Father O’Brien, the president of Santa Clara University resigns after investigation into conduct and drinking.
Father O’Brien seems to have done an amazing job in his tenure at Santa Clara. Formerly thought of as the forgotten stepchild of Stanford, in recent years the Jesuit university has become an important bush-league development institution for Silicon Valley firms and not just because it’s perched in the heart of the tech enclave. Recent years have seen major developments in endowment, facilities, academic rigor, and quality of students all under the watchful eye of the deft stewardship of Father O’Brien. Needless to say, the bay was rocked like a San Andreas earthquake at the news that Father O’Brien would step down after allegations of “inappropriate conduct” involving alcohol and a grad student. Life is just never easy in the petri dish of covid era mental health, even if one has spent their life in “Ad Majororum Dei Gloriana” (pursuit of the greater glory of God).
Before this becomes tawdry gossip of “Oh, the Catholics, you know how they are” are there other lessons here? Indeed there are. The first lesson is we don’t really know what went on, we know it’s not good and there is a vague description and a public mea culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa, but that’s all we empirically know at the moment. One of the lessons may be, we have to see what really happened before we indict an entire system as extensive as the Catholic Church. The church is in fact, culpable for many crimes over likely centuries but we are finding that correlates more to community secrecy than Catholic dogma. Additionally, it’s important to understand that clergy are human, insofar as being human is divine, they are fallible and faced with all the pitfalls of being a fractured and flawed human. Certainly, Father O’Brien will have to face the music for whatever he did but he deserves compassion as we all do.
As much as we have seen these incidents in the church and uncovered centuries of deeply seeded secrecy, there is an elephant in the sacristy that nobody is talking about. Alcohol. Demon alcohol. So enmeshed is alcohol in American life and in the church (you know the blood of Christ will fix your human frailty), we overlook how it correlates to these incidents. By Father O’Brien’s admission, alcohol was involved. Would the incident have happened if alcohol weren’t involved? Maybe. Maybe not. Many negative consequences rise with the use of alcohol, sexual assault, violence between partners, car accidents, and yes, even priests saying or doing unacceptable things. It would serve the church well to look further into the culture of drinking among the clergy and the church in general. It all works together, were the church to have a better grip on the issue of drinking, there would be fewer of this incident.
Father O’Brien is a man, like any other. He is not perfect. Like any other man, he must be held to account for whatever it is he did. He is also not immune from problematic drinking or other mental health issues. It would serve us all to look at him with compassion and understanding that the issues land at every demographic across the entire bouquet of humanity. That includes landing at the White House, Buckingham Palace, and the rectory. As a side note, cannabis doesn’t fuel inappropriate behavior the way alcohol does. Why are we so supportive of the more damaging substance? Sure, Jesus and the last supper and all of that but there is compelling research into the ancient plant being referenced in the Bible too. If father O’Brien has depression, anxiety, social phobias, or whatever and he was using alcohol to soften those sharp elbows, why not a mild edible to do the same? What would Jesus do?