c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) L’affaire Foley _ and the who-knew-what-when about his messages of adolescent longing to congressional pages _ has ignited a firestorm of righteous indignation. This comes mostly from politicians and pundits for whom this reaction is more a weapon than an expression of true moral concern.

Ethical concern inside Washington’s Beltway has always been as broad and shallow as the watery Everglades in Foley’s native Florida; it is usually drained right after Election Day. Once this issue has been used up for or against either political party, one wonders whether the pages’ parents will be the only ones still interested in protecting them from unlawful search and seizure of their intimate lives by members of Congress.

America’s Catholic bishops can thank Congress for the not-exactly smooth manner in which it has refereed these seduction games played against trusting youths by the not-exactly adult men they trusted. You can’t really compare the two situations, since the furor in Congress concerns one member, not the thousands involved in clerical sex abuse. It doesn’t make the bishops’ dealings with sex abusers look good, but it helps us to understand their reactions.

Congress may represent a democracy but it still operates, as the bishops do, as a classic hierarchical institution. The most obvious common denominator for bishops and members of congress is their shared sense of privilege. Their reserved parking places and A-list invitations help explain their identification with the man in the Gospel who prayed, “Thank God I am not like the rest of men.”

That New Testament character was, of course, a hypocrite. The original meaning of hypocrite is “one who speaks words written by another.” That is another point of resemblance for members of Congress and bishops. When they get into a crisis, they speak the words prepared for them by public relations aides whose interest is not so much to separate truth from falsehood but to protect the hierarchical institution from loss.

Leaders in both church and state feel, as Winston Churchill once vainly said of the British Empire, that they are not in power to preside over the dissolution of the institution entrusted to their care. It is never “women and children first” when a Titanic like the Church or Congress grazes an iceberg. Hierarchs are the ones who wear the lifejackets and they never stray far from a lifeboat. Their instincts are to preserve themselves and their power _ and the structure that is the source of that power.

The bishops want to be pastors, just as the members of Congress want to be public servants. They override these good intentions with the acquired hierarchical sense that their destiny is to govern and save a vast establishment from harm. They do not want to see young people endangered, but they honestly feel they protect the latter’s interests best by protecting their own interests first.

Congress helps us understand how the bishops reacted _ not out of bad will, but as men who attained their status by giving themselves to a system whose property, power and privilege they feel they must preserve.

The most important group in these situations is not the bishops or the members of Congress, but the ordinary men and women who keep the world turning.

Despite the expectations of many analysts, Catholics did not revolt against their church or their bishops when the clerical sex abuse scandal broke. They wanted the truth, but they did not foam with righteous indignation or leave the church or cut down on their contributions. They reacted maturely, as people who were not surprised at the imperfection of human nature. They did not lose faith in their church, but they did lose confidence in its leaders. Most Americans will react to the Foley scandal much the same way. They have seen everything and are far more mature than the press or the pundits believe.

The big risk for the politicians who would use this problem for partisan advantage is not that Americans will lose faith in democracy; they are more likely to lose confidence in those leaders who are trying to use this sad occasion for their own personal and partisan gain.

(Eugene Cullen Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic Church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago and author of “Cardinal Bernardin’s Stations of the Cross,” published by St. Martin’s Press.)

KRE/RB END KENNEDY

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