In her column at the Washington Post Megan McArdle echoes the sentiments I expressed yesterday about the report of sexual abuse of children and teens by Catholic priests in Pennsylvania:
According to news reports, the church hierarchy in Pennsylvania and beyond has already denied Christ’s gospel three times: once when it sheltered predators in silence; once when it failed to remove everyone who was involved in covering up any crime; and again when two of the six dioceses involved tried to shut down the grand jury investigation that produced the report. Now they face the same choice Peter did.
They can offer the full record of faithlessness in abject penitence, witnessing for repentance and redemption even at risk of martyrdom. Or they can deny Him a fourth time by minimizing the past and protecting those who helped maintain that grisly silence. Which is to say, they can choose to be a millstone around the neck of the faithful — or the rock on which the church can be rebuilt.
I wish she were a little more careful in her diction. I do not approve of the actions of these rapists but my influence over them is limited. They are not the Church. They are merely the Church hierarchy. And, as she notes, they are unshriven.
They aren’t “unshriven” in the sense of “not having heard confessions.” But they do deserve severe punishment of their fictional god, and the church members are totally responsible for supporting the doctrines of the Catholic Church. The Old Testament god would strike down them and their children and children’s children:
In 1 Samuel 15:2-3, God commanded Saul and the Israelites, “This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.'”