Sharing scandal stories? Go Big.

" The storm within the church strikes at what every Catholic fears most. We take our religion on faith. How can we maintain that faith when our leaders are unworthy of it? ”

What a childish question. If you lose your faith so easily, if you believe that the evil actions of some impugn the good results of all, then walk away. Commit spiritual suicide, or better yet, find a religion or spiritual home that works for you? Because people have stuck by their faith through more trying times, and asking the question only shows the naivete.

The above quote comes from Maureen Dowd's brother, as she steps aside in today's column to let him do the heavy lifting. She thinks as a practicing Catholic, and a male brought up participating more in the faith traditions, he might hold more sway with her readers and church leaders:

My brother Kevin is conservative and devout — his hobby is collecting crèches — and has raised three good Catholic sons.

When I asked him to share his thoughts on the scandal, I learned, shockingly, that we agreed on some things. He wrote the following:

“In pedophilia, the church has unleashed upon itself a plague that threatens its very future, and yet it remains in a curious state of denial. The church I grew up in was black and white, no grays. That’s why my father, an Irish immigrant, liked it so much. The chaplain of the Police and Fire departments told me once ‘Your father was a fierce Catholic, very fierce.’

My brothers and I were sleepily at his side for the monthly 8 a.m. Holy Name Mass and the guarding of the Eucharist in the middle of the night during the 40-hour ritual at Easter. Once during a record snowstorm in 1958, we were marched single-file to church for Mass only to find out the priests next door couldn’t get out of the rectory.

The priest was always a revered figure, the embodiment of Christ changing water into wine. (Older parishioners took it literally.) The altar boys would drink the dregs.

When I was in the 7th grade, one of the new priests took four of us to the drive-in restaurant and suggested a game of ‘pink belly’ on the way back; we pulled up a boy’s shirt and slapped his belly until it was pink. When the new priest joined in, it seemed like more groping than slapping. But we thought it was inadvertent. And my parents never would have believed a priest did anything inappropriate anyway. A boy in my class told me much later that the same priest climbed into bed with him in 1958 at a rectory sleepover, but my friend threw him to the floor.

Nevermind that the conservative Catholic male angle was better covered by Ross Douthat yesterday, so there's no need to bring in somebody's brother, a Catholic heavy, to also recommend reforms. (Take care what you wish for.) So why not save the disillusionment for the standard coming-of-age chapters in the family memoirs?

Because if we're digging up stories of scandal, I can do you one better up here in Wisconsin, and much more recent too:

When Mal was working for the gas company, his boss' brother and wife got the call in Florida one winter, where they were retired snowbirds. Their son, and a student intern employee, has been killed at the family funeral home business; the timeline showed an afternoon killing.

Were they after embalming drugs? Was it a robbery? Did the killer surprise the owner's son, and the young man who was completing classes at the nearby college in mortuary science? Was the killer after one, or both, men? Family or financially related? Anybody nearby see anything odd at the business that day?

It was a great murder mystery all right. Funeral home employees slain in the daytime. A description of a car spotted in the parking lot around that time, all detectives had to go on.

Turns out ... it was a young priest out of the Superior diocese, who eventually killed himself after he'd been tracked and questioned. Because of his death, without confession or conviction, the diocese couldn't be held responsible.

Great read. And if you're looking for real-life scandals to share, dig a little deeper. This one surely beats a second-hand story from somebody's brother about that game of slap-and-tickle with the young priest in the drive-in back in the day. No?