The Abuse Cover-Up: A Possible Scenario

If a person is well-grounded in the Catholic faith, here is what is supposed to happen when he/she knowingly commits a serious sin.  1)  He/she recognizes the sin as being serious and feels remorse.  2) He/she seeks the Lord’s forgiveness by utilizing the Sacrament of Reconciliation, confessing the sin to a priest.  3)  The priest discusses the sin with the penitent and provides guidance and spiritual direction.  4) The priest prescribes some token act of penance to be performed by the penitent when he/she leaves the confessional.  5)  While still in the confessional, the penitent recites the Catholic prayer known as the Act of Contrition.  6) The priest absolves the penitent of the sin (“in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”) and sends him/her on their way.  Here is this Act of Contrition as I memorized it 63 years ago (when I was in the second grade).

O my God, I’m heartily sorry for having offended Thee and I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of heaven and the pain of Hell.  But most of all, I detest them because they offend Thee, my God, Who art all good and deserving of all my love.  I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to confess my sins, do penance, and amend my life.  Amen.

By resolving to “amend my life,” the penitent is making what is called a “firm purpose of amendment,” which means he/she is resolving to never commit that sin again.  This resolution is made like a vow before God.  He/she should be leaving the confessional with the mindset that he/she will never commit that sin again.

Very important in this entire scenario is the “seal of confession.”  My understanding is that the priest is bound to never reveal to anyone the sins the penitent has confessed, even if it is so serious that it is considered a crime by the civil courts.  Think murder, or the sexual abuse of a child, for example.  The reason for this “seal” is that if a priest is free to reveal the sin to the civil authorities, then a penitent would likely never make use of the sacrament, would never have the sin forgiven, and would be damned to Hell for all eternity when he/she died.  This is diametrically opposed to what the Church seeks for everyone who ever existed, which is their eternal salvation.  The civil courts accept this tenet of our faith and will not expect a priest to reveal what he knows about any crimes for which a prisoner is accused.  However, the priest may strongly recommend privately to the penitent that he/she “turn himself/herself in” and accept the civil punishment that is due.

Now, imagine that the penitent is a Catholic priest who has sexually abused a child.  I would assume any priest is sufficiently well grounded in the Catholic faith and is familiar with the above process.  He is remorseful, seeks out the Sacrament of Reconciliation, confesses the sin to another priest, or perhaps to a bishop, recites the Act of Contrition, makes his firm purpose of amendment, gets absolved of the sin, and goes on his way.  If the confessor is a bishop, then this bishop is bound by the seal of confession and cannot tell anyone of the abuse that occurred.  Modern society may view this as a cover-up.  The Church views this as a bishop being true to the seal of confession. 

What is missing here is the fact the back in the 60’s and 70’s, when it seems most of the abuse occurred, the word “predator” was perhaps not in anyone’s vocabulary as clearly as it is today, and a bishop would have wanted to believe the penitent (a priest) who has made the firm purpose of amendment, assigned him to a parish where he again has children under his tutelage when this priest is, if fact, likely to offend again (the definition of “predator”).  If this is true, then we have learned an important new word and what it means and such a "re-assignment" would be unthinkable.  However, by the same token, the cover-up seems to continue to this day, which is simply inexcusable no matter what the particular scenario. The question remains:  Where do we go from here?

What is also missing here is the effect the abuse has had on the victim.  If I would have been abused by a priest back then, I can’t imagine the damage it would have done to my psyche and my personal Catholic faith.  It may well have been irreparable.  What we need today is leadership and I think it must come from within the Church.  We need a modern saint of the same ilk as in ages past when a serious heresy or similar error occurred … a saint, perhaps a pope, who will change the culture by his preaching and his actions.  We need a modern saint who has some answers and can see their way out of this situation and lead us back to moral sanity.  Lord, help us.  Amen!

"Lord, teach us to pray."

Given the plethora of negative vibes we all get these days related especially to sexual predators among Church hierarchy, exaggerated and biased news reporting, unbecoming (read “un-presidential”) behavior and unseemly dialogue among our elected officials and their associates, and many other things, we might consider re-discovering or doubling down on our prayer life.  But how should we pray?  What should we say when we pray?  To whom should we pray?  Where should we go to pray?  Well, Jesus, has some answers.

One incident in Sacred Scripture was when Jesus’ disciples made the request “Lord, teach us to pray.”  (Luke 11:1).  Jesus responded with what has become known as “The Lord’s Prayer.”  The parts of the Lord’s Prayer that I believe have great relevance in today’s world are:  “Hallowed by thy name,” Thy will be done,” and “Deliver us from evil.” 

When we pray to our Father in heaven, we should pray that his name, “God,” be “hallowed,” that is, it should be “honored as being holy.”  This would be the ultimate sign of respect.  People should respect the name “God” because it is, in fact, a holy name.  Today it is often disrespected by, for example, calling upon God to damn someone or some thing.  If we want God to answer our prayer, “hallowed be thy name” would seem to be a good way to start our prayer.  If God has ears, I can imagine Him turning his ear to us as soon as he hears that.

No one knows the will of God.  What we can be sure of, however, is that God wants the best for us.  He created us for the purpose of sharing his heavenly glory with us.  So we can say that his will is for us to ignore the will of Satan and be free from sin, so that when we die, we can be judged as worthy of heaven.  Back in 2016, we had a choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton to be our president.  It was an unhappy choice to make either way, to say the least.  I could do nothing better that to simply say “Lord, thy will be done.”  When we are faced with this kind of decision, it is about all we can say.  These words are part of the Lord’s prayer.  It is something we should say when we pray.  It seems especially important in these troubled times.

Finally, he says we should say “Deliver us from evil” when we pray.  God has the power to defeat Satan.  In fact, he has already done that by having his Son die on the cross 2000 years ago.  However, it is still up to us to make the right choices in our lives.  To ask Him to deliver us from evil is to ask Him to take us away from the sins of this world and to make us holy.  If you worry about sexual predators within His Church and the other things mentioned in the introduction to this blog post, then this request within The Lord’s Prayer is timely and most appropriate.

In summary, we should pray thus:  Dear God, we would like everyone to respect your name as being holy.  Please infuse this respect into the hearts and minds of all on earth.  In addition, we would like your will for us on this earth to be done in every way possible, including the election of leaders that will govern us according to your will.  And finally, Lord, please allow us to move forward in our lives with no evil, no Satan.  In other words, lead us, please, Lord, with our focus on your heavenly kingdom. 

And where should we go to pray?  Jesus told us to “go to our inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret.”  Because “your Father, who sees in secret will repay you.”  (Matt 6:6).  For me, that is the solitude of a small Catholic chapel in the presence of Jesus’ body, blood, soul, and divinity in the monstrance or tabernacle there.  “Lord, I love you.  Please sustain us in these troubled times.  Amen!!”

The Politics of the Day

The politics of today:  taxes, abortion, the media, the death penalty, and inclusiveness.  What a list!  Yet, these things dominate the headlines and so also dominate my thoughts this Thursday morning.

Taxes.  Nobody wants to pay a lot in taxes.  Yet, bridges must be built, utilities must be delivered, water and air must be kept clean, etc., etc.  There are tons of important projects that require/deserve public funding.  Yet, people resist and mostly want their taxes to be reduced and they react negatively when an increase is proposed.  It is true that the rich should bear the bulk of the burden.  I take the view of the Democratic Party here.

Abortion.  This should not be labeled as an “issue” for voters.  It is a matter of life and death, not an “issue” to be decided by politicians or judges.  To support the brutal slaying of a preborn human life at any stage of development is beneath our dignity.  It is simply unfathomable to me that anyone would want to do this.  What is so magical about birth?  Okay, this is when we see this human being for the first time.  But this life existed before that in the mother’s womb!  And this life is the ultimate in innocence.  A serious error was made in 1973 when the Supreme Court judges made abortion legal.  I take the view of the Republican Party here but, without strong leadership, it is going to be very difficult to reverse now, forty-five years later.

The Media.  There are many things that President Trump does that he should not be doing in my humble opinion. Vicious early morning tweets attacking his “enemies” is one.  Calling the press the “enemy” of the people is another.  Being a president is serious business.  Making presidential decisions is serious business.  A president should be respectful and, well, presidential.  But, by the same token, the media should also be respectful.  I would like to see unbiased reporting of facts, and not the injection of personal opinions and biases that disparage our leaders, regardless of their behavior.  I take a mixed view here.

The Death Penalty.  Man should respect the dignity of human life as a matter of routine in all areas of life.  To impose the death penalty on another human being is simply cruel and barbaric.  Yes, the criminal was also cruel and barbaric by committing the act for which he/she is accused.  But in killing him/her, we are doing the same thing of which he is accused!  Correct me if I am wrong, but this is called hypocrisy.  Killing another person is wrong, but is it right if we do it as a punishment?  Lynching someone is what they do in western movies, not in a civilized society.  I take the Democratic Party’s view here.

Inclusiveness.  A newfangled term!  It refers to having respect for those in our society who are different from us, be it due to their race, their religion, their sexuality, or whatever.  Of course, we should have this respect!  A white man should have respect for a black man (and vice-versa).  A person of one faith tradition should have respect for a person of a different faith tradition.  Any man should have respect for any woman (and vice-versa).  Whether you are heterosexual, homosexual, or transgender, one person should have respect for another.  I see problems entering into the discussion when someone wants to flaunt their sexuality publicly, such as in immodest dress and trangenderism.

For me, the Republican Party seems the best fit.  But, I wouldn’t mind if there were a new party created that would satisfy all my Thursday Thoughts.  Amen!

Stein, Kolbe and Auschwitz

During the month of August, the Catholic Church celebrates the feast days of two people who were killed in the concentration camp in Auschwitz, Poland.  Edith Stein, aka., St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, was murdered in Auschwitz on August 9, 1942, and Maximilian Kolbe was murdered in Auschwitz on August 14, 1941.  The dates were set aside by the Church in their honor on the dates of their deaths, today and next Tuesday .  Both were canonized as saints of the Catholic Church, Stein on October 11, 1998 and Kolbe on October 10, 1982, both by St. John Paul II.

To include all that can be said about these two saints is impossible in in the short space of this blog.  Indeed, entire books have been written.  I am thinking this morning about the facts associated with their lives that assisted their causes for canonization.

First, Stein.  She was the seventh child of a prosperous Jewish family in southern Poland, not far, actually, from Auschwitz.  She was raised in the Jewish faith and was known for her brilliant mind.  She studied atheistic philosophy at a university in Germany and, as a result of her studies, abandoned the Jewish faith and became an atheist.   She became a respected professor of philosophy at the University of Freiburg in Germany and became very well known.  However, she would soon change her mind about God after studying the life of the great Catholic mystic and Doctor of the Church, St. Teresa of Avila.  So stunned was she about what she read in this book that she began a formal and thorough study of the Catholic religion.  She was baptized a Catholic on January 1, 1922, along with her sister, Rosa.  After this, she became a Carmelite nun at their cloistered convent in Cologne, Germany, an order founded by Saint Teresa of Avila so many centuries earlier.   She transferred to a similar cloister in Holland after the Nazis burned her home to the ground.  Here, she wrote two books of her own that are known as deep spiritual works.  After the Nazis invaded Holland, they captured her and Rosa and transported them to Auschwitz where they were treated as Jews and were both marched into the gas chamber.  Her writings, following the lead of St. Teresa of Avila, were instrumental in herself being declared a Doctor of the Church.

Second, Kolbe.  He was also from Poland, born in 1894.  At the age of 12, he claimed to have had a vision of the Virgin Mary.  A few years later, at obviously a very young age, he was allowed to enter a seminary.  He took final vows in 1914 and was sent to Rome to attend the Pontifical Gregorian University, where he, too, studied philosophy and obtained his doctorate.  He was ordained a priest in 1918.  This was followed by foreign travel to China and Japan where he engaged in religious activity and founded monasteries.  Poor health caused him to return to Poland in 1936.  He was arrested and sent to Auschwitz in 1941.  He is perhaps best known for the circumstances that caused his death (by fire in a crematory).  The Nazis arbitrarily selected ten prisoners to die because an 11^th had escaped.  One of those condemned began to wail and ask for mercy.  Kolbe, feeling compassion for the man, asked to be killed in his place.  The Nazis obliged. 

The stories of these two great saints of the Catholic Church are moving reminders of how Catholic men and women, people of great faith, are often murdered for their faith.  We call them martyrs.  Martyrdom often leads to canonization.  Some may want to draw parallels between these and those of other religions who are killed defending their faith by seeking out and killing so-called infidels.  There is a difference.  Catholic martyrs defend their faith, to be sure, but never does such death involve violence of any kind against another.

St. Teresa Benedicta and St. Maximilian Kolbe, pray for us.  Amen!

The Catholic Clergy Sexual Abuse Scandal

A Catholic priest is the one human being whom I would expect to be holy and above reproach in all areas of life.  His life as a minister in the Church founded by Jesus Christ should set an example for all, just as the life of Jesus himself did.  He should have a full understanding of the foundations of Church teachings and an ardent follower of the Ten Commandments, the Precepts of the Church and other church laws.  One should expect him to be a font of holiness, wisdom, and strength against temptation.  He should be someone who sets an example of how we should react to earthly evils.  In fact, he is the instrument of forgiveness for those who seek to be reconciled to God for their evil actions!

That is why the clergy sexual abuse scandal has been so devastating to the sensibilities of Catholics everywhere and so difficult to understand.  Admittedly, the temptations that Satan sets before us can be overwhelming.  We are all sinners and at times fail in our own strivings toward holiness, especially in regard to the sixth commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”  Modern society does not help.  I can cite perhaps doesn’t dozens of examples, from movies to music, from the way people dress to the way they speak, from societal norms to bodily appearances, from the way people behave and ignore God to the way our consciences allow us rationalize.  We ask:  What is going on here?”  It seems that the Devil, the Evil One, Satan, is winning the war to gain our souls.  We need to wake up to this!

But the worst is when priests and bishops themselves personally fail in the task of resisting temptation.  Eight years of seminary training have failed in a most basic way.  I am so pleased to see that Pope Francis has apparently begun to clean house.  A Church Cardinal, Cardinal McCarrick, has been demoted and publicly chastised.  I truly hope and pray that all offenders will be rooted out and punished in a most appropriate way. 

Having written all of the above, let me say that my faith in the Church will never be shaken.  I can throw up my hands in disgust and be ashamed, but I will always strive to follow Church decrees to the best of my ability and worship as Jesus asked us to.  Remember many early Christians turned away from Christ because his saying were hard and unacceptable.  When Jesus saw this, he asked his most ardent followers this question:  “Do you also want to leave?”  St. Peter responded:  “Master, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”  (See John 6:60-69). 

So, dear troubled Catholics, pleased be convinced that Jesus is the Holy One of God and that he has the words of eternal life.  There is nowhere else to turn.  Amen!

  

See also:  http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Dear-Troubled-Catholics---A-Letter-from-Ralph-Martin-About-the-Current-Crisis-.html?soid=1104120873290&aid=IsqbtdIkHzo