Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, and the Pope
Posted by LK on 3/28/10 • Categorized as Blog, Featured, Film, Religion, legal
I read the following in Sunday’s edition of the NY Times, in a piece describing the priorities of Pope Benedict while he was climbing the Church’s political rungs on his way to Papal status:
“As archbishop, Benedict expended more energy pursuing theological dissidents than sexual predators. Already in the early 1980s, one could catch a glimpse of a future pope preoccupied with combating any movement away from church tradition. Vatican experts say there is little evidence that Benedict spent much time investigating more than 200 cases of “problem priests” in the diocese, with issues including alcohol abuse, adultery and, now under the microscope, pedophilia.”
Getting to the core of the point, the teaser blurb on page 1, referring to the full article inside the paper, reads:
“As Munich Archbishop, Pope Benedict XVI was broadly described as a theologian more concerned with doctrinal debates tan problem priests”.
Let’s see now; we’ve got a powerful figure in the public eye who’s so busy being high minded that he can’t be bothered or inconvenienced by taking into consideration the oh so mundane social norms and expectations of the people around him.
Sounds remarkably like the “societal boundaries be damned, I’m above them” attitude displayed by that dynamic duo of directors, the infamous pariahs, Roman Polanski and Woody Allen.
Roman figured that the notion of underage girls was a tedious, low brow, man-made standard that he wasn’t subject to. Woody was so impervious to near universally accepted standards of decency in the 20th century that he started carrying on with his stepdaughter. His stepdaughter.
Oh, and by the way, that he ended up marrying her is inconsequential; it’s like the legal concept of “fruit of the forbidden tree”, which prohibits the use of evidence in a trial that came as a result of an illegal search. Yes, he married her, but any decent guy wouldn’t have gotten to the alter with her in the first place.
And joining their exclusive little club, or rather, surfacing as a long time member of it, is the Pope himself, who was so wrapped up in his theories and interpretations of liturgical law and doctrine that he, in the words of the Times, “punished a priest for holding a Mass at a peace demonstration, leading the man to ultimately leave the priesthood”.
And all the while, priests he was responsible for were violating commandments, violating vows, and worst of all, violating young children.
Taking it a step further, the Pope’s behavior is probably more profound and dangerous than that of the Hollywood Hellboys. At least Roman and Woody, while having cultural platforms with which to reach people, weren’t afforded official leadership status within a structure like the Catholic Church, that’s got a billion plus souls to tend to.
I am here not to praise any of these men. Rather, if anything, I’m here to condemn them all. If Roman and Woody are to be damned, without the shield of their fortune, fame, and brilliance to deflect the arrows of criticism, the Pope is guilty as well, and possibly more so, since his job title calls for maintaining decorum, not to mention the mental health of the youngest, and most innocent of those he’s charged with protecting.
P.S. Would love to hear what the Reverend Huckabee and Dr. Dobson have to say, if anything, about His Holiness.
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Another spot-on observation by LK.
The slow (maybe not so slow) steady erosion of societal norms continues towards the seemingly unavoidable ending that will be the utter chaos and the true armageddon when we reach anomie.
I believe that the Vatican has a bureaucratic structure to say the least; a fact that I, as a Catholic, find regrettably necessary. In that setting I believe that Pope Benedict, in his earlier role as head of the Congregation of the Faith (the Inquisition), had the job of investigating theological matters of the religious who were under the authority of the Vatican. The job entails rooting out false teaching, and does not involve other improper behavior of the religious. The term “religious” here refers to those who have taken solemn vows. Vows were taken and they should be adhered to, or the nun, priest or monk should refrain from representing the Church. They were not forced to take their vows.
The crimes and sins of those in the Church who were pedophiles or condoned it must be punished, but two points are important. First, It probably was not Pope Benedict’s job to investigate them as it was not in his job description. One cannot say the buck stops with him because he was not in charge. Pope John Paul II was in charge then, and other subordinates( whose job it was) were handling the investigation. Secondly, it does not excuse the crimes (they’re inexcusable), but the statistics for this scandal are almost identical for the occurrence of this behavior in every other societal group (including other Churches). In other words, yes, there is a “gotcha” mentality vendetta against Pope Benedict and the Church by the secular media and other anti-Catholics. This scandal is being pushed year end and year out, with every new development, while according to statistics it’s going on everywhere else and being ignored. It is being stressed in the case of the Catholic Church because it is the Catholic Church.