[Catholic Caucus] Our Hearts Are Broken, but the Church Must Rebuild

CE.com ^ | 08-16-18 | Michael J. Lichens

[Salvation]

Our Hearts Are Broken, but the Church Must Rebuild

Michael J. Lichens

Like just about every Catholic in the Anglophone world, I felt every emotion possible while reading the Grand Jury Report on the priest-abuse in Pennsylvania. Three hundred priests had sexually assaulted numerous souls in their care. I wanted to vomit, I wanted to toss my computer against the wall, and I know I wept bitterly at different points. As I was flying, I didn’t have much room to react.

The word that occurred to me over and over, however, was satanic. No, I’m not implying that anybody was worshipping the devil, but the lord of flies is certainly delighted by the actions of the wayward bishops and clergy. If you recall, the 80’s and 90’s experienced a hysteria known as the Satanic Panic which saw many innocent people be accused and sentenced for seemingly fictional crimes. It was supposed that there was a vast network of devil-worshipping pederasts who sacrificed numerous children to their dark master.

For good reason, it seemed outlandish. I’m not so sure it seems outlandish, anymore, but we now see that the real monsters were in our chanceries and rectories, not hanging out on the street-corners or in satanic covens.

Heartbreak and Anger

Our bishops have betrayed us and left the faithful brokenhearted and furious. It wasn’t enough that they enabled and allowed unspeakable cruelty to occur in their own homes, they now stubbornly stand behind their PR firms and complain how we angry faithful have ruined their vacation. These are not the actions of a father whose children have had enough. These are the actions of idiot CEOs who got caught blowing their shareholder’s cash on drugs and prostitutes, but somehow even worse.

In writing the above, I’m not calling anyone to remain in anger or to allow bitterness to overtake them. But if you believe that charity rejoices in the truth, it is time to speak bluntly about what has occurred. And you all have every right to be angry. Your hearts are not only broken, you have found yourselves possibly feeling duped or sold a bill of goods.

If you are a fellow convert, you probably found yourself in the awkward position of explaining the Catholic teachings on sexuality to long-time friends. While you were trying to be obedient and loving, a bishop in your state enabled the sexual abuse of minors.

While you were trying to be authentically pro-life, a successor to the apostles covered up for a rape and abortion.

While you were fundraising to help your parish, the shepherd was using the money to cover up the most abhorrent abuse and hire public relations spinners to make them look good.

You have every right to be angry. Being Catholic is no easy task, but our leaders couldn’t even shoulder the burden of being a halfway-decent person. Your anger and pain is a sign of some grace that still remains: you believe and love the Church and you want the priests and bishops to live up to their calling. It can seem to be cold comfort, but your tears and anger remind all of us that there are still Catholics who care and that can mean more than you realize.

What Next?

You have a right to anger and heartbreak, but it can’t stop there. The task ahead of us seems large, and we still are unsure what to do next.

Dear reader, your love for the Church and her people moves you to anger and pain. If you had stopped caring, you would have left the Church a long time ago. Give thanks to God that you still feel that intense love and want to hold your Church to the standards of Christ. You have not given in to the bitterness that lurks in the background of this scandal.

I wish I had a 10-step program, TED talk, or book here that would help, but I’m not sure what we are called to do next in a systemic way. In whatever we are called to do, we must begin in prayer and love. No doubt, that sounds trite, but I am not suggesting we only offer “thoughts and prayers” but truly begin to pray and seek God’s grace.

Most importantly, the victims of this scandal need to feel love, prayer and support. Numerous victims were silenced, called liars, and pushed out of the Church. While our pain is real, it pales in comparison to these innocent children who were harmed in what should have been the safest place. Where they needed love and support from the church fathers, they found themselves getting attorneys and PR firms (at best).

There will need to be some great works to be done. Bishops will have to resign and some clergy will need to be sent to prison. It’s not going to be easy and it’s going to be a generational struggle, but we will get nowhere if our motivation isn’t first love.

Make Your Voices Heard

Our struggle to rebuild the Church will begin in prayer and it will not end within my lifetime. In between, there is much to do. I suggest that everyone reach out to their priests and ask about the scandal. Does your pastor have a plan to protect youth, even if his bishop is dragging his feet? If not, he needs one. Has your pastor spoken of this scandal? He cannot be silent and you must encourage him to begin speaking. If the Church is a family, no great family resolves anything by playing nice and singing saccharine songs while the house collapses around them.

You can also call and write your bishops. Heck, if the cathedral rectory is in town, there’s nothing wrong with dropping a note off in person.

Beyond that, talk to your Catholic editors and writers. If Catholic media remains silent, it is complicit. We editors and writers are here to serve you, the faithful Catholics who are willing to roll up your sleeves and do the work that needs doing. Serving you means that we need to begin tackling this issue, to the best of our ability.

The time of patient silence is over. Ask questions, demand answers, and don’t put up with silly responses that don’t resolve anything.

Reach Out to One Another

The next few weeks are going to be rough. I’ve seen the most committed, faithful Catholics begin to struggle with their faith, including a few priests. This is when we will need to actually function like the Body of Christ. We need to support and be there for each other, loving until it hurts. Especially reach out if someone you know has been directly hurt by sexual violence.

This is not excusing anything, but all estimates put the number of monstrous priests at about 6% and that means some good, holy priests are suffering. Their sufferings will only get greater as a cloud of suspicion begins to hang over them and they have to answer for the crimes of their bosses. Chances are, your local priest is experiencing a dark night of the soul and needs the encouragement and love of his parishioners to speak up and begin to root out the dark infection that torments the Body of Christ. So, if you are able to, reach out to your priest. If your priest is part of the problem, we must also begin to pray for him and protect the vulnerable from those who betray their vocation.

And don’t be afraid to talk about this with your fellow Catholics. We should not overly-speculate, but truth must be brought to the light if we are to even begin our next steps.

Rise, Let Us Be On Our Way

Catholic Exchange is a robust site that manages to do a lot with our meager resources. But we are also rather small in the media world. We cannot fix the Church by ourselves, but the great assembly of saints is with all of us and we can begin to heal and rebuild. We must begin at this moment.

Your hearts are hurt, and I can only offer these handful of words. In the coming months, the pain and frustration will be excruciating but we must press forward. Each revelation will sting, but we cannot remain in ignorance and must now ask that all things be made known.

Pray, readers, for all of us here who now have to contend with a strange, new world and let me pray for you as you bear your own struggles with this scandal. We here at CE will address this to the best of our ability, but please join me in calling for all Catholics of every station to pray and work to rebuild.

[Shark24]

Yes they do. Side note if you will: working with the teens and young adults the last few months they don’t seem to be following this issue closely. They are more involved in their relationship with Jesus and the Church. Just an observation. God bless.

[Salvation]

Another reminder:

This is a Catholic Caucus thead for active Catholics only.

[Night Hides Not]

Bishop Grahmann, formerly of the Diocese of Dallas, passed away last week at 87. He was in charge during the trial of Rudy Kos, back in the late 90s. His leadership, or lack thereof, cast a pall of the Diocese for many years in my opinion.

I converted through RCIA at St. Ann Parish in Coppell during that time. Back then, St. Ann was a growing parish of about 1000 families. It was launched by Msgr. Killian Broderick about ten years before that, with about 400 families.

There were no grey areas with Msgr. Broderick, and he would occasionally speak truth to power in his homilies. It wasn't until after his death that I read of the true story behind the friction between our parish and the diocese.

Killian testified for the plaintiffs in the Kos trial. Kos had sought out his guidance outside the confessional, and Killian felt honor bound to testify, which must have infuriated Bishop Grahmann. The lingering hostility delayed breaking ground on our new church by at least five years.

The results of Msgr. Broderick's leadership are self-evident: St. Ann Parish is now the 6th largest parish in the United States, with about 8000 families registered.

Our "two adult" policy is strictly enforced, i.e. two adults must be present whenever children are present. Seems simple, but it's very effective.

There was one night when I was teaching last year when I was the only one of six teachers present that night. We solved that by combining both classes, bringing in one of the staff to assist me. It was a special night for me, as the lesson for the night was "agape love". I departed from the curriculum, and used a section of Fr. Robert Spitzer's book "Healing the Culture".

I must have appeared to be really fired up that night, 30+ 6 graders were quiet for over 30 minutes, and their questions demonstrated that they were interested in the topic, and paying close attention.

It was nothing like Fr. Spitzer's presentations, who appears regularly on EWTN. I know him well: he graduated two years ahead of me at Gonzaga, and served as President of GU during the early 2000s. His leadership helped to launch a rebirth at Gonzaga, aided by the success of our basketball team. Over the past 20 years, enrollment has grown from 2000 undergrads to nearly 6000.

[detective]

The homosexual incidents increased rapidly in the late 1960s and peaked in the early 1980’s.

The John Jay study showed 504 incidents were reported to have occurred in 1980. 29 were reported to have occurred in 2002. Since that time the number of incidents has further declined.

Less than 5% of Catholic priests have been accused of sexual abuse of any kind including touching over clothes.

It is estimated that approximately 10% of Catholic priests are homosexual. Some say it is more. No one knows the exact number.

The Pennsylvania AG report shows a network of homosexual priests working together to sexually abuse teenagers and working together to protect each other.

When Saint John Paul II became pope he inherited an American Catholic church that had been infiltrated with corruption. The network of homosexual priests were part of this corruption. Though he was resisted, he worked to get rid of homosexuals and abusers.

The incidents declined rapidly in the 1980s and 1990s.

The American Bishops protected homosexuals. They ignored and tried to silence faithful Catholics who reported homosexual priests.

The report has gone back 70 years and tried to identify all accusations. Most of the priests accused in the report are either no longer priests or are dead.

I have always been angry about the homosexual network of priests and those who protected them and allowed them to abuse others.

But I am tired of the media blaming all priests.

[lastchance]

“No, I’m not implying that anybody was worshipping the devil”

I think some probably were. Menstrual blood and urine are not ingested just because they are icky. They do have strong ties to ritual magicks.

[Shark24]

Well the Eastern Rite Catholics (Middle East) can in fact marry. As for your other excellent questions, let’s see if others have inputs. God bless.

[COBOL2Java]

I have SiriusXM Radio in my car and on my clock radio. I listen to EWTN (Station 130) morning and evening. This scandal is pretty much all that’s being talked about, and Michael Lichens’ article here sums up most of their discussion points fairly well.

[miss marmelstein]

He’s a graduate of Gonzaga which is a Catholic University.

[Shethink13]

Bishops and the Pope whom all the non-Catholics think is such a wonderful social justice warrior need to get out of the immigration business and climate change nonsense and cursing the evils of capitalism and start saving souls, firstly, their own.

AMEN!!! Thank you!

[Shethink13]

And I’m sorry I’m unable to provide info on the origin of celibacy. Celibacy makes sense to me so I don’t really care who, what, where or when it was instituted. But I can understand the desire to know.

[COBOL2Java]

And I’m sorry I’m unable to provide info on the origin of celibacy. Celibacy makes sense to me so I don’t really care who, what, where or when it was instituted. But I can understand the desire to know.

Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1579 - 1599.

Also, it should be known that, scholars have surmised that, should the Western Church open up marriage for priests, it would only be made available to candidates. In other words, the Church would manage this change by permitting married men to be ordained, not allowing already ordained priests to marry.

---

As has been detailed, the problem isn't necessarily solved by opening up the priesthood to married men. The problem is one of homosexuality and pederasty. A priest who gets sexually involved with a woman tends to leave the priesthood and marries, whereas a homosexual priest stays in the priesthood and grooms others in his circle.

[COBOL2Java]

The problem has been one of formation. This has been done very poorly in the last 40 years. The so-called “sexual revolution” has not helped.

I ought to know; I was a seminarian in the late 60s/early 70s, and saw what happened in the “Spirit of Vatican II”.

What needs to be done now:

Every diocese and religious order needs to implement an affirmative program to screen out vocations applicants with a history of deep-seated same-sex attraction—and certainly those who have engaged in homosexual activity. Applicants should *not* be allowed to apply for the seminary unless they are already able to live as habitually chaste single men, without recurring falls into unchastity. Candidates in seminaries who act out sexually should be dismissed - period. This policy is not homophobic in any way. It is simply non-hypocritical: The Church has to cultivate vocations of men who live and practice what the Church professes.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Some people have made the historic point about celibacy being favored in order to protect ecclesiastical and monastic estates from being divided up and passed off in private inheritances. A relevant point, I think. But even more,the West saw celibacy as a way to avoid all-absorbing political entanglements. And beyond that, it is an eschatological sign (meaning it points to the life to come.) But more on that, later.

The Church in the West had to wage a protracted struggle against secular power. Bishops and abbots owned estates, whose income constituted the main support of the Church, but as owners of land in the realm, there were constantly pressured to become mere vassals to the king and way too enmeshed with the political nobility. (Look up “Investiture Controversy” and you will see that reforming popes struggled AGAINST this for centuries.)

If a bishop had sons and daughters, he’d be even more deeply caught up in dynastic marriage politics: marrying this daughter to that duke, and this son to that princess, and forming alliances with powerful families for all the political/economic/social benefits that would accrue.

Trying to secure the independence of bishops from the temporal Powers-That-Be was a huge job. It took a millennium to settle and it’s not what I’d call “settled” even yet. But, for many centuries in the history of the Church, marriages would have forced priests and, even more so, bishops and abbots, to become even more deeply enmeshed in securing titles of nobility, access to estates and lands, royal alliances and the rest of it for all their children.

The Church was trying to steer clear of that whole web of worldly entanglements. Celibacy --- the avoidance of ongoing dynastic interconnections --- was THE honorable way to secure independence from worldly preoccupations and temporal power, and hence more freedom to be "in this world but not of it."

This has --- I should say primarily --- the value of "eschatological witness," which means they were dramatically demonstrating that they expected to receive full recompense by having the entire Christian community as their family in this world, and eternal life in the next. Check out Mark 10:28-30 (Link).

It was (and is) the most powerful of motivations to be able to follow the example of St.Paul and of Jesus Himself, in trading earthly for heavenly priorities.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Let me add that in my own parish, we have more married clergy than celibate: four married deacons and two celibate priests.

Sometimes people wrongly think of deacons as laymen, but this is incorrect. Deacons receive the Sacrament of Holy Orders and are clergy under the Bishop, not just added-value laymen assisting the pastor.

Our deacons --- and their wives --- are real treasures. I can hardly imagine how the parish could function without them.

[COBOL2Java]

Our deacons --- and their wives --- are real treasures. I can hardly imagine how the parish could function without them.

EWTN's Teresa Tomeo is married to a Deacon. She is a syndicated Catholic talk show host, author of numerous books, and an international speaker.