[Dialogue] Spong on Virginia Tech and RC Pedophiliacs

[KroegerD at aol.com]

April 18, 2007 
Tragedy on a University  Campus  

It is arguably among America's most beautiful universities, nestled as it is  
in the mountains of Southwestern Virginia. Its official name is Virginia  
Polytechnic Institute and State University, though popularly referred to as VPI  
or Virginia Tech. It is well recognized in college athletics. I have been on  
that campus numerous times while serving as a priest in the Episcopal Diocese 
of  Southwestern Virginia, which embraces Blacksburg, Virginia Tech's home. I 
know  members of the faculty of that university who were active in the affairs 
of our  Diocese. Just three years ago I led a national conference for the 
Society of  Friends, frequently called "The Quakers," that met on that campus 
during the  summer season, taking advantage of both outstanding facilities and 
the cool  mountain climate. It has been to me a rather idyllic spot.  
Virginia Tech even lives in the folklore of members of my family as the  
primary rival of the University of Virginia, to which their allegiance is deep.  
This inter-collegiate competitiveness reverberates even in their humor on a  
daily basis. No "Cavalier" likes a "Hokie" and vice-versa, except when they have 
 a tragedy or a common enemy.  
The horror of the massacre that engulfed the Tech campus this past week would 
 have been difficult to embrace intellectually or emotionally, no matter 
where it  occurred. It was made doubly difficult for me because of my long history 
with  that institution. I joined a nation of citizens in shock and grief as 
we  struggled to comprehend the incomprehensible.  
America's way of processing tragedy is to talk it to pieces through the  
media. Every network pre-empted all other programming to focus on the massacre.  
Maps of the Tech campus were shown; students willing to talk to the media were  
plentiful, their words sometimes filled with the campus jargon of those very  
familiar with the names of all the buildings, even using nicknames that only  
fellow students would understand. Trauma experts, psychiatrists and other  
would-be specialists offered their wisdom, even in the face of an almost total  
lack of factual data, about the causes, the motivation, the signs that were  
missed, and the breakdown in security. Politicians from the President to  
Virginia's two Senators became "secular high priests" seeking to express outrage  
and grief simultaneously and thereby to offer comfort, faith and hope that 
might  assure parents, grandparents and friends that their grief was shared by the 
 people of the nation and the people of Virginia. Tim Kaine, the Governor of 
the  Old Dominion, as Virginia is called, was on a trade mission in the Far 
East and  was not available, but the news that he was flying home immediately 
communicated  his identification with the tragedy and illustrated the gravity of 
the  situation. When the media people had done all that they could do, the 
grief in  some fifty families in America was still palpable, the pain and loss 
still  intense, and through the process of identification with those families, 
the  anxiety of people in this nation was raised to somewhere between orange 
and red.  This trauma had all of the intensity of a domestic 9/11.  
Blame is one of the tactics we human beings employ in the face of irrational  
and inexplicable events. If a disaster can be seen to be someone's fault, it  
appears to satisfy something within us. So there was much early talk about a  
breakdown in security. The two attacks were separated by two hours and yet  
security was not tightened, classes were not cancelled, and students were not  
warned until the second and far bloodier attack was carried out. The fickle  
finger of fate began its probe for targets to blame with early nominees being  
campus security, the administration and even the University President, who  
responded typically by immediately ordering a full scale investigation. There  
had been strange warning signs that in retrospect appear to have been 
minimized,  like bomb threats on the campus during the last thirty days, which served 
as  another indication that the tragedy could have been averted had the 
authorities  been more aggressive. Hindsight, however, always possesses 20-20 vision. 
 Tragedies also tend to produce both heroes and scapegoats. One recalls Rudy  
Giuliani, the mayor of New York whose political career was in shambles before 
 9/11, identified as it was with scandals, a messy public divorce, minority  
alienation over alleged and real police brutality and his own personal health  
issues; yet he emerged as the hero with a strong public performance in that  
national disaster, which not only made him TIME magazine's "Man of the Year" 
but  also turned him into a viable presidential candidate. Finding the 
scapegoat was  harder in 9/11, but one candidate was clearly the Bush Administration 
which  struggled to keep a full investigation from being carried out, and also 
put  strange twists on the data that were available, like a memo marked 
"highly  confidential" in August 2001 that warned of an imminent terrorist attack, 
but  which did not alarm then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice 
sufficiently  to disturb the President on vacation at his Crawford Texas ranch. 
Eventually the  head of the CIA, George Tenet, was fired, but the announcement 
made suggested  that he had resigned "to spend more time with his family," and 
then he was later  rehabilitated by being presented with the Presidential Medal 
of Freedom in a  White House ceremony. It is always best to cover mistakes 
with outsized efforts  of praise.  
Heroes, however, will emerge. They always do and I doubt if the campus  
security force has sufficient status to be an effective scapegoat. That would be  
like blaming the abuse of Abu Ghraib on Private Lynndie English. Tragedies also 
 bring the usual issues back into attention in the political arena. America's 
 violence is consistently blamed on the proliferation of guns, and that 
charge is  regularly countered by spokespersons for the National Rifle Association 
and  other gun lobby organizations that rehearse the time-worn cliché that 
"guns do  not kill people, people do." Clergy seek to use every tragedy to 
reinforce their  doctrine of human sin and depravity and to call for a return to the 
values of  yesterday and even to the God of yesterday, while other moralizers 
offer their  analysis of human nature and make their pitch for a new moral 
awakening.  
Most people will not be moved by any of these special interests. This bizarre 
 scene at Virginia Tech will simply sit uneasily on the body politic until it 
has  been absorbed into our individual psyches where it becomes one more 
ingredient  in the rising tide of angst, anxiety and fear that seems endemic in 
modern  society. It will find expression politically in various attempts to 
create  security in a free society, which will normally take the form of locking 
the  door after the horse has escaped and is usually accomplished by 
diminishing our  freedoms. Ultimately the public will learn enough about the perpetrator 
of this  heinous crime, not to exact revenge for he has already turned his 
lethal weapon  on himself, but to be able to reconstruct the steps he took 
before his madness  erupted into brutality. That strangely enough brings some 
comfort because we can  understand mental illness and can at least console 
ourselves that none of us or  any of our friends are like that. We will, however, 
never be able to escape the  fact that some human beings are psychotic and they 
lurk in the shadows of our  society, out of which they can strike at anytime and 
claim us or someone we love  as their victims. That realization will never 
fully go away.  
Security is a great fantasy among fear-laden human beings. We seek it in many 
 forms. It is seen in tribal identity, in religion, in our constant need to  
identify and reject enemies or those who are different and who thus threaten 
our  imposed, security building codes of normalcy. We even seek it in various 
escape  modes from alcohol to drugs to promiscuity. Security, however, is 
always  elusive. It is a human desire, but never a human achievement. The most 
powerful  nation in the world could not protect itself on 9/11 from 19 terrorists 
armed  only with box cutters. The well trained Israeli army cannot protect the 
citizens  of Israel from suicide bombers. The armed forces of the United 
States and the  United Kingdom together cannot contain the violence of militant 
Iraqis. The  police forces of our various cities cannot prevent murders, 
robberies, rape and  child molesting. Security is always an illusion, but seeking it 
is the nature of  humanity itself, because we are self-conscious creatures who 
live in the medium  of time. We know that we are mortal and destined to die. 
Nothing we do can  change that. God will not stop it. Prayer will not make us 
safe. Good deeds  designed to win the approval of the heavenly parent will not 
guarantee that we  live another day if someone marks us for death, or even if 
we find ourselves  accidentally in the wrong place at the wrong time. That is 
the nature of our  humanity. Perhaps the time has come to stop pretending 
that it is otherwise and  to embrace the brisk winds of anxiety that mark human 
existence and to learn to  live courageously and creatively in the face of 
constant insecurity.  
I believe that is what faith ultimately means. Faith has little to do with  
proper believing or with the ability to say yes to creedal and doctrinal  
assertions. It will not be found in saluting pitiable claims that some leader is  
infallible or that some sacred text is inerrant. Faith ultimately has something 
 to do with being, with embracing the unknown, with a willingness to step 
into  the future and with the ability to live each day with integrity, even in 
the  face of the anxiety of humanity which we never escape. Both human 
insecurity and  our ability to live with it become our glory when we have the courage 
to be all  that we are capable of being in the face of it.  
By faith, the Epistle to the Hebrews tells us, Abraham left the security of  
his known home in Ur of the Chaldees. He journeyed into the wilderness and 
into  an unknown future, but in that process he discovered his destiny and his  
purpose. If the Virginia Tech tragedy and the 9/11 tragedy can create in us  
similar faith that enables us to leave the known for the unknown, the secure for 
 the insecure and thereby to embrace more of what it means to be human, this  
tragedy can perhaps become an occasion for growth.  
John Shelby Spong  
_Note  from the Editor: Bishop Spong's new book is available now at 
bookstores  everywhere and by clicking here!_ 
(http://astore.amazon.com/bishopspong-20/detail/0060762071/104-6221748-5882304)   
B. J. Hogan from Naples, Florida writes:  
I have a concern that I would like to share with you. I come from  
Massachusetts, where pedophilia in the Catholic Church has been public since the  early 
1960s. It has been an occasional topic of talk radio, newspapers, and the  
underground.. However, it was not until very recently called by its appropriate  
name — instead it was referred to as homosexuality. I am sure that you are 
aware  of the vast difference between pedophilia and homosexuality.In my opinion, 
the  Catholic Church (and perhaps others) have always used that misconception 
as  justification for their dislike and disdain for gays. Many pedophiles 
have also  hidden behind the innocence of many homosexuals.  
I believe that the general public has been so indoctrinated by this  
misconception that they still carry some of the old beliefs, and that remains  the 
biggest obstacle to acceptance of homosexuals  
I also believe that, as you say, "the Catholic Church created the biggest  
closet for homosexuals." It also created one of the largest closets for  
pedophiles, and rather than deal with it for what it is, the Church has fostered  
many untruths about homosexuality.  
I would appreciate it if you would consider the above. Perhaps as you  
champion the cause of God as love, you will also assist the public and all  
homosexuals in clearing up this misnomer.  
Dear B. J.,  
You have said it well and I can add nothing to your letter but to cheer at  
your insight. By publishing in this column I will give wide readership to your  
thoughts and conclusion. They are words that many need to hear.  
John Shelby Spong 



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