JOHN JAY RESPONSES

I had mentioned in the main text of my previous Post that there were going to be a number of ‘interests’ who would not be pleased by the Report. I put this text up as 'Addendum 3' at the bottom of that Post, but I am also putting it here now as a free-standing Post.

On the ‘Revealer’ site, a religious-opinion site of a Lefty lean, under the heading of ‘Timeless’ on the home-page, you can access several articles that indicate one major group that is verrrrry unhappy indeed.

In these articles, especially the one by Frances Kissling, former President of ‘Catholics for Choice’ and now a Visiting Scholar somewhere, it becomes clear that the cause of feminism within the Catholic Church is not well-served by the Report at all.

Among the points in hers and the other articles in the mini-series on the Revealer site, the Jay Report is tainted because it was paid-for by the Bishops (although one writer tries to pooh-pooh the government’s fiscal contribution because the government “has no interest in the outcome” – whereas the Bishops had hired John Jay to do a whitewash); the researchers are simply the hired-flunkies of the Bishops. Why the government would pay anything for a Report in which it had no interest is a question the writer doesn’t bother to address.

And that the whole problem is not really one of priests and ‘sex’, but rather of “hierarchy and patriarchy”. And that comment should indicate that there is a powerful organized ‘interest’ for whom the Catholic sex-abuse issue has been a chunk of beisbol that not only been bery bery good to them but also provided a hefty bat with which to flail the Church in the service of their agenda’s demands. A bat – a weapon – that the Report now threatens to take away.

Because the only “real reform” is that women be ordained as priests (and consecrated as bishops, I imagine, will be the next thing). Or – as one writer puts it as a “concession on a single issue” – the Church must yield its position on “celibacy requirements, the ban on birth control, the ban on women as priests”. You can see what this ‘interest’ is looking for here.

It ties all this into the ‘sex abuse’ crisis because really it’s not actually about ‘sex’ at all, but about “power and dominance” by a patriarchy that is also (for red-blooded American lovers of democracy) a  “top-down hierarchy and an absolute monarchy”. And therefore, deploying all the classic “rape-as-power” tropes (although very few of the cases involved actual rape), the articles seek to establish that the only “real reform” (as opposed to the piddling oversight Boards and such that are now in place) is for the full feminist agenda to be accepted by the Church forthwith. Only THAT would indicate that the Church is acting “in good faith”. That the Church has more sex-abuse prevention safeguards and oversight in place than probably any other organization in the country doesn’t seem to count for anything with these writers. In fact, it should be seen, they say, as pretty much just  ‘window-dressing’ and part of an ongoing “process” to “protect the image of the American bishops”.

And who can forget Lenin’s absolute opposition to the workers’ “trade unionism” because ‘reforming’ the system would do nothing; only utter ‘revolution’ (according to Lenin’s vision of it, and nobody else’s was to be allowed) would be an acceptable outcome for Russia and its workers and peasants.

But no – the sex abuse crisis will continue as long as “male” abuse of hierarchical power is allowed to continue. So therefore only the full feminist agenda for the Church can be acceptable as the Correct solution to the still-present-tense “crisis”.

Even more amazingly, one author goes as far as to say that IF ONLY the Church would make that “concession on a single issue” mentioned above, then the Church would be treated much more kindly in the press because of its “good faith”. The writer seems to realize – as I have been mentioning as well – that there are dynamics linking the sustained media-attention and the agendas of various politically influential advocacy ‘interests’; and that if you do what it wants you to do, the media will lay off. As my aged grandmother used to say: At least Jesse James had a gun; you KNEW when you were being held-up. The Capone organization would also use such a quid-pro-quo offer to get you to see things their way; you were advised not to refuse their offer.

There is only modest reference to the actual numbers of cases and so forth that the Report rather exhaustively toted up and explains. Indeed, making the best of unpleasant ‘facts’ (which, famously, “don’t matter” in advocacy circles – especially if they don’t support your agenda), the Report is pooh-poohed as “number-crunching”. It’s not a matter of what is actually happening, in other words; the advocates are out to “disintegrate a paradigm” here, and so – channeling Lenin – inconvenient facts and numbers shouldn’t be allowed to obstruct the Glorious Cause.

In regard to the conclusion, based on the actual reports and numbers, that the abuse-crisis as a crisis is now a matter of “historical” significance but no longer a major emergency, there is the now-standard cry – echoing a certain US military organization’s favorite come-back – that the Church and John Jay should “tell it to the survivors” (who, of course, must be considered as always telling the truth and as having no “mercenary interest” in bringing lawsuits – although so often the huge sums garnered in ‘settlements’ are also bruited as proof-positive that terrible things happened).

I can’t imagine that on top of its own doctrinal concerns, the leadership of the Universal Church hasn’t noticed that American women-in-power have now amassed a not particularly spotless record of awfulness: Janet Reno’s violent destruction of the Waco complex and all its women and children in order to “save the children”; Madeleine Albright’s observation that a rather large number of collateral losses to civilians (women and children included) would be “acceptable” to effect ‘regime change’; Hillary Clinton’s ongoing support of the frakkulently death-dealing military misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan (where those benighted populations will continue to be ‘helped’ with military occupation until the full ‘womens’ agenda is accepted; and the several highly-placed females in the World Health Organization who have colluded with Big Pharma in foisting lethally dangerous drugs on the populations of developing nations. The feminist dampdream of matriarchal power as “benevolent” seems not to be quite the Utopia that its cadres like to spin. The Church might wonder if it’s wise to invite that vampire (Vampiress? Vampirix?) through the front door.

Although it is none-too-subtly suggested that to do so would no doubt help increase the numbers of Catholics, who are reportedly abandoning the Church (although whether because of the sex-abuse crisis, or ‘patriarchy’, or as the consequence of a general societal infatuation with more vivid and extreme religious affiliations … is a question apparently too inconvenient to deal with). As if the Catholic Church was primarily concerned with ‘keeping numbers up’ and conforming itself in whatever ways necessary to keep up the membership – which has led the mainstream American Protestant denominations into the Correct Valley of Decline and Irrelevance.

I mention all this to the SO Community to highlight how the SO Mania can be used – and is being used – for the purposes of groups that are not primarily concerned with anything except finding pretexts for their own agendas.