The late Father Richard Neuhaus spoke of the sex-abuse scandal that broke out almost 10 years ago in the American Church as “The Long Lent.” I think he would have been astonished to know not only that it has not completely ended here (although we may finally be in the endgame), but that this sickening plague went viral into Ireland and continental Europe, bringing down not only abusing priests and religious but members of the hierarchy implicated in cover-ups that destroyed families and crippled dioceses. In the U.S., recent sexual scandals have also brought down several well-known media priests familiar to the readers of the Register through radio, television or personal appearances. And scandal has seriously hampered the operations of a well-known modern religious congregation whose late founder sadly was found to be a fraud and accused of several grave sexual crimes.
This is the background against which we need to look at the interplay of two very important virtues especially relevant for the Catholic laity today: justice and mercy.
The long history of the Church has seen, as Archbishop Sheen put it, “a thousand Crucifixions and a thousand Resurrections.”
If I were to propose two principal causes for the priestly sex-abuse scandal, I would point to a profound misapplication of the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and the secularization of the West.
Both coincided with exhaustion from the wars and genocides of the last century, leading people to look for pleasure and security as ends in themselves — and thus making them ripe for the “Dictatorship of Relativism,” as Pope Benedict terms it, which inevitably leads to violence, sexual license and (as C.S. Lewis put it) “The Abolition of Man.”
Should all of this shock us?
Well, in one sense, perhaps, but not fundamentally, if we understand human nature and the reality of original sin assumed by each one of us at conception. The truth is that only four human beings have ever been born or created without that original sin that inclines us to commit sins of our own: Adam and Eve, Our Lord and Savior, and his Mother, the Immaculate Conception. The rest of us are born sinners.
Therefore, it would be hypocritical to be “shocked, shocked” (see Casablanca for the reference) that anyone commits even the most grievous crime. We may be disappointed and disgusted, but not surprised. After all, did not even Peter, the Rock upon which the Church is built, deny his Savior three times in his moment of greatest need? Didn’t Judas, one of the original Twelve, betray the Lord for a handful of coins?
No, as Catholics aware that our own perhaps less newsworthy sins also nailed Christ to his cross, we are called to mercy, to forgiveness.
The Lord says in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy” (Matthew 5:3-12). The Church is an engine of mercy for those who see forgiveness, offering three sacraments — baptism, reconciliation and the anointing of the sick — that apply God’s grace at various times during life for those who repent of their sins.
When I was a priest at the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C., some years ago, I placed behind my office desk one of the great photos of the last century: Blessed John Paul the Great, whose feast day we celebrate Oct. 22, in conversation with his would-be assassin in his jail cell, whispering words of forgiveness, whether asked for or not.
Everyone who walked into my office knew that there was no sin that could not be forgiven, except the sin against the Holy Spirit that is despair of forgiveness.
In Blessed John Paul’s encyclical Dives in Misericordia (On the Mercy of God), written near the beginning of his papacy, in 1980, he foreshadowed what he exercised so nobly after the attempt on his life. There he says that merciful love for all human creatures “constitutes the fundamental content of the messianic message of Christ” (64). The scriptural passage that he more often preached upon during his pontificate than any other was that of the Prodigal Son and Merciful Father (Luke 15:11-32).
Finally, for those of you more academically inclined, I recommend a book on anger and forgiveness written by two fine Catholic men, a psychiatrist and a psychologist: Helping Clients Forgive: An Empirical Guide for Resolving Anger and Restoring Hope by Robert D. Enright and Richard P. Fitzgibbons.
Father C. John McCloskey III is a Church historian and fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His website is FrMcCloskey.com.
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Father McCloskey,
It’s not the academically inclined that will help the church’s victims heal but themselves, depending on what degree of abuse was meted out to them and the psychology of the child involved. Books won’t do the trick as your cavalier attitude attests. Prayers, your thoughts and sorrow are being trotted out throughout the world and you know what no one believes you mean one word of it. I’ve set you a challenge below so go prove me wrong. I have a paedophile from the Arizona parish being given refuge here in Ireland by the name of Paraic Colleary (I even went to school with this sicko) so prove that you are in earnest when you mouth your apologies by having him extradited back to the USA to serve out his sentence. He is currently living in Rhue, Tubbercurry, Co. Sligo, but you’d already know that wouldn’t you? Read on for my second challenge to you and let’s see if you possess any moral fibre.
Where are the true apologies, the acts of real understanding, the admissions of the animals in your ranks who ripped lives apart? The hierarchy that continued to cover up for the abusers, move them from pillar to post but never in the direction of the Law? You continue to kow tow to these sick perverted creatures. Satan is within your ranks.
The arrogance and condescension of your church has to be stamped out and I would recommend all the old fogeys be removed forthwith as they all have secret pasts and not one of them can stand up to scrutiny. I dare you to send me a name and open up all records to me here, in every country that priest, bishop or cardinal has served and I’ll get you the goods. The Vatican is also included in that ‘dare’ if you wish to call it that.
How you can still proclaim to be a priest with the words Reverend after you name beggars belief. What did you do when you heard of it? Did you shout enough is enough or did you keep your head bowed and kept reciting your Mea Culpas; no, I think not. What have you to be ashamed of in the few of the mortal sins that patters from the keyboard. This is not craftily nor cunningly written just straight from the heart who was never allowed to be a child thanks to you and your ilk.
I have more respect for Satan/Lucifer/ or whatever other Angel’s name he was called as he had/has more integrity than your church has or purports to have.
Go and join your Jesus on the cross along with the others of your ilk and do the world a favour.
Father McCloskey,
It’s not the academically inclined that will help the church’s victims heal but themselves, depending on what degree of abuse was meted out to them and the psychology of the child involved. Books won’t do the trick as your cavalier attitude attests. Prayers, your thoughts and sorrow are being trotted out throughout the world and you know what no one believes you mean one word of it. I’ve set you a challenge below so go prove me wrong. I have a paedophile from the Arizona parish being given refuge here in Ireland by the name of Paraic Colleary (I even went to school with this sicko) so prove that you are in earnest when you mouth your apologies by having him extradited back to the USA to serve out his sentence. He is currently living in Rhue, Tubbercurry, Co. Sligo, but you’d already know that wouldn’t you? Read on for my second challenge to you and let’s see if you possess any moral fibre. Paedophilia and homosexuality in the ranks of the church are responsible and nothing else,not the secularisaation of the western world but that was long overdue. You must all have been jaded in concealing crimes committed on a global scale. No other reasons than these will be accepted in years to come along with your warped teachings of course of which you are not qualified to even discuss.
Where are the true apologies, the acts of real understanding, the admissions of the animals in your ranks who ripped lives apart? The hierarchy that continued to cover up for the abusers, move them from pillar to post but never in the direction of the Law? You continue to kow tow to these sick perverted creatures. Satan is within your ranks.
The arrogance and condescension of your church has to be stamped out and I would recommend all the old fogeys be removed forthwith as they all have secret pasts and not one of them can stand up to scrutiny. I dare you to send me a name and open up all records to me here, in every country that priest, bishop or cardinal has served and I’ll get you the goods. The Vatican is also included in that ‘dare’ if you wish to call it that.
How you can still proclaim to be a priest with the words Reverend after you name beggars belief. What did you do when you heard of it? Did you shout enough is enough or did you keep your head bowed and kept reciting your Mea Culpas; no, I think not. What have you to be ashamed of in the few of the mortal sins that patters from the keyboard. This is not craftily nor cunningly written just straight from the heart who was never allowed to be a child thanks to you and your ilk.
I have more respect for Satan/Lucifer/ or whatever other Angel’s name he was called as he had/has more integrity than your church has or purports to have.
Go and join your Jesus on the cross along with the others of your ilk and do the world a favour.
Hanora Brennan is filled with hatred and rage and is in need of our prayers. Please, God, give healing to Hanora.
“If I were to propose two principal causes for the priestly sex-abuse scandal, I would point to a profound misapplication of the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and the secularization of the West.”
I find these reasons very vague and not compelling. A more concrete and intuitive cause is that many of the abusing priests didn’t have a life of prayer. Although there may be general truth to what you are saying, it is a very antiseptic way of putting it.
“we may be disappointed and disgusted, but not surprised”
Again, I get the drift of what you are saying. It’s likely imprecision or the desire for originality that spawned such a line.
Hanora, I can’t blame you for being enraged, but Lucifer is NOT your friend, and I beg you to understand this for your own good. He is in fact the silent instigator and ally of every sinner in the world, especially those who prey upon the young. As an angel, he is powerful and intelligent beyond our ability to imagine, and as an evil one, he is a dangerous, deadly maniac who would love you to trust and admire him so that he can do to you far worse than the evil wrought by the abusive priests and complacent bishops. Give him the slightest chance and he will warp, pummel, brutalize and finally utterly destroy you, laughing as you plunge into hell at the end of your life. Don’t let your anger drive you into his wretched arms. Please.
There is a time for mercy, and a time for justice. Now it is the time for justice. Not just the offending priests (which should not shock us, any more than any crime should shock us… criminals are always with us), but their abetters, the bishops that gave them refuge, transferred to differnet parishes, and silenced complaints in the name of “avoiding scandal”. Those bishops betrayed their charges, siding with the wolves against the lambs (for being merciful to the wolf is being cruel to the lamb), and showed himself fully incompetent for their offices. Any organization will have evildoers in its ranks. You cannot judge it for their presence. But any organization will be judged for they way it does justice when evildoers show up it its body. When the Church has showed itself competent in meting out justice, then you can talk about mercy.
Also, in a world where girls are molested more than boys, I find extremely unpleasant the emphasis on homosexuality. There are women today who were molested by priests as children. Are you telling them that being females, their pain does not matter to you?
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