A half-baked column?
Writing a column is sometimes like cooking Easter dinner, mixing together seemingly disconnected ideas to come up with something palatable. So here’s a mixed bag: A dirty bird, a smiling little girl and “naked ice cream.”
The recipe goes like this: Mix ingredients, sprinkle liberally with metaphors, stir briskly and hope the result isn’t half-baked. Here goes.
The girl, about 5, was at an ice cream store my wife and I stopped in the other night. She was regaling customers proudly showing off her bowl of vanilla ice cream. It was “naked,” she told us with a wide Irish grin. “Naked,” you see, because it had no toppings. No chocolate syrup, no whipped cream, no cherry.
It was good to see her laughter and innocence. These days, we journalists read and write too often about children who don’t laugh, who aren’t innocent. About children who have suffered from abuse, whether physical, emotional or sexual.
April is Child Abuse Prevention Month. People are wearing blue ribbons and blue wristbands acknowledging the horror of child abuse and their resolve to end it.
There’s even a blue ribbon banner over the front door of the archdiocesan Pastoral Center. Considering the church’s lamentable problems with clerical sexual abuse over the past few years, such a banner may seem hypocritical. It’s not.
Humankind has endured child abuse for a long time. And it’s hardly limited to a few priests. It affects every stratum of our culture: rich and poor, single and married. Child abuse leaves physical bruises, emotional scars and broken spirits.
If attention paid to clergy perpetrators of sexual abuse throws a brighter spotlight on all child abuse, we all gain. Especially children. Sexual abuse has captured center stage, but the church is deeply involved in trying to prevent all abuse.
For information about the blue ribbon and efforts to recognize, challenge and punish child abusers, visit the archdiocesan Web site, www.archchicago.org. It offers resources, experts, law enforcement contacts. There’s also an explanation of some of what the archdiocese has done in parishes and institutions, schools and religious education classes to expose abuse and teach how to stop it.
Inside this edition there is a four-page section detailing the policies and procedures of the archdiocese regarding the reporting of the clerical sexual abuse of minors. I was impressed reading it; I hope you are.
Oops, I’m almost out of space and I forgot the dirty bird.
For several days, I’ve been doing almost daily battle with at least one grackle. He (or she) spends the day dragging straw and grass into my backyard grill. Each day I throw it out.
I know I’m thwarting nature. The bird is just trying to build a nest to make more birds. But I find the grill occasionally useful. Still, perpetrating this anti-wildlife act on Easter, the celebration of our life in the Lord, is troubling. But just a little. A juicy hamburger is much better than grackle.
However, it does let us here wish you and your family a joyous and faithful Easter.
Tom Sheridan
Editor and General Manager
