We're Going to Have to Wrestle With This...

Lots of people say, "I'm spiritual, not religious." and it is because they fail to see the connection between the physical actions (in the sacraments and ceremony) and the deeper reality these physical signs, symbols, gestures and prayers, reveal.  Faith without works is dead, as Saint James said. In the case of the Pennsylvania report detailing accusations, assaults, actual documentations and testimony covering several decades, involving 300 priests and over 1,000 children, we have case after case after case, of works without faith. 

That seems like it might be an overstatement, but the business of the Church seemed to triumph over the spiritual reality of the Church. There will be some who read the report, and because many of these documented abuses took place decades ago, clamor for everyone to move on.   However, these sins, and they were sins, and these crimes, and they were crimes, demand we wrestle with the reality, we are never free from the temptation to cut ourselves off from God, even when where we work, what we do, and all that surrounds us, even the words we must say, call out to God.   We can have everything and forfeit it for a want we can't have.  We can be living out our vocation, and fail the moment things become difficult.  We can fail by looking away, by pretending whatever we see, isn't that bad, or by pretending what we do in this circumstance, doesn't matter. 

We're part of the defense against the Gates of Hell because we are the Church.  Ergo, we must not be asleep in our spiritual lives.  To have acted and preyed upon so many, (1000 known), spiritual deadness must have abounded.   By what we do and what we fail to do, we will find ourselves saying, "Lord, Lord! When did we see you suffering?" and find ourselves spit out for our lukewarmness.   There's a lot of millstones to go around, for neglect, for institutional protectionism, and for actual assaults and failure to report, and profound indifference to the subsequent suffering. 

The error for each of us, is to will only to move forward, as if we can somehow discard sin like a skin.  It's an error of worldly thinking to think we could ever purge sin from our hearts.  Only God's grace can burn away our hardness of hearts, and forge the soft points that should be steel.   We cannot ever taste even a little of sin, for it's like we're all alcoholics, it's just the flavor of the liquor we're debating.    

The whole of the Church will have to perform a penance.  I propose a Year of Humility, both public and private, where we pray, fast and do reparations and alms giving.  We offer masses and shun feasts other than the Eucharist. We hold confessions every Friday from sun-up to sun-down and try to have 24-7 adoration staffed so every parishioner, every family performs a holy hour during the year, as part of the whole Church response to storm Heaven begging for grace, for healing for the victims, and yes, even for the perpetrators.   


As an institution and organization, there's a desire to move on, but we need to wrestle with this pain and it's going to be messy. It's going to hurt.   To begin to heal, we must first allow ourselves to examine this wound and be willing to enter into it.   

The one comfort I can give, is our faith is not based on the faith lives of men but from Christ.  He's with us, he's on the cross for us.  He invites us to enter into his suffering for the Church and we should.  If you want to read what else I've written about this subject, it's over at the National Catholic Register: The Wake Up Call We Need, and if you have a suggestion for further discussion on this matter, leave it in the com box.  

The Grand Jury's report is here. Read it. Weep. Pray. Fast, and weep again.