Just Saying
Remember when homosexuals in government were regarded as a threat to national security, because they could be blackmailed by secret agents into sharing classified documents?
Well, now we know how it really works. Homosexuals can blackmail the government into keeping their activities a secret. And they don't even have to ask. A report on the Foley scandal by Gail Sheehy and Judy Bachrach, in last month's Vanity Fair, shows a Congressional leadership determined not to take action against the creepy page predator - whom everybody on the Hill, it appears, knew was gay. There were complaints and fulminations behind closed doors. but Speaker Dennis Hastert appears to have kept a lid on it.
The sordid episode reminded me, as it must have reminded you, of all those American Roman Catholic bishops who made a habit of treating priestly pederasty as an "internal matter," in the name of protecting the apparent integrity of the Church. In Poland, the same mind-set has inspired a rather extensive cover-up of clergymen who collaborated with the secret police during the Communist regime. Many of the alleged collaborators have risen in the ranks; one of them, Stanislaw Wielgus, went all the way to the top of the Polish Church. Not for long, though. He announced his resignation at what to have been his consecration.*
Polish Catholics are divided. Conservatives rationalize the collaborative acts and complain that liberals are making a fuss about nothing. Liberals, of course, are sticklers for truth and transparency. Many Catholics feel doubly betrayed by the Church, just as they did in the United States. First, you go and do something wicked, then you cover it up. Or, rather: first, an individual does something wicked, and then the institution covers it up. But the "institution" is of course a fiction; in actuality, it is other individuals - bishops - who compound the problem by taking action to protect the reputation of the organization that they lead.
Did you know that the Roman Catholic Church is the world's oldest corporation?
* Click here for a list of stories, many filed by Craig S Smith, in The New York Times.
