Don’t throw stones in sex abuse cases

Two former residents of Morning Star Boys’ Ranch are alleging that in the 1960s, counselors at the ranch penetrated them with flowers. I’ve been a journalist for 26 years and can tell you this: The more bizarre the details of a story, the more likely the story is true.

When people make stuff up, they fabricate along the lines of clichés. Unless flower penetration is a porno cliché I’m unaware of, this detail resonates in the weird way of horrible, but true, stories. I won’t be surprised if other former ranch dwellers corroborate this abuse.

Writing these words will likely generate e-mails from readers who will call me a bad Catholic, writing for a bad newspaper that attacks Morning Star founded by the good Father Joe and don’t I know that bad boys who grew up to be bad men hired the same bad and greedy lawyers representing the parish sex-abuse survivors, who won a big battle in federal bankruptcy court Friday, by the way.

My words might also generate e-mails from people who say I am a good Catholic who works for a good newspaper that isn’t afraid to report on the good men and women who would have been even better men and women now had they not been exposed to bad priests in the parishes and bad counselors at the ranch.

Don’t bother to send me those bad-good e-mails. I am tired of the dichotomy. I am tired of the blame game. For the Catholic church to heal from our current crises, we need to remember the complex lives of the people Jesus hung out with.

We need to look into our own lives and acknowledge that we are capable of great good, great bad and everything in between. This is our human condition.

Philip Yancey, in “What’s So Amazing About Grace?” describes the New Testament scene where the scribes and Pharisees confront Jesus with a woman who has been caught in adultery. Yancey writes:

At that moment crackling with tension, Jesus does something unique: he bends down and writes on the ground with his finger. In this moment freighted with danger Jesus pauses, keeps silent.

Those in the audience no doubt see two categories of actors in the drama: the guilty woman and the “righteous” accusers. When Jesus finally speaks, he demolishes one of those categories. “If any one of you is without sin let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stoops to write, marking more time, and one by one all the accusers slink away.

Jesus and the woman remain. No one has condemned her. Jesus tells the woman to go and sin no more.

The woman, as well as the accusers, are all a little bad. The woman has committed adultery. The scribes and Pharisees obviously have sins to repent, or they would have thrown some stones.

And they are all a little good. It’s unlikely the woman sinned in the same way again. And the men chose to walk away from violence in a scene played out in front of others.

“Unless a flaw comes into the light, it cannot be healed,” Yancey writes.

Friday, a federal bankruptcy judge ruled that Catholic parishes and schools here are owned by the Spokane Diocese, which means their assets could be tapped to settle lawsuits filed against the diocese by sex-abuse survivors. This is big news, with the potential to change the physical and emotional landscape of the Roman Catholic Church in Spokane and throughout the country.

With this new development in the bankruptcy-sex-abuse quagmire, and with the new allegations surfacing from Morning Star, some will gather in anger and pick up their stones.

Others will pause and ponder our shared human condition. We are all flawed, and the church’s flaws are certainly now in the light. But we are all touched by grace, too.

This is a dichotomy, but unlike the good-bad one, this dichotomy allows for hope, and Lord knows we need some as we journey through the unprecedented – and sometimes bizarre – events unfolding now in Catholic Land.