Something I’ve noticed of late is a bit troubling to me. When I shift my articles over from CoolCleveland.com, my home site, and place them on my Facebook page I usually get quite a few “likes” … except when I’m writing something critical of either the county prosecutor or local preachers. Which leaves me to wonder if my wordsmithmanship (yeah, I just added a new word to the lexicon) suddenly becomes crappy when I write on these two subjects, or is something else at play here.
Now I can well imagine that many of my loyal readers might tend to disagree and not “like” it when I’m critical of the clergy (which of course is their prerogative) but I can’t imagine that’s the case when I’m critical of Tim McGinty, given the current situation in the Tamir Rice case. Methinks another factor is at play here.
Could it be fear?
We live in a society where many people of good conscience remain silent out of fear of some kind of retribution — some kind of official censure or harm coming to them. All too often people live in fear of the government, when it should be the other way around: the government should be in fear of the people.
Their thinking goes: “What if someone saw that I “liked” an article critical of the prosecutor, and then went back and ‘reported’ me to the authorities? Could an ominous knock on my door soon follow?”
Is that what people are afraid of … the Thought Police?
Shades of the kind of cowardice that surfaced in Europe in the face of the totalitarianism that swept up much of the Continent in the 1930s: The dominant feeling came to be one of, “I’d better shut up or they might come after me.”
Pastor Martin Niemöller (who spent time in two Nazi concentration camps) wrote about the cowardice of German intellectuals following the Nazis’ rise to power and the subsequent purging of their chosen targets:
“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
* * *
Now, to the clergy. Currently, the film that seemingly is on track to win the Best Picture Oscar next year is Spotlight, the adapted-for-screen true story about The Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” team, the oldest continuously operating newspaper investigative unit in the United States, and their coverage of the Massachusetts Catholic Church sex abuse scandal of the last decade.
As the film so accurately and succulently points out, the reason priests were able to get away with molesting children (not only in Boston, but across America, and indeed around the world) for so long was due to the shameful silence and cover-ups accusers were met with when they complained to authorities of the abuse. No one wanted to criticize the church, out of fear of being sentenced to eternal damnation by some pedophile with his collar turned backwards.
A similar kind of fear currently grips most members of congregations in Greater Cleveland. No one dares to raise their voice and point out that the clergy is failing in its duty to effectively protest against the unfair — nay, downright scurrilous — tactics being employed by county prosecutor Tim McGinty.
As I’ve written before, only the clergy can stop this judicial train wreck from happening; only the clergy can force McGinty to recuse himself and bring in a special prosecutor so the citizenry can have faith in the outcome of the Tamir Rice affair. So it falls to our religious leaders to exercise the power of their bully pulpits, and, in the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr., to go to jail for engaging in acts of civil disobedience if that’s what it takes to right this horrible wrong.
Indeed, nothing else is going to work. No other group but the clergy has the power to assure that justice is served for the family of Tamir Rice, and indeed for all of us. But, sadly, few citizens will speak out in regards to the willful dereliction of duty being exhibited by our faith leaders.
When — and if — violence breaks out (something I hope and pray does not happen) after what will most likely be an unjust and tainted outcome, the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the clergy because all they did was hold press conferences, which clearly, is not enough.
In America we talk about the separation of Church and State, but what we don’t talk about is the fear the average citizen harbors in regards to both of these entities — the prosecutor and the preachers — and in a republic that’s very dangerous.
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.
One Response to “MANSFIELD: Prosecutors and Preachers”
Robert Knox
Easy read, excellent article!!!