What a Father Does

In September my husband and I will celebrate our 14th anniversary. Our life certainly doesn't look anything like the life we imagined and planned during our engagement, but whose does? Together we've faced our share of challenges and through it all he is my rock. While we disagree on politics (I married a conservative Republican 4th Degree Knight of Columbus Catholic although I have corrupted him a bit), we do agree on the most important thing. No matter what, our family comes first. When it was just the two of us he took chances with his career several times while I waited to restart my career as we first tried to have children. Circumstances changed (he was laid off and his preferred career path was outsourced to India, we have a child who has special needs) so for the past decade he has been in a job that he enjoys but isn't his dream job and my career has yet to restart as I am too busy taking care of our son. Neither of us regrets the choices we've made because we made them together based upon what was best for our family. Neither of us thinks that we've made "sacrifices." As our circumstances change we'll continue to re-evaluate the opportunities before us first always trying to do what is best for our family as we've done throughout our marriage. This weekend we heard about a father who put his own safety first and abandoned his children in a life threatening situation. My husband was very clear that he would put our son under a seat, wrap me around our son and then throw himself over me praying that any bullet wouldn't penetrate all of us. I'm not surprised by my husband's reaction and I have no doubt that he will do so instinctively if ever we find ourselves in such a nightmare. It's one of the many reasons I fell in love with him despite our differences. The past few months I've watched the media coverage of the Sandusky and Lynn trials. While I never did criminal defense work, I spent a decade doing Family Court defense work and represented more than my share of child abusers. Each of my clients got the best representation of which I was capable; especially those who morally repulsed me. I tried harder in those cases to ensure that my personal feelings didn't compromise my professional efforts. Those cases were the most challenging for me but I was able to sleep at night knowing that I fulfilled my professional oath while praying that the system worked as it was designed. When that was no longer true I moved on. In my old neighborhood sometimes street justice was discovered in the Dyke Road Ditch. It is the marshland between the Mohawk River and the Barge Canal that can be seen from the Dyke Road overpass above. In the past it was common after the spring thaw (in the Mohawk Valley the snow usually begins around Halloween and the grass is once again visible around Easter) to find a dead body or two in the Dyke Road Ditch. While I certainly don't embrace street justice, I am appalled that institutions like the Catholic Church and Penn State not only condoned such horrific child abuse but actively conspired to cover it up rather than first doing their best to protect those entrusted to their care and when they failed in that duty, seeking justice on their behalf. We Catholics call our priests "Father." In my lifetime I have been privileged to know many men who deserve that title. My father's best friend as I was growing up was a Catholic priest who was a Dutch Uncle to us. I have no doubt that just like my husband, he instinctively would have put himself between any innocent victim, especially a child, and danger because that is what a father does. I also have no doubt that he would have called the police if he knew that child abuse had occurred even if the abuser was a fellow priest because he understood that even though he had a duty to the Catholic Church, his higher duty was to be the embodiment of Christ on earth. While I continue to be deeply saddened by the behavior of the Catholic Church Hierarchy, too many of whom still don't understand their priestly vows, I cling to hope that those priests who do understand along with the nuns and the rest of us laity who make up "the Church" eventually will persevere and the institutional Catholic Church will change it's practices and actually follow it's mission to be the embodiment of Christ on earth. In the meantime, my husband and I remain as cautious and vigilant as possible about who we allow near our son as he is unable to protect himself because that's just what mothers and fathers do.