stated: “The response of the Roman Catholic Church to the wave of shameful child abuse revelations engulfing it across Europe and the US is ‘hopelessly inadequate’. That is the view of Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin, who has worked courageously to bring the history of abuse in the Irish Church into the open. It is also the view of the Financial Times. Serious sexual crimes against defenseless children by priests entrusted with their care are an outrageous crime. The betrayal is deepened by a pattern of covering up for these child molesters, who were in some instances left free to keep preying on their charges. The responsibility for this goes to the top: not only of local hierarchies but to the Vatican itself.”

I tried to appeal to her motherly instincts — ”you have young children, don’t you want them protected from pedophiles?” Her answer was that: “If you go to the Bridgeport website (her parish) and look under ‘safe environments’ you will see exactly how the Connecticut church is protecting our children.”

I pointed out to her that rules have been in place for many years but that they don’t get enforced — she went ballistic: “How quickly you dismiss the efforts of others. And how harsh is your sentence. The Church is not perfect and the people in it are not either. But, from my perspective, I believe their effort is sincere. Connecticut is a very liberal state and the legislature has a slant specifically against the Catholic Church. The state has no business in meddling with the ‘sanctity’ of The Church”

I am still baffled by her response. When Catholics are willing to put the welfare and reputation of the Church ahead of their own children — does this constitute brainwashing? I am a Christian, not a Catholic — I was tortured by The Church for my sexual views. As I grew up in San Juan, I saw them abuse children in my Catholic High School and was always too afraid to talk for fear of being expelled.

When I came out as a gay adult, this same pious sister asked me to give up homosexual sex because Christ died on the cross for my sins. My mother disowned me, I’m no longer in her will. Yet, my mother married a divorced man, so she lived in adultery most of her adult life, and my sister married while pregnant. See a pattern?

Unfortunately I grew up with the Catholic Church's values, so I can only feel remorse as I watch the spectacle of the hypocrisy in which The Church finds itself embroiled. As a gay man, I strongly believe that the cover-up of child molester priests — either heterosexual or homosexual — has no place in The Church.

True, Pope Benedict last month issued an unprecedented apology in a letter to the Irish Church. I find the letter to be as hollow as the institution of The Church itself. The letter promised an investigation, it stopped substantially short of a mea culpa. Instead, it appeared to blame “secularism” for the phenomenon of child abuse. This is intellectually dishonest. The pattern of abuse was detectable in Ireland long before an identifiably secular lifestyle took hold — and when Church authority went virtually unquestioned. The Vatican is in denial, denouncing what is in their view an attempt to discredit the Church and to smear the Pope.

To put it in simple to understand words: “This is an authoritarian isolation in which Benedict and his predecessor, John Paul II, have lived, surrounded by like-minded dogmatics possessed of their infallible truth. They have rolled back the reform process set in train by the Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965. With flinty doctrinal rigidity they have shut down debate on married priests and celibacy, the ordination of women, sexual relations outside marriage and homosexuality — all issues germane to the scandal in which they are now enveloped. They expect unquestioned obedience to their authority, and in the case of these crimes, they imposed absolute secrecy and resisted co-operation with the properly constituted civil authorities. In practice, that means being accountable to no one — at least on earth.”

At first, I was puzzled by Pope Benedict’s response. Now, I think I understand. The pontiff is a globalizer. He can feel the world’s geopolitical plates shifting. The dismal reality is that the Pope does not care. If the eventual choice is one between the implosion of the church in the west and a dilution of the blind obedience he sees as an anchor of papal authority, Pope Benedict is ready to stand in the ruins. The thread that runs through all this — the reactionary dogma and the refusal to admit any complicity in the cover-ups — is a willingness to sacrifice truth to an unthinking, and futile, defense of the authority of the church. It is my condemnation for being a practicing gay against Church doctrine, and my sister’s salvation, because she confessed her premarital sex and got absolution.

Catholicism is booming in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Europeans and North Americans now number only 350m in a church of some 1.2bn. About two-thirds of Catholics live in what is the emerging world — about 400m of them in Latin America. Brazil boasts twice as many communicants as Italy. Mexico and the Philippines have larger congregations than Germany or France.

This perhaps is where Pope Benedict’s gaze is fixed. Catholics in the emerging nations, after all, have been largely untroubled by the scandal that has rocked his authority in the west. They are less inclined to challenge the pontiff’s moral absolutism and his demand for unquestioning obedience to Rome — just look at my mother and sister.

The future lies beyond the decadent materialism and moral bankruptcy of the richest societies. In the manner of a corporate executive reaping the rewards of globalization, the pontiff is gathering new recruits in the spiritual markets of the emerging world. The pews may gather dust in Europe and the US, but elsewhere — albeit for a few skeptics — the future of The Church is secure and untouched by any laws of man. If they have to sacrifice a few children, so be it!

Dr. Mock is the author of Mosaic Virus, Floricanto Press 2007 — a thriller that deals with Church’s pedophilia cover ups. His views have been published in The Chicago Tribune and many gay and lesbian periodicals. He was inducted in the Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: http://www.carlostmock.com/