Jonathan Wolfman's Open Salon Blog

New York's Cardinal Dolan OK'd Cash for Child Rapists

Fri, 1 Jun 2012 06:06:53 -0400

Cardinal Dolan (center)

I must admit that I might be tempted to refuse to return calls from news outlets were I the new Cardinal of New York and word got around that when I was Archbishop of Milwaukee I'd authorized $20,000 payments to encourage rapist priests to zip up, shut up, and leave the priesthood. Cardinal Dolan, unavailable for comment is, in addition to his now shepherding our largest diocese, the current president of the US Conference of Bishops.

Numbers of sources in New York, northern New Jersey, elsewhere, including the New York Times, report that when stories about these payoffs surfaced years back in Milwaukee, the then-Archbishop said the accusations were "false, preposterous and unjust." Apparently not, for as Laurie Goodstein in Thursday's Times' writes,

"...a document unearthed during bankruptcy proceedings for the Archdioces of Milwaukee...reveals that the archdiocese did make such payments to multiple accused priests to encourage them..."

to speed up their own dismissals. Doing so in such cases allows the Church to ditch fast wayward priests from diocesan payrolls. The more typical laicazation process requires Vatican approval for each man a diocese wants gone and it simply takes much longer if the offending priest challenges the process -- thus the skids were greased with numbers of $20,000 payments.

The Milwaukee Archdiocese stated publicly on Wednesday that the payments had been made, " as a motivation" for offenders to go. This leaves the new New York Cardinal Dolan's emphatic denial, (again, when he headed the Milwaukee Archdiocese) looking at best silly.

There is a record of now-Cardinal Dolan's specific knowledge and approval of the Milwaukee payments. Ms. Goodstein writes that

"the newly revealed document is in the minutes of a meeting of the financial council of the Milwaukee archdiocese from March 7, 2003"

which then-Archbishop Dolan attended. Those minutes attest to the fact that "unassignable priests", that is, those the archdiocese itself considered to have done harm to children were as yet receiving full salaries. A shorter process for taking these men from the salary rolls was wanted because the Milwaukee Church had already lost millions to sexual abuse-related law suits. In fact, Ms. Goodstein reports, last year the Milwaukee Church filed for bankruptcy despite the money-saving scheme. Cardinal Dolan, apparently, became New York's Cardinal when his former diocese went under.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, a group that goes to bat for victims, asks this excellent question in a recent letter to the Milwaukee Church:

"In what other occupation, especially one working with families and operating schools and youth programs, is an employee given a cash bonus for raping and sexually assaulting children?"

I'd ask two more.

1. How much pain must an enormous and powerful universal institution inflict on our children by its utterly ahistoric ideological insistence that a brilliant, charismatic, just and decent thirty-three-year-old Galilean peasant Jew disdained women so deeply --

-- and that, that is what this is about --

that he died an umwed virgin and that those prepared to speak in his name must also disdain women so thoroughly that the idea of sex with them is repellent?

2. How much longer must the Church's good works be undermined and its good people sullied by policies traceable to an absolutely ahistorical apprehension of who Jewish young men were in that time and place --

-- they all married; all, unless they were severely physically or mentally ill --

-- how long will the Church allow itself to rot from within by a policy that by its very nature invites into the priesthood young men who simply have to know they're fundamentally sexually and emotionally compromised and can find social approval and honor nowhere else but in the ministry...a ministry they already know will cover for them?

_____

Note:

While it's true that the Church has not always required priestly chastity, it was an early demand even when it permitted married priests.

Council of Elvira, 305 C.E.

(Canon 33): It is decided that marriage be altogether prohibited to bishops, priests, and deacons, or to all clerics placed in the ministry, and that they keep away from their wives and not beget children; whoever does this, shall be deprived of the honor of the clerical office.

Council of Cathage, 390 C.E.

(Canon 3): It is fitting that the holy bishops and priests of God as well as the Levites, i.e. those who are in the service of the divine sacraments, observe perfect continence, so that they may obtain in all simplicity what they are asking from God; what the Apostles taught and what antiquity itself observed, let us also endeavour to keep… It pleases us all that bishop, priest and deacon, guardians of purity, abstain from conjugal intercourse with their wives, so that those who serve at the altar may keep a perfect chastity.

(in Wiki and elsewhere)

Punishing The Fraud Who Championed 'Gay Reparative Therapy'

Thu, 31 May 2012 07:05:09 -0400

^{Dr. Robert Spitzer}

I find that, somewhat to my surprise, I am in favor of demeaning, lasting punishment for people who have deliberately used their training, expertise, and position over time to bully and harm. I find, too, that I am for this even for those closer than most to life's end and even when they appear to repent. (I know I am a bad person.)

Such a one is the renown psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, now eighty. Ten years after publishing what he now admits he knew at the time was a deeply scientifically flawed effort, Dr, Spitzer has apologized for what was by many, considered a ground-breaking study of homosexual men. His fudged data -- published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, spurred on and legitimated a nationwide pseudo-scientific cottage industry for the hateful, lunatic Religious Right. Dr. Spitzer's work was nearly universally-read among practitioners. He alleged that gay men could, through concentrated psychotherapy, throw over their sexual-orientation and, were patients to work very hard at it, enjoy Better Living Through Heterosexuality.

The doctor has written an apology in the form of a letter to the editor of Archives. In it he says that, according to the New York Times, "he had no way of knowing whether the patients who said they had changed were deceiving themselves, lying, or reporting accurately." He went on to say that the claims he made were, in fact, "unproven" about what has come to be called reparative therapy.

The 'Times' reports that Dr. Spitzer's study lacked a control-group and that his subjects had largely been recommended to him by other quacks who had been engaged in this kind of faux-therapy for some time. The doctor's letter apologizes for any harm that may have, he says, resulted from his work.

That harm he caused, in fact, includes having led many to serious "depression and suicidal...behavior."

For far too many this apology sounds and is sickeningly hollow, for the fact remains that the enemies of thoroughgoing civil rights for LGBT citizens have used and continue to use Dr. Spitzer's work to justify their inane claim that gay sexual-orientation is a (poorly) chosen lifestyle and, therefore, all manner of vicious discrimination under law is justified. The 'Times' refers to Dr. Spitzer as a longtime "towering figure" in American psychiatry and that, given the man's enormous influence, was true. The tower's now crumbled yet the evil he has done continues to subvert lives.

As I've admitted, I'm a bad person: in a lesser moment I'd have no trouble referring the disgraced man, even at eighty, to the care of Lisbeth Salander, my Dragon Tatooed sweetheart, for some exquisitely permanent and painfully appropriate ink.

OPEN CALL - Two Historical Events You'd Love To Witness

Wed, 30 May 2012 07:05:57 -0400

I offered here yesterday, as an introduction to my piece on why I'd like so very much to be able to be among the companions of Jesus during the years of his public teaching and especially in the twenty years after his crucifixion, decades from which we have no historical record whatever of the Jesus Movement.

As a lead-in, I suggested six other moments in history I'd give dearly to be able to have seen unfold. They were (in brief):

. King David's bringing the Ark of the Covenant to

Jerusalem;

. At Lee's side at Gettysburg when he knew the game was

up;

. At Mount Sinai, at the giving of The Law;

. At the Omaha Beach Allied Invasion;

. At Muhammad Ali's regaining his title in Zaire; and

. With Dr. King at the Memorial in late August, 1963.

If I'd one shot only, I'd opt for being, as I say, among the companions of Jesus in the years between his murder in 33 C.E., and the years the first written works about him developed, in the '50s.

My Open Call to you, then, is simple.

Tell us, (here, please) what one or two times/places in history you'd most want to see, 'live', as it were, and why.

Thanks!

Jon

Witness: With His Companions After the Crucifixion - Jonathan Wolfman - Open Salon

Witness: With His Companions After the Crucifixion

Tue, 29 May 2012 06:05:05 -0400

There are numbers of people, places, events throughout history I'd love to have known, to have witnessed.

. I'd love to have been, for example, with Dovid Ha Melek (King David) when, it's said, he had transient possession of God's (and Indy's) Ark.

. I'd feel privileged to be able to see Gettysburg those first three July days, 1863, and then to be at General Lee's side when, after Pickett's miserably failed "charge", General Lee had to tear up his never-delivered note to Lincoln suing the president for peace on terms favorable, of course, to the slaveholders.

. I'd be honored, too, to have been at the foot of Horev (Sinai) among the 600,000 who (we're taught) witnessed the The Decalogue descending like a delicate newborn in Moshe's arms.

. A treasure would be to watch the Allies land along a northern June, '44 French coast-- think on, for a moment, witnessing Nazi lookouts' eyes pop as our massive invasion armada emerged from the thick, pre-dawn mist.

. I'd like to have been in that 1974 arena in Zaire to see Ali, the Court having overturned in '71 his ludicrous draft-evasion conviction...I'd like to have been a twenty-three-year-old watching him, cheering him as he regained his title, a title that ought never have been stripped.

. And I'd trade a great deal to have been, at twelve, at the Memorial's steps on a late August afternoon to hear "in the words of the old Negro Spiritual, 'Free At Last, Free At Last, Thank God Almighty We Are Free At Last!'"

Clearly there are hundreds if not thousands of witness-moments for which we hunger.

But most of all?

Most of all I'd want to be among that ancient, protean, mesmerizing rabbi's closest companions in the three years of his public, itinerant teaching just prior to his murder at Jerusalem and for the decade and more, immediately after they all fled upon news of his execution.

Why would I most want to be there with him and then with them?

Of the four canonized, narrative Gospels -- Mark, Matthew, Luke, John -- and five times that many additional Gospels of which the Church and scholars know...the Sayings Gospels, the Infancy Gospels, Peter's and Mary's, Thomas' Gospels, Paul's magnificent Letters, and the rest...between the crucifixion, in 33 C.E., and the first writings about Jesus in the '50s, there's a two-decade stunning chasm, a total blackout.

We have absolutely no written account of how his closest companions got on and what they did in the twenty years after the crucifixion. The earliest Gospel, Mark's, was written in the '70s. Even Paul's and Timothy's and James' letters to the fledgling Jesus-believing communities at, say, Corinth, Thessalonika, Epheseus, Rome...even the earliest of these dates to the '50s, twenty or so years after their Jesus was from them so violently cut off.

I'd like to know why the earliest written Jesus-traditions do not date to those years and what survived from those exclusively oral traditions, on into the first writings and why, and what oral traditions didn't survive, and why.

. Were the stories of his remarkable personality and extradordinary public and private performances announcing that a Kingdom of God, one of Justice that could be had in the here-and-now...were they overwhelming and so compelling that, when he was so untimely snatched from them, they were for a very long time struck emotionally mute?

. Were they savvy? This is to ask: were they controlled enough in the midst of devastating personal loss to understand that, wherever they fled...did they believe that, to avoid Rome, anything said about Jesus had to be transmitted orally only, for self- and group-protection? But that would presume they believed that Pilate understood Jesus as they did or that Pilate at least could appreciate their sense of Jesus. And yet we know that Pilate (a butcher later recalled to Rome for his over-arching cruelty)...could they have believed that Pilate saw him as more than just one of a dime-a-dozen Jewish Miracle-Men, nuisance peasant nobodies whom those governors, long before and after Pilate, routinely picked up and nailed up and particularly at Jewish festival times?

. Was no one in that first Jesus-community, the one at Jerusalem, literate? Most of his Galilean followers were almost certainly unlettered, but all, and even at Jerusalem? That's tough to believe.

And to be clear: this was the Passover Festival when masses traditionally poured into the city when Roman Procurators routinely ordered peasant irritants killed. After all, in the half century from Jesus' birth, Roman authority under numbers of Procurators at Jerusalem crucified over 50,000 in Judea -- southern Israel -- alone. That's an average of just under 20 crucifixions per week.

So, as devoted to their friend as his disciples were, could they have possibly imagined that Romans saw Jesus as they themselves had apprehended him? For them to have believed that Roman Authority saw Jesus as they saw Jesus would not have been an expression of devotion. It would have been lunacy, a negation of everything every Jewish peasant of that place and time knew about the tools of routinely brutal Greek and then Roman dismissive, uncaring colonial oppression.

So, again:

Why no record, why no record at all in the years when the Jesus-Movement at Jerusalem began first to organize in the capital and then to travel, to branch out, first among Jews and then among gentiles and then farther and farther from the Holy City?

Recall again that by the late 50s we have abundant written evidence that Paul and his companions are organizing House-Churches in communities throughout the Mediteranean and then in Rome itself and then writing to them, and, again, just twenty-some years on from Paul's work, we have 'Mark', the first canonical Gospel.

I want humans' answers; I want no magic-answers.

I want to see it, I want to be there, to light up and to penetrate those earliest dark years and to see, really understand, how and why the first Jerusalem community survived its near-decimation, its scattering after the murder and how it once again coalesced and grew.

Again, please, no religious institution-driven magic-answers will do.

I want to be there, to have known that rabbi's preterhuman charisma and his Kingdom of God Justice Program orally delivered over and over and over again, first throughout the Galilee and then south, in its repetitive, striking, illuminating Performances of Parables, of Stories, of Sayings, the very guts of his Kingdom of God Justice Program, the bases for all twenty Gospels

And then I want my own eyes to see that silence and to see beneath it. Theirs, the companions of Jesus, theirs may well be the most unlikely yet overwhelming Success Story of all un-recorded time.

-----

NOTES:

1.When the Church Definitively Authorized Four Gospels

By the start of the 5th Century, C.E., when Innocent-I was Pope, the Church became definitive about which gospels (Mark/Matthew/Luke/John) would universally be considered authorized. Prior to that, regional synods did not always agree, despite the Council of Nicea's work in 325 C.E.

2. The Historical Sequence of the Writing of the Four Authorized Gospels

Church and secular scholars now agree that Mark was the first written of the canonical (authorized) narrative gospels. They can show how Matthew and Luke relied on Mark and added/subtracted where they thought necessary. (They also agree, btw, that the writer we call Luke also wrote 'Acts'.) John's Gospel, the last written (betw 110-120 C.E.) is a fundamentally different kind of narrative. The four are presented in editions of the New Testament, however, in the order that they have been for ages, with Matthew leading off.

OPEN CALL on Wednesday:

Tomorrow I'll invite you to an Open Call, asking you to think of one or two historical events you'd dearly, if it were possible, like to witness.

NY Times Reviews My Student's Film Abt His Mental Illness

Sat, 26 May 2012 06:05:34 -0400

Still photo, Bud Clayman, at City Hall, Philadelphia, from his film, "OC87"^.

I've shared here that my former student (and Open Salon member), Bud Clayman, made an extraordinary, award-winning film about his decades-over-decades struggle to come to terms with and to overcome a complex of mental illnesses.

Bud's film, OC87, opened in New York City yesterday to terrific critical acclaim.

The film may be seen in Manhattan at the Village East Cinema.

Here are quick-takes from The Huffington Post and from National Public Radio, followed by the full New York Times review. It has garnered numbers of terrific write-ups.

(And, as I told you well back, I'm in the film...for abt two (2) full minutes -- bc after high school Bud needed a place to stay so I invited him to stay at my place and he did for a few years--. Stardom, Here I Come!)

And here's a link to my own www.talkingwriting.com interview with Bud Clayman about the film.

Bud Clayman: “An Extreme Makeover” | Talking Writing

-----

"A remarkable achievement for the filmmaker… a film of surprising intimacy." - Huffington Post

_____

"In OC87 [Clayman] represents a group of people who are rarely offered any media exposure, and he comes bearing a message of hope rather than just a sob story. He has something valuable to offer, even as we wish there were more like him on screen." - National Public Radio

You can hear the complete NPR/'All Things Considered" interview with Bud at

NPR : National Public Radio : News & Analysis, World, US, Music & Arts : NPR

-----

The film's website:

OC87: The Obsessive Compulsive Major Depression Bipolar Asperger’s Movie

-----

Movie Review

Filmmaker Puts His Mental Illness on Screen

By ANDY WEBSTER

“This is not a film about hand washing,” says Bud Clayman at the start of “OC87,” adding, “It’s a film about the fear of acting on thoughts.” Mr. Clayman has obsessive-compulsive disorder — specifically “harm O.C.D.,” which involves intense anger and violent imaginings — and Asperger’s syndrome, which inhibits the grasp of social cues. This moving, penetrating documentary records his attempt to describe his conditions, confront them and learn to manage them.

Mr. Clayman, who experienced depression in high school, studied radio, film and video production at Temple University, and moved to Los Angeles after graduation, only to suffer a breakdown. (The title comes from 1987, when he had his darkest hour, a withdrawal from human interaction.) For eight years he lived at Project Transition, a therapeutic community in Pennsylvania, to receive treatment. In “OC87” he retraces those steps, and visits his parents, psychologists, an actor on “General Hospital” with bipolar disorder, and a San Francisco news anchor with O.C.D.

“My O.C.D. tells me that I must control every thought and every action perfectly,” Mr. Clayman says.

We get vivid, subjective glimpses into his mind-set, feeling his unease as he walks down a street, his struggle in a diner to gauge the proper length of time for, say, glancing at someone. (Less attention is paid to Asperger’s; we must wait for that definitive video diary.)

On camera Mr. Clayman has a tentative and preoccupied mien, but he is persistent in reaching for self-improvement. And there is change: his squalid apartment is made over; he speed-dates; he participates (impressively) during karaoke. He also laughs, interacts, expresses gratitude and tries hard to listen closely to others. His problems often seem like agonizingly exaggerated versions of everyone’s. We can learn from his solutions.