When the church colludes with evil: 8-18/19-18
August 18, 2018
This past Thursday here on the blog I wrote briefly about the shocking report from a Pennsylvania grand jury (the image here today show's the report's cover page) that said some 1,000 (no doubt many more) children had been abused in the past 70 years by hundreds of priests in the Catholic Church who, in turn, often were protected by their bishops.
It's a story of disgrace that cannot be easily dismissed and shouldn't be.
The Guardian, the British newspaper that has been doing a lot of excellent work in recent years, has published this analysis of that Pennsylvania disaster. It's written by the paper's religion correspondent and it summarize the picture well and includes a telling quote that points to what really went wrong at the core of the church.
Harriet Sherwood writes in that article that the Pennsylvania scandal is "another blow for Pope Francis, who is already reeling after a series of damaging scandals over recent months."
Even those of us -- Catholic and non-Catholic alike -- who admire and have been impressed by much of what Francis has done and said must acknowledge that somehow he hasn't been able to get control of the abuse scandal. It's not clear whether anyone in his position could have done that, but it must so far be counted as one of his failures that he hasn't stopped the scandal and healed the church.
Sherwood puts it this way: "Francis, considered progressive and enlightened on many issues, has struggled to get a grip on the scandal that has gravely weakened the Catholic church’s moral authority. Despite calling for 'decisive action' when he was elected as pontiff in 2013, he has failed to turn that into a reality. Instead he has been on the back foot, reactive rather than proactive, and has misread the extent of betrayal by the church."
And as she makes clear, the problem goes way, way, way beyond Pennsylvania.
Deep in the story to which I've linked you there's a quote from an abuse victim that's really telling. The pope, he says, "should come here and tell the truth, but the chances of that are very slim. The thing the church fears most is the damage to its reputation.”
That fear clearly was a motivating factor in all the abuse that The Boston Globe and The National Catholic Reporter described in the early stories years ago about the scandal. And perhaps there are church leaders still trying to protect the church's reputation.
But the reality is that the church's reputation is in shreds today because of its failure to protect children. Instead, it protected abusive priests and the bishops who oversaw that immoral protection.
There's really no good reputation left to protect. So now is the time to complete the airing of the full story and to commit to moving the church into a future in which what's happened before will not happen again.
It took the Vatican two days to respond publicly about the Pennsylvania report, but when it finally did it said it was taking the report "with great seriousness." Let's hope that's right.
Similarly, leaders of the two Catholic dioceses in the Kansas City area issued statements Thursday saying people are right to be disgusted by the abuse scandal. They apologized and promised to do better. Similar words have been heard before from church leaders in the U.S. and around the world. And they carry less and less weight. What's needed now is action.
The Catholic Church, the church universal and religion in general have much good to offer this wounded world. But they cannot do that when severely compromised by collusion with evil. If that collusion doesn't end, the church deserves whatever criticism and disgust the world gives it.
(The priest abuse scandal has received lots of coverage in the last week, including this helpful analysis from The Washington Post.)
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WHEN ARETHA FRANKLIN SANG
I loved this quote in this RNS story about the late Aretha Franklin from Candi Staton, a gospel and soul singer who knew her well: “She took you to church even if she was singing about a no-good man.” Aretha's was a rare gift with roots in the church. Thank you, church. Thank you, Aretha.
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