The Sacrament of Confession

I'd like this digression on obscenity to be about the abuse of language or politics or aesthetics or justice or the even the environment. But no.

They were deaf, but they were not silent. For decades, a group of men who were sexually abused as children by the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy at a school for the deaf in Wisconsin reported to every type of official they could think of that he was a danger, according to the victims and church documents.

They told other priests. They told three archbishops of Milwaukee. They told two police departments and the district attorney. They used sign language, written affidavits and graphic gestures to show what exactly Father Murphy had done to them. But their reports fell on the deaf ears of hearing people

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The only thing in any sense just about this is that the Catholic Church worked so hard so keep this quiet in service protecting its reputation. And we get to see how nicely that worked out. It's the apotheosis of moral corruption, and hopefully the long-arc subtext of any and all retellings of what is unfortunately certain to be an ongoing situation. Any assumption that it is not is just more of the same. And as any Calvinist can tell you, even the church will get what it deserves.