The headlines are depressing: a bishop resigns who defrauded an elderly widow of six figures, and no mention is made of this fact in the official Vatican announcement. A cardinal admits to abusing a 14-year-old girl when he was a young priest, conveniently just after the statute of limitations seems to have expired (and it seems the French bishops conference was aware of this fact for at least the last nine months).
If there is some small glimmer of hope, it’s the fact that these men are leaving office. Yet that is cold comfort, as they appear to be departing into cushy retirements, still technically clerics in good standing. Does not justice demand the loss of office, or at least being remanded to a monastery to spend the remainder of their lives in prayer and penance?
We read these stories and are rightly infuriated. And since anger is the passion by which we summon the energy to correct injustice, we want to know what to do with it. How? How do we stop these things from happening?
One thing is clear. To paraphrase the Dread Pirate Roberts: there is no quick fix; anyone who says differently is selling something.
The temptation towards a simple solution is an enticing one, because the enormity of the problem seems beyond the scope of our ability to handle it. So, when a sly, smooth voice whispers to us, “You know what will make this all go away…,” it can be difficult not to entertain whatever is proposed.
Some will say, “We just need a Vatican III to address these things,” and then present their laundry list of changes to Church teaching or practice that will supposedly solve the problem. However, that list looks suspiciously like the one that a certain segment of the Church had been advocating for decades prior to the abuse crisis even coming to light: optional celibacy, female clergy, desacralizing the priesthood, and so forth. A generous interpretation would assume they truly believe these changes would help; a cynic would say they are using this crisis in order to further an ideological agenda.
Others will say, “We just need to return to Tradition,” including everything from an emphasis on stricter moral teaching to Tridentine liturgy. Of course, this ignores the fact that cases of abuse took place prior to the Council, and that many cases of abuse documented after the Council were committed by priests who were formed in the precise milieu for which these voices advocate. Even if one were to stipulate that there is some sort of connection between tolerance of abuse within the hierarchy and tolerance of bad liturgy (which is tendentious at best), thinking that a liturgical crackdown would result in fewer cases of abuse is like thinking that Nyquil will cure your cold–you’d be treating a symptom, not the disease itself.
The fact is that the pre-conciliar Church was hardly a golden past. At the time the Council was called, Mass attendance was already starting to dip, and the social forces which would cause such upheaval were already starting to swirl. We think of Fr. Patrick Peyton’s rosary crusades of the 1940s and 50s as an idyllic movement of families praying together and staying together; yet Peyton started the movement precisely because he saw the family in crisis.
Still others propose that what is needed are tough canons severely punishing acts of abuse or their concealment. Yet even when attempts at such laws, such as Vos estis lux mundi, are put into place, we quickly see that a policy is only as strong as the will of those who are meant to enforce or carry it out. A law doesn’t do much good if it’s only occasionally implemented.
There is no quick fix. The problems in the Church are generational. And because our problems are generational, the solutions in the Church must therefore be generational: they must have an eye toward slow, steady progress. We are creatures of habit: habits take time to form, and time to change. Any problem in the Church is, to some degree, a problem of a habit that needs to be changed, and the challenge there is inertia.
Both habits and inertia build over time. Habits are formed generationally: we learn from our parents and those who precede us how to act, what to prioritize, what works and what doesn’t. For so long, the habit of hierarchs has been to sweep things under the rug, shuffle priests around, offer settlements for silence. We are now at the stage where at least rhetorically our bishops deem this unacceptable. We are apparently not yet at the stage where they consistently match their words with consonant actions.
It will take time to form a Church that does not accept abuse and takes appropriate action in response to it. It will take time to form the right habits. This is, to put it mildly, frustrating. But the sad fact is that we human beings learn slowly, and change slowly.
This truth is demonstrated by the ways in which God has dealt with humanity. The economy of salvation took thousands of years to unfold; the prophets foretold the coming of the Messiah centuries before He came, precisely because God knew it would take humanity that long to be prepared. Jesus Himself said that the Kingdom of God would grow like a mustard seed—slowly, gradually, from a tiny thing to a sprawling one.
Looking at the acts and words of God Himself as our template should remind us the process of becoming God’s holy people has two facets: God’s grace and our cooperation with it. We should take neither a quietist attitude of “God will sort it out in the end,” nor should we form action plans based entirely on our own efforts with no emphasis on prayer or sacramental renewal. God will indeed sort it out, but through us; yet for Him to work through us, He first needs to work on us. And that takes time. This is why the Church “thinks in centuries.”
I think this is what a synodal Church is: a Church that understands that she discerns and moves together, and “together” often means “slowly”—or at least, more slowly than we might like.
While we’re tempted to click on the banner that says, “this one amazing church hack that will fix your problems!” we must remember that the only sure method of becoming a holier Church is to tend the tiny mustard seed growing in the garden.
In this case, the mustard seeds are the young people being raised in the Church suffering from the abuse crisis. It is these Catholics who can become the laity and clergy who are willing to put the safety and well-being of the vulnerable ahead of institutional prestige—that is, if the hypocrisies and inconsistencies do not drive them from the Church all together.
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