A few years back, Chris Rock dropped a nice spoken word ditty called No Sex in the Champagne Room. I am 100% sure Father David Dueppen, a priest in Miami, Florida, has never heard it. Why? Because not only did he spend $1800 dollars in the champagne room of a club called Porky’s, but he also had a sexual relationship with the stripper he spent the money on, Beatrice Hernandez.
And if that weren’t fascinating enough, she claims that he promised her she would be cured of demons if she would have sex with another woman while he watched. If you think this is a script from a porn movie, think again: this is the latest escapade from the Archdiocese of Miami, encapsulated in the headline from the Miami Herald “Ex-Stripper: Priest is my baby’s father—and I want him to pay.”
Before I go south and start to write this whole piece with quotes from songs (“That’s Just My Baby Daddy” comes to mind) I am struck with disgust about where the Catholic church, and lately Miami’s Archdiocese in particular, finds itself in matters of church discipline. Between the former Father Cutie and his recent marriage (props to him, at least he left and got married like a normal person), to Father Dueppen’s $1800 dollar visit to a strip club (and follow-up role as abusive father), the church finds itself in the throes of a Maury Povich-style DNA paternity case show.
Add to that news that slipped through the cracks about Cardinal Roger Mahony of the Los Angeles Archdiocese ordering a subordinate to delay reporting of sexual abuse claims to the police until the priest in question could be defrocked, and you have set of players that would rival a mafia movie. The malfeasance and criminal behavior is shocking to say the least—and all, incidentally, coming to light during the “Year of the Priest” declared this year by Pope Benedict XVI.
Outsiders might be tempted to think that all of these issues are about sex, and in one sense, that is true. The deeper issue within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church surrounds bureaucracy and a corporate fealty that is designed to protect the institution at all costs; even when the corporation’s clients (parishioners) are being abused. The shake and shuffle of the bishops and hierarchy to send its miscreants to other parishes to inflict pain and suffering, while ignoring the fact that little or no true discipline is meted out by the church, is appalling.
While Pope Benedict calls for a “Year for Priests” to commence on July 19 of this year, the day devoted to prayer for the sanctification of priests, anything but sanctification is happening. May I suggest the hierarchy of the Catholic Church start anew by taking a page from the Episcopal diocese in Philadelphia? The diocese has deposed Bishop Bennington from office, and rejected a request for a new trial regarding his concealment of his brother John Bennington’s abuse of an underage girl 35 years ago. That is church discipline done properly, and from the offshoot root of the Catholic Church.
I am not calling for a conservative Catholicism; far from it. What I am calling for is a return to real church discipline, not corporate slot-shuffling. Discipline is not only for the priests in question, but also for the bishops who are worried more about covering their tracks than paving the way for justice.
In cases like Father Dueppen’s, where priests or clergy use the position of spirituality to defraud people of their dignity and their sexuality, they should be subject to the rule of law and summarily removed from office. More often than not, this is not the case. Unfortunately, the road to success for a bishop seems to owe more to the Peter Principle (“rising in the hierarchy to the level of one’s incompetence”) than anything else. In the Catholic Church hierarchy, this means you can go pretty far.
It is high time to stop the shuffling shell game, and for the church to admit the one thing it believes, theologically, that it cannot do: sin. Rather than piling on for political grandstanding by deciding who can take the Eucharist or not, the United States Council of Catholic Bishops should take a good look at the real sins they have committed while saving their offices from lawsuits and protecting criminals. When bishops are prosecuted for their duplicitous roles in lying about clergy abuse, and their shuffling about of the bad “seeds” about their diocese, then I can seriously begin to believe all the other drivel they are shoveling about to keep the stench of perfidy rising from their offices.
When theologians are silenced by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for questioning Christology, while sexual abusers get a little counseling and reassignment for defiling children, becoming baby daddies, and spending the collection on strippers, I have to wonder why I (or any other sane person) stays with this church. My response lately is to say that I stay to advocate for the laity, not for the wolves in liturgical garments. I know many good priests and other religious leaders who struggle with sexuality (and other issues, as we all do) but they do not inflict their pain or struggles upon those who are weak and helpless. Nor do they spout sanctimonious words in the attempt to obfuscate the real issues of sin within the church ranks.
The real derailing of this train of organizational wrongdoing and shame will come surely, as many of the dioceses in the United States become uninsurable and the number of Catholic churches dwindles. As membership shrinks, the number of ordinations decreases, and the coffers dry up, perhaps the Vatican and its leadership will be forced to look at its decrepit, hierarchical structure, and fix it. I doubt it, however.
Like the spider who crawled across Pope Benedict’s robes this weekend in Prague, everyone except the Pope can see the real issues at hand.
Tags: catholic church, pope benedict
It seems that most of us are psychological beings--with our stated values generally coming in second. In Book 6 of the popular free ebook series "In Search of Utopia" (http://andgulliverreturns.info) there is a pretty good description of many forces that may motivate us. Book 4 looks at our values, but it seems that we are generally more psychological than logical. We might assume that if a priest gets enough satisfaction for his power drive from his ministry he should walk the straight and narrow. Unfortunately, human motivations often trump the spiritual values.
Again, the Pope's obsession is to take care of himself and his priests as his flips his middle finger at the victims of his sex abuse Holocaust. He's gotta keep catering to himself and supply more victims for those poor clericw who caught got victimizing their sheep.
Still self obsessed with their own needs like a ravaging wolves in the flock.
Poor Poor Priests???....and as for the so called "good priests" who allegedly are suffering from the sex abuse scandal and who remain silent despite knowing the truth, YOU might wanna think real hard again about staying in your all boys club.
What will it take? It will take the church growing up about human sexuality. It will take giving up this odd notion that has no basis in biblical tradition that suppressing and repressing one's sexuality makes for healthy adults. It will mean admitting that the priesthood has become attractive to closeted gay men looking for a way to hide their sexuality rather than live it honestly. Being closeted does not give way to healthy living, certainly not to healthy pastoral care.
The church still claims homosexuality to be an 'intrinsic moral evil,' yet many of its pastoral leaders and institutional leaders are gay - though closeted. The church still claims that only celibacy makes one worthy of doing sacraments. The church still thinks of people engaging in sexual relations, including within completely healthy, committed, loving relationships, heterosexual or same-sex, even when married for life, as not worthy of doing transubstantiation.
Until and unless the church becomes healthy about human sexuality, these scandals will continue. Unless and until the church becomes honest about what has happened to the priesthood because of its 'teachings,' this story will not change much. And as long as the church's 'reputation' matters more than being honest in this regard, more harm will come from these unhealthy men.
With much regard for those priests I know who are honest, healthy, committed pastoral workers who are as dismayed by all this as I am.
margaret
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I don't think this has much to do with sex, healthy, unhealthy, gay, or otherwise. The real problem is the cult of specialness regarding the clergy. They have to be defrocked of their invincibility, their immunity from prosecution, and the simple notion that they are better than everyone else.
As a Reformed Catholic priest, I am more and more relieved at my decision to leave the Roman hegemony as time goes by. The Year of the Priest, it seems to me, has been a constant theme in the Roman church for centuries. It has always been about priestly powers, real or imagined, priestly dignity and authority, priestly privilege and domination in areas, such as human sexuality, where they, allegedly, have no real world experience on which to draw. Bravo to the Presiding Archbishop of the Reformed Catholic Church who has countered Pope Benedict's Year of the Priest with his own Year of the People of God. It is the People of God whose wishes, some 50 years after being acclaimed at the Council, are continually ignored. As a "new" Mass is foisted on the Roman faithful, replete with archaic text and theologies, one can only pray for the day when educated Catholics finally conclude, "Enough is enough!" and find another way to be Catholic without the power politics as usual of Rome.
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