Hatred Willard Gaylin (classic novels TXT) 📖

During the emergence of the scandal involving pederast priests, it was astonishing to read the reports from the Boston archdiocese. The leaders indicated that whereas previously they had viewed sexual offenses of priests in terms of moral transgressions, in the past twenty years or so they were encouraged to adopt a therapeutic approach to the problem. The “problem” being no less than pederasty, lying, violating a position of trust, and desecrating sacred vows.

They were encouraged to adopt a therapeutic approach? By whom? Everyone who had studied the problem had known by then that sexual perversions were intractable to standard—or, for that matter, any—treatments. Never mind that there is no affective treatment for pederasty. Even if there were, that would be the bailiwick of the therapeutic community and we would have preferred the Church to continue its moral fight for righteous behavior.

This abdication by the Church of its traditional role as a moral authority was expressed with numbing clarity by Cardinal Bernard Francis Law, the archbishop of Boston (until late in 2002). In his deposition on his actions in the case of the pedophile priest, the Reverend John J. Geoghan, Cardinal Law stated, “I viewed this as a pathology, as a psychological pathology, as an illness.”7 He went on to concede that the events had “a moral component,” but it was the illness that drew his attention and commanded his action. He referred the errant priest to those who better understood this illness, the molester’s personal physician and a suspect psychiatrist.

But sick or not, Father Geoghan had violated his vows of celibacy and he had committed multiple homosexual acts viewed by Cardinal Law and his church as grave sins. He had also sodomized innocent children, which is certainly—in addition to being a felony in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts—a sin against God and an act of evil. Surely, violation of vows, corruption of the innocent, sin, and evil fall within the purview and jurisdiction of the Church. Yet these monstrous actions seemed beneath the concern of Cardinal Law, who referred the matter to the attention of his assistants, thus so successfully putting these “incidents” behind him that, when deposed, he was “unable to recall” his most dramatic involvement in these heinous crimes.

I first became aware of this dangerous slippage in the attitudes of the Catholic Church during the 1970s, when I was examining the brutal slaying of a young Yale coed by her fellow student and former boyfriend, Richard Herrin.8 The leadership of St. Thomas Moore Church—the seat of the Catholic chaplaincy at Yale—chose to view Herrin, a poor Mexican-American boy from the barrio of Los Angeles, as a victim, more to be pitied than censured. Worse was the tendency of this religious community to “normalize” his behavior by assuming that given the right stimulus, we might all pulverize a loved one’s head. Or pitchfork our neighbor’s child, I presume.

During an interview I had with Brother Thomas, a Christian Brother in Albany, New York, an incident revealed to me the danger of universalizing, thus normalizing, malignant and even psychopathic and psychotic behavior. The Christian Brothers had shielded Richard Herrin when he was on bail in their custody, even allowing this impulsive murderer to attend a college campus under an assumed name. The pedophile shuffle of the Church, revealed only recently, was in full swing during this earlier period, again under the rubric of compassion, understanding, and treatment.

Brother Thomas was the mildest, gentlest of men, with other-worldly qualities that would have made him perfect casting for a thirteenth-century scholastic monk: When I asked him if he could imagine himself ever taking a hammer to the head of a sleeping and innocent girl, the following dialogue occurred, which I record verbatim:

Could you imagine yourself ever taking a hammer and hitting someone?

I could. I could consider that I could not be in control.

If something is so outrageous in my makeup that could be triggered and I could just lash out.

Have you ever attacked anyone with an instrument?

No, I haven’t.

Yet you have been outraged by social conditions every day of your life.

Yes, I have, but it has been small and inconsequential.

But you really could imagine picking up a hammer and crushing a skull?

I don’t know the difference in picking up a hammer and I can see myself losing control and doing practically anything.

Under what conditions have you actually ever lost control?

No, I have never lost control. But I pick up the newspaper and it seems to happen so much. If it can happen to one person, it can happen to me.

The last naive statement denies the corrupting influence of both family environment and life history. Of course, given the same life history—and even this does a disservice to genetic influences on behavior—we might all do the same thing. But we do not have the same life history, and therefore, we become different people. The adult person who emerged as Saint Theresa and the person who became Agrippina, mother of Nero, were not likely to do the same thing “given the same opportunities.”

It is time to reverse the therapeutic trivialization of morality, where nothing is either wrong or right, only sick or healthy. Where nothing is deemed punishable, only treatable. Where evil is only one among other symptoms of mental illness, like depression and anxiety. Where anyone may be excused for any act regardless of how wantonly depraved it is. It is time to liberate morality from the tyranny of psychodynamic models. Even the redoubtable Dr. Menninger became appalled at what he had inadvertently helped to create and in his later days wrote a book entitled Whatever Became of Sin?9

Most of us are fortunately ignorant of the kind of evil experienced in Jedwabne and the hatred that is the subject of this book. I am not talking about rage, but raw hatred, the hatred that goes beyond betrayal and destruction for purposes of advantage, material gain, or revenge; the hatred that finds pleasure in the pain of