What shall we talk about?

Is it appropriate to preach about the unfolding sex abuse crises about Archbishop McCarrick and the Pennsylvania dioceses?  Is it necessary?

When I preach, I try to make connections between the appointed readings and liturgical occasions of the day, and the lives of our local faith community.  That includes current events, and from time to time I try to speak about current events from a Catholic perspective in my homilies.

But when the biggest current news story is actually about the church, and the story portrays our Catholic bosses and peers in an unflattering light, it's not a straightforward exercise.  For good or ill, Catholic preachers have been trying to think this through for the better part of 20 years.

Deacon Fritz Bauerschmidt, who also is chair of the theology department at Loyola University in Baltimore, recently wrote about some of the challenges faced by presiders and preachers.  He recounted what he observed at his local mass for last week's Solemnity of the Assumption:

the priest, in his homily, made no mention of the Pennsylvania grand jury’s report, or the recent news reports about Ted McCarrick. During the prayer of the faithful he tried a stumbling petition for victims of abuse, but he was clearly embarrassed by the topic and had no idea what to say and I found myself momentarily feeling sorry for him. Clearly he found it difficult to find words that could both accurately describe these acts and were suitable for utterance from the sanctuary.

 That anecdote touches on some of the difficulties that preachers face in talking about the abuse crisis.  The preacher may not be well-versed in the facts of the crises; and it's difficult to know precisely what to say about it.  Part of the discomfort, to be candid, is that it's excruciatingly awkward to talk about sex from the pulpit.  Most weekend masses have children present.  It's for the parents, not the preacher, to decide whether, when and how to introduce these topics to children.  Then too,  a homily isn't the same as an opinion piece or a blog post or a public venting session - it's a specific category of public speech whose purpose is supposed to be proclaiming the Good News. What is the Good News about the abuse crises?  Finally, there is a credibility issue: not to put too fine a point on it, but the clergy as a class may not be given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to sins and crimes that have implicated so many of us; and some of us have been our class's own worst enemies by reflexively but unadvisedly leaping to defend the indefensible.  These preachers think they are defending a church under attack, but they end up coming across as defending criminals and those who covered up the crimes.

And so there are a variety of excuses that homilists can trot out to avoid preaching about the sex abuse crises.  To his credit, Bauerschmidt hasn't let the excuses dissuade him:

Since my ordination in 2007, I have preached on the topic of sexual abuse and its cover up about a half dozen time. It is always hard. I am almost always unsatisfied by what I have said. But it has also almost always been greeted with a sense of grateful relief by parishioners. They are relieved to hear from the pulpit some acknowledgement of reality, and of their struggles to remain part of a Church that has mired itself in such unreality.

I've only preached about it one time.  That was probably 10 or 12 years ago.  My theme was that the church is the People of God, and inasmuch as bishops work for the church, they work for us; and so, when they screw up, part of our stewardship of the church should be to hold them accountable.  It wasn't well-received by my pastor (this was several pastors ago).  Not to put too fine a point on it, he benched me.  He removed me from the preaching rotation the following month, and told me that henceforth he'd have to pre-screen my homilies, something he never followed up on.

And so, knowing that I was to preach this past weekend, I spent a lot of time during the week trying to discern whether I should preach about the abuse crises.  I believe strongly that there are events in the community or the world that preachers must acknowledge, but my intuition was that this weekend I shouldn't.  I wasn't seeing (or the Holy Spirit wasn't leading me to see) a ready connection between the crises and the Sunday readings.  And I had a sense that it was too early: the crises are still unfolding, and their full scope and meaning haven't quite gelled yet in the public's mind - or at least in my mind.

As it happened, our diocese's archbishop, Cardinal Cupich, more or less pre-empted us preachers and took the decision out of our hands.  He did this by instructing parishes across the archdiocese to insert an expanded introduction to the Penitential Rite, the text of which the archdiocese provided, in each Sunday Mass.  Here is the text:

Dear brothers and sisters, during this Eucharist we are mindful of the tragic sins of clergy sexual abuse which have come to light in the Church, and which have had sad and grave consequences for victims. These actions and the failure of others in Church leadership to protect victims and remove abusers from ministry have wounded the whole Body of Christ, and so we pray for God’s mercy on the victims and we pray for reparation.   

We are also confident in the healing power of God, whose grace is stronger than human sin and whose Providence is infinitely greater than the consequences of any human neglect. May the Lord grant healing to all those whose lives have been so hurt and damaged by the failures of the Church 

 May He grant true repentance to those who have committed such grave sins … and may He grant the entire Body of Christ hope and trust in the Church’s leadership.

This was spoken by the priest after the sign of the cross and greeting, and before the deacon led the "Lord have mercy".  In my view, it's extraordinary - in the sense that I don't recall anything like it having been done before.  I suppose it's open to critique, both on the merits of its own content and its merits as a liturgical prayer.  Listening to the priests verbalize it this weekend, it struck me as too long.  I think there are some things to like about it.  I'm not sure that it exactly hits the bull's-eye.  But as Bauerschmidt notes, whatever is said probably will feel inadequate to us.  And on the whole, in addition to being grateful that it took me off the hook of having to address the crises in a homily, I think it's better that the church acknowledge the crises than not.