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Religious Problems at the Air Force Academy
There have been numerous reports that evangelical officers and chaplains have been pressuring
cadets to become evangelicals. Jewish and non-evangelical cadets complained about intolerance and discrimination. A
parent of a cadet complained that his son was called "a filthy Jew."
The campus newspaper carried an advertisement signed by almost 300 Air Force personnel
urging the cadets to get saved. Some professors began classes with prayer, several told cadets to get saved by the end
of the semester. A coach once posted a huge evangelical banner in a locker room. Cadets are told they will go to hell
if they are not born again.
It was alleged that Brigadier General John Weida, commondant of cadets, employed coded
language to urge evangelical cadets to convert others. He later admitted that religious coercion on campus was a problem,
but he had no idea how to deal with it. It would take decades to solve. The Academy officially sponsored a screening
of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.
Dr. Kristen Leslie from the Yale Divinity School issued what is known as the Yale Report,
which complained if "pervasive evangelical" bias at the academy. Academy officials
criticized the report and attempted to ignore it. Captain Melinda Morton, a Lutheran chaplain, had signed the report and was
ordered by the chief chaplain Colonel Michael Whittington, to unsign it. Reverend Morton refused to retract her signature
and defended the report. She was transferred to Okinawa before the end of her tour, and resigned her commission
as a result. The Air Force conducted its own investigation, which only acknowledged a few problems.
In Congress, Representative David Obey complained about this situation and was denounced
Republican John Hostettler of Indiana for participating in the "long war on Christianity in America..." The Hoosier added
that Democrats are given to "denigrating and demonizing Christians." Obey offered a ryder calling for an impartial and thoorough
investigation, but it was defeated 218-198.
All this is the more troublking in view of the fact that the numbere of evangelical chaplains
in the servives is increasing exponentially while the ranks of Catholic and mainline Protestant military clergy are thinning
our. The mainline Protestants have developed serious problems with militarism since Vietnam, and there are few Catholic priests
to send to the Armed Service. Other reasons for concern were the number of Christian symbols on display at the 2004 Republican
National Convention, and the fact that Lieutenant General William Boynton remains a top Pentagon planner. He had said
publically that his American god was far superior to the Muslim god. Add to this the Pentagon effort to produce its
own version of the Bible, and one might see the makings of a very unhealthy pattern.
WOMEN PRIESTS, POPE JOAN, AND HISTORICAL EVIDENCE
The novel Pope Joan was a good read, but there is no good historical evidence
to support it. However, the evidence mounts that women were priests in the early Christian church. For several decades, we
have speculated that it was likely that women presided at Eucharist when house churches when women were heads of the households.
Scripture mentions a number of husband and wife missionary teams, often with the woman mentioned first. We have speculated
that sometimes the females were the lead missionaries. Maybe they preached to men and women separately with each presiding
at Eucharist.
We all know that Paul greeted female preachers as partners and called Junia an "apostle." That name was later given
a masculine form though the word invented for her did not exist in the first century. It is also beyond debate that Paul’s
put-downs of women appear in texts we no longer attribute to him. Paul also refers to women as "Elect Lady." That suggests
a leadership role and also that these women were elected by their own communities. John also writes to an "Elect Lady."
Another epistle of John is addressed to a woman, whom John refers to as a presbyter, meaning she was a priest and not
a bishop. Pliny the Younger wrote to Emperor Trajan about his torturing of two women called ministrae, they had been
responsible for calling Christian meetings and for ministering to others.
There is overwhelming evidence that women were ordained as deacons, and that some were archdeacons. Some medieval
texts call them priests. We knw that some women were ordained to recite the daily Divine Office and that some of them of them,
as archdeaconess or even mitered abesssses,. had very extensive administrative duties. Over time, these roles were trimmed
as sexism gathered force. Some think ST. Brigid, among other absesses, celebrated mass. The evidence is unclear. A conservative
approach would be that none of these women celebrated mass before age 60 because Christianity carried on the Judaic view that
women who menstruated. The evidence here is unclear. In many places women were prevented from taking communion while having
their periods, but Vatican directives clearly rejected this practice. It may even be more likely that women celebrated mass
in the Eastern Church than in the West. At any rate, the reason for excluding them would have been the ritual notion of impurity,
something that hoses still excluding women today would not be inclined to admit. Hence, the argument today is that priests,
as stand-ins for Christ, must be physically eqipped as men because Christ is a male.
In the Priscilla Catacomb Fresco, women are portrayed sharing Eucharist. Several have hands outstretched, suggesting they
were concelebrating. There was one cup for the wine and two dishes for bread. When this piece was later duplicated above ground,
St. Priscilla was shown with all men. Of course, there are no serious scholars who even bother to dispute the fact that there
were quite a few female deacons, beginning with St. Phoebe. There is also no question that there were numerous female priests
among the gnostics and so-called heretical sects. .
In Women Officeholders in the Early Church, Ute Eisen produced images of ancient tombstone carvings and writings
that refer to women as priests ( presbyters or presybtides). They led churches in Yugoslavia, Italy, Sicily, Egypt, Greece,
and Asia Minor. A ninth century mosaic in Rome’s church of St. Praxedis, which I saw some years ago, shows st. "THEODORA
EPISCOPA" with three other female saints, including. Sts. Praxedis and St. Pudentiana. The latter two were martyred just before
the legalization of Christianity in 313 A.D. A conservative interpretation would make them leaders of some sort. Theodora
had a square halo, showing she was still alive when the original art was done. Some historians speculate that Theodora had
a son who became pope. This cannot be proven. We do know that there were no more women in orders after the ninth century.
The official case against female clergy is now based on Tertulian’s suggestion that women do not bear the physical
image of Christ. A review of the literature, however, establishes clearly that this was all about women being considered inherently
inferior to men. It goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks. There is evidence that Christ tried to overcome such foolish
cultural baggage, but that the culture soon overcame his message even in the church. The organization representing Australia’s
clergy just came out for optional celibacy, saying the nature of priesthood should be defined by the Eucharistic nature of
the Catholic community. As I thought about how this approach would also open the doors to women priests, I thought about the
numerous ancient drawings of a be-haloed woman in blue preaching. It was obviously Mary, and she was exercising authority
by sharing the Word as she understood it. Today, Catholic women cannot preach; they can offer "reflections."
Christianity and the Holocaust
Historians have long noted the baleful influences of Constantine’s recognition of the church and its long connection
thereafter with the state. Contemporary concerns with the harmful consequences of this relationship have been intensified
by the debate over what the Christian churches could have done to save people from the holocaust and especially whether Pius
XII could have saved more lives by speaking out clearly and repeatedly against the Nazi’s campaign to exterminate the
Jews. An obvious reason to examine the Constantinian influence upon Christianity is to seek explanations as to why Christ’s
emphasis upon peace and justice have for so long been a relatively minor part of Christian discussions and the Christian message.
The horror of the holocaust has led some, particularly in Jewish circles, to question the idea that God is all good and
merciful, incapable of any imperfection. One way to avoid associating God with the holocaust is to suggest that they deity
simply hibernates on occasion. If God does not hibernate, it might be argued that He allowed the holocaust due to his great
displeasure with Twentieth Century Jews. If that is the case, it would be difficult to escape the conclusion that God is not
sometimes very vengeful and capable of irrational rage. A literal understanding of the Old Testament would strengthen this
conclusion. God is sometimes seen as Lear-like, commanding a man to burn his son alive or visiting a whole people with plague.
A Christian taking a similar tack could accuse God of child abuse, sending his only son to suffer and die. It is suggested
that a fuller and more loving relationship could be developed with god if we asked Him to repent his failures as He demands
the same from us. By seeing God as abusive and sometimes irrationally angry, it is possible for us to accept our own recalcitrant
sinfulness. Christians have gone through all sorts of mental gymnastics. Jewish thought has a long tradition of airing grievances
with God. An advantage of this approach is that it gets around them postmodern problem with vertical, hierarchical relationships
and the feminist objection to a vertical hierarchical relationship with a male being, though God. One feminist, Catherine
Madsen, admitted that she would have no trouble with a vertical relationship with God so long as she could address Him person
to person. It would, she thought, be like Israel calling God "my man" rather than "my master." Martin Luther had a similar
yearning. He wanted to address God without a feeling of humiliation as a person. Christ solved the problem perfectly by addressing
the Father as "Daddy" (abba). For this writer, it is difficult to think of a badly flawed God. It is a definitional problem.
It is difficult to believe that intelligent people still take a literal view of the Old Testament. The matter of what God
was doing during the Shoal makes some sense, despite the fairly impersonal view of God that emerged in the Enlightenment.
The holocaust was such an enormous evil that even a clockmaker deity should be expected to intervene in some way. The only
lesson has to be that God was really serious about man’s free will. God expects man to use his will to respond to divine
grave in improving the world. God won’t do it for us. To have responded in any other way to the holocaust would lead
people to expect all sorts of divine help in constructing the Kingdom. Finally, the discussion of a Lear-like God illustrates
how much people feel the need for God, even if it is an extremely imperfect, abusive one.1
Joan Chittister wrote: "We did not need God to save the Jews from the Holocaust. We needed God alive in us." That Christians
did not save the Jews could suggest they had not learned how to help God become alive in them. It could also suggest that
the churches had not been sufficiently effective in nurturing the kind of spirituality that would promote the coming of God’s
Kingdom.
To post- holocaust people, God is frequently seen as the wellspring of their lives, demanding that they make the most of
be-ing, pursuing justice, compassion, and love. The fact that God did not intervene to stop the holocaust made it abundantly
clear that She expects people here on earth to bring about the Kingdom and combat evil. To demand less of us would make us
irresponsible. To want " God to be almighty [ in earthly affairs is] so that we can be almighty" by simply petitioning Him
to do what we want. " God is trying to teach us that some of the miracles of life "peace and sobriety, care and compassion,
self-development and other-centeredness—come from within ourselves." 2 In Luke’s Sermon on the Mount,
we learn we are expected to be compassionate because the Creator is compassionate. The word "compassion" is mistranslated
in Matthew’s version to mean "perfection." Master Eckhart reminded us that "Compassion means justice." Elsewhere Eckhart
says, "You may call God goodness; you may call God love. But the best name for God is Compassion. Adrienne Rich, the Jewish
poet, said compassion is "the most that we can do for one another."3
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A FACTUAL ACCOUNT OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH'S SEXUAL ABUSE SCANDAL
For two decades, the once rich and powerful Roman Catholic Church in America has been rocked by revelations of sexual abuse
by priests and the practice of sending these predators to other parishes without warning parishioners. The vast majority of
cases of sexual abuse of young males involved young adolescents, which is described by the term ephebophilia. Whereas the
term pedophilia describes the far less frequent abuse of children. The distinction is important because pedophilia appears
not to be treatable, whereas there has been much success in treating ephebophilia. The first cases surfaced in 1985, about
the time when it was becoming clear that people who took sexual advantage of minors could not be cured. As late as the 1960s
experts were saying that the illness could be cured and that it was often a one time occurrence. The usual practice was to
send offending priests off to special hospitals for treatment and to reassign them when physicians said they were cured. From
1985 to 1993, the great majority of American bishops put in place policies that would quickly turn these cases over to civil
authorities and remove the predators from the active ministry. The reforms have largely worked. However, the church did not
publicize its new policies and did not make it known when previous offenders were removed.
In 2002, two cases of priests who each were accused of molesting more than a hundred boys became known in Boston. The first
case involved defrocked priest James Porter, who admitted to having abused almost 30 youngsters. . The Porter case surfaced
in 1993, and later received much greater attention when extensive files were made public. Porter was convicted and later killed
in prison. He was treated several times but continued to return to his evil ways, and the church continued to move him from
parish to parish and placing him in contact with more children. Cardinal Bernard Law, the most influential American churchman,
had kept him and several others in ministry long after such men had been removed elsewhere. Catholics across the nation, including
leading traditionalists such as William Buckley, Jr. and William Donahue, demanded that Law resign. After resigning Law low
profile for more than a year and was eventually assigned to a post in Rome.
The second case involved former priest Paul Shanley, who was sent to prison in early 2005 for having abused Paul Busa two
decades ago. Busa testimony was based on "recovered memories" therapy. No witnesses were produced to show that Shanley had
ever spent any time alone with Busa. In 2002, Busa’s friend Gregory Ford discovered through recovered memory therapy
that Shanley had abused him. Then Busa made the same discovery, and his story was very similar to that of Ford. However, the
prosecutors were to decide that they could not make Ford’s charges stick. According to press accounts he could have
been a worse predator than the notorious Fr. James Porter.
Shanley had worked for decades rehabilitating young men who had been involved in drugs, street crime, and the like. The
press reported that the there were numerous sexual grievances filed against Shanley in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. In fact , all
but one of these complaints had to do with positions on the church’s sexual theology. There was one allegation about
his sexual conduct in 1967; Cardinal Richard Cushing’s secretary investigated it and found it groundless. His move to
California in 1989 was said to be an effort to escape charges, but he moved because he could not in conscience sign an oath
the Vatican imposed on all priests. He was accused of sexual abuse in California, but the prosecutors did not ask for an indictment
due to a lack of evidence. It was reported that he had possibly molested as many as a hundred boys and that he was a founder
of the North American Man Boy Love Association and that he had spoken to its convention. There was no evidence he had anything
to do with the NAMBLA, yet most of the jurors said they "knew" of his involvement. After Shanley was arrested in Boston, the
archdiocese avoided all contact with him. It once sent a deacon to deliver some papers. Priests who kept in touch with him
out of either compassion or belief in his innocence were pressured to stay away from him. Few noted when he was convicted
in 2005 that it was on the basis of testimony based upon recovered memory therapy Despite all the publicity about Porter and
Shanley, the Massachusetts Attorney General was unable to find any recent cases of sexual abuse in the archdioceses.
Very few cases of sexual abuse that occurred after 1990 have turned up. In the eighties, researcher Richard Sipe said about
6% of priests sexually abused minors. It turned out that in some dioceses the figure was between 7 and 8% but that the church
was only admitting to about 1%. By 2005, almost a billion dollars had been paid in claims, and more cases kept coming in.
In Louisville, the other jurisdiction with huge abuse problems, only one new case of abuse occurred since 1990. It is learned
that in the past 50 years, a minimum of 1000 priests were involved in criminal and civil complaints regarding this sexual
abuse. Father Andrew Greeley. A sociologist, has estimated that 100,000 minors were abased by 2,500 priests in the last quarter
century. In 2003, The New York Times reported that there were 4, 268 known accusers and 1, 205 priests who had been
charged with sexual abuse. Almost all of the cases the press dug up where decades old and involved people who had been removed
from the active priesthood. Many cases involved situations in which dead clerics were accused. One archdiocese seemed to assume
all of the dead men who were accused were guilty and posted their names on a web site listing predator priests. In many cases
"recovered memory " therapy was involv ed, but the press did not question its validity. Once a priest was accused, other accusers
soon appeared. Perhaps in all these cases, the accusations were accurate. Still, it is possible that innocent people were
being wronged as was the case in the 1980s when many child care professionals were sent off to jail. None of this detracts
from the terrible fact that cases occurred after 1985 in which priests repeatedly lapsed into this despicable behavior and
were quietly reassigned to new parishes. In only one case did a jury acquit an accused priest.
In 2001 and 2002, more than 200 priests were removed for sexual abuses, most of which had occurred long before. In about
a dozen instances, the church appeared to have employed hardball legal tactics in dealing with accusers. In almost all of
these instances, the tactics were insisted upon by insurance companies. Most of the secrecy agreements were requested by victims
who wanted to avoid embarrassment., but it is also clear that the church also wanted secrecy. 1 By August, 2002,
four bishops had resigned as a result of these sexual scandals. A fifth resigned due to involvement with mature women. In
June, 2003 Bishop Thomas J. O’Brien of Phoenix managed to escape prosecution for mishandling these cases by permitting
civil authorities oversee his handling of cases involving allegations of sexual abuse by clergy and religious. A month later,
he resigned after being arrested in connection with a hit-and-run fatality. It also became clear that some bishops, including
prominent cardinals, recycled these sexual predators transferring them from parish to parish, where they found new youngsters
to prey upon. At the end of 2002, it was clear that of the roughly 150,000 priests who had served in the last 50 years, 1.5%
were guilty of sexually abusing children. That is a much smaller figure than the percentage of the general population that
commits such crimes. However, the picture will probably never be clear. Many people probably have not come forward with their
terribly sad stories. On the other hand, it could well be that some of the claims now considered valid are false. The many
cases of unjustly accused child care personnel suggest this. 2 After the media’s interest in the scandal
had waned, a secret Vatican directive surfaced which lawyers claimed was the basis for a strategy to keep these cases secret.
It forbade revealing charges against priests who faced church proceedings that could end in being defrocked. It fact, the
document was not intended to deal with sexual abuse and in no way forbade bishops from reporting criminals to the authorities.
It is likely that very few bishops ever saw it or even heard about it.3
The most careful analysis places the number of abusive priests at "less than 2 percent of all serving American priests...about
a thousand ‘pederasts’ in all nationwide...." If less scientific analyses are taken into account, it is altogether
possible that the number of abusive priests is even higher. When full disclosure was forced by the courts in Baltimore and
provided voluntarily in Baltimore and Manchester, New Hampshire, the number of abusive priests turned out to me several times
greater than in the rest of the country, where incomplete disclosure was most probably the rule. 4 Baltimore reported
charges against 6.2% of its priests compared to 5.3% in Boston and 7.7% in Manchester, New Hampshire. Psychologist A.W. Richard
Sipe, a former priest ans advocate of church reform , has studied the matter and estimates that 4 to 5% have molested minors.5
It should also be remembered that people within the church who demand across-the-board change have seized upon the crisis
as evidence for their case. They are little different than "recovering Catholics" in accepting the most inflated estimates
of abuse.6 Many of the cases have been built on a psychological technique known as memory recovery. It was earlier
employed to convict many people in the child care industry, but was subsequently discredited, and most of those convictions
were eventually discarded. Recovered memory has come back in vogue in the 1990s in the Catholic sexual abuse scandals, has
been employed widely, and very few cases based on it have been overturned. 7
Eight non-Catholic experts did a study for the Vatican in 2003 that indicated that homosexuality was not the main cause
of priestly pedophilia and sexual abuse. The experts noted, however, that homosexuality was one risk factor. Most cases involved
boys between ages 14 and 17, and the perpetrators tended to be priests who had been ordained five to seven years. The experts
urged the church to do more than simply strip these men of their ministries because they were facing great stress and because
without care and treatment they could become threats to the larger community. larger community. There was some talk of sending
these men off to monasteries to spend their last days, but the monastic orders objected that people would then identify them
with sexual abuse.
A 2004 survey by Christian Ministry Resources showed that though the media concentrated on the abuses of Catholic priests,
"most American churches being hit with child sexual abuse allegations are Protestant." Arthur Gross, a law professor and rabbi,
reported that Jewish rabbis are involved in sexual abuse at about the same rate as Protestant ministers.8 A Zen
abbot has reported that in Asia Buddhist monks have the benefit of "concubines or acolyte boys they fool around with." In
Protestant churches at the same time there were about seventy allegations of sexual abuse per week, but very little of this
was ever to appear in the press. It is tempting to lay much of the blame at celibacy and the sexual immaturity that training
for it seems to foster. However, Christianity Today reports that every week in the past ten years there have been 70
reported cases against personnel in Protestant churches. A fourth of those cases involved pastors, who were usually married.
That number, too, might be low because there is no reason to sue single, small congregations with few assets. 9
The New York Times reported on a study of 225 sexual abuse cases in public schools in 1990-1994 that in only 1% of
the cases did superintendents make sure that predator teachers did not continue to teach. It estimated that 15% of the nation’s
school children will be molested by a school employee.10 Of course, we should expect more of bishops than schoolmen
.
In the 1980s, a Pentecostal minister named Tony Leyva was found to have molested about a hundred boys in several southern
states, but the story never assumed significance. In 1992, an Baptist associate minister and Sunday School bus driver in Washtenaw
County, Michigan were accused of raping small boys, but the story was never picked up by the national press. Litigation in
these cases is less likely because the lawyers can only target small congregations with few assets. By contrast, the Catholic
sexual abuse scandal was the second biggest news story in 2001-2002. Of course the Church’s long insistence upon "below
the belt" issues made it fair game for charges of massive hypocrisy. It is difficult to determine how much of the press’s
emphasis on this story stemmed from people’s hostility to Church, which had long been an object of prejudice and whose
teachings on sexual matters has not been greeted by widespread public acclaim.
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