And what of the vile McQueary?

By Rod Dreher • November 10, 2011, 8:38 AM

Philadelphia Daily News columnist Ronnie Polaneczky says what I’m thinking:

It goes without saying that Paterno, Curley, Schultz and a host of other Penn State administrators acted with a disregard so bloodless, it’s hard to believe that they’re actually human.

But the behavior of McQueary, whom the grand-jury report paints with a degree of high regard, baffles me more.

As an eyewitness, he knew firsthand the horror that child had experienced. It was not a rumor that he heard, and dutifully reported. It was not a frightening hunch he determined should be brought to the boss’s attention.

McQueary saw, with his own eyes, a child being brutalized. And he did not attempt to stop it.

One or two McQueary sympathizers I have spoken with have told me: “You weren’t there. You don’t know the shock and revulsion he must have felt. He was stunned. He tried to do the right thing. You can’t make a judgment. He is the hero in this thing.”

Bull—-!

I know, like I know the sun will rise tomorrow, that if I’d seen what McQueary saw, nothing would have stopped me from screaming bloody murder. From using every ounce of strength I possess to pull that naked, repulsive predator off of that little boy. From gathering the child in my arms. From telling him, “I am here. You are safe. It’s over.”

Yeah, me too. But I don’t know that it’s as easy as that.

For many, many years, Catholic laypeople have known that children were being raped by some of their priests, and that bishops were covering it up. This didn’t come out of nowhere, in 2002. True, few if any were in the position of catching a pedophile priest in flagrante, as McQueary supposedly did with Sandusky, but the evidence that these things were happening, and that neither priests nor bishops were being held to proper account for it, if only morally (as opposed to criminally), has been present and undeniable for a long time. It’s as if the horror was too great to believe, because if what we’re seeing is true, then the world isn’t as we thought it was. So these children were sacrificed to false idols: the reputation of Penn State football, the reputation of the Church, and so forth. Ultimately the false idol is … oneself. Preserving one’s own peace of mind is more important than saving a child, and seeing justice done for the weakest and most vulnerable.

I don’t know that I can think of an act of everyday cowardice more vile than Mike McQueary, big strapping 6-foot-4-inch Mike McQueary, walking away when he came upon an old man sodomizing a little boy.

Or take the recent situation of the 18 people in China who walked past a child lying in the road, wounded after being struck by the car. Why did they do that? What is it about us that allows us to see a child being tortured by another person, or by circumstance (e.g., lying in the road broken by a car accident), and not do everything in our power to help? Where is the line between exculpatory psychological impairment and moral collapse?

29 Responses to And what of the vile McQueary?

catechist says:

November 10, 2011 at 8:55 am

A parent came to pick up her child from my CCD class, and wanted to explain why the girl had missed so many classes, and hadn’t learned many of her prayers. The mom’s English was terrible, but the things she was telling me about what was going on at home seemed incredible, though I won’t give those details here. I couldn’t believe I was understanding her correctly, and I kept trying to bring the conversation back to what was going on at home, while the woman was determined to focus on how to make up the work the child had missed. As soon as she was gone, I contacted the Director of Religious Education, a native Spanish speaker, told her everything, and begged her to talk to the woman to find out what the woman was actually saying. Within hours the principal of the parish school and the DRE had talked to the woman, followed up with me, confirmed that I had heard the astounding and terrible things I had thought I might be hearing, and the police and Child Protective Services were involved, as was the diocese. The principal told me my response may have saved the child’s life. I never saw the girl or her mother again, but I pray for them.

I say this not to put myself forward, but to say that other Catholics I know have done similarly, though the situation has not usually turned out to be a genuine abuse situation. But for as long as I’ve been reading your blog, Rod, I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter; by virtue of being a Catholic layperson, I’m implicated in the coverup, because I haven’t done … what? No priests in my diocese, no bishop while I’ve lived in this diocese, has been implicated in the abuse scandal. What was I supposed to do? Sometimes I get the impression that you feel that simply remaining Catholic, and not walking out of the Church, is enough to make all of us laypeople guilty.
Carlo says:

November 10, 2011 at 8:58 am

The real question is: what is about post-Enlightenment culture that refuses to recognize that the possibility of moral collapse is real, and in fact moral collapse is ubiquitous in human history? As Del Noce says, at the beginning of modernity there is NOT a direct rejection of God but rather the rejection of the doctrine of original sin.
Rod Dreher says:

November 10, 2011 at 9:09 am

What was I supposed to do? Sometimes I get the impression that you feel that simply remaining Catholic, and not walking out of the Church, is enough to make all of us laypeople guilty.

You have a point, and I’m sorry I gave that impression. I don’t expect you or anybody else to walk out on the Church, and I apologize for coming off that way. It’s an expression of the intense frustration I still feel over all this. I cannot stand to see bad men — especially those who facilitated the abuse of children — prosper. It eats me alive, for personal reasons I’ve stated before. I have people close to me who were victims of (nonsexual) child abuse — I’m thinking of two people right now — and I know how utterly broken it has left them.

I think the fact that there’s very damn little the average Catholic layperson can do about the scandal, given the way the system is set up, has a lot to do with my frustration. Your question is a fair one. What do I expect Catholics to do, or to have done? And I don’t have a good answer. But the fact that Bernard Law retired in luxury, Roger Mahony retired at his own leisure, and outside of activist groups, nary a peep was heard … well, that bothers me a great deal. I believe that for the most part, they got away with it.

Did you ever read Jason Berry’s great book “Lead Us Not Into Temptation”? In it, he details what it was like in the 1980s, in south Louisiana (Diocese of Lafayette), when kids and their families started bringing out stories of what the molester priest Gilbert Gauthe had done to them. Those poor people were set upon by many lay Catholics who wanted them to shut up, for the sake of maintaining the illusion about the Church. That, for me, is the template here. I bring it up again in the McQueary context to say that McQueary’s sin here is not a one-off. It happened in the Church. It could happen to any of us. I hope to God I’m not a coward if I’m ever in a situation like that — but if I am, I also hope to God for my own salvation that I am covered with shame, and driven to repentance for my moral collapse.

Bottom line: without the Church — and I don’t just mean the Catholic Church, but I mean mostly the Catholic Church — I believe our civilization is a goner. The failure of the Church to be the Church is just about the worst thing. This is why I keep going on and on about it. Again, I apologize for falsely accusing you.
Angela says:

November 10, 2011 at 9:14 am

I think McQuery was the first to break the silence and state out loud what was going on in that football facility. I think he was betrayed by those who were his supervisors and those who held the power in the university. I think it is easy to state what we would have done, or how we would have felt. Human nature is a bit more complicated than that.

Yes, McQuery was wrong to not do more. Yes, McQuery was the only one who actually reported abuse to those in power.

I think that this abuse went on for decades, and there were more people who saw it and walked away without saying a word.

There is a reason the grand jury, who sifted through evidence and testimonies for three years, spoke with regard of McQuery’s testimony. There is a reason the PA State AG did the same in her initial press conference.

I want to know what that reason is and I hope it comes to light.
Franklin Evans says:

November 10, 2011 at 9:19 am

Listening to talk radio the last few days, and reading Rod’s excellent contribution above, I have a request of all who are outraged by this series of events. It may seem trivial, but from my point of view and life experience it goes to the heart of the matter.

The next time you witness a person being rude, speak out about it right there. The next time you witness someone speaking out against a rude person, add your voice. And, should you find it difficult to do those things, examine your thoughts and feelings in that moment and take a long hard look at yourself in the mirror: If there is to be any justice in our society, the person you are looking at has a duty as a citizen to promote justice in every situation.

I don’t mean taking justice into your own hands. That is an extreme that is itself evil. I don’t mean calling the police to arrest rude people, even if there were such a law in evidence where you are (there are such laws. NJ has one about rude gestures while driving.) A society starts with social dynamics, and delegates to the law those things that rise above the mundane and everyday things like rudeness. But there is no respect for the law if there is no respect for our fellow members of our society, and I for one remain supremely unsurprised that actual crimes go unreported while we find ourselves tolerant of rudeness.
Rod Dreher says:

November 10, 2011 at 9:25 am

Let me add something, Catechist.

A few years ago, when I was still a Catholic, I was at mass in a parish of the Baton Rouge diocese on the first Sunday after the diocese issued a statement saying that a previous bishop, now deceased, had molested a teenager for four years. That parish had a substitute priest for the mass I attended. He read a statement from the then-bishop, as instructed. Then that priest ordered everyone in the parish not to think about this or to talk about it.

I remember very well exactly where I was sitting when I heard that disgusting instruction from the pulpit. I was so furious I nearly stood up and walked out. I thought for a split-second, “I need to say something! This is outrageous!” But of course I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to stand out. Nor did I say anything after Mass, when I ought to have confronted that priest. I kept my mouth shut because I didn’t want to cause a scene. I’m still ashamed of myself. I could have changed exactly nothing, but I’m ashamed that I didn’t at least say, and say out loud, “You’re wrong, Father. Shame on you.”
Angela says:

November 10, 2011 at 9:30 am

Rod, Abuse does leave one broken. As a victim of childhood abuse that was sexual, physical and spiritual, I know that. I also know that there is hope for wholeness.

15 years of therapy and small group work with other victims has changed my life. That work has led to a solid marriage, a solid faith, and compassion for myself and others. And a new career partnering with other victims of abuse and those who are willing to bring their brokenness into the Light.

A turning point for me was when my husband went through group therapy and learned that although he had never been abused, he also had brokenness in his life. It caused me to not feel alone.

I cringe when I hear people state abuse victims are broken. What I hear is pity, which makes me less than because of what someone else did to me without my consent.

I don’t want pity, I want empathy sure, but mostly I want equality.

I am not saying pity is what you offer your friends. I’m saying that is what I hear, and that is why I wrote this response.
catechist says:

November 10, 2011 at 9:41 am

Rod, I believe you, and you are gracious to apologize. I shuddered too at the incidents (Amy Welborn used to post about this sort of thing) where parishioners would defend abusive priests to the last breath, and asked myself “What would I do?” I don’t have an answer about what to do about Bp Mahony etc., but my practical answer for what we can really do, here in our own places, is to practice moral imagination. Before I encountered the situation I did, I had asked myself, What if I were to find out that a child in my class were abused? What if I only suspected it, but weren’t sure? What would be the tipping point that would make me go from “I have a wild imagination” to “I now suspect abuse”? I teach my children to do the same thing: to imagine themselves in various situations and think in advance, What would I do? What if things seem unclear? Who could I talk to?

Whenever we examine our consciences, especially for sins of omission, and near occasion of sin, that’s a time to follow up with imagining possible reactions should such a situation arise again. One positive outcome of so many people across the nation now thinking, in response to the horrors in the news today, “I would never walk away from a child being abused!” is that, somewhere, one of those thousands will find himself in that situation, and be psychologically and spiritually prepared for it.
Carlo says:

November 10, 2011 at 9:56 am

“I’m still ashamed of myself.”

That’s the correct reaction, to recognize that I am a sinner just like Sanduski, and that nothing but God can satisfy the cry for justice coming from a 10 year boy who has been sexually abused. If we had a more realistic understanding of the reality of sin and redemption, then we would also be equipped to respond more adequately to these situations. Instead all we get is endless moralizing, as if that is going to make any difference or help anybody. Laws are necessary, people should be held accountable, but ultimately what’s wrong with the world, as Chesterton said, is me.
Wondering says:

November 10, 2011 at 10:06 am

Given that McQueary grew up as a star football player in the small, close-knit State College area around the PSU program and likely had ample opportunities to interact with Sandusky growing up. Is there not a chance that he, too, might be a victim of Sandusky? If that is the case, might that not explain his hesitation to act like we all wish he would have acted? Might that not change the way we think about McQueary’s actions that night?
Virgil says:

November 10, 2011 at 10:07 am

Carlo raises a point that I have been thinking about all week.

From the perspective of modern liberalism, on what ground can it be said that what McQueary did was wrong? Indeed, on what ground can it be said that what Sandusky is alleged to have done is wrong.

I’m not saying liberals don’t intuit the wrongness of victimizing a child or that they don’t feel revulsion at the thought of it, but still, on what grounds can they say that any of this is, ultimately and objectively, wrong?
Rod Dreher says:

November 10, 2011 at 10:07 am

The problem with that, Carlo, is that bishops have used that truth to evade personal moral responsibility. In the Orthodox Church in America, that “focus on your own sins” line was deployed this year and in recent years by bishops and those wishing to protect them against laypeople demanding to know why they, the bishops, were behaving with such moral weakness.

Similarly, in the Catholic Church during these scandal years, many bishops have held “healing masses” and suchlike in which the community is supposed to make amends for all the evil done to children by particular priests and bishops who covered up for them. While it’s certainly true that many in the laity deserve some share of the blame for their (our) silence, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that those in authority are appealing to Christian humility as a strategy of ass-covering. After all, if everybody’s guilty, then nobody is.
M.Z. says:

November 10, 2011 at 10:16 am

You are proving splendidly why one should never ever be a whistle blower. McQuery blew the whistle on what occurred. As part of that he met with university officials numerous times. But since people are unsatisfied with how he blew the whistle, he is going to suffer consequences. One cannot say in good faith that McQuery wouldn’t have been better off if he had never claimed to have saw anything on that night.
Carlo says:

November 10, 2011 at 10:30 am

“focus on your own sins”

That’s not my point at all. My point is that when the cultural foundations are weak it is naive to think that morality will stand on its own. Because that’s what I hear: let’s be more aware, let’s prosecute more, let’s speak up more, let’s help the victims more. Fine, do all of that to the extent you can. But be aware that ultimately… you can’t. The deep paradox is that a strong awareness of our human predicament can also (slowly) help us stand up and do the right thing. A society like ours, which for all practical purposes has embraced Pelagianism, can only moralize more and more while things get worse and worse.
REB says:

November 10, 2011 at 10:38 am

I have been reading a lot about the Penn State football scandal with a great deal of interest, because I graduated from Penn State. I think that the PSU administration made a mistake by not suspending everyone involved when the grand jury investigation began and starting an internal investigation right away. With the grand jury proceedings going along, it is hard to believe that anyone was surprised this week by what happened. It is right that Joe Paterno was fired for a moral failing so great that it almost defies belief.

The situation at Penn State is not necessarily a sign of cultural and moral collapse. Does anyone believe that this sort of thing wouldn’t have happened 25, 50 or even 100 years ago? We probably just wouldn’t have known about it.

One of the most troubling things to me is people’s rage at Mike McQueary, because so much of it is based on thought that, “If I were in that situation, I would have charged in there and put an end to it.”

We know that, for most people, that isn’t true. People watch horrible things happen all the time and do nothing. We would LIKE to think that we would have charged in there and beaten Sandusky senseless, but for most people it’s probably not true. When Polaneczy writes, “I know, like I know the sun will rise tomorrow, that if I’d seen what McQueary saw, nothing would have stopped me from screaming bloody murder. From using every ounce of strength I possess to pull that naked, repulsive predator off of that little boy. From gathering the child in my arms. From telling him, ‘I am here. You are safe. It’s over.’” Really? He KNOWS that, just as certainly as the sun is going to rise tomorrow, that he would have been the moral hero? Is he always cool headed and wise in a crisis? Maybe from the comfort of his chair behind a keyboard, when he looks at a situation from the outside knowing what we all know now he would do that. But if he walked in on something happening, would he really be so heroic? When he is shocked, stunned, and overwhelmed? Is he so sure that this is what he would do? I would give it maybe 50-50 odds, at best. This is what he wants to believe we would do, but how can one say for sure?

Human psychology and behavior are complicated. When most people see something horrible, they don’t take action, they freeze. When we see something horrifying, we also tend to disbelieve what we’ve seen and question our perception of the events we’ve witnessed.

I think that this is a story of sin and its invasive, destructive power. Sin is commonly defined as an absence of the good and also a perversion of the good. I think that we can see both of these definitions at work here.

Look at Paterno’s response to the allegations he heard. Apparently, Paterno and Sandusky were friends. Friendship is one of the best things in life. We all tend to think the best of our friends, and to downplay or disbelieve negative things we hear about them.

I have a friend whose cousin who committed a horrific murder. It was the stuff of horror movies. Everyone was repulsed, and in the small town I lived in at the time, people were writing letters to the paper talking about what a monster he was and how they hope he gets the death penalty, and that he was always a wretched excuse for a human being. His cousin, though, didn’t see it that way. She knew him as the boy she saw every Christmas and Thanksgiving, who shared his toys, and later in life shared important moments like weddings, funerals, and holidays. She knew he was troubled and had real issues, but didn’t believe he was a monster. So when she heard the news of the murder, she simply didn’t believe it. Even though she knew he was with this woman whom he murdered on a trip, and even though she knew that he was troubled, she couldn’t believe that he had done this. She knew him as her cousin whom she loved and cared about, so she didn’t believe the story until much later.

Now think of Paterno and Sandusky, they shared in one of life’s good gifts: friendship. But apparently the good of friendship skewed and perverted Paterno’s view of his friend. Isn’t it possible that he had a hard time believing what he heard? This doesn’t excuse the behavior, or mean that he did the right thing. What Paterno did (or maybe more accurately, didn’t) do was categorically reprehensible. This will probably be something that will be a source of shame for him for the rest of his life. But it possibly grew out of friendship rather than a desire to cover something up. This doesn’t make it better, but it does make it at least partly understandable.

Also think of the protesters last night. Most of them are probably college students with poor judgment. But for the true believers, who think that Paterno was wronged in this whole thing, they, too reflect a common human foible. It is idolatry. Whenever we give ultimate, or near ultimate, commitment to someone or something less that God it becomes skewed and perverted. Anyone who believed that Joe Paterno was a saint, even before we knew any of this is naive and foolish. But when idols come crashing down, people do stupid things like march in the streets and protest against those who do what is right. It is because idolatry skews one’s view of the world.

I think that it is a very human story, and rather than say that people are “vile” or totally morally bankrupt, we should think more deeply. Is McQueary really “vile,” or did he dramatically do the wrong thing in a moment of crisis? Does it besmirch his entire character? History, psychology, and life experience show that in a moment of crisis, most people will do the wrong thing.

That’s why we hold up moral heroes: because they did what most people wish they would do in a crisis. Think of someone like Martin Luther King, Jr. What is it that is so laudable? It is that he saw injustice and stood against it, despite the cost. Most people didn’t do anything, even though they saw what was happening throughout the USA and probably thought it was wrong. What is so laudable about Dietrich Bonhoeffer? That he saw evil for what it is and he stood against it at the cost of his life. Most people rationalized it away – or chose to believe that their perceptions were wrong.

Then think of Abu Ghraib. Apparently many people knew what was going on, and no one said anything. Why? Are they all “vile” and moral cretins? Probably not. They are average human beings who make bad decisions in a crisis. Freezing and poor responses in crisis should be condemned, but also treated with a little bit of grace, too.

If you ask people what they would have done in Mississippi in 1963 when they saw African Americans being thrown out of Woolworth’s for trying to eat lunch at the counter, most people will tell you that they would have been morally outraged and would have stood up to the powers that be. Baloney.

If you ask people what they would have done if they saw their Jewish neighbors in Nazi Germany being loaded on cattle cars and taken to the ovens of Auschwitz, they will tell you that they would have been morally outraged and would have sought to protect their neighbors, even at the cost of their own life. I doubt it.

If you ask someone what they would have done had they seen the humiliation and sexual abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib they will probably tell you that they would have gone in there and broken up the sickening spectacle and then reported it up the chain of command. And when there was no action on their complaint, they would follow up and make sure that justice was done. In reality, 999 out of 1000 people would walk on by and pretend that they didn’t see what they saw, because the perpetrators are on “our side.”

How should we respond to this? I think, more than anything, with sorrow AND anger. Sorrow for the children who were hurt and abused. Anger at those who didn’t do anything or nearly enough.

But we should also respond with some humility. Anger that comes from a place that says, “I would have responded differently” is naive an most likely grows from a false narrative that you believe about yourself. Hopefully some of us who are outraged will now stand up when we see something that is wrong, that we will speak up for those who have no voice, and will defend the powerless even at great cost to ourselves. But don’t fool yourself. If you don’t do this in small, low-feedback situations, you probably won’t do it when it matters the most.
Charles Cosimano says:

November 10, 2011 at 10:48 am

Virgil, you have a very good point. And the answer is that if we take the emotion out, we can’t make an argument against it. On the contrary, it would, without the emotive element getting in the way, be possible to make a well reasoned argument that it was actually, if not positively right, then at least neutral. It would be a simple matter to go back to the Spartans as the proof text.

As much as Rod likes to decry emotivism, it is the emotional response that drives us in this. It is an anger that comes from the gut, not the head and if the head is involved it is because it is following the gut. And there is nothing wrong with following your gut and wanting to gut McQueary in a somewhat more literal sense.
Melvin Backstrom says:

November 10, 2011 at 10:48 am

Virgil,

Well let me as a modern liberal, with conservative tendencies, explain how I can say that what McQueary did was wrong. Perhaps you’ve heard of something called the Golden Rule? Usually phrased as: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. (Or in its Confucian form: Do not unto others as you would not have them do to you.) Yes, Jesus is quoted as saying something to this effect (depending on the translation) in the Bible, but there’s nothing intrinsic to the idea that requires a belief in a God. If I had been in McQueary’s place, I hope that I would have the strength to do something then and there to stop what was going on because I could have been that little boy. In fact, because we, as human beings, are all fundamentally connected, in a way, I AM that little boy; no man is an island.

Or, for a more philosophically grounded but related ethics, one could also turn to Kant and his insistence on the basis of rationality, not fear of God, that morality is composed of treating others as ends unto themselves and not means to my own ends. The raping of a little boy is as blatant a using an other as means as one could imagine; therefore, it is immoral and to acquiesce to immorality is to go against the rational principles that one presupposes in one’s life. To walk away is to contradict one who fundamentally is.

There’s a lot more to be said here, but I’ll leave it at that for now. Let me just say in conclusion, as someone who grew up Christian and now finds himself an agnostic/atheist, that I find this argument pretty tiresome given how many times I became aware of seemingly good Christians doing things not because their own autonomous, moral code motivated them to do so, but because of their fear of God. Religious conservatives often love to point to the supposed moral wasteland of liberal utilitarianism when, in fact, many of them are living according to their own utilitarian calculus: in fear of going to hell and desire to please God (in a rather sycophantic way) in order to go to heaven. The moral poverty of this point of view seems to me quite obvious.

Peace
Franklin Evans says:

November 10, 2011 at 10:55 am

Virgil, all I can say to your questions is to ask what it means to be human. If compassion and accountability are valid answers to my question, then it obviates any label you care to apply, liberal or conservative, Christian or other, even male or female.

I’ve never been a Christian, not even nominally, and I am squarely in the liberal area of the political spectrum. With respect — meaning I do not intend personal criticism towards you, not even by assumption or implication — it galls me when any group, in this case conservatives, calls another group’s morals into question based on abstract premises and assumptions. Any liberal, modern or otherwise, who answers you in the abstract with “it depends” is not quite human in my book.

As an offer of comparison and contrast, and not to one-up anyone, the Vatican’s policy of non-intervention during WWII was routinely ignored by individual Catholics, groups of Catholics and entire villages and towns of Catholics in northern Italy. Their human compassion are why I was even born. I know of no nobler humans on the planet than those villagers and farmers who protected my mother and her family, and countless other Jews, at the daily risk of their own lives. It’s perhaps a harsh standard to apply in this case, but for me the principle is the same.
Grumpy Old Man says:

November 10, 2011 at 11:07 am

Some wise thoughts, REB.
Carlo says:

November 10, 2011 at 11:28 am

“it galls me when any group, in this case conservatives, calls another group’s morals into question based on abstract premises and assumptions.”

In my book it is fair to question whether another group’s moral are reasonably founded in that group’s philosophical assumptions or are just an expression of the random human decency of any given individual.

I remember when my grandfather died. My grandmother told me how in 1944 he had risked his life to get some of his Jewish colleagues out of jail before they were shipped to Auschwitz. That was clearly consistent with his worldview (a very religious man). A militant Fascist could have well done the same (some did, believe it or not!) , but would that have been consistent with a race-based view of the world? What about an historical materialist (a Marxist)? What about a social Darwinist? I am sure many of them would have done the same, but I also think that is a culture thoroughly shaped by either Fascism or Communism or Social Darwinism fewer people would do that than in the society where my grandfather grew up (old time Catholic Italy).
Lindsey says:

November 10, 2011 at 11:47 am

REB’s response has merit in it, and yet I cannot help but hear rationalization for doing the wrong thing. Why should people escape our censure when they do wrong? What I’m hearing is, “Don’t ever say they did wrong because you might do the same in that circumstance.” I’m sorry, I believe that, barring some situation such as proposed by Wondering, McQueary should be shamed. Not only did he not do anything when he witnessed the abuse, but he was apparently satisfied with simply telling superiors and then accepting when nothing was done. The fact that I or anyone else may have done the same thing in that situation does not make it not wrong, and does not mean that we should not call someone out for it.
Franklin Evans says:

November 10, 2011 at 12:02 pm

Carlo,

I do take your point.

Please allow me to clarify (trying to avoid pejoratives here): I used the qualifier “abstract” for the conscious intent to distinguish between (ahem) the knee-jerk assumptions about labels and the demonstrable common ground of compassion humans of any label can and do share.

Others will disagree with me — some Jews for sure — but I don’t mean to indict the Vatican leadership during WWII. I don’t believe their policy was from a malicious motivation. I imagine them hearing stories of people “violating” their policy and at least silently blessing them for it. Wartime politics and diplomacy is just not entirely rational, regardless of where it must be practiced.

OTOH, I would indict the Fascist, Marxist and hypothetical social Darwinist leaders. Theirs would emphatically be validly labeled as maliciously motivated. All the more reason, for me, to admire those individuals who acted or would act as your grandfather did.
REB says:

November 10, 2011 at 2:15 pm

Lindsey, I’m sorry you misread what I wrote. I clearly said that what both McQueary and Paterno did and didn’t do was wrong. We should be angry at them. But when that anger is fed by the idea that YOU would have done the right thing, then you slip into calling people like Mike McQueary and Joe Paterno vile, amoral, or cretinous. That’s not necessarily true, and we don’t know that. They did something very wrong. But that does not tell the whole story of their character as human beings. If one believes that he or she has the right to pile shame on someone else for doing something that you SAY you would do, but can’t be CERTAIN you would do, you are in dangerous territory.

By all means, point out that what they did is morally wrong. I agree. But don’t root your argument in the fanciful notion that you would do the right thing; build your argument on the fact that what was done and left undone is categorically wrong.
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Stef says:

November 10, 2011 at 3:34 pm

Rod, you’re making this way too complicated. McQueary was a grad student at the time. Now he is a Penn State football coach. You do the math. The simplest explanation is that he didn’t report the crime because he didn’t want to lose a chance to advance his own career. Which probably explains a lot of the silence surrounding Catholic clergy abuse cases, too.
Scott Lahti says:

November 10, 2011 at 10:51 pm

“And what of the vile McQueary?”

And what of the quear McViley? Wasn’t he – Mr. McViley – the she-mailman on the unscreened pilot of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood After Dark?

And as long as we’re on PBS kiddie-corn, recall from the earliest years of The Electric Company, c. 1971-1972, the mock soap opera “Love of Chair“, and the last in a series of ominous questions voiced by the announcer at the end of each episode:

And what about Naomi?
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EliteCommInc. says:

November 20, 2012 at 9:27 am

How about t his: It didn’t happen at all. The problem with McQueary is McQueary. His story has never been consistent – even after he was safe in his carreer. My guess as with most of these fanciful tales of abuse and human carnage — he changed hist story to accommodate the popular narrative.

I have no doubt that child sexual abuse occurred amongst Catholic priests — but I doubt the hysteria that has played itself out amongst various churches, and child services across the country was even close to reality.

But that’s how this stuff works — lots of story very little reality.