Waiting for Godot to Leave

About this time last year, I wrote about folks who Can't Care, Don't Care, or Won't Care, and I bragged about how I take my business ventures less personally than I used to. Well, that was a hollow boast. I take everything personally. I don't think there's any other way to be an artist, a poet, an actor, a writer - or to live life in an engaged and engaging way.  I really don't think there's any other way to be an authentic Christian and to avoid the trap of Unreality in our daily lives and in our worship. Thus, life usually hurts.  And anything to do with the Church - or even with my fellow Catholics - really really hurts, because hypocrisy abounds, in my heart and in theirs.  For part of the sting is realizing how many people fit into the aforementioned DON'T CARE category - even when it comes to loving God and their neighbor.  And so, it's the same old story.  There are lots of folks around who make a show of their faith, but who ...

Today, I spent lunch with my friend and Theater of the Word actor Dave Treadway of Steward Media  and I was on a tear, complaining about many things, especially this.  "Dave," I said, "I used to think the liberals in the Church caused all the trouble, until I met the conservatives in the Church.  Now I'm getting used to rampant hypocrisy on both sides of the spectrum, from left to right - Catholics who are as bad as I am and worse, regardless of the number of devotions or novenas they pray.  I am hurt by, but used to, leftist Catholics who ignore Church teaching and right-wing Catholics who despise the Catechism.  I am used to, but hurt by, bad liberal bishops and bad conservative bishops.  I am used to, but hurt by, my own infernal sinfulness, which keeps rearing its ugly head again and again. "But what really bothers me at a fundamental level is how many conservative Catholics there are who are making excuses for rape and child abuse...

From the combox at my post Making Room for Evil  ... Anonymous said... [Quoting me] "pederasty is a sub-set of pedophilia" No, it's not. And I notice in your example of "comparing" child abuse, you couldn't actually bring yourself to present a true comparison between pederasty and pedophilia. Were you afraid they'd agree one was worse than the other? September 12, 2012 8:43 PM Kevin O'Brien said... ... of course pederasty is a subset of pedophilia. They are equally evil. What the hell is the matter with you? September 13, 2012 4:43 AM Anonymous said... Statutory rape isn't necessarily the same thing [as " legitimate rape "], even if it's bad. Put it this way: A guy in his 20s wants to have sex with a 16-year-old girl who is physically an adult in every possible way. A guy in his 20s wants to have sex with a 7-year-old boy. Those are both the same thing to you? Surely not. September 13, 2012 12:...

Father Z. has written a rather lame post in defense of Kansas City Bishop Finn , (more accurately, a post attacking Finn's critics).  Bishop Finn, for those who haven't been following, enabled a child pornographer priest to continue to victimize children by taking pornographic pictures of them, refused to call police, helped destroy evidence in the case, and spent $1.4 million of money from Catholic Schools and Parishes to defend himself from related misdemeanor charges that carried no serious chance of jail time and no real financial fines.   Read my many posts in which I go into detail on this .  Or read the facts of the case, unfiltered by the "liberal anti-Catholic media" (which, apparently, includes orthodox pro-life anti-contraception anti-Obama Catholics like me) - read the documented facts of the case  here or here . Mistaken as Fr. Z's post is, it gets worse: Father Z. is censoring out commenters who disagree with him...

Rod Dreher at the American Conservative writes a powerful piece about NCR's firing of the reporter who interviewed Fr. Groeschel. Rod points out ... People who run churches and church organizations often don’t understand what communications (journalism, filmmaking, etc.) is. They think it’s all supposed to be publicity, and so they guarantee mediocrity, and ultimately the discouragement of talented people — artists and journalists — who have good and useful talents to give to the whole church. Exactly.  This attitude propogates what I call The Catholic Ghetto .  Or, as a friend of mine recently said, "Christian movies are like porn.  The lighting's bad, the acting's bad, and you know how it's gonna end." Rod's article is worth a read.

Content Warning: I get a bit graphic in my last paragraph in bold below.  Readers may wish to skip it, especially victims of abuse.  I'm trying to point out what this crime really consists of.  Sometimes the language needs to match the act so those who don't understand start to get a clue. *** Thanks to those of you who offered me support via email and Facebook and elsewhere, regarding my Rant of Pain .  What steams me the most is how otherwise good Catholics say things like this - what a Catholic writer and fellow blogger said below (from a combox, directed at me and my position on child abuse, which I go into in my post What Rape Is ) Just to clarify--again. (1)There is a distinction between pedophilia and pederasty. The distinction exists for a reason and shouldn't be disregarded in order to indulge one's emotional outrage. (2)There is also a distinction between forcible and statutory rape (ask a victim of forcible about that.) (3)And yes, ...

OK, I'm going to get this out of my system. Members of my immediate family have been victimized by sexual abuse.  I can tell you personally of the pain it causes.  I can tell you that when an otherwise good Catholic that I will not identify writes a blog post in which she argues that if an adult has sex with, say, a fourteen year old it's not CHILD ABUSE because teens are sexual creatures and when priests have sex with them (she argues in so many words) it's because the kids want it - I want to scream. When one of the best men I know is thrown into a dark night of the soul, into drinking and weeping over Bishop Finn enabling CHILD ABUSE and members of Finn's Opus Dei prelature covering up, lying, and making excuses for him and belittling the severity of this abuse - I want to get drunk and weep a bit myself. When commenters here and elsewhere on the blogosphere are defending Fr. Groeschel's indefensible defense of abusers, which consisted of blaming the v...

Bill Donohue and others are claiming the pictures Fr. Ratigan took were not pornographic.  If they were not pornographic, why was Fr. Ratigan convicted of child pornography?  Are pictures of the naked vagina of a two-year old girl not pornographic?  Are pictures taken with a spy camera up the skirt of a sixth grader at her birthday party not pornographic?  Donohue should be ashamed of himself. Bishop Finn clearly did not serve the people of his diocese; he let a dangerous priest have access to children without warning any of the children or their families.  But one of the people poorly served by Bishop Finn was the priest himself.   Fr. Ratigan is discovered to have taken hundreds of pornographic pictures of little girls at his parish, claims that he hugs them "to help them get to heaven", tries to kill himself, and is sent not to regular counseling with a professional therapist - but to a hand-picked fellow member of Opus Dei, a marriage counse...

As I had suspected, the spin is being put on Bishop Finn's conviction.  The Catholic League's Bill Donohue and others are doing a grave disservice to the Church by making excuses for the inexcusable. For the truth - the truth presented in court - Read this document .  It is the stipulation of testimony in this case. It contains the facts that both sides agreed to.  It shows, without a doubt, that Bishop Finn is not fit to be running a diocese. It shows that the photos in question were clearly pornographic and that Bishop Finn was not at all concerned for the victims involved, and that he was angry that the police were contacted at all - much less six months after the photographs were discovered.  It shows that Bishop Finn knew that Fr. Ratigan continued to ignore the restraints placed upon him, and that he knew Fr. Ratigan continued to be a threat to children (on Easter Sunday Fr. Ratigan visited a family of parishioners and "was caught taking photographs, ...

There's something about Christ and how we fail Him that we can learn from Kansas City / St. Joseph Bishop Finn. Here's what Bishop Finn did  - He was informed by letter by a Catholic School Principal at St. Patrick's Parish in Kansas City that parents and teachers were concerned about the behavior of their pastor, Fr. Ratigan, who was trying to spend time alone with students, who insisted on giving a little girl a massage at a church event, who was taking a lot of pictures of  little girls, and in whose garden a pair of little girl's underwear was discovered.  Bishop Finn ignored the letter. A year later, a computer technician finds hundreds of photos on Fr. Ratigan's computer - photos of little girl students at the parish school, and one of a sleeping two year old, with her diaper moved to the side to reveal her genitalia - all taken by Fr. Ratigan.  In fact, the photos of the students were taken surreptitiously on the playground, at the cafe...

See the report here. See my take on this and other Church sex scandals here.

Let's chase from every single parish Hell and sin and Holy Fear Let's make our architecture garish. Let's chase from every single parish God almighty. Then let's cherish Moods and feelings, vague, unclear - Let's chase from every single parish Hell and sin and Holy Fear

More from my secret diary, names still changed to protect reality ... November 4, 2005 On tour with my actress Vickie , who is very innocent, but also quite vain. She told me a repulsive story about her faith in this woman who claims to have raised a million dollars to produce a movie that this woman has written and that this woman is going to star in. Vickie has been keeping in touch with her for two years, and has recently offered to suck butt to get a role in the picture. “She told me she’s not sure there’s a role for me in the film, but there might be a small one. I told her I was willing to do anything to help her, anything at all. I said, ‘You’ll need a personal assistant to run errands for you and help you arrange things and help you on set. I’ll be glad to do all that for you,’ and she said that definitely sounds like a possibility!!! ’” Later, sitting at lunch with Vickie and listening to her talk about her pipe dreams regarding s...

Apparently, Fr. West of Human Life International is launching a full-scale obsessive-compulsive assault on Mark Shea via Twitter and Facebook.  I won't link to it.  It's filled with half-truths and personal attacks on one of the best Catholics I've ever had the privilege to know. This is phase two of the Demagogue, and it's a damn shame that it's coming from a cleric in the Church.  Begin with tolerance for a relatively benign and certainly well-intentioned and even somewhat fun demagoguery (like that of Michael Voris) and proceed on to a mean-spirited hate campaign designed to destroy.  Phase One leads to Phase Two. Let us pray for all involved. Human Life International has had its problems in the past - particularly with Fr. Euteneuer, who went unhinged and whom they made no attempt to reign in.  If they do nothing to corral Fr. West, that will tell us everything we need to know about the integrity of that organization.