"the suffering endured by many minors due to sexual abuse, the abuse of power and the abuse of conscience perpetrated by a significant number of clerics and consecrated persons"
has inflicted pain not only upon them by also their families, and the larger community of believers, and non believers.
Francis powerfully identifies the cry of the victims with the Magnificat:
"The Lord heard that cry and once again showed us on which side he stands. Mary’s song is not mistaken and continues quietly to echo throughout history. For the Lord remembers the promise he made to our fathers: “he has scattered the proud in their conceit; he has cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty” (Lk 1:51-53). We feel shame when we realize that our style of life has denied, and continues to deny, the words we recite."
He identifies sexual abuse, power abuse and conscience abuse with the betrayal of Christ by his disciples:
"How much pride, how much self-complacency! Christ’s betrayal by his disciples, their unworthy reception of his body and blood, is certainly the greatest suffering endured by the Redeemer; it pierces his heart."
What should be our response?
"A solidarity that summons us to fight all forms of corruption, especially spiritual corruption. The latter is “a comfortable and self-satisfied form of blindness. Everything then appears acceptable: deception, slander, egotism and other subtle forms of self-centeredness, for ‘even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light’"
Who should respond?
"every one of the baptized should feel involved in the ecclesial and social change that we so greatly need. This change calls for a personal and communal conversion that makes us see things as the Lord does."
"It is impossible to think of a conversion of our activity as a Church that does not include the active participation of all the members of God’s People. Indeed, whenever we have tried to replace, or silence, or ignore, or reduce the People of God to small elites, we end up creating communities, projects, theological approaches, spiritualities and structures without roots, without memory, without faces, without bodies and ultimately, without lives."
"This is clearly seen in a peculiar way of understanding the Church’s authority, one common in many communities where sexual abuse and the abuse of power and conscience have occurred. Such is the case with clericalism, an approach that “not only nullifies the character of Christians, but also tends to diminish and undervalue the baptismal grace that the Holy Spirit has placed in the heart of our people”.3
"Clericalism, whether fostered by priests themselves or by lay persons, leads to an excision in the ecclesial body that supports and helps to perpetuate many of the evils that we are condemning today."
To say "no” to abuse is to say an emphatic “no” to all forms of clericalism.I was very involved in the period 2003 through 2008 with Voice of the Faithful in responding to the sexual abuse crises. Anyone who has spend any time with victims realizes the depth of their suffering. However few Catholics have had that second hand experience, and most did not seek it out.
Voice of the Faith had as its three objectives: support for Victims, support for priests of integrity (remember 50 priests from Boston had called for Law's resignation), and "structure change in the Church."
Francis has placed the end of clericalism at the center of the "structure change" that is necessary in the Church.
Ending Clericalism is the great sign of our times.
We have seen the rejection of organized religion but not spirituality especially among the young people because of the hypocrisy they see among the clergy in their abuse of sex, and power, and their slavery to money and status. The percentage of them rejecting organized religion has risen to almost forty percent. Since they also reject Trump, I suspect future polls will find this rising to fifty percent.
If Francis really wants to take on clericalism, he had better call out and clean up the Curia officials who blocked implementation of the recommendations of the commission he himself created. First things first.
ReplyDeleteI assume most of the folks here know this, but here is the Voice of the Faithful Web site: http://www.votf.org/
I'm glad to see the connection in your last paragraph. I do not know which is depressing me more -- my Church's bureaucratic response to sin and crime ("it's not up to us to stop it; we only hold meetings and propose procedures") or the current root and branch destruction of my government by the ignorant egoist and the grifters, grafters, highbinders and four-flushers he empowered.
What is the path forward? Breakaway communities like Spiritus Christi in Rochester, NY? Stay and do Sysyphus? Go protestant or near-Catholic (Episcopalian)? Or become an individualistic American monad? Ir just glide it out. Maybe one should arrogantly ask the question, "What does God want? Right now, I'm on glide path.
ReplyDeleteWell Francis says in his letter we reform things as communities. Schismatic communities just beget schismatic communities. That has happened even to those who broke off to keep the old Latin Mass.
DeleteHowever the alternative is not necessarily our local parish communities. The primary engine of reform in the Roman tradition has been religious orders not the bishops. A great variety of religious orders met the needs of their times, first the desert solitaries, then Benedictine communities, then the mendicants, then active orders like the Jesuits.
I though VOTF was a good idea because it initially advocated parish voices. That didn't work out well because the only one here in our diocese was under the thumb of its pastor.
However we did have a network of 50 members. We moved our meeting around the parishes. Got co-operation from many priests, probably because our meetings were one time events. The diocese was amazed at this but did not intervene because we were not advocating married priests, etc. They left it up to pastors.
We had an annual Mass for victims; we had retreats for our members. We often went to Mass before a parish meeting and were acknowledged by the pastor. We also used a lot of events at John Carroll and others places where we meet before and afterwards. Like religious orders we developed a parallel structure that was both separate but also collaborated with parishes and others institutions.
Unfortunately VOTF needed a broader issue base and a spirituality, e.g. a vision and practices, to hold its members together. I think the end of clericalism is the broader issue and we have the Pope himself as leader.
Jack, I was a member of VOTF for years. But, because of the opposition of bishops, they really have not gone anywhere. People talk among themselves, write letters that end up in the dumpster, and nothing has changed.
DeleteThose of you who can't bring yourselves to find a new path without the comfort of the Catholic rituals you have known all your lives do have a voice - your money. Stop writing checks to the bishops/cardinals' appeals. No more checks for Peter's Pence. Write checks to the groups of your choice that do the work - Catholic Relief Services for one, Jesuit Refugee Services, Doctors without Borders (to name my three top charities), local Catholic Charities, and many non-religiously affiliated groups who do God's work in the world.
Since chanceries tax parishes, the laity need to set up non-profits for the members of the congregation to donate to, instead of in the Sunday basket. The non-profit will pay for all the parish expenses from the lighting bill to staff salaries and benefits. And not a penny of it will go to the bishop/cardinal.
The institution responds to money. At Blessed Sacrament last weekend (church home of Brett Kavanaugh, Chris Matthews, E.J. Dionne and many other Catholics in the DC media and power structure), one of the priests addressed the Pennsylvania scandal by asking the parishoners to keep writing checks to keep the parish lights on. This was revealed in a comment after a WaPo story. And the woman was convinced - she wrote the check.
Seriously.
But, you can keep the lights on in your church AND keep the money out of the bishops' hands. THAT will shake things up to a point that something might be done about clericalism from on high. It's the only power you have in the church.
Prayers aren't going to do the trick. It's a system that has been going for 1700 years and the laity have put up with it for all that time. "The simple faithful" could be counted on for their tithe no matter what the priests and bishops and popes did.
Anne, I agree with your strategy of diverting money from the clerical structure. I give almost all money to the special parish collections that support our Foodbank and our Saint Vincent DePaul society. These are staffed by volunteers so the money goes directly to those in need.
DeleteOn the eight days a year when these envelopes are collected I also turn in my regular collection envelopes with 20 dollars each. Only these are taxed by the bishop. Since we have a school he gets only 10%. So I give a $16 a year administrative fee to the bishop, and $160 -16 administrative fee to the parish. Since my contributions to both the Foodbank and SVDP are substantial I was engaged in promoting a poor church for the poor long before Francis became Pope.
Some people may object that I am penalizing our lay ministers. However I believe that the church should consist of almost all voluntary (unpaid) ministers, i.e. priests, deacons and lay people. I am willing to do my part in ministries that use my talents which other people in the parish don't have. I haven't had any pastors beating a path to my door. They are interest in my money not my talent.
A long time ago I asked myself what was the source of my faith. I concluded it was my parents and extended family not priests, bishops and pope. So I go to church because of all the Catholics with whom I share faith, hope and love. They are the Church.
Wait! I just realized what will fix everything. More latin masses and more latin in masses.
ReplyDeleteAnd ad orientem with Communion rails. Don't forget lots of incense.
DeleteThe trads would love my EC parish. It's an historic building, and we kneel for communion at a communion rail. We don't have prayers in Latin, but sometimes have hymns in Latin. Fortunately, incense is limited to special days, as it makes me cough violently.
DeleteOf course they might have a few problems with the woman priest who is consecrating the bread and wine....
;)
I'm ordinarily ok with incense, but when I have rhinitis, feels like a California forest fire burning up a perfume factory.
DeleteDavid Gibson has some ideas too. It's in the NYTimes, but will probably show up at Crux at some point. Or maybe at the Religion News Service site.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/20/opinion/pope-francis-catholic-church-sex-abuse.html?em_pos=large&emc=edit_ty_20180821&nl=opinion-today&nlid=79541265edit_ty_20180821&ref=headline&te=1
Don't see the article in either RNS or Crux. Yet.
Thanks for the link, Anne. That's a good article.
DeleteYes, excellent article by David.
DeleteWhat Francis needs to weigh in on, and which wasn't in his letter, is what he plans to do about bishops who abuse or who enable abuse.
I don't think it's any accident that the church's scandals and the MeToo issues have come to a head at the same time. In a way it's a perfect storm moment. There were some conditions that had to be present for this to happen. An article from an e-mail thread that Jim McCrea sent out a couple of weeks ago started my train of thought. Now I can't find it. But what it said is that this stuff has been going on for centuries; there is nothing new under the sun. But what has changed is the status of victims. That formerly women and especially children had a lower status in the eyes of the powers that be; and that an offense against these powerless ones by those who had more power wouldn't be viewed as very serious, if the voice of the victim was even believed at all. And the state of communication was such that even if the allegations were believed, they wouldn't have been known outside of a given location. Women and children, and even men who were formerly of "lower status" (such as the seminarians who were abused) are seeing their rights recognized. Now the victims have found their voice. And for this to happen another factor in the perfect storm was necessary; and that is the advance of modern communication, including the social media that I have many timed decried. What has been hidden is proclaimed from the housetops. I have to view it as grace at work, even though a severe grace and a painful one.
ReplyDeleteShould read "...many times decried" rather than "timed".
DeleteKatherine @3:16. Very insightful, as usual.
DeleteHow scriptural: Katherine 3:16.
ReplyDelete