As an aspiring screenwriter who has yet to find someone like Mel Gibson, Roseanne Barr, or Mark Wahlberg to produce my screenplay, “Den of Iniquity,” one of my favorite screenplays is “A Few Good Men” written by Aaron Sorkin and based on his 1989 play. The most famous line from the movie starring Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, and Demi Moore, is when Nicholson, in the role of Marine Corps Colonel Nathan Jessup, says on the courtroom stand to Cruise, in the role of Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee, “You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!”
When I encounter people who don’t want to hear about survivors who were sexually abused or whistleblowers who suffered reprisals for reporting abuse, I would like to tell them, “You don’t want the truth because you can’t handle the truth.” They remind me of a woman who does not want to learn from her neighbor that her husband has been cheating on her with numerous women for many years. In order to avoid the pain of betrayal, the woman wants to go on living as if her husband is truly faithful to his marriage vows.
One of the reasons Catholics don’t want to hear reports that Pope Francis preyed upon young Jesuit novices in Argentina or covered up countless abuse cases when he was the Archbishop of Buenos Aires is they fear it may call into question the validity of what the popes, bishops, and priests have been preaching to them throughout their lives. If Omaha Archbishop George Lucas lied about not having sexually abused a high school seminarian in St. Louis or covered up that he had sex with priests and a gay prostitute in the presence of young seminarians in Springfield, then is what he said about Jesus and life after death also a lie? After paying “eternal life insurance premiums” Sunday after Sunday for all of one’s life, is “heaven” a lie like “celibacy” seems to be for the 150 credibly accused bishops that Pope Francis refuses to laicize or excommunicate along with priests like Father Marko Rupnik who raped over 20 nuns? Hypocrisy on the part of Catholic clergy is harming the faith of Catholics including over 30 million Americans who were baptized in the Catholic Church and who no longer self-identify as “Catholic.”
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