Russell Shorto

Catholic Whistleblowers

A group of priests, nuns and others in the Catholic church who say sexual abuse still continues.

A Walk in Amsterdam

The Haarlemmerstraat in Amsterdam is a narrow enough thoroughfare that from my office window I can easily see into the shops across the street. There is the olive oil boutique, with its rows of metal barrels and its sign inside saying “Check Your Oil,” and the coffee shop that young, nattily dressed tourists wander into to get licitly high. (Most visitors know that in Amsterdam a cafe is for coffee, and a coffee shop is for marijuana.) Looking up, I have to crane my neck to take in the succession of gable types on the brick facades — step, bell, spout — that signal the changing fashions among real estate developers during the city’s golden age in the 17th century.

Continue to my article in the New York Times travel section…

White Smoke

The most astute Italian Vaticanista, Sandro Magister, has come out with a prediction and a favorite candidate for the next pope. Actually, Magister has two candidates, and the remarkable thing is both are Americans. Magister’s money is on Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, whom he calls “a larger-than-life man from the Midwest with a radiant smile and overflowing vigor.” His other choice is Sean Patrick O’Malley from Boston. Magister is good at giving a taste of the ruthless behind-the-scenes maneuvering among the cardinals. There are two factions: the old guard of the curia, who want an Italian pope, and one who will follow Ratzinger’s take-no-prisoners conservatism; the other faction includes, essentially, anyone who wants anything else. Dolan, Magister argues, could please both. He’s a conservative, but also as a non-European he would seem to represent change.

Cross to Bear

As Benedict becomes the first pope in six centuries to resign, it may be of interest to read the formal petition to the International Criminal Court, by the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, that he, along with other Vatican officials, be tried “for rape and other forms of sexual violence as crimes against humanity.” I don’t think many seriously expect the petition to succeed, but the Center for Constitutional Rights, its co-filer, says Ratzinger’s status as a layman “may make international prosecution easier.” The petition can be found here.

The Catholic Church Must Be Defended

The recent release of 30,000 or so pages of documents detailing the cover-up of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests in Los Angeles has brought the usual torrent of criticism of the church (Cardinal Roger Mahony, who the documents show working hard to shield rapist-priests, has been relieved of public duties). And with it comes the continued defense of the church. After helpfully noting that “It is well-understood that sexual abuse is a crime against children,” “Catholic Online” makes a remarkable charge:

While it appears based on the documents that Mahony may have participated in covering up crimes against children, he has actually gone one step further. He has actively participated in a crime against the entire Church.

An emerging trend among Catholic publications is to separate the offenders from the church. That has to be continually and dispassionately refuted. Every such utterance should be countered by, for example, the conclusion of the committee that documented decades of abuse of children in Catholic institutions in Ireland:

Physical and emotional abuse and neglect were features of the institutions.

Repeat: physical and emotional abuse and neglect were features of the institutions. Mahony is not separate from the church. He is of the church.

Putting Things in the Penis (as opposed to the other way around)

The current issue of “The Atlantic” has what is surely the most self-evident headline of the year so far: “The Problem with DIY Penis Implants.” In the vast category of incomprehensible things that humans do, we learn of a very special subcategory. The word “craze” denotes a mass phenomenon but it also connotes irrationality. What has been documented in prisons from Australia to Texas seems to fit the term. Objects implanted include dice, buttons, and “deodorant roller balls.” The question forces itself to the front of the mind: Why? One answer given in the article–boredom–simply doesn’t satisfy. I googled, and found an interesting article from 2001 in “Inside Indonesia” about a similar yearning among working-class Indonesians. Ball bearings and “semi-precious stones” are favored implants. Most common explanations for the behavior are aphrodisiac and performance enhancement. The fact that the operations are self-inflicted or performed not by doctors but fellow prisoners or other laymen suggests, further, that the motivations are deeper, murkier, more darkly mired in the psyche. Most men would I think accept as a definition of “penis”: the thing you don’t mess with. Unless of course it’s broke. If it’s broke, you get it fixed. If not, and hordes of people are attempting to fix it anyway, there is something going on. The world is off-kilter in some dramatic, subterranean way. Can someone solve this?

God Bless the Irish

Following on my post of yesterday, about the likelihood of an assault-from-within in the Catholic church, it seems Ireland may lead the charge. Irish clergy have been among the most heinous of the church’s manifold serial rapists of children and (not coincidentally) the Irish, historically among the most devout of Catholics, have been leaving the church in droves.

Recently, Bishop John Buckley indicated that church positions against contraception, abortion and premarital sex are not rules that must be followed but “ideals.” This is a virtual shot across the bow. The Vatican sees the church as a strict hierarchy, with the pope and cardinals at the top issuing orders, which Catholics are obliged to follow.

An Irish priest named Tony Flannery today puts himself in direct opposition to the hierarchy. In 2010 he directly challenged the basis of the church’s top-down power system, when he wrote:

I no longer believe that the priesthood, as we currently have it in the Church, originated with Jesus. More likely that sometime after Jesus, a select and privileged group within the community who had abrogated power and authority to themselves, interpreted the occasion of the Last Supper in a manner that suited their own agenda.

This is, historically speaking, accurate. And the select and privileged group today, who have abrogated power and authority to themselves, are outraged. The Vatican suspended Flannery from the priesthood for this, and forbade him from speaking out. Today, Flannery holds a news conference, in open defiance of the pope.

Closer to God

A new report details another wave of Catholic priests sexually abusing children. This time it’s Germany, and the report covers 1,165 victims. The new wave of information comes via a hotline that was set up, which victims could call. Many recounted their years of systematic abuse at the hands of their religious leaders. One pattern: children were told that performing oral sex on priests or submitting to other depredations brought them “closer to God.”

These waves keep coming. In fact, they have been washing over us for centuries. Erasmus, the great Church reformer of the 16th century, who as the illegitimate child of a priest was raised in a monastery, wrote in his memoir graphic descriptions of what children endured in monasteries: monks “whipping boys to death every day” and creating an atmosphere in comparison to which there was “more innocence in a brothel.” Erasmus paved the way for the first great exodus from the Catholic Church, the Reformation. We’re due for another.

Decoding the Decoder

Charles Gehring, translator of the Dutch records of the colony of New Netherland, thanks to whose work I was able to write my book “The Island at the Center of the World,” gets a fine profile in the online journal Narrative.ly.

The Election, Seen from Amsterdam

While people were voting in the U.S., I was on a panel in Amsterdam that was part of the city’s huge American election extravaganza. First, I doubt that other foreign cities go to such lengths: every TV network, the country’s top politicians, thousands of people, a rock concert vibe. Second, the panel was meant to talk about the election and the American melting pot. I was the only American: the others were three Dutch journalists and a Ugandan who talked about how he looks at Obama as an older brother who sometimes disappoints but of whom he is still proud.

One of the panelists, the very smart Dutch writer Paul Scheffer, zeroed in on how Obama is black but not “black,” not part of the African American experience, and how he can thus represent in a way few other people could the melting pot ideal. He can be a model for black people, but also for recent immigrants.

Obama continues to have an intruguingly powerful hold on Europeans, and I would say on a lot of people outside the U.S. His reelection–and the fact that the same coalitions that elected him in the first place did so again–reinforces that. The questions that I got from the Dutch audience all danced around one topic. The issue of how to identify as an American while also being whatever else you are (black, gay, Jewish) has mostly been solved by Americans. And lots of other people out there find that fascinating, and long for something similar. How can the French solve the identity puzzle? Or the Germans, or the Dutch? Or, for heaven’s sake, Israelis and Palestinians? Obamas two elections seem to point to a new American alignment. And a lot of other parts of the world will be very interested in how that plays out, and will be looking for tips.