I returned to the Church at a time when many were fleeing in reaction to the clergy sexual abuse crisis. If my focus had been on flawed human men, I might not have come back and in fact, could have ditched Christianity altogether. By God's grace, my eyes were on Christ and in some strange way I thought it might be a source of consolation to Him if He could carry one of His lost sheep home on His shoulders. Mostly through the Monastery and the Traditional Latin Mass community, I came to know and love some very holy priests. They demonstrated what I thought was a genuine love for Jesus when they lifted the Host and lovingly lowered it to the paten. They offered the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass with strict obedience to the rubrics, the only deviation from the liturgy being the times they'd lead us in a Hail Mary.
Since my return, the faithful have been rocked by one scandal after another. Some scandals received national or world wide notoriety while some remained under local purview. EWTN (which I jokingly now refer to as Every Word of Trump Network) took its share of hits. One of its celebrity priests exhibited increasingly alarming behavior while another seduced a woman he was counseling and left his order. Another priest with a lot of notoriety in pro-life circles was suspended from ministry when it became known that he'd had an affair with a women he was allegedly exorcising. "The Devil got to him" a friend said to me and a shiver ran down my spine. While the aftershocks of these scandals reverberated for months, I felt a false sense of security about my own diocese. At least the priests I knew would never betray Christ the way the Stones and Corapis of the world had done.
I think there were red flags but I didn't want to see them. Even though our archdiocese was desperate for priests, one young cleric moved down South and took a job at a Catholic college. Another started to appear on Facebook in lay clothing, posing with young women. When I attended any of his Masses, he seemed in a hurry to finish, to the point where he wasn't even giving a homily at Sunday Mass. Soon he went on a sabbatical for unknown reasons.
It was during the pandemic lockdown that I learned that these two priests who I once thought exuded piety and goodness were no longer priests. For one, it was a voluntary decision. He simply never returned from sabbatical. For the other, it was the only choice he had after credible accusations that he had taken sexual advantage of a young woman he was counseling. Rather than face a tribunal, he opted for laicization. This was not the future I imagined for this priest when only months after his ordination, he preached so eloquently on the school of St. Therese. Was he always this flawed and just hid it? Or did the Devil get to him too?
One of the most disturbing personal encounters I had happened not with a priest but with a Traditional Latin Mass altar server who was living at a local monastery in an external dwelling. He took an interest in my youngest because for a short time, she expressed the desire to enter a monastery one day. He never struck me as anything other than a young man who was destined for the priesthood but was having problems finding an order that he thought was a good fit. Nothing could have prepared me for what I was soon to learn.
All the while he was attending Mass, closing his eyes in what I thought was a state of intense recollection, he was studying the Koran and courting a Muslim woman. (nb: There is nothing wrong with dating a Muslim woman, unless you're pretending to be Catholic aspiring for the priesthood). When I later learned that he stole from the monastery on his way out the door, it occurred to me that maybe what I mistook for piety was actually torture. He couldn't bear to serve on the altar. He had become a regular at the TLM at my parish and when I learned of his fall and what he'd done I warned the pastor. I don't think he took me seriously at first but said that he would probably not permit him to serve again until the allegations were more clear.
It was at the very next TLM that I was returning from Holy Communion and saw this same young man in a pew several rows behind mine. As I returned to my pew, our eyes met. I cannot describe his expression but I was unnerved. The look he gave me seemed like a warning but of what I don't know. This would not compare to how I felt afterward when my pastor and the other servers insisted that he had not come to Mass that day, either as a server or as part of the congregation. I saw what I saw. Another revelation struck me. It was wasn't he who was turning down the Orders. It's entirely possible they saw something incompatible with their rule and opted not to take him. Why had the nuns not seen this?
The point here is not to share ecclesial gossip but to note that the betrayal of Christ continues to this day, by men who like St. Peter were confidantes of Our Lord. While they were falling by the wayside, older priests who I'd come to know and love were aging out of ministry or dying.
The lesson here is although priests are the only men who can confect the Eucharist and administer the sacraments, they don't always behave like an alter Christus. That's why at all times it's important to remind ourselves that we're not following this priest or that bishop or two popes ago. We follow Jesus.
I wish I could say the kind of behavior I described above is all that's wrong with the Catholic hierarchy. When priests, bishops and even cardinals undermine the successor to Peter, one is reminded of Judas. I go back to the idea of being so secure in faith that it's never permitted to grow. When someone, in this case the Pope, makes the rigid uncomfortable, they don't question themselves. Instead we get dubia, which I find ironically is also a type of cockroach. Dubia is a kind of nuclear option for cardinals who are concerned about heresy in the pope's teachings or interpretation of faith. The pope has the option to address a letter of dubia or not. Pope Francis, as he does with so many petty distractions, chose to ignore the one put to him by 4 cardinals including American Cardinal Raymond Burke, who insists that schism is the way of the devil. The cardinals who signed the dubia did so in response to Amoris Laetitia, the apostolic exhortation of Pope Francis which contrary to the assertions of the cardinals, did not change Catholic teaching on marriage and the family. It simply challenged us to try to meet people where they are, which is exactly what Christ did. This is unacceptable to the Catholic Pharisees, who are about a smaller, "purer" church where there is no challenge, there are no unclean and no outsiders who refuse to tow the line.
Do you see anything Christlike in this kind of behavior? The hard right-wing of the Catholic Church likes to throw the word "scandalous" around a lot when it comes to any deviation from the practices they find acceptable. In some Catholic circles, it's scandalous for a woman to walk on the altar or, Heaven forbid, lector at Mass. It's scandalous to permit Catholic Democratic representatives who vote for abortion rights to receive Holy Communion. It's scandalous to baptize babies born to imperfect parents whose marriages are not sacramental. It's scandalous to allow children being raised in same sex unions to attend Catholic school. It's scandalous to allow girls to become altar servers.
You know what I find scandalous? Scandalous is living in luxury while members of your flock have their power turned off in winter (is that you Bishop Strickland?). Scandalous is the magna cappa while you give a free pass to politicians who work to keep poor people poor. Scandalous is supporting a radicalized priest (Father James Altman) who defied his own bishop and used his parish bulletin to foment racial division and hatred. Scandalous is granting a twice-divorced Republican politician convert who had an affair with a Catholic woman an annulment instead of telling him to go back and make it right with his first wife. Scandalous is appearing in your religious habit at a political convention to nominate a man who is the antithesis to Jesus Christ. Scandalous is placing the corpse of an aborted baby on the altar while offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
It is not scandalous to minister to the imperfect. It may be unpleasant or inconvenient depending upon our own stations in life, but it is exactly what Jesus did.
The aftershocks just keep coming. All I can do is keep my eyes on the Lamb. He'll still be on the Throne no matter what we sinful creatures do in His name.
Comments
Post a Comment