Tag Archives: Rape

Morally Bankrupt

Everyone knows politicians are morally bankrupt, but what Maryland has done is an abomination. That state’s politicians recently passed a law removing the statute of limitations on civil child sex abuse claims. Now victims can sue their purported abusers decades after they were raped. Worse, these abusers include priests who only wanted to lay their hands on these children and prey.

This has left the Archdiocese of Baltimore with one moral choice. It must resort to chapter 11 of title 11 in the Eleventh Commandment, which states “Thou shalt file bankruptcy to absolve yourself of financial liability for your sins, but only after exhausting all other options, such as lying, obfuscating, delaying, and deflecting.” So we have been forced once again, as if a nine inch nail was being held to our head, to put another diocese into bankruptcy. It’s unfortunate, but it’s far better than confessing . . . or being held responsible for our actions. And we take great consolation in knowing it’s what God wants. Trust us.

Excuse me, Father Orifice? Actually, it’s pronounced Oreefeechee, but what is it my dear pathetic fool? Are you saying God expects us to trust the people who allowed our children to be raped and then lied, covered it up, moved the abusers around so the truth would be hard to prove? God wants that?

Praise the Lord! I was concerned you wouldn’t get it. Hell, yeah, that’s exactly what God wants. Sure, we brought rapists into your communities and families. Then we lied about it. Covered it up. We did do that. But we would never do something evil like hiding assets, undervaluing property, and cynically manipulating the bankruptcy laws to delay accountability for years, minimize claims, and hope that with the further passage of time, God willing, more victims, abusers, and witnesses will die thereby decreasing the amount we would ultimately need to pay, hopefully, with Bitcoin. Now that would be morally bankrupt.

Father Orifice, Chaplain of Pungent Sound Technical College of Technology

Down by the River: Not your Great-Granny’s Ireland

Edna O’Brien’s Down by the River opens ominously with a road in a verdant and decaying rural Ireland. “The road is silent, somnolent yet with a speech of its own, speaking back to them, father and child, through trappings of sun and fretted verdure, speaking of old mutinies and a fresh crime mounting in the blood.” Hey, wait one hot second, Gladiola! Yes, dear reader. This is all wrong. My great-grandmother was born in Ireland, and I went there last year on a golf trip. Where are the wee folk and the pints of Guinness? The songs about unicorns? My apologies, dear reader, but this is a story by Edna O’Brien. She’s Ireland’s William Faulkner. Or, perhaps better put, William Faulkner is America’s Edna O’Brien. She writes about Ireland in all its melancholy and sordidness, so fear and superstition appear on every page – song too, but no wee folk; no unicorns.

Mary (that’s a loaded name in a predominantly Catholic country) is 14 years old. Her father is James. He loves horses, but he’s a cruel man who believes in “might before right.” He’s been raping Mary for quite some time now, and she is desperate to get away from him. She and her sister, Elizabeth (another loaded name), visit a remote shrine and pray for their father to be cured of his “epilepsy”. They speak in code, because the truth is too awful to say, even to God.

There’s another truth too awful to say: birth can be a brutally violent act. Mary witnesses this when her father helps a mare give birth. “Mare and foal, though of the same flesh, are warring, two warring things, not like a mother and its young, each fighting the other, except that the foal is stronger, her energy and her thrusting prodigal now.” Soon after, Mary becomes pregnant. When James finds out, he attacks her with a broom stick trying to cause a miscarriage. He was kinder to the horse and foal.

This is Ireland in the 1990s. Abortion is illegal. Bishops control the medical profession, and society decries the “abortion holocaust” taking place in England. Mary concludes suicide is her only option. Betty, an older cousin, rescues Mary from the river and figures out her secret. She helps Mary get to England, but a neighbor discovers the plan and alerts the authorities. Betty and Mary are brought back to Ireland before the abortion occurs.

Now the bishops and lawyers get involved. Mary becomes public property, and the public presumes to know what is best for the born and unborn. But the public only knows Mary as the “Magdalene” so how could they know best.

Time is relentless, and a decision must be made. But who gets to make it. Everyone demands to be heard, but whose voice should be heard? It’s telling we don’t hear Mary’s voice until the end. It’s beautiful.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor