This is a Good Start?

The Administrative Committee of the USSCB released a statement outlining steps the Administrative Committee has taken to address the crisis.

Boy I feel better. Don't you?

Everybody got that?  Remain calm.  

The Bishops have released a policy and procedure paper. 

If only we’d had a statement outlining the steps of how to handle when someone behaves in an illegal and/or immoral way.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m fairly certain the criminal abuse of minors and cynical abuse of power with respect to seminarians and others of age, wasn’t the consequence of a lack of policy.   

But wait, there's more.  As a bonus feature, we’ve been told how powerless this governing body is, to do much beyond the four steps they outline.  

If that's the case then what exactly does the outline establish which holds weight? Where is the weight?

Here are the four points the USCCB held out as signs of progress:   

1) Establishing a third party reporting system, where laity can go to report misconduct by a bishop so that it will be directed to the appropriate ecclesiastical authority. 

No.  I’m sorry, that’s saying, “Trust us. We got this.”  No. That’s how we got to the point of having this seventy years of cover up from the grand jury of Pennsylvania.    (There already is one, it’s called the police).   It’s one and done now, because there should be no difference between how we handle reporting an abuser in the laity, and in the clergy.   As optics go, it looks like “we’ve drafted a policy so we can keep this in house.”  

2) Instructions to develop proposals for addressing restrictions on bishops who were removed or resigned because of allegations. 

Could we sound more mealy-mouthed? Instructions to develop proposals?  What in heaven’s name does that mean?   How about, specific policy regarding the consequences for bishops removed because of allegations?  

How about naming the consequences, in duration and type, so it’s clear, this is a severe breach of moral leadership, of moral behavior, it’s wrong, it’s always wrong, and it carries the gravest of consequences for those convicted.    

It’s not that I think the bishops have bad hearts, but is this seriously the best they can do in light of the crisis? 

Do I hope not? Do I hope so?  I'm at a loss. 

3) Develop a code of conduct for Bishops…I had to stop, I couldn't quite give this recommendation because I think it is silly. 

We don't need to develop a code of conduct. That already exists.  It’s what each and every person who received the sacrament of Holy Orders agreed to live out.

Theoretically, if you're a bishop, you've lived this, you know this...or should.  One would hope no one goes into the priesthood or holy orders looking for the loop hole of how they can hoodwink God and obey the letter of the law.  Well, that's the code for priests...but not Bishops so...it's above/below my pay grade.      

This scandal is about breaching that code of conduct, whether by commission or omission, ignoring the lost sheep for the benefits of comfort or promotions, and ignoring the devouring of the flock because facing the wolves would be hard.   The code is be men of courage, men of faith, shepherds who lay down their lives for the flock. 

What is lacking in these proposals is a unified voice of courage declaring what will be done. 

How about, you propose a public form of penance to be conducted by each and every bishop and perhaps also by the priests, in reparation for the grave injustices done, and as a reminder to all that for one sin, we lost Eden, and for these sort of sins, we’ll damn ourselves if we don’t repent.

  

4) The USCCB declares it supports a full investigation…here we agree, but not just of former Cardinal McCarrick. This isn't just about one man abusing his position. 

You believe in a full investigation.  Great. Lay bare the bones of the institution.  Be unafraid to look at the wounds, to recognize them for what they are in each and every occurrence, nails in Christ’s body.  

That you fled the problem up to now, it's understandable in a way.  The apostles fled at His Crucifixion. The full investigation is beyond a single man, it’s the collective result of a bureaucratic organizational structure which sought to protect the reputation of the Church, at the expense of a few souls being damaged. If you really want to show the laity how sorrowful you are for the corruption and abuse and cover up, support a full investigation to root out all who sold everything for Wales.

Reform must happen, but for it to take hold, the Bishops need to stop hiding in committees that draft policies and stand as men of faith, as true shepherds who will seek out every lost sheep and fight off every wolf.

Personal Note:

I don't want to stay mad, but we can't let this go or be swept past by the comforting reassurances of a position paper, committee or future policies. This is the Church, these our our brothers and sisters in Christ. 

We don't want to lose any Bishops or priests or seminarians or laity to sin, by omission or commission.  So we will keep bringing this up, until they recognize, we need a better response than this...

So I'm praying.  Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and enkindle in them the fire of your love.   

Sherry and the Zombies

There are moments when prayers are answered and my first response is, "I got to stop praying." I don't mean it, but the sinful part that doesn't want a deeper relationship with God or a more meaningful relationship with anyone else, does.  Because too often, I hold to God and focus only on His generosity, and no where, no how, it's too scary, will I allow myself to focus on His searing instruction that demands the death of self.
But it kept coming up.

 Recently, I began praying for the ability to hold onto friends.  I asked why it was so hard for me. 

All prayers are answered. When you ask to be made deeper, the fastest root is pain and suffering.  When we experience conflict between our relationship with God and the world, we're thrown into sharp relief with who we are and who we are called to be.  The Holy Spirit is fire. The Holy Spirit convicts.  The Holy Spirit cannot work where there is no room, and I struggle daily with my attempt to double book the world of my ego and the Holy Spirit in the same heart.  Being gracious, the Holy Spirit grievously surrenders the seat to the world every time I say that is what I want.  You win Sherry, here's the world's answer.

Then I wonder why I am miserable. 

I've come to know my ego is rather zombie like.  I keep thinking its dead, it is not, but it is not fully alive either, it is undead.  It keeps coming and when I am not vigilant, it takes over, eats my brain, and I no longer see what I am doing is destructive. I only feed my desire.  When anyone calls me on it, I attack.  I see that no one else will let me do what I want.  Like I said, the ego zombie eats the brain.

This is not a case of false humility, it is a case of knowing while I am reflective, I am not thoughtful.  Thus I am great for the instagram/twitter type moment of generosity or friendship, I see you, you need to talk, I listen. I see you, you need help, I do. I see you, you ask, I will give.

But the long term stuff, the thinking and thinking and thinking of you stuff that matters, where the other person is surprised by a gift of self often slips by me and I have hurt people in layers over time by my careless ways of drifting through friendships such that a lot of those that could have been infinitely precious, eventually ebb away. These patterns to the other affected seem at best thoughtless and fickle; they convict me of being well intentioned, but wrong.  We all know where good intentions lead.  Faith without works is empty.

The zombies seem harmless and slow but ultimately if not stopped, will kill that which is good because they cannot see the value of anything save their own appetites.  (I'll ignore the current rage for sentient zombies who are somehow heroic), I don't need any help in rationalizing the extent of my own appetites. 

Talking with a classmate from college, we related in an instant our hang ups about friendships and then proceeded to provide our very own examples of that reality without even realizing it.  She always felt she was intruding. I talked about how I clown and expand to fill the room trying to put on a show to prove I'm likable.  We'd decided to walk to the grotto. I immediately began painting a picture of the whys of it, to prove she should go with me. She'd already agreed.  Immediately she asked if I wanted that time to myself.  I said no.  But the proof of our hang ups was right there. "Are we ever going to get out of our 7th grade selves?" I asked.  We both laughed.

But the question lingers.  When will this zombie ego that only likes to be liked in the moment and never wants to grow beyond here just stop already? When will it know that it doesn't need to do that and shouldn't and that if it really wants more than the instant and ever less satisfying gratification of the cheap laugh, it is going to have to think or feel beyond me, me, me and now, now, now and the next now?   

Like all sin, the only solution is 1) to see it --which is quite painful, 2) own it --again, ow, 3) ask for grace to overcome it yes, I'm doing that, and 4) repeat repeat repeat times infinity while doing whatever grace directs you to do, i.e. change.  So I'm asking and that's a scary act.  Then, I have to act and keep acting, and that's even harder.  

Prayers.

Training for the Test

Our society has grown steadily more blind and deaf to the notion of something as old as sin, namely sin itself.  It persists in singing that if everyone agreed to get along, the aches and motivations of the human heart that tend toward the darker elements of life would somehow be snuffed out.  It is an earthly rendition of the Heavenly promise absent the one focus (God) that would bring about that perfection.  COEXIST! It commands.  It never says how.

The fallen earthly tune sings that somehow without the Greatest Good, the Only Good, we will be good, all gazing out at the heavens in our Federation land of tolerance and harmony where no one thinks outside of how one should think no matter what.   In the land of tolerance and diversity, we will become Borgs without the implants, serving the quality of life for the state, and thinking only what the state deems agreeable.  Resistance is futile.  

But don’t worry, you can still call yourself whatever you like.    You can even practice your faith if no one else is affected by it ever, not in the workplace, not at school, not in politics, not in your homes or on your lawns or in your children’s hearts.  It can only be you communing with whatever it is you commune with, and it should only feel good.  No one’s God should be in the business of challenging His creations. He should have made us better.  So we are free to worship a god of one’s own imagining, the inverse of who we are, beings made in the image and likeness of God. One need only look at the daily barrage of the news, entertainment and politics to know that we are losing this battle against the world. 

We need allies.  As such, we need to know how to win hearts and minds to the reality that 1) there are objective truths and 2) they are knowable.  Even within the Catholic Church, relativism has watered down the purpose of Christ’s teachings and the person of Jesus to a cool progressive ancient teacher who hugs and encourages you to share, sort of a Barney for adults who need that sort of thing. Modern thinking is Love should require no sacrifice, Love makes no demands, Love makes no judgments, Love should only always feel right.  Ergo, Modern God doesn’t demand anything of our souls either.  God doesn’t care if you take birth control and He gets that you need to have an abortion or Jesus never said anything about homosexual sex.  God doesn't care about what you do in the bedroom.  That's just silly.   He only cares about other sins, real sins.

The only sin in the modern age is judging others or naming sins as such.  If you do either of those two things, you’re a hater.  Because Jesus said, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”  It is the only quote that still gets raised.   But if one argues, judging me a hater is rendering judgment, that’s just being sophomoric or clever.  You declared a limit on behavior, ergo, you’re still a hater.

Christ is more than a man who said, “Be Excellent to each other.”   He said, “I am the way, the truth and the light.”   He told us we were to love our neighbors as ourselves and “Be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect.”  He told us he did not come to unite but to divide, and that He was the fulfillment of the law.  After giving us the Beatitudes and exhorting us to be salt and light to the world, He cautioned us not to water down His words or our faith or our thinking.  ^* “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.  Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven. I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” 

Do I think this battle can be won in politics or law?  No.  And it was never meant to be won there either.  As we know with so many other past battles, we cannot legislate or politically bully hearts to be other than as they are.  We can only live out lives steeped in service to others and love of God, obedience to God's teaching.  We must do good because we love, we must love because God created us to love.  We must recognize that however much we give, pray, love or serve, it is insufficent.  It is baseline.  The God who is Love, always wants us to love more. So ours is an infinitely Demanding all just all merciful God.

How many of us would consider ourselves more righteous in our lives or thinking, obedient in thought and words and deeds than those who had the opportunity to sit at the feet of Jesus at that Sermon on the Mount?  How many of us if we look hard in our hearts, seek to mold Christ to fit our hearts, rather than grow our hearts outward toward God’s vision for them?  How many of us pay attention to the existence of sin in our own hearts and thoughts and words and what we do and don’t do?  Do we even know what is sinful anymore?  Can we name the sins of our lives, not in the generic “Naughty and Nice” categories, but the real ways in which at some point, we scream at God, “No! I Will Not Serve!”

Do we understand that all sin is an echo of the first sin; Lucifer’s breaking with Heaven, and of the second sin, Adam and Eve refusing God?  “No, I will not obey.”  They are the opposite of “You shall love your God with all your Heart, Soul, Body and Mind.” (Serve God first).  And “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  Obey the commandments in mind, word, thought and deed toward everyone around you, everyone in the world.

How poorly do we see ourselves?  More importantly, how do we learn to see more clearly, the planks in our own eyes that we may pluck the splinters from others? 

We will have to put on the armor of Saint Joan and ask for the fiery tongue of Saint Paul, the steel reasoning of Saint Thomas Moore, the understanding of our faith parallel to Saint Thomas Aquinas and the simplicity of Saint Teresa of Lisieux. We need the hands of Blessed Mother Teresa, the charity of Saint Francis, the clarity of Saint Augustine, and the wit of Saint Catherine of Siena.  In short, we will need to train under the communion of the Saints. They lived through difficult times, they spoke truth. They prayed hard. They struggled before God and surrendered. They gave everything to God. Their spiritual battles should be studied in preparation for our own. We will need their bones of thought to stiffen and strengthen ours.  We will have to lean on the 2000 years of thinking and prayers and tradition and beauty and riches of our Church until we can add our bit to the walls.   As laity, ever reaching upward, we should be seeking to be part of the walls, the blood and the brick and the mortar of Christ’s Church. 

The end goal can overwhelm given the immediate fears that might darken the heart.  Family won’t like what I say. Friends won’t like what I say.  It will hurt. Have courage.  Take heart.  We do not yet know the roles we have been given by God. This is training.  Start reading. Start learning in this year of faith. Stay close to the sacraments and ask the Holy Spirit to direct your feet.  You will find your Calcutta; your place where God’s will is being presented.  All you need do is obey.  There are an infinite number of graces God hopes to flood in our souls if we would only submit.  It is a luminous promise, to be transformed such that we will only see Jesus in our lives.   So trust that all that is, is an opportunity for grace.  Trust that if we seek, we will find.  If we trust, the words will be given to us to speak and more besides, and if we pray and submit, God will grant us the infinite amount of grace needed to get us through the test of this world soul intact and bring a whole bunch more with us in the process.  We want to make sure everyone is at the feast.