What Was He Thinking?

How is it that decent, even admirable, people like Joe Paterno and a litany of monsignors can look away, do the minimum, and essentially tolerate the sexual abuse of children? In a fine Nov. 15 NY Times piece, David Brooks deflates the righteous indignation that pervades public commentary on the scandal and shows how prevalent and even normal such irresponsibility is among us feeble humans. It helps to understand why people “look away” when confronted by sexual abuse. Three motivations stand out: institutional loyalty, personal loyalty, and, most importantly, a primal shyness, sensitivity, and tendency to glance away from sexual matters.

A common analysis of the tolerance of sex abuse ties it to organizational loyalty: we need to protect the reputation of the Church or the Program. This motive is condemned as odiously self-serving in the case of higher level officials whose own status, wealth and power are identified with the institution. So, the thought that a coach or administrator would sacrifice the innocence of a child to the reputation of a program is unspeakably repugnant. And yet, loyalty to the group (family, Church, nation, corporation or team) is clearly a good thing. We raise our children to renounce selfishness and serve the common good: to be loyal to the larger group. The urge to protect the reputation of my family, my Church or my football team is on the whole a praiseworthy thing. No doubt there is a temptation to idolize such collectivities and this may have played a role in the various sex scandals; but I see it as a secondary, not a primary motivation.

Personal loyalty, to the perpetrator, is probably a stronger motivator in the suppression of an aggressive prosecution of sexual wrongdoing. Here again, we have a morally praiseworthy motive: loyalty to comrade or friend is among the very deepest and truest of moral sentiments. Where would we be if we did not instinctively protect each other…especially in hostile environments like warfare, football, business and (yes!) the spiritual life of the Church? If I find my best friend or brother in wrong-doing, is my first impulse to call the police? Of course not, I want to correct him and protect him; I want his well-being as well as the broader, common good, specifically the protection of the innocent. Nevertheless, this good can itself become an idol and a moral atrocity if we were to consciously sacrifice the innocence of children to protection of our comrades.

A deeper, more primal force is at work in the avoidance of sex abuse, especially among those who are basically innocent morally: shyness, a reticence, a sense of delicacy about things sexual. Sexuality is so precious and tender that the natural, the innocent reaction is to shelter it, to glance away, to avoid it except in the proper and protected context. John Paul II’s groundbreaking understanding of the relation of shame to sex in the world after the fall underscored wholesome “shame” as a protection, a shelter, a delicacy about what is most precious, vulnerable and valuable about our bodied selves. This motive is even stronger among the innocent and pure. In the article cited above, David Brooks speaks of “motivational blindness” and studies in which people are shown images and those uncomfortable with sex look away from the more graphic ones. This seems to be a wholesome and natural, deeply primal response, to what is precious and sacred. And it would be stronger among those most innocent. Many of us, coming upon a scene of grown men beating up a small boy, would instinctively jump into the fray to protect the little ones…Penn State football players certainly would not hesitate. But we are not so prepared, instinctively, to deal with the erotic intimacies of others. Instinctively we look away, avoid and hopefully forget about the disturbing sight. I recall chaperoning high school proms and being directed by my principal to patrol the dance floor and intervene where the girls were “too close” to their dates. I went through the motions but religiously avoided the couples that were out of compliance: I found it unbearable to intrude on such a personal, intimate reality. This instinct to “look away” is in itself a wholesome, reverent one. Tragically, it is not the correct response to abuse of the young.

Most of us, especially the more pure and wholesome among us (Joe Paterno and a number of bishops), are not well prepared to deal directly with sex abuse. Most families and groups have swept these matters under the rug, not out of moral depravity, but out of a painful shamefulness and awkwardness. This awkwardness is heightened, culturally, among those who came of age in the more Victorian society prior to the cultural revolution of the 60s. My dear aunt of happy memory, born in 1910, told me of her first job and how shocked she was when the boss explained that she would be replacing a woman leaving the workplace due to her “pregnancy.” That he would use such a word in her presence was, for her, unthinkable. She was of the same generation as the bishops who were to govern the Church when the sexual revolution exploded in the 60s: they were not prepared. The Great Generation was not sexually confident, knowledgeable or comfortable enough to directly and clearly address the sexual issues that were thrown in their face. They looked away. And this “looking away” continues today. The rapid and widespread acceptance of homosexuality as a lifestyle is possible only because we look away from the facts and details intrinsic to that behavior. Pious Catholics are able to vote Democrat, albeit with some discomfort, because they divert attention away from something like partial-birth abortion. The sexual libertines are winning the culture war because decent, notably Catholic, people look away and prefer to remain unengaged in such intimate, personal affairs.

This “avoidance response” may spring from innocence, but it is an immature innocence: shyness, awkwardness, timidity, and anxiety. A mature, confident innocence will be able to soberly and calmly see the real, judge it, and confront it in justice.

This is not at all to justify or condone the toleration of abuse. On the one hand, it is an attempt to practice the exhortation of St. Ignatius Loyola: “Put the best possible interpretation on the action of another.” It is also a way to deepen our own self-understanding so to train ourselves in sobriety, vigilance and preparedness for the confrontations with evil that can take us by surprise. The Brooks’ piece, drawing from the social sciences rather than a faith tradition, establishes how prone we all are “to self-deception. We attend to the facts we like and suppress the ones we don’t. We inflate our own virtues and predict we will behave more nobly than we actually do.” Without implying a moral equivalence, we sense a shared spiritual blindness: we are all of us so weak, fragile, and prone to error and evil.

May we all bring ourselves, victimized and victimizing, humbled and weak, into the Mercy of the one Victim who does not accuse or condemn or victimize; the victorious and regal Victim himself, Jesus our Lord.