I’ve been fortunate enough to do a lot of traveling this summer, and one result of this is that I’ve been mentally filing away quite a number of possible posts that I never actually got time to write. One came back to me today as I was sorting through papers from our Alaska trip. I was going to write a bit about our visit to the Anchorage museum, and its, err, tribute to victims of the priestly scandals of the last few decades.

Due to one of those bizarre, inexplicable tricks of pricing for which airlines are so (in)famous, the Doctor and I ended up in Anchorage on the day before we were supposed to meet up with the rest of my family. So we had a day to ourselves to explore the city. The tourist attractions within Anchorage itself are somewhat limited, so we ended up investigating the Anchorage museum, located directly in the downtown area. A generous way of describing this museum would be to say that it has something for everyone. A less generous way would be to say that it has a fairly random collection of exhibits, ranging from natural history to modern art. It’s also pretty seriously out of date… the most contemporary exhibit in the “Alaskan history” segment had obviously been erected in the 1980’s, and offered grim predictions of the economic hardships the state would soon face due to plummeting oil prices. Ah, if only! (I was quite transfixed, however, by the dioramas depicting the daily lives of the native Alaskan tribes in the ancient days. How could I fail to enjoy seeing those pre-modern Inuit women cook, sew and tend their children in their traditional Eskimo coats, boots and pants?)

Having been duly warned of the coming crisis in overabundance of oil, we wandered into another gallery, this one featuring some contemporary “native Alaskan art,” created by local Anchorage artist Sonya Kelliher-Combs. Ms. Kelliher-Combs is apparently known in the art world for her attention to social issues. Entitled “Points of View,” this particular gallery uses simple collections of objects to draw the viewer’s attention to various “social problems.” Two exhibits feature native clothing and are intended to highlight the difficulties caused by the collision of these native tribes with the modern world. A third, in a similar vein, displays 38 pairs of gloves arranged with the fingers pointed upwards. The title is simply, “Goodbye,” and each pair represents an Alaskan native who has died by his own hand since 2005. Another exhibit features a box overflowing with corks, and then there was another box filled with pull-tabs, like those used in the gambling industry.

One of the more prominent exhibits (or at least the one that arrested my attention the most) featured three largish boxes set in a row on a sort of pedestal. Each box was full of white plastic rosaries (the same kind, in fact, distributed at 9pm on weekdays to newcomers looking to pray with the Cornell Society for a Good Time.) The title: “Forgive You, Father, for You Have Sinned.” You can probably figure out what that exhibit was supposed to represent.

It does seem to be the case that Alaska has had more than its share of priestly scandals in recent years. We got a sobering reminder of this when we went to Mass in Anchorage, and found printed in the bulletin the contact information for the person in charge of fielding accusations of priestly abuse. But I was acquainted with the problem a few years before these scandals became “famous”, thanks to a college friend who grew up in Alaska. “Alaska gets all the really bad priests,” she told me with a sigh. “The alcoholics and the pedophiles, they all somehow seem to end up in Alaska. Alaskan Catholics know not to leave their children alone with an unfamiliar priest.”

I was (quite properly) shocked by this, though it sadly became evident in later years that Alaska is not the only state to have had these problems. Of all the shameful things the American church has dealt with in the past few decades, this is surely one of the most horrific. What was it Jesus said about it being better to be drowned in the depths of the sea than…? And in some ways more horribly still, we see real American bishops and other clergy supporting these monsters in priestly garb, hiding their crimes, and putting them in a position to wound still more young Catholics.

Probably there were other mistakes made in the days after the Council that ultimately did more overall damage to souls. This, though, stands out as the clearest and most obvious reductio ad absurdum, the truest example of the depths to which the newly liberalized American church could sink. It might take a little conditioning (or rather, de-conditioning) before one can retch at the awfulness of the OCP “worship music”, but just about anyone can appreciate the utter baseness and depravity of a pastor, of all people, preying on the young and trusting souls that have been placed in his care. Is this the new springtime? Then I’ll stick with winter, thanks very much.

So obviously, I sympathize with some of the sentiments that inspired Sonya Kelliher-Combs to create this little display; nonetheless, the exhibit rankled. I felt resentful that this woman, who as far as I know is not a Catholic, would feel at liberty to drop Catholic priestly scandals in among her plethora of “social issues,” just another exhibit sandwiched between suicide and alcoholism. I felt as a Jewish person might feel if someone like me were to take it upon myself to build a memorial of Auschwitz, even though I am neither Jewish nor German nor in any other way specially connected with that tragedy. It seemed presumptuous, and the work of a person who, instead of feeling real sorrow, was merely fascinated by the sordid and the macabre.

In truth, that assessment probably isn’t quite fair. There were some cases of missionary priests abusing native Alaskan children, which would, I suppose, put the issue within the scope of Ms. Kelliher-Combs’ “native issues” theme. Even so, the exhibit seemed profoundly disrespectful. If the pull-tabs represented gambling and the corks alcoholism, what are we to conclude about the rosaries? That the main problems of native Alaskans are drink, gambling and… Catholicism? And that cheap plastic trinkets are really representative of what the Church has to offer? This display was not lamenting particular priests’ betrayal of their sacred office. It was lamenting that the priests ever came to Alaska at all. The irreverent, smart-alecky title emphasized this even further. And that made me angry, because it seemed like giving a further kick to those people who were already the most down in the wake of the scandals – Alaskan Catholics.

All this did get me thinking, though. Why don’t we see more properly Catholic expressions of grief and remorse over these terrible events? For Trads, I suppose, these problems seem so inexorably bound up with other problems in the Church that we don’t really think to do or say much about the priestly scandals per se. The heretical liberal Catholics don’t like to think about them for a different reason: it can’t be pleasant witnessing the putrid, rotted fruits of the trees that you helped to nurture. But for some Catholics in the middle, thinking about these events might be the ticket to beginning to see how far the Church leaders in America have strayed from where they should be. Some have moved from there into apostasy… but why not into orthodoxy, instead? In taking up this cause, traditional Catholics could hardly sound a more sympathetic note with the population at large. This is one of those very rare times in which orthodox Catholics can find common cause with the mainstream media against liberals within the Church itself.

Are there traditional parishes that have asked parishioners to pray novenas for the victims of clerical abuse (or, perhaps equally importantly, for the clerics themselves)? Have any pilgrimages been made in reparation for these terrible sins? If so, I’d be interested to hear. If not, perhaps we ought to think about doing things like this, for multiple reasons. For one thing, the prayers are surely needed! For another, there’s always a chance that some of the victims (or friends and families of victims whose faith was destroyed by the traumatic events) might return to the fold if they come to see that the withered branches they encountered are not representative of the whole tree. But finally, I left the Anchorage museum with the strong feeling that, if these stories do need to be told and lamented, they should be told and lamented by faithful Catholics. We don’t want to leave the job in the hands of Ms. Kelliher-Combs.