Posted on 06/25/2002 4:07:12 PM PDT by Lady In Blue
It has been extremely difficult and painful to confront the reality of the Church's abuse scandals.However, as with any scandal, now that it out in the open there is a real opportunity for healing to occur.
As a layperson, my greatest concern at this point is how the laity has been addressing this issue. Those who have been most vocal seem to put all the responsibility on priests and bishops. How self-righteous we are. Perhaps it's time address the plank in our own eye.After all we, the laity, have our scandals to address.
Though many of the lay groups that are forming to address this issue call theselves "faithful," the majority of the laity over the past several decades have been anything but.Indeed, I would suggest that a good place to start addressing our own scandals would our widespread unfaithfulness to the Church's teachings. And our collective disobedience has been most prominent in - of all areas - sexual morality!
Does anyone really believe it's just a coincidence that after 30 to 40 years of thumbing our collective nose at the teaching authority of the Church in this regard, we find the Church mired in a sex scandal? Where in the world do we think these priests and bishops came from,anyway?The Church didn't raise them.We did.They came out of our families. I believe that it's well past time that we put down our rocks,get on our knees and undertake our own purification in this regard.
The time has long since passed for the laity to put aside the cafeteria-Catholicism of the past several decades and truly partake of the banquet the Church has to offer.If we do, this can truly become the "springtime of hope" the Pope envisions.The only question is: Do we have the maturity,the integrity - and the faith - to face this scandal at its core? For our sake and that of our children and of the world, I pray that we do.
Accessory Bishops and predator priests might pay for theirs here on Earth, too.
Trying to drag the laity onto this gibbet of shame is absurd. Like you, I've got plenty to make reparations for. Shielding sex abusers is not something that's on my conscience.
Bishop Dolan, auxiliary from St. Louis and former Rector of the North American College, is your new leader.
There was an interview of him published here a couple of days ago; he seems to be a level-headed man who will bring some rationality back to your archdiocese.
That isn't the question. Where in the world did these priests and bishops think they came from? That is the question.
For these men (separate from the service to society they performed) to have sexually abused a child is unthinkable. They have put themselves in a position and carried themselves as beyond reproach. They claimed to represent something greater than themselves and then took advantage of the trust that was handed to them by those who believed.
Forgiven, yes. Forgotten, no. Remember, pedaphiles cannot be cured.
"I think women should be priests"
Ever notice how empty the church is at confession time? "I ain't telling no man my sins"
"I don't care what they say, I'm using birth control pills anyway"
"I don't believe everything the catholic church teaches"
I see the writers point, I don't think he's trying to hide the scandal, I think he's trying to remind some of us what were doing.
I'm sorry, I should have said, "I will hold on to my stones to defend my Faith, my Church and for no other reason."
I did not mean to imply I was judging, I'm just trying to defend.
"Wild and gloomy times? Small wonder that people are shaken and confused! The signs are everywhere. The signs of our times point to a struggle between absolutes. We may expect the future to be a time of trials and catastrophes for two reasons: firstly, to stop disintegration...Revolution, disintegration, chaos must be reminders that our thinking has been wrong, our dreams have been unholy. The second reason why a crisis must come is in order to prevent a false identification of the Church and the World. Our Lord intended that His followers should be different in spirit from those who were not His followers....But, though this is the divine intent, it is unfortunately true that the line of demarcation is often blotted out. Mediocrity and compromise characterize the lives of many Christians...There is no longer the conflict which is supposed to characterize us. We are influencing the world less than the world is influencing us. Since the amalgamation of the Christian and pagan spirit has set in, the gold is married with an alloy, the entirety must be thrown into the furnace so that the dross may be burnt away."
I have spoken to a friend of mine, just ordained Saturday, who spent the last five years at the NAC. He says the man was an awesome rector and very orthodox in his teaching. He believes he will make a great archbishop and is probably being groomed for a red hat.
I hope he's all that my friend says he is. It will be a "hot time in the ole' town tonight" as the song goes.
Child abuse, perjury, obstruction of justice, witness tampering, interstate aid and abetting, embezzelment, are all major crimes.
The laity had nothing to do with this, and relied in good faith on the bad faith representations of the clergy.
After about 20 years of hard labor, he should have this place fixed up.
What can be said in defense of the clerics who wreaked such havoc? They didn't know better? Their formation was poor?
An important and fundamental distinction. Thanks for pointing it out.
I'm a devout Catholic. But if you don't rise up in righteous anger over the pure evil that has infected our many bishops and our Church, you will allow what's happened to continue. "The only thing necessary for the rise of evil is that good men do nothing."
Interesting letter. However, it may be a little more complicated than just blaming the behavior of a small minority of perverted homosexuals in the priesthood on "the laity." The causes of sexual perversion are the subject of considerable debate in psychiatric circles. No doubt the widescale departure from conventional sexual morality throughout American society, as well as the constant display of sexual indulgence in popular culture, have eroded confidence in Christian commitment to consecrated monogamy and chastity. The idea that normal, heterosexual lay people have "caused" the outbreak of homosexual ephebophilia is, I think, nonsense. At least, I know that I bear no such responsibility.
It would be nice if I could tell you that my upbringing was unusual. I don't think it was. For us Post V-II kids (though I was born during the Council, I didn't go to school until after the Council, and after all the experiments were underway), this was often how it happened.
Your questions come down to, "Why did these priests and theolgians, etc., venture into the muck of heresy?"
I guess their intentions were good. I guess they were trying to bring the Church into the 20th Century or something. Ultimately, though, they did what they did because they chose to dissent.
Dear Lady in Blue,
"He's saying that whether a priest,bishop is good or bad,he comes from a FAMILY! A lot of families are NOT teaching their kids to pray and to ACCEPT ALL OF THE CHURCH's TEACHING!"
That is the opposite of what I'm saying. Catholic families didn't create these failed moral monster priests, bishops, theologians, seminary rectors, etc. They didn't originate in Catholic families with less than adequate faith or catechesis.
These men grew up. They were small in number, at first, I imagine. Perhaps some of them came from an inadequate Catholic background. But others likely came from very fine, devout, faithful Catholic families. Likely most of them. Because prior to the middle of this century, most American Catholic families would have been scandalized by what is now accepted as normal.
These men became failed priests, bishops, theologians, seminary rectors, etc., all on their own. Let's not blame Catholic families in general for these men.
These dissident priests then spread their disease of dissent to other priests and then to innocent Catholic families. People like my parents. The bishops did little to stop them. In my own Archdiocese, the late Patrick Cardinal O'Boyle was faced one morning with an advertisement in the local newspaper denouncing Humanae Vitae, signed by dozens of diocesan priests. Cardinal O'Boyle was called many awful names by many folks, especially other priests, when all the signers found themselves laicized in short order.
But Cardinal O'Boyle was fighting a rear-guard action. By the time this happened, in '68 or '69, the problems were all already set in place. And he only lopped off the heads of those who publicly dissented. He did nothing to the priests who dissented, and taught dissident teaching from the pulpits, but who didn't shout it outside the boundaries of their parishes. The message was, "It's okay to dissent as long as you don't shove it in the Cardinal's face."
My parents didn't invent this garbage. They got it from Fr. So-and-So and Msgr. Whathisname. Fr. So-and-so and Msgr. Whathisname got it from the guys who made it up, in the seminaries, etc., where folks thought that creating parallel "Catholic" teaching was exciting and pioneering and brave, etc.
Those corrupted Catholic families then passed on a corrupted Catholic faith to children of my generation.
But the problem didn't originate in the heart of Catholic families. Though many Catholic families are now largely corrupted by the almost unconscious acceptance of dissent, this is the result of the moral crimes of a previous generations of theological leaders, not the cause.
sitetest
Nor do I. What HowlinglyMind-Bending Absurdity says is true. But in this instance, many priests in the Church have just totally rejected Catholic teaching on sexual morality, and have embraced its opposite with full fervor. THey have done so IN THE ABSENCE OF any mandate to do so from the laity (who should have no power in this regard anyway). I don't think there are many Catholics who want unbridled homosexual activity in their seminaries and parishes. And the vast, vast majority of Catholics with kids don't want their kids anywhere near it, and are (rightfully) afraid for their children.
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