c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Eugene Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic Church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago and author most recently of”My Brother Joseph, published by St. Martin Press.)

UNDATED _ Nothing brings out the brave moralist in American observers as much as a safe and vulnerable target.

A critic attacking Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker, who recently made headlines with controversial comments on racial minorities and immigrants, is not exactly Hemingway squinting into his rifle sight while a rhino thunders toward him.

Rhetorically shooting Rocker resembles more being on an African safari with a camera instead of a gun, peering out of a Range Rover from a safe distance at a slow moving and decidedly dumb creature. This opportunistic high moralism suddenly affected by sportswriters is more embarrassing to them than to the beleaguered big leaguer, John Rocker.

Aside from the fact that Rocker makes his living by throwing a ball, that he is fundamentally an outdoor entertainer rather than a philosopher, the sportswriters have been generous in”godding up,”as a sports magazine editor once described how interviewers are encouraged to make athletes seem divine. They have canonized more people than Pope John Paul II, who holds the record for naming saints in the Catholic Church.

Rocker was, let’s face it, ambushed by a sportswriter who did not expect to get profound sociological insights out of him. Now many of his colleagues are signing on to Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig’s edict that Rocker receive psychological testing and treatment to rid himself of what he characterizes as unacceptable racism and insensitivity to certain minority groups.

A distinguished New York columnist has suggested that whole teams should be subjected to psychological treatment to clean up their racist, homophobic and other problems.

As a licensed psychologist, I am qualified to note that therapy is not like a prison sentence, a punishment or a cure to be prescribed by authorities from the outside. Therapy is an opportunity for human beings to examine their lives but they must enter it for and by themselves if it is to be helpful for them. Psychotherapy as corrective socialization _ to change people’s thinking _ is a function of a totalitarian state.

But perhaps it is over such a state that Selig thinks he presides. He has been a Major League owner and served as acting commissioner for years while still running his Milwaukee franchise. Car dealer Selig is a man with a major conflict of interest. He is what the other owners wanted after they railroaded the eminently ethical Fay Vincent out of that office.

How many sportswriters have taken a hard look at this arrangement, ripe to rotting with appearances of being morally and ethically questionable? Should they recommend therapy for the entire phalanx of owners, including Selig, for supporting such a self-serving arrangement?

The same New York Times that contained the column advocating group therapy for the Atlanta Braves also included a news story about the exhibition”Sensation”whose dung-specked Virgin offended many Catholics. The museum’s director, Arnold Lehman had”solicited hundreds of thousands of dollars from individuals and companies that have a direct commercial stake in `Sensation’ art.”He also concealed Mr. (Charles) Saatchi’s $160,000 donation from the public while giving him a central role in shaping the show’s artistic content.”Saatchi put his own art on exhibit, enhancing its value. Has anybody called for therapy for any of this low-minded behavior of these alleged high-brows at the Brooklyn Museum?

In the business section, we are introduced to a young essayist for TIME magazine, 28-year-old Joel Stein who writes about”Dog feces. Hairy body parts. Drunken sex with cousins.”In interviewing a young actress, we are told, he asked questions only about her body, asking,”(w)hat else do you want to know about Jennifer Lopez?” The editor likes him and nobody minds that his men’s-room-wall style of writing may be so offensive that, if he pitched for the Yankees, he would be in Bellevue by now.

Still, he looks pretty good compared to Teddy Field, the Marshall Field heir, who is celebrated in the same newspaper for throwing parties that gratify the Male Sexual Predator.”Is there no place left where 40-something men can pursue women young enough to be their daughters, the age difference overcome by the size of their portfolios? The answer is yes _ at a Ted Field party.”Whatever Field is pitching, nobody seems to think he needs therapy for underwriting sexual harassment on a grand scale.

All Rocker really needs is to have his mouth washed out with soap. He’s just a big unsophisticated kid taken in by bright lights and big time reporters. But not even a complete bath, nor a visit to Lourdes, would clean up the rest of these observers, participants and perpetrators of low vulgarity.

DEA END KENNEDY