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| Scene from Columbus State University production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. (Image © CSU.) |
Yesterday, in this blog, I
published a post in which I took exception to Michael Voris’ brief but
startling allegation that the Archdiocese of New York was seeking to discredit
himself and Church Militant. Voris’ charge was based “on very good authority
from various sources”, sources whose names and credentials Voris didn’t reveal.
Since I’ve reported on at least two incidences in which third parties used
journalists to smear others by remote, I questioned Voris’ prudence in naming
the archdiocese without qualification, especially as the charge necessarily
implicates the Archbishop of New York, Cdl. Tim Dolan.
Clerical Skullduggery
A friend of mine, to whom I’ll simply refer as “Valeria”,
disagrees with my assessment. Voris’ statement, Valeria says, is “hauntingly
familiar”, because she and her family has had an unpleasant experience (putting
it mildly) with her local bishop and diocese, about which legal counsel has
suggested she reveal little and with great circumspection. Valeria therefore
wholeheartedly supports Voris, as have others. “As much as people wish to
believe that the Church is infallible,” Valeria told me, “people are not, and
thus a significant number of the clergy openly choose to lie and discredit the
innocent to protect their mission.”
Agreed once, a thousand times agreed. It would be nice if
all our shepherds were honest, wise, good, sane, and zealous for the faith.
Unfortunately, just the last fourteen years by themselves have illustrated in
sordid Technicolor the fact that the clergy are all too human … that they can
be crooks, fools, liars, cowards, and sociopaths just like any one of us. And while
in strict justice we’re entitled to leaders who live the gospel message with
integrity, if we’re paying attention to our own doctrine, we realize that the
hierarchy will have weeds among the wheat just as will the laity (cf. Matthew
13:24-30).
(I can’t help thinking about the elderly Irish monsignor Fr.
Andrew M. Greeley once quoted: “Faith, the Bark of Peter must be divine, else
we boys would have kicked the bottom out long ago.” Or the reaction of one
French cardinal to Napoleon’s claim that he would destroy the Church: “Absurd.
We’ve been trying for several centuries to do so without success.”)
However, it’s precisely because of stories like Valeria’s,
or the Boston boys abused by the late Fr. John Geoghan, or any other number of
stories, that we’re primed to give credence to charges of clerical skullduggery
even before the evidence is out in the open. And, unfortunately, malicious people take advantage of this
predisposition. For instance, Dave
Pierre of The Media Report has spent several years documenting false abuse
claims made against priests … claims that, in the wake of the “Long Lent” of
2002, were given automatic credence precisely because the accused were priests.
The Victim’s “Right to Be Believed”
Before I go further, I must state categorically: I have no intention or desire to impugn
Michael Voris’ integrity. If I left that impression with any of my readers with
my previous post, I offer my apology. I have no reason to doubt he acted on
what he thought was a reasonable fear. My
sole concern was and is the prudence of naming the Archdiocese of New York as
the source of the effort to discredit him.
“Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard,
believed, and supported,” said
Hillary Clinton, a sentiment that many
advocates of sexual-abuse victims have echoed. While our natural sympathy
for the victims may urge us to agree, let’s think about what this really means:
claims of victimization should neither
require substantiation nor suffer contradiction. If you don’t immediately
believe and support the victim, you’re part of the problem — you’re enabling
the victimizers. This “victims have the right to be believed” mentality is a
major feature of identity politics as well, as activists demand we treat subjective
impressions of racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia as objective facts: “You’re
a victim of such-and-such if you think
you are.”
“Spectral Evidence”
From June 1692 to May 1693, during the Salem witch trials, over
one hundred fifty men, women, and children were accused of witchcraft, twenty
of whom were executed or killed, one of whom died in prison, and many of the
rest of whom served brief prison sentences before their convictions were reversed
and (eventually) annulled. Most of them had been accused by a handful of
pre-adolescent girls; the only evidence against them consisted of the “afflicted
girls’” claims that the accused’s spirit, or specter, had appeared to them and attacked them in various ways.
Thanks to this arrangement, hallucinations, dreams, and mere fancies would be accepted in court as factual proof not of the psychological condition of the accuser but of the behaviour of the accused. (Marion L. Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry into the Salem Witch Trials, p. 54)
Initial cautions about relying on this “spectral evidence”
were quickly dismissed as hysteria swept through the region. The “afflicted
girls” were given automatic, unquestioning belief; no proof that they had been supernaturally
attacked was ever demanded. At least one or two residents openly protested
against giving credence to the girls’ testimony, only to find themselves
accused (one, John Proctor, was a distant relation of mine). Nine little girls
were given the implicit power to ruin lives and destroy a community on the
strength of nothing more than their say-so.
Many decades before William Blackstone wrote the formulation
that bears his name, a Quaker critic of the Salem trials, Thomas Maule, wrote, “It
were better that one hundred Witches should live, than that one person be put
to death for a witch, which is not a Witch” (Truth Held Forth and Maintained, ch. 29). Among many other things,
the Salem witch trials symbolize the devastation and tragedy that can take
place when, out of fear or a distorted notion of right, we allow people to make
accusations without corroborative evidence. If we reintroduce “spectral
evidence” under the rubric of a “victim’s right to be believed”, we create for
ourselves a tyranny of the oppressed.
Part of proving guilt is proving victimization occurred.
Credibility vs. Truth
“So what does this have to do with Michael Voris?”, you ask.
Simple: the tendency to award automatic credence to victims’
allegations doesn’t begin and end with sexual assault and identity politics; it
crops up all over. For our purposes, it’s definitely a feature of the Catholic
blogosphere, particularly where Catholic celebrities are concerned. Let some
Prominent Catholic yell out, “Help! Help! I’m being repressed!”, and people
from all over the Net will come not only to offer comfort to the victim but
also to form a virtual mob in order to cyber-lynch the oppressor. (Father
John Corapi comes immediately to mind.)
It’s one thing to accept the word of a friend whose
integrity is known and who has reason to know the facts; it’s another to accept
the word of anonymous strangers whose integrity is a question mark and whose
bona fides are clouded in mystery. People do make false accusations (consider the
recent anti-gay cake hoax perpetrated in Austin); people do treat rumors,
speculation, and suspicions as facts; people do make wild accusations on the
slimmest of pretexts. If people couldn’t and didn’t lie, there would be no need
for the Eighth Commandment, let alone perjury laws.
To show that an accusation is credible is not the same as to prove that it’s true. Knowing that between 1% and
5% of American adult males are pedophiles won’t tell you whether Joe
Schmuckatelli is a pedophile; you’d have to learn more about Joe Schmuckatelli.
Knowing that one
in three African American men is likely to be imprisoned at some point won’t
tell you whether economist Thomas Sowell is likely to go to jail; you’d have to
keep close track of Mr. Sowell, verging on invasion of his privacy, to see if he
puts himself at risk. Knowing that other bishops and dioceses have launched
character attacks against other people doesn’t of itself prove that Voris’
anonymous sources are telling the truth, especially since we have nothing but pure speculation as to the archdiocese’s motive for
discrediting him.
Summation
So with all due respect to Valeria, Michael Voris, and
everyone else in support, I still have to question Voris’ prudence in making
such an unqualified accusation against the archdiocese. If it needs repeating, I do not question Voris’ honesty. But
until we’re given credible names and a substantiated motive, we need not
believe Voris’ accusation of the archdiocese any more than we need believe the scuttlebutt
at work about the CEO’s love life. And while I do not grudge Voris a single
ounce of support given him for his heartbreaking admission — no,
we should not put limits on God’s mercy! — I can’t see where such support
requires that we burn Cdl. Dolan at the stake until we’re given more than an
accusation.
Your Honor, the defense rests.
