Dostoevsky was keenly aware of the simultaneously good and evil aspects of human nature. In The Brothers Karamazov, he recognized without sentimentality that there was a battle going on in the world between good and evil, and said that the dividing line of this battle was drawn through the human heart. But while Dostoevsky was understanding about this duality of our hearts, he had no tolerance for those who corrupted the innocence of children.
The recent report of the Pennsylvania grand jury on the abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests in six of the commonwealth’s dioceses brought to mind Dostoevsky and my own experiences in the 1970s as an altar boy at St. Ann church in Dorchester, Massachusetts.*
I was one of the lucky ones who did not fall victim to pederast ex-priest Paul Mahan, who was stationed in our church. Others were not so fortunate.
Many of us altar boys sensed that there was something not quite right about Father Mahan. Before Mass in the sacristy we would put on our cassocks. He was always eager to straighten collars, discover an open button, or find some excuse to touch us. The priest seemed to go into a trance.
Bolder boys would escape, breezing by him pretending to have some duty to attend to —“I have to light the- candles, Father.” The shy and vulnerable did not fare as well.
At the end of each Mass, I would rush out of the church. But at other times I recall being rushed out by Mahan. Today, I regret leaving the other altar boy behind.
In those days we were too young to fully appreciate what was going on. We were wary of this man and avoided being alone with him. As boys do, we retaliated by making up a variety of names for him and laughing at him behind his back. “Father Mahands” was more apt than we knew.
I see now that his concern with our apparel was a way of encroaching upon us—and finding out who was the most susceptible.
I was not shocked to learn that Father Mahan was defrocked and had 13 counts of child molestation lodged against him. But neither did it shake my faith. The Roman Catholic Church is made up of saints and sinners; good popes and corrupt popes.
In our creed Catholics say, “We believe in things seen and unseen.” The institution of the church is the “seen.” The “unseen” is the mystery of the faith. And it’s the unseen which is always the more important part.
Today the Church seems to be over-run by bureaucratic priests who have no eye for the eternal. Such as Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington who was complicit in the cover-up in the Pennsylvania diocese while he was bishop there. Or Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, who recently attended a fundraiser with the disgraced Theodore McCarrick, who recently submitted his resignation as cardinal because of his sexual abuse of seminarians. Meanwhile Pope Francis instead of condemning and defrocking Wuerl continues to sow discord by promoting controversial priests such as José Tolentino Mendonça to the bishopric.
We don’t hear enough about the “unseen” from the Catholic hierarchy. Nor do we hear reference to the battle Dostoevsky wrote of between good and evil. I have not heard Pope Francis mention sin, evil, or redemption in response to Pennsylvania. His reaction to the report was slow. He seems more concerned with the secular world of politics. His papacy is a distress to the faithful and he seems to take some pride in this.
It is a difficult season in which to be a Catholic. Recounting his departure from the Church, Rod Dreher writes,
He’s not wrong. The only thing for Catholics to do is cling to the unseen mysteries: the crimes of Father Mahan and Cardinal McCarrick—the evil prevarications of Cardinal Wuerl—do not alter the fact that Christ died on the cross for us; that the Eucharist is His body, or that He promised that “the gates of hell shall not Prevail against the Church.”
Because it’s the moments where the gates of hell seem to have been loosed that it’s most important to remember Christ’s instruction that, despite everything, we should “Be not afraid.”
