Sunday, October 31, 2010

Blue Bloods off my Must-View List

I've gotten hooked on the new CBS show Blue Bloods. Normally I'm not into police dramas, but, like most women of a certain age, I've got a little crush on Tom Selleck, who's still just as compelling as years back when he played Magnum PI. The entire cast is very talented in their portrayal of an Irish-Catholic police family living in New York City. Their involvement in law enforcement goes back three or more generations. While I've really enjoyed the show up to this point, I'm not sure I'm going to continue watching it.

Last Friday the show involved kids in a Catholic high school selling drugs. The clergy staff members were reluctant to cooperate with the police, but Selleck's character, Police Commissioner Frank Reagan, told the priest, "You don't want to sweep another problem under the rug."

I had a little hope.

But later in the show, Reagan met with the bishop. He couldn't have been more nauseating, with the "your excellency" and the kowtowing. Selleck's character suggested the cardinal give a press conference to address the issue and said he would stand beside him, "just like he has stood with the Reagan family."

This hits too close to home, as I know of far too many cases where the linkage between abusive clergy and law enforcement has been, indeed, a fine blue/black line. Cases where law enforcement's reluctance to arrest clergy for the most egregious crimes makes me wonder what exactly is behind this unholy alliance.

The priest who assaulted me, Patrick McElliott, was well-known to law enforcement in Waterloo, Iowa. Several officers went to the bishop and insisted the bishop send him away after he assaulted one too many young girls in that city. Of course, he went on to the next parish after a short stop at rehab and continued committing crimes against children and young people throughout his career and into retirement.

My mother had a saying she used, usually when discussing situations I didn't understand when I was little. She would be talking about people who were supposedly upstanding members of the community, and she would shake her head and say, "They're thick as thieves." I didn't get it: weren't thieves bad guys whom the good guys (cops) put in jail?

Far too often, abusive clergy and corrupt law enforcement operated together to prevent justice from being served. I've suddenly lost a lot of respect for Commissioner Reagan, fictional character though he is. And Blue Bloods has lost a fan.