My Roman brothers,
Day by day global news sources toss fresh evidence into the feeding-frenzy surrounding the clergy sexual abuse scandals currently rocking the Roman part of the catholic, Christian, Church. Your trouble is not that media no longer protect priests, nor that society lusts after scandal, although both seem true. The damage reaches further than you presently imagine. Trouble, thy name is Legion.
Against this trouble your legions of priests and defenders will not stand. The enemy is within your very w
alls and admitted though your very own gates. Your trouble is the trouble of us all, loving the lesser good, per Augustine. Evil exists in the inordinate love of a lesser good. The lesser good is good, but only as it is good to God. As J. Philip Wogamon has written, “We love the lesser good appropriately only when we love it through our love for God.” The institution (i.e., the organization, offices, and office-holders) of the Roman church is good, but not so good as God, nor so good as the Body of Christ which is partly embodied in Christian churches throughout the world. By loving the institution as if it were identical with God one in fact loves the lesser good. Love becomes misdirected, away from its own well-being. So it is with the Vatican and its defenders: loving the lesser good is taking your beautiful church away from its own well-being, its own salvation.
Like you in the Roman tradition, my branch of the church catholic (the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) has also unwittingly admitted—even welcomed —pastors and leaders whose weaknesses have coincided with opportunity, to the everlasting horror of us all. So has every other denomination. Yet none of the rest of us have been torn apart the way that you are being torn. We have very, very, few allegations and fewer lawsuits, while you have entire dioceses driven to bankruptcy. The difference is in how our communities deal with the unspeakable when it happens. Shine a light, or shroud in secrecy? Make the difficult admission, or attempt to bluster it away with denial? Secrecy and denial never work, as you are discovering to your confusion and horror.
My brothers, you are even now making mistakes that will eviscerate the credibility of all churches—Roman and otherwise—throughout the world. You can stop the hemorrhaging, and begin the healing simply and immediately. The work ahead will be neither easy nor painless, but it can and must be done. A faith-based organization that has broken faith is out of business.
- Place on leave—immediately—any leader accused of betraying his people. Launch an investigation. Remove from the priesthood any leader confirmed to have abused his office. Remove from leadership (if not the priesthood) all who knew and did nothing, or who covered-up. Painful as this is, it is an indispensible precondition for rebuilding trust and faith.
- Protect the victim’s privacy, and provide immediate follow-up care from a clinically certified therapist. Disclose the priest’s misconduct to the entire victimized congregation openly, honestly. Provide pastoral care to the entire congregation, and so begin the long road towards healing.
- Know that if there is one victim there likely will be more. Urge the others to come forward. This isn’t stirring up trouble, the trouble is already there. It won’t be over ‘til the whole truth is out. It will take a generation or more, yet the sooner you begin the sooner you will be through.
- Require sexual abuse prevention training for all priests, deacons, religious, and all whose ministries place them in contact with children and youth. Empower laity with the confidence to love and support their priests by holding them accountable.
Your beloved Pope has his Roman legions—battalions of staunch defenders who dismiss the evidence of shattered lives as “gossip”—yet they will not suffice for this battle, merely prolong it. Now is the time for a kenotic act: a self-emptying as Jesus did, “not counting equality with God a thing to be grasped ” he emptied himself of the prestige and position that rightfully belonged to him. It is time to follow his example, not with individual acts of piety and mortification, flagellation and fasts and the like, but collectively, systemically, and organizationally. Recall the fast that God chooses, “to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke.”
Our human nature leads us to race to the defense of powers that have sheltered and shaped us, given us identity and purpose. You love your church, but you are called to love God more. Instead of defending power, you are called to race to the defense of the powerless. Loyalty to the church is not the same as loyalty to God. Loyalty to God means loyalty to those whom God so loves. Look out for the little ones. God will lead you through the rest.
Filed under: The Station Platform Tagged: | Catholic, misconduct, Roman
Did you know that everything that you suggest (and more) has been in place and enforced for almost 10 years? No, of course not, the media only reports what it wants to report-20 year old news.