Sad Connections

As soon as I heard the horrible news that former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky had been arrested on 40 counts of child abuse over the weekend, I thought of our own church's recent sad history.  And I wondered, how long would it take for others to make the same connection I was making in my mind.

Not long.

Here's an opinion piece from the Orlando Sentinel  http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2011-11-08/sports/os-bianchi-joe-paterno-penn-state-scandal-20111106_1_penn-state-jackie-sherrils-state-coach-joe-paterno  and one from the New York Times  http://nytimes.com/2011/11/09/sports/ncaafootball/joe-paternos-grand-experiment-meets-an-inglorious-end.html  .  Google "Joe Paterno" and "Catholic Church" together and see how many are making the connection.

Let's see, in this despicable allegory, Sandusky is the avuncular and smiling parish priest who loves and cares for kids at all hours of the day and night, Paterno is Cardinal Bernard Law who hears but does nothing, and Penn State University president Graham Spanier is the Vatican dicastery which has nothing to say about the victims but embraces the (implied falsely) accused Tim Curley, university athletic director, and Gary Schultz, university vice president for fiance and business (insert here nameless diocesan bureaucrats).  Paterno, like Cardinal Law, will have his resignation gladly received and get pushed upstairs and out of sight.  College athletics, at least big-time football and basketball, remain caught in their own form of clericalism, an undeserved entitlement because of media fame and fortune.

The comparisons are deserved, and the bad taste in my mouth doesn't go away.  Penn State's JoPa and university officers did not learn anything, anything, from what the Catholic Church went through over the past decade or more.

Yet I also can't help thinking, as this parallelism of moral miss-the-boat inaction is made, where are the "mea culpas" from media commentators and columnists, who said in 2002 that this kind of thing only happens in the Catholic Church.  Even several Vatican Cardinals were known to whisper knowingly that "this sort of thing is a peculiar American problem.  It never happens to us in Italy (or insert any other country)."  Boy has that proven to be wrong.  Sexual abuse of children, and subsequent cover ups, have occured in Canada, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Nigeria, and on and on.   And sexual abuse of children, and subsequent cover ups because of an institutional sense of entitlement, appear among political leaders, public school teachers, youth football coaches, ministers and rabbis and imams and lay leaders in all the religions, branches of the military, and on and on.  What area of institutional life is immune? 

Abuse of children is a human problem and sin, not merely a problem of the Catholic Church or religious leaders.  When will our society learn this?

I believe that the Catholic Church's leadership in the United States does "get it."  Our institutional church has made huge strides to protect children, young people and vulnerable adults.  Our vigilance has also highlighted the occasional (and terrible) lapses, such as in Kansas City and Philadelphia.  I believe that Pope Benedict XVI gets it too.  His meetings with victims in recent overseas trips are serious and sincere.

Clearly the NCAA and football-university complex doesn't get it.  A fine institution of higher learning learned nothing from the past sins of the Catholic Church.