April 2002 Cover
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Sucking for dollars
By
Mitzel
Does this happen in other churches?" A friend asked me this question; the "this" referred to the revelations in the Boston area and elsewhere that a number of Roman Catholic priests have acknowledged sex with young
men in their parishes, activities called "abuse." Also alleged is a cover-up by our local Cardinal said to have known about the "abuse," authorized making settlements with the complainants and assigning the same priests to
new parishes. The local press has gone wild with this Church-"abuse" story. It has turned into a full-fledged witchhunt with all the attendant attributes you find in witchhunts the bandying about of names, the disregard for
legal procedures, etc. The Cardinal's representatives turned over dozens of names to the local prosecutor. One ex-priest was given a 10-year prison sentence for touching the butt of a lad he was lifting out of a swimming pool
in public. Ten years for touching butt! One friend explained: "Oh, he didn't get the 10 years for touching butt they wanted to convict him for everything else he's done!" Maybe so, but the legal system, as fucked-up as it
is, isn't supposed to be like the Academy Awards failing to give Bette Davis the award the one year she earned it and instead giving it to her later for a lesser effort. This morning's rag reports that the Archdiocese will pay
$20 million to "retire the claims of 86 people alleging molestation by a single priest." Now, let us assume that each person undoubtedly male persons was "molested" by the priest once. That works out to $232,558.14
per incident.
What is this "sexual abuse"? What is this molestation? Is it groping? Sexual fondling? Jacking off? Sucking off the altar boys? Bum-fucking the parish baseball team? I have no idea. I was not raised in the
Catholic culture and this is all a great mystery to me. I asked two men slightly older than I am, who did grow up in a local Catholic parish, and one said: "What's the big deal? When I was a kid, on Saturday you'd go see the priest
and get your blow job." I presume most sexual contact is oral with maybe some hand jobs thrown in for diversity, but, again, since the "news" agencies don't bulletin this news, how will I ever learn? So, the church puts the
price of $232Gs per blow job is this the price for the sex? The alleged "abuse"? The "on-going" "victimization"? And the state railroads you to the slammer for 10 years for grabbing butt. It's refreshing to see the guidelines for
the new panic.
Some things have not been mentioned in the hurricane. First off, the drama seems to involve mostly Irish-American priests, at least here in Boston. Not the Italians. Not the Portuguese. Not the French. Does this
mean that sexual behaviors among the Irish clergy are different from their other ethnic brothers? I doubt it. Are the other ethnic groups more accepting of homosexual behaviors, even by priests with their male parishioners? I
don't know, but I suspect yes. I also suspect that this sex with teenaged boys has long been a tradition in the RCC I always simply assumed it was a perk of the work. So why is this latest witchhunt happening? What was
the triggering event? I have read that the Vatican has weighed on in the issue, with its typical pachyderm daintiness. The Pope's flunky put out the line that it's not the church's problem, it's the faggot priests who have
sneaked into the clergy. The line has been picked up by the Vatican's apologists, including a local loud-mouth Irish homophobe columnist who, suddenly, has become an expert on the difference between pedophilia and
ephebophilia (most of the priests in the press stories, those accused of sex with teen males, are wrongly called "pedophile priests"). Does the Vatican want to rid its church of gay priests? Are the straight men crowding the
seminaries, waiting to take over? Charley Shively once noted that if the faggots and the women left the Catholic Church, it would promptly collapse, which it may anyway, what with its pay-outs of a quarter million a blow job!
One person noted that this outrage against the church, especially from the Irish quarter, indicates that the immigrant mentality is gone, that Catholics finally see themselves in fact are! assimilated and no longer live
in fear of the church, its priests, and its power. If this is true, it only testifies to the fact that many Catholics have lived with a bitter resentment for some, clearly, a hatred of the church and the behaviors of its hierarchy
and priesthood. Is this current panic the church's Night Of The Long Knives?
What I find most pathetic is the parade of adult men some in their 30s and 40s coming forward as "victims," presumably the recipient of the blow jobs. One guy was in the rags, said he had been groped by a
priest who was his wrestling coach at a local Catholic high school. Excuse me, but isn't wrestling all about groping? Looking at this pathetic line-up of whiners victims of a blow-job indeed! you have to wonder. Why in
the world have these men come forward years decades! later? Is it time to Get The Priests? Do some smell money ("Honey, we'll put the Papal Titian in the kitchen!")? My goodness, paying a quarter mil a blow job,
the Roman Catholic Church in America just may turn out to be the Enron of Religion!
Where will this panic end? Will the church change? Should I care? One friend of mine, with a general contempt for all religious experiences as a result of his Roman Catholic upbringing, told me perhaps influenced
by post 9/11 popular prejudice: "Don't even bother following the scandal. The Catholics, they're just the Muslims of the Christian world!"
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