Featured Story:
Yesterday's Papers
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
My friend Kihm Winship writes beautifully of the history of my hometown, Skaneateles, NY. Today he dropped a line to ask if I remembered anything of the original Riddler’s newsstand. His question hit something of a gusher.
My reply:
Do I ever remember Riddler's! Before my time, it was Lynch’s. Many old folks called it that years later. To me, it was always Riddler's. The store sold newspapers, periodicals, candy, soda, ice cream and enough cigars and cigarettes to put the local funeral director's children through college. In my younger days the store was on Genessee Street, the village’s main
The shop’s proprietor was Ed Riddler, a burly, retired army sergeant. As the man at the center of much of our daily commerce, Riddler became something of a local celebrity. He was also quite a character.
Ed seemed to wear the same clothes for a few years at a time, often topped by an army issue jacket with "RIDDLER" embroidered across the left breast pocket. His rotund and creviced face never appeared to have been shaven within the previous 48 hours. He always had the remnant of a stogie in the corner of his mouth. He could (and often did) yell at someone without the slimy stub ever moving from its permanent perch in the right corner of his lips.
Ed wasn't exactly fastidious but he was more filmy than grimy. His visage was scary until you realized he was actually a more than halfway decent fellow. If you were a kid who got past his initial attempts to spook you, and he decided you could be trusted, he'd find little tasks for you to do. These efforts were rewarded with the very best kinds of kid currency: baseball cards, comic books, candy or soda.
Ed's barter system didn't necessarily favor the erstwhile youngster. A half an hour helping clean up some mess in his medieval basement might have translated into a Hershey Bar. The ungenerous exchange rate was mitigated by admission into a mysterious area not open to the public. This entry into the unknown gave the chosen few the same sort of feeling of self-importance that a rock concert laminate provides these days.
Riddler's, especially on Genessee St, was a gathering place for kids -- mostly boys. After school or a ballgame there'd be a tangle of bicycles in front and back of the store. Our sturdy American-made steeds were often abandoned (or in that era's parlance "ditched") while still skidding to a stop. The resulting snarl of metal served as both an obstacle and warning to Ed's older customers. Beware! Youth being served.
When Ed decided that he didn't appreciate such restraint of trade, he had no problem throwing every kid out of the tiny store post haste. His temper usually held until we'd blown a collective few dollars on items that rarely cost more than a dime (except for ice cream, which could run upwards of a quarter if you started delving into exotics like sundaes -- although I can never remember getting more than a Riddler's cone because if you wanted ice cream, the Hitching Post or the Skaneateles Bakery were better options.)
Ed handed down semiannual edicts concerning the number of bicycles that were allowed on "his" sidewalk. For a few months his ruling would hold as we parked our bikes, kickstands extended, in neat rows. Eventually the rows and kickstands disintegrated into a new clump of Western Flyers, Huffys and Schwinns. Soon enough an old person would trip on the restored gallimaufry and Riddler would blow a gasket. We'd flee, leaping to the street or alley without hitting a step before engaging in a ridiculous fast-forward contest of pickup sticks, with our bikes serving as the sticks. We'd then peel out (more ancient parlance), running on a tidal wave of the panicked exhilaration that surges through children whenever collective disregard for authority is suddenly called to account by a bellowing adult. After scattering, we'd meet up a few blocks away to discuss the dramatic turn of events. Mostly we'd suss out the pressing question: do you think Old Man Riddler will tell our parents? He never did.
The premium real estate at the original location was a seat at the counter of the fountain. From there we could watch Ed engage in repartee with his favorite customers. It was a great floor show. One day he was haranguing future town official Fran Sheehan about something or other. Sheehan replied by busting Riddler for the rickety old table he used for storing reserved papers (with the name of each customer written in Ed's highly legible script, at an angle to one side of the masthead.)
Mr. Sheehan chided, "Hey, Ed, what was the number one tune when you bought this table? The Song of the Volga Boatmen?"
Riddler dissolved in laughter at Fran Sheehan's perfect joke. As an adult I've often thought of Ed's strategic retreat when I'm bantering with my colleagues in comedy. Some gags don't need to be capped and can’t be topped. The table, by the way, was still in service at least a dozen years later.
My most vivid memory of the newsstand flows from that old fountain at the original Riddler's. Among the items on the menu was a nickel Coke. At some point the fountain drinks gave way to a cooler full of bottled soda. No one could remember the last time anyone ordered a fresh-mixed beverage, served in ridged, scratched-up, plastic cups.
One day, low on disposable income, we decided to see if the cheap drinks still listed on the greasy and dusty menu board were available. Mrs. Baker, a long-time Riddler employee who never liked having to do impertinent things like wait on customers, allowed that since there was still syrup in the reservoir, nickel Cokes remained on the menu. Yours truly, Bob Brewer, John Considine and (I think) Bruce Hammel agreed to a "if you get one so will I" pact. With much grunting and gasping the enormous Mrs. Baker pumped the coke syrup dispenser. After a blockade of crystallized sugar was overcome, a dollop of aged syrup was dispensed into each of the four small glasses that were then filled with soda water and ice. Mrs. Baker labored through a half-stir of the drinks and presented them to us. We eyed the murky concoctions and then one another before hoisting and chugging the dubious fluid. We snorted and laughed as soon as we tasted it because clearly there was something wrong, very wrong, with the Cokes.
An ad hoc forensics team later convinced Riddler employee Howard Fisher to examine the carton of syrup. He did and discovered it contained an enormous infestation of mold that was only days short of bursting out of its container and engulfing our small town. Needless to state, we were the last patrons to ever drink a fountain Coke at Riddler's. No one even considered asking for a refund. It was a simpler time.
Riddler's contributed greatly to my love of reading. It was there I began to buy The Sporting News, Street and Smith's sports annuals, paperback books such as the essential Roger Maris At Bat,
When Ed Riddler realized I was buying the publications for myself, he was impressed. His praise was typically gruff, "Keep this up, son, and someday you might not be an idiot."
Sure enough, some days, I'm not.
Featured Story:
Jaywalking in Dreamland
Monday, September 20, 2010
by Barry Crimmins
Believe it or not, my retirement from performing three and half years ago never really happened. Please allow me to explain. At the time I was despondent and couldn't sleep. A friend gave me some Ambien - a hypnotic sleep-inducing drug.
The problem with Ambien is that many people arise while still under its trance to do some rather outrageous things. Some write nasty emails. Others get into car accidents. The worst cases I have heard of involved several people taking jobs with the Bush-Cheney administration. At least that answers the question, "How did they sleep at night?"
So I suppose I could have done worse during my drug-induced amnesia than quit my night job as a touring political satirist. Still, 2007 was a crazy time for a 53 year-old man to walk away from a gig. For one thing this country has a habit of throwing away workers over fifty whenever times get tough. Times were definitely getting tough in 2007. For another, more important thing, hard times are when I can actually make some headway with my political humor. Empty pockets = open ears.
But I sleepwalked away. I'll never recover the time I lost to the weakest of show biz devices -- the dream sequence. All I can do is apologize for my absence and promise you I've sworn off Ambien. I further promise that I'm back as a performer and signed on for the duration.
I don't expect to get rich at my new/old gig. To make big dough as a political satirist in this country you must pretend that our nation's problems are equally provoked by the right and left. To be welcomed in the mainstream, you must overlook the fact the entire left was ruined over half a century ago by McCarthyism. I can't do that.
Despite an occasional uplifting film about Edward R. Murrow, the damage done by Tailgunner Joe remains as a pervasive and pernicious underminer of our already limited political system. Because of the fear and paranoia instilled by McCarthyism, politicians and the media bang hard right turns whenever anyone mentions even the most tepid of southpaw ideas. In a country where our choice is never more than "either/or," the removal of one-third of the political spectrum from consideration turns participatory democracy into a stilted and shallow endeavor. Who knows how much better off we'd be if we'd stop looking through a lopsided scope that always causes us to pull to the right?
Many speak of the so-called Greatest Generation but none mention how many GG-ers benefited as children and adolescents from the activism and organizing of American socialists, whose mere presence as a legitimate factor in our government's considerations forced FDR to save the little guy along with capitalism during the Original Depression. We need to be exerting a lot of that same pressure today.
Were a real left (meaning a populist, people-first left - not some Stalinist authoritarian left) simply allowed a seat at today's (and the past 60 years') political table -because everyone actually at the table gets accommodated sooner or later - we'd have a Renewed Deal including:
Legitimate national health care (not often worthless, price-gouged insurance but actual health care, like most of the rest of the world has.)
A solid jobs program that isn't funneled through corporate vampires skilled at diverting funds for the needy into the accounts of the greedy. Leading to...
A resulting revivified federal infrastructure and a much healthier environment.
Greatly improved protections and circumstances for workers (as opposed to our current situation in which we're expected to express gratitude for still having not only our own jobs but large portions of the jobs laid-off workers used to do -- often for less money than we made when our doomed comrades were still around to help lighten the load. Thanks again!)
Federal initiatives on crucial issues such as alternative energy that are not dictated and detoured by the energy monoliths currently robbing and poisoning us.
An understanding that the deserved collapse of enormous multinational swindlers benefits us little folks. There is no business too big to fail. (Unfortunately there is also no lie too big to tell.)
The end of the futility and madness of literally matching the rest of the world dollar-for-dollar in military spending. This would instantly improve our circumstances at home and our standing in the world.
A livelier arts community in big and small towns throughout our nation because where there is art, there is hope. Where there are artistic get-togethers there is lively local discourse -- always a boon to genuine democracy.
Portrayal of the left's views in the media as a normal part of the political debate and not as extremist prattle that is somehow bringing down our nation.
Had I not retired for the past few years, I'd have been traveling the country promoting the above sensible political ideas through my humor. Instead, I abandoned political satire to self-proclaimed "moderates" (of course there are notable exceptions) who hold progressive activists as responsible as FOX News, the religious right, and talk radio for our political failings.
Rather than expose worthy targets, these people get fat feeding on obvious bait. That proves it, Rush Limbaugh IS an asshole! Unlike these middle-of-the-roaders, I'd never rub elbows with the supposedly moderate mainstream pols and power-brokers who have done nothing but make matters worse because they are flat-out wrong or because they possess neither the brains nor courage to take a real case for) the people, to the people. Why deal with such riffraff when I could instead be out shaking your honest, unwashed hand?
Jon Stewart implied the other day that to be a moderate, you need a job (or at least you need to be looking for one as if one existed). Stewart's upshot? Shiftless unemployed people protest the economic and political circumstances that have made jobs impossible to find. There is some truth to this. Poverty radicalizes people while the comfortable take their cues from the smug. No matter how you spin it, anything on the left in this country is impotent, eviscerated and infiltrated while the extreme right caucuses in Congress. I fail to see equality of culpability.
I won't ask you to travel across the country to come celebrate me at some silly rally. Instead I will come to your town to entertain you and learn from you. I'll come to speak of your real circumstances and target the real enemy -- an enemy that is neither immigrants nor Muslims nor a lack of initiative on the part of the fucked over. An enemy that certainly doesn't arise from the left in this reactionary nation. The real enemy is a combination of greed, despair, conformity, cowardice and ignorance. The real enemy is anything that divides and conquers us so that we don't realize and utilize our collective strength.
The real enemy is the self-satisfied fat cat, for whom the status quo is just fine, who tells us that we're on the fringe if we so much as suggest that this country needs more than just a little fine tuning to bring it into focus.
I'm not saying the left has all the answers. I am saying that we as a nation discover fewer and fewer correct ones without the input of a large and legitimate school of thought. I am also saying there is a very real and legitimate dissatisfaction in this country that is only being serviced by the far right. It's time we provided a more humane alternative.
So I'm back if you'll have me. My first stop will be at Mottley's Comedy Club in Boston on Friday and Saturday, November 5 and 6. Tickets are now on sale.
My next stop could be somewhere near you. I hope be soon near all of you because like millions Americans. I need the work. I can't say I won't do anything outrageous. I can only promise that Ambien will have nothing to do with my behavior.
Featured Story:
Cornered Eggs or Local Yolkels
Thursday, August 26, 2010
When I was a kid we were taught that one easy way to demonstrate the superiority of the American system of capitalism over the Soviet system of communism was to compare farming in the USA to that in the USSR.
My teachers made the same compelling case, nearly word-for-word, year after year.
They taught us how Soviet-style collective farming was fraught with flaws, such as:
If Soviet sod-busters made a mistake on one acre of land, the blunder was repeated throughout the giant system.
In the Soviet-style collective or "factory" farming system, if some sort of crop blight or livestock malady struck part of the food supply, it would likely contaminate the entire supply of the agricultural commodity in question.
Because of its enormity, the collective farm system was nearly impossible to adroitly maneuver through or around meteorological challenges, changes in consumption habits or national emergencies.
The collective farm system was run by bureaucrats who knew little or nothing of farming. When problems came they were adept at one thing and one thing only: passing the ruble. You'd no more want your food grown by farmers who answered to a paper-pusher than you'd want your medical care controlled by someone who didn't know one end of a stethoscope from the other!
We were taught that our system was built on the responsiveness and accountability of local farmers. If curdled milk turned up in Soviet kitchens, it was nearly impossible to trace the milk to its source to make sure the problem was dealt with and alleviated. In America, we buy our milk from Farmer Brown. We know Farmer Brown and he knows us. If Farmer Brown messes up, he'd better straighten things out quickly or we will start buying our milk from Farmer Jones! In America there is nowhere for the farmer to pass the buck.
We were taught that because Farmer Jones and Farmer Brown had to compete in a free market, both had the incentive to deliver nutritious and delicious foods at the fairest price to the townsfolk. And so they did.
I didn't buy a lot of what I was taught in school but it always seemed to me that the accountable local farmer vs. the bureaucratic factory farm lesson had more than a few grains of truth in it.
Decades later, diversification and accountability in agriculture is still for me. When it comes to farming there is a cliche that perfectly summarizes what I believe about agriculture: Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
Featured Story:
Cath-22 pt 4: Good News for Postmodern Man!
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Above- Priests Party Down!
Below- R -Thomas Neary -- Serial rapist
Below L- Charles Bailey and his photo as a kid
Below C- Bad news, Pontiff, some of the kids are starting to fight back
By Barry Crimmins
Anyone who has read the previous three parts of this series has likely surmised that my enmity for the Catholic church is personal. It certainly is.
A problem I have with most church critics is that they almost always stop and genuflect at the altar of “all the good people in the church.” These "good people" are often well-intentioned but they serve as the phony front for a corrupt organization -- they run the flower shop in front of the bookie joint. Some know what they're doing, some don’t but they all help provide a smokescreen.
As I stated earlier, Catholic clergy either participated in the abuse of children, participated in the coverup of crimes against children or knew of the crimes and coverup and remained silent and therefore became accessories during and after the fact. The few priests who didn’t know what was happening, must know by now. If they are truly men of conscience, they need to raise hell about this, which will get them excommunicated - a good and righteous place to be.
The same can be said of nuns and other church workers and volunteers. They either participated, helped cover-up, knew of the crimes and conspired in silence or now know and must take a stand.
This is also true of the rank and file membership of the church. Forever the so-called "faithful" have looked the other way at blatantly sinful behavior by their spiritual leaders. When the church is obviously wrong, they unquestioningly accept whatever weak alibi clerics provide. They don’t bother to challenge the church over its ridiculous dogma and edicts, although some take or leave the church's tenets as the so-called cafeteria Catholics do.
The faithful have turned a perpetual blind eye to the abuse of children at the hands of the clergy. I know. I was abused on the altar, during mass, before the assembled faithful almost every day for three years before anyone spoke up. Even then the church wasn’t challenged. The problem was simply brought to my parents’ attention.
What upset me last Palm Sunday wasn't the fact that it marked the 39th straight year I would fail to make my Easter duty. This meant, according to church teaching, an extension of my sentence of eternal damnation. Fortunately, I long ago saw such threats for the utter bullshit they are.
What bothered me were all the parishioners who were interviewed outside St. Patrick's Cathedral after Bishop Timothy Dolan’s intellectually and ethically bereft defense of Pope Benedict’s role in the clerical child abuse scandal. They aped Dolan's unjustifiable outrage at anyone who would question the pope about a scandal Ratzinger had facilitated via coverup for many years.
Rather than running as quickly as they could to escape Dolan’s twisted take, the parishioners stood in line to bleat things before cameras and into microphones such as, "It's about time someone defended the Holy Father!"
And, "This stuff happened years ago, when will these people get over it?"
These pope-protectors are are exactly kind of “good Catholics” who ignored my suffering as I dealt with one of the worst predator
Twice Neary began to put his hands on me in the privacy of the sacristy. Twice I threw an elbow, squirmed free and fled. I had already been raped when I was much younger by a man the babysitter brought into our home so I guess I had developed emotional antibodies to rapists. Otherwise, I think, Neary would have had his sadistic way with me.
Once he realized I wasn't a good bet for molestation, he made my life a living and public hell. He wanted to drive me off so that he could have a fresh supply of boys to prey upon. So every day, on the altar and in the sacristy, he heaped abuse upon me. This came at that difficult period when childhood is passing and adolescence is blooming. My days began with an emotional pummeling by a spiritual authority on the altar right in front of the most devout of Catholics. Good morning!
He couldn’t force me out because as a good Catholic boy, I was terrified to go home and tell my parents that a priest despised me. I was sure my mistreatment was deserved. I’ve written about this experience on this blog in a 2007 piece entitled Mea Maxima Culpa.
In the years since writing about Neary, I've been amazed at how deep and painful the memories of his emotional and verbal abuse remain. To relive this period of my life is to dredge one of the darkest corners of my soul. It sends me into unfathomable funks. Then I think of the boys who weren't as lucky as I. The ones Thomas Neary sexually terrorized for months and even years.
I wonder how many of those innocent kids could have been saved if someone stood up in the church and told him to stop his daily humiliation of me. I wonder how much more emboldened Neary became when he saw no one make the slightest move to defend me in my defenseless innocence.
Then I think of those assholes outside of St. Patrick’s expressing relief that someone has finally defended the pope. They are quick to run to his defense but when I was just a child, alone on an altar with a cruel priest who subjected me to malicious humiliation again and again, they didn’t so much as clear their throats. They left me alone in my agony to do the Catholic thing and decide I had it coming.
The church already knew what Neary was long before he got to Skaneateles. He'd already been reassigned a few times, always finding a new comfortable seat before the pipe organ stopped in the sick game of musical chairs the church employed as a policy for predator priests.
The man who hated me and questioned my common decency on the altar so many mornings was among the worst of the worst of the child abusing priests. His sexually criminal behavior against children and adolescents included some of the most unimaginably vile conduct that has come to light in this scandal. For instance:
He would orally rape a boy and then order the child to swallow every drop of semen because as God's representative on Earth, he was sacred and his semen was the equivalent of the eucharist so it must never be spilled onto the ground.
He would anally rape boys while praying very loudly in Latin so that a child's screams of pain could not be heard above Neary’s counterfeit spiritual petitions.
After raping boys he would make them confess their sins to him so he could absolve them for having been raped. This of course served to underscore the lie that the kids were complicit in their own degradation and not hapless and helpless innocents who'd been overwhelmed by a serial rapist. It also fortified Neary’s coverup, which was reinforced by threatening the boys that they'd never see their parents again if they disclosed what really went on during the supposed educational sessions.
On his way out of many victim's homes, Thomas Neary would collect payment from boys' mothers for the “special instruction” he had given them because he was sure the kids had vocations to become priests. That’s right, he raped kids and charged their parents for it. Are you puking yet?
Ever the preemptive pervert, the diabolical Neary told boys' mothers to be unconcerned if their children acted oddly or expressed a desire to end
Neary was confident in parental gullibility, especially considering how he would rape some boys in their own bedrooms while their mothers knelt dutifully praying the rosary in their living rooms, per his instructions.
Neary didn't just rape kids in their bedrooms, he also violated them in church sacristies, rectories and basements. He assaulted children and adolescents in cars and private homes, in schools and anywhere else the monstrous urge overcame him.
Charles Bailey never entered the seminary but he did, after a lifetime of anguish, overcome post-traumatic stress disorder and a great deal of understandable trepidation to blow the whistle on what the abominable Thomas Neary had done to him. In fact he literally wrote the book on Neary. It's called In the Shadow of the Cross and you need to read it.
Thanks to my friend Charles Bailey's brave public disclosures about the horrific crimes Neary committed against him, I’ve gotten to know several of the rabid priest's victims. Actually I already knew some of them, I just didn't know he had assaulted them until they disclosed their stories to me after reading my 2007 essay on the matter.
The truth is slowly unwinding. I’ve learned that among his Skaneateles victims, one suicide by shotgun and another by drugs and alcohol can be traced directly to Neary. The young man who killed himself with a shotgun was a dear friend of mine. The other fellow was enough older than me to only be a passing acquaintance but he left behind a devastated family and scores of heartbroken friends.
Charley Bailey and I decided we should form an unofficial organization for those of us who survived Neary. We call it the Hell Alumni Association -- Thomas Neary Branch. We fought the same war, against the same enemy, just not together.
I can't tell you how much these people mean to me. Some are middle-aged, some nearly senior citizens but all of us are children when we discuss the human jackal who terrorized us when we were young. It's such a relief to be in touch with these folks. Neary is dead and we're alive. Hurray!
Charles Bailey is everyone's hero -- he broke the conspiracy of silence and dozens of us have benefited from it. When the church attempts to spin the scandal into an opaque tapestry of lies, he is there to shred it. In Central New York when the church speaks about child sexual abuse by priests, people immediately wait for Charley's reasoned and knowing refutations. He never lets them down.
Charley and his wife Sue are tremendous people. Neither would blink an eye in a hurricane if it meant it might allow the church to slip past with a lie. The Baileys have directly confronted mental reservation -- the church's clause that allows priests to lie for the supposed good of the church.
Charley emailed this to me the other day:
My experience with mental reservation was when I asked the bishop [Moynihan of the Diocese of Syracuse, now retired - BC] to see neary's "secret archive" file. I was sitting in his office with Sue and asked to view his secret archive file.
I was told by the bishop, "There is no such thing."
I said, "The one mandated by canon law."
He said, "There is no such canon law to my knowledge."
I said, "I know you have two files on each priest. One 'public' record personnel file and then the 'secret archive' file that you store in the basement and only you have the key except for one other undisclosed person."
He said, "I am confused by what you are saying, I know of no such file."
So, I open my paperwork and lay the below article in front of him. [it quoted the canon law that mandated the documents Charley demanded - BC] After he reviewed it he said, "Oh, THAT Secret Archive. No, you can't see it. Anyway we destroy them after a priest dies"
(an aside to this -A Philadelphia grand jury found 45,000 pages of secret archives in the basement of the bishop's office, I don't think they are ever destroyed)
Faith is just another word for loyalty and loyalty must be earned and then maintained. When loyalty is betrayed all bets are off. The Catholic church has betrayed its membership to the point where the institution is, in my opinion, beyond redemption. What person with a child could be foolish enough to ever leave that child under the care and influence of a church that is responsible for a crime wave against children? People who are still leaving their children in the hands of this derelict organization have no one but themselves to blame if and when their children are harmed.
They say a church is really just the people who attend it but the Catholic church is nothing more than a 2,000 year-old corporation run by the equivalent of an unresponsive, absurdly greedy and distant front office. In other words, it's the world’s first and worst multinational. It deserves no more loyalty than Verizon or General Electric.
The Catholic church cares about our well-being about as much the average corporation cares about leaving us on hold for 40 minutes while we attempt to straighten out a bill. Even if you do get through to someone, they are arrogant and impolite and treat you as if their mistake is your fault. Corporate is as Catholic has done for centuries.
There is only one way for the Catholic church to make a perfect act of contrition for all of its misdeeds. It must open up its finances, including an audit of its vast treasure trove of precious art, artifacts and architecture. Then it must put ten billion dollars in escrow for the victims of its predator priests (and nuns and administrators). The rest must be turned over to the poor people of the world via churches and institutions that rightfully belong to them anyway.
Of course this is never going to happen so there is no hope of redemption for the odious institution. Therefore it is incumbent upon all Catholics and former Catholics of actual good faith to break for good with the church that claims to be embodied by the Vatican. The Vatican isn’t a church, it’s a vault. We should not worship vaults.
There is the one and only mercy I beseech the Catholic church to bestow upon me -- formal excommunication. Let me out and make it official. Granted I am already what they call “silently excommunicated” because I have violated church laws concerning church attendance, sexual behavior and blasphemy. According to its rules, I'm doomed to hell. But that threat doesn’t work on me because I've been to hell and it is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Roman Catholic church. So those robed frauds better watch themselves when they threaten my soul. It has beaten them before. It was my soul that allowed me to endure them in the first place and I will be damned if I ever let them lay their greasy paws on it again.
If these psycho-sexually criminal creeps and the wealth-worshiping frauds who cover for them think they can threaten me with banishment, all I can say is, “Please don’t throw me into the eternal brier patch!”
I beg for formal excommunication because I have standards to maintain and a reputation to uphold. I have sinned mightily in my day but my sins were human and I have worked hard to rectify my mistakes. I’ve made a lot of progress. To continue my reform, I need to disassociate myself from certain negative influences from my past. Among them there is none more negative than the Catholic church. It was a large minus sign that hovered next to me for far too long.
So I am out and haven’t an iota of guilt over my departure. I still have a conscience but it is a sensible one that operates on its own and not at the behest of a demonstrably sinister organization. Now that my conscience holds me responsible for my own behavior, I can no longer alibi that I looked the other way because I was just following the rules set down by some arcane and fraudulent institution. It’s a little more work but a much lighter load to carry.
I walked out of the church long ago but only recently have I come to understand what it is all about. Only now do I see how it implanted self-loathing in me so that I would remain in fearful compliance with its edicts, or failing that, at least maintain a scared silence. Well no more.
This scandal is far from over. We are just beginning to learn about priestly abuse of children in Europe. Some stories have filtered in from Central and South America. Asia, Africa and various far-flung islands will chime in sooner or later unless the church’s propensity for reassigning perpetrator priests knew some boundaries and you know that it didn’t. The church leans so heavily on its phony nationhood because it knows that it will need to continue to employ diplomatic immunity to avoid prosecution as a criminal cabal. We’ll see how long the world puts up with that bullshit.
I won’t put up with it at all. I’ll go in peace only if and when the Catholic church goes to hell. Until then I promise to tell the pope or any of his minions they are liars whenever a falsehood slips from their mentally reserved tongues. You should, too.
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