|
|
It's understandable. That's what Abraham does. She goes after the bad guys and brings them to justice. After years of covering trials and hearings, I understand how dedicated many police officers and district attorneys are to that.
All of the alleged assaults are heinous acts. In churches throughout Delaware County on Sunday, priests apologized for the sins of their fathers. Cardinal Rigali's letter was welcomed by parishioners who don't want this shrugged off, no matter how hard it is to swallow.
For me, this is a bitter pill.
As a veteran journalist, I am still sickened by some assault stories I have covered over the years. And sometimes, years later, I wonder what ever happened to a certain victim.
There have been times when I have taken a moment to say a prayer for an abused child, a woman who has been beaten, someone who has been murdered.
When my newspaper world and my faith collide, my reality and my spiritual side, I have to take pause. In a theology class in college, the priest told us that it is good to question your faith. If you challenge your faith, it can only get stronger.
When the Catholic Church says their problems mirror society, maybe they do.
But how did society's problems become the church's problems? The church is our salvation.
We, as a church, must come to grips with the fact that our spiritual leaders are human.
Here we are, in the dawn of the 21st Century, cleaning up problems from the past. And rightly so that we face this, apologize and offer comfort to the many victims and clean up our Catholic Church.
Again we are misdirected, though. Weeding out homosexuals and not allowing them to serve as priests will not solve problems like the ones depicted in the Grand Jury report. Just because they are homosexuals, doesn't mean they are pedophiles.
Chastity is one of the vows priests must take. So if a priest follows those rules why would it matter whether he were homosexual or heterosexual?
It seems we are off on a witch hunt. Let's leave that until Halloween.
There are those who will tout their platform now to berate the Catholic Church or to embark on a crusade against homosexuals.
I can't change the fact that my daughter was baptized by an accused pedophile.
What I can do is believe in my heart that nothing changes. Infant Baptism is one of the most critical doctrines of the Catholic Church.
"Born with a fallen human nature and tainted by original sin, children also have need of the new birth in Baptism to be freed from the power of darkness and brought into the realm of the freedom of the children of God, to which all men are called," Catholic scholars write.
The 64 priests accused of pedophilia are human beings who have fallen from grace. They are old now, some of them dead, many of them living in retirement homes. My guess is they are fervently praying for atonement because of the sins they have committed.
Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua spends much of his time in prayer now, according to reports.
Cardinals John Krol and Bevilacqua allegedly knew of the sexual abuses. I believe that. And even if they were told to cover it up, they are as guilty as the offenders, many believe.
I believe they are more guilty.
Were they ordered to cover up the sexual abuses? And by whom? Will we ever really know?
Will the Catholic Church survive? Definitely. After all, they survived the Spanish Inquisition, selling pardons for sin, even murder, and the sex scandals of the Middle Ages.
They will survive now because people have faith. And faith is what gets us through the toughest times of our lives. And for the church and for many Catholics, that would be now.
