From: Wade Smith (wade_smith@harvard.edu)
Date: Wed 04 Dec 2002 - 16:53:27 GMT
On Wednesday, December 4, 2002, at 11:13 , Grant Callaghan wrote:
> I think these are all serious issues that have the potential to affect
> the lives of everyone in the world today. There is this fiction that
> it requires a religious leader to cause this affect. It doesn't.
This morning I was having a conversation with a co-worker about the
newly released documents from the local archdiocese about abuses allowed
and fostered under that regime. I pointed out that such coddling and
apologies come just as often from any institution- CEO's who fondle
secretaries, policemen who receive bribes, choose your own example.
These are the ravaging perks of power. It is the allowance of such power
that is the dishearteningly seemingly unstoppable crime- these same
leaders get elected again and again, given promotions by boards of
directors, and medals by their peers.
But, of course, they also get discovered, and, something trips up, and
they are prosecuted, or exiled, or otherwise disgraced and ostracized.
This process takes a long time, sometimes, especially when hierarchies
are encouraged and imagined to be a working organizational model.
It might not require a religious leader, but, in many ways, it does. It
requires someone touching that part, whatever it is. A faith-based
leader, at the very least, a con-man, in many ways.
We still need a firmer bedrock of critical observation, and, IMHO, it is
a very good thing here in Boston that the clergy is finally being seen
as the guild of liars that it's always been.
- Wade
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