I can't tell you how upset I am with the new accusations that have recently surfaced about child molesters in the Church. In a CNN report the headline reads, "Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal goes global." It's as if there is an infestation of pedophiles and deviants crawling inside the Catholic Church. This humiliation is undoubtedly being used by people who are ardently anti-Catholic to either validate their own religious beliefs (which is to say they are right and we as Catholics are wrong), or by the irreligious who don't like anything dealing with religion, especially if it's as big and bulky as the Catholic Church.It also disturbs me how a group of degenerates - namely the offenders - can callously bring shame upon themselves and upon this Church without any consideration of the impact it can have both on the laity and on the victims. Good priests (the VAST majority) are held with an air of suspicion and as eventual child molesters or as the object of ridicule in inappropriate jokes.
There seems to be no end to the reports of sexual abuse. They surface faster than Church authorities can address them. Keep in my that the Catholic Church operates in terms of centuries, which means that the disgrace of these scandals are not going to go away anytime soon, nor the calumnies that are leveled by phony storytellers and cynics.
And finally, how many people are we losing because of this mess? Yes, they can always come back or we can characterize their departure as "their" loss. But the Church diminishes in numbers at least at a faster rate as the result of this mayhem. I don't want to even try to put numbers together.
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The Catholic Church is attacked from within as well as from the outside, sometimes it's hard to hang on to Jesus promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against her.Sometimes it seems as if we are staring hell in the face just reading the news. Sometimes all we can do is pray, and since St. Joseph is the patron of the universal church, he is a good one to pray to. I posted a prayer on my blog for the Church.
"St. Joseph is the patron of the universal church, he is a good one to pray to."
Indeed. It's also the reason why I chose today to do a post like this one.
In my Bible reading this morning, this passage seemed to the point:
Msrk 4:16,17 (regarding the mustard seed sown on rocky ground)
and these likewise are they that are sown on the stony ground: who when they have heard the word, immediately receive it with joy.
And they have no root in themselves, but are only for a time: and then when tribulation and persecution ariseth for the world they are presently scandalized.
Such are those who desert the Church when such scandals arise; if their faith were strong they would not be so faithless as to leave the Church, but instead would storm heaven with prayer for the priesthood.
I think if I had persevered in the monastery, or had been a priest, now is the time I would have left. That thought came to me in prayer and it made me realize how tempted to discouragement some very good priests and religious must be in these days of scandal, especially when secular culture accuses everyone of being a paedophile. We have to pray for one another - weaker souls will be lost as well.
Our Christain responsibility needs to be in obtaining healing for those victims. Jesus taught us through his parables just how we are to respond to those who have fallen victim....we are to be their Good Samaritans. I worry not about our Church, as His Word in Matthew 16 states "...the gates of the netherworld will not prevail againist it."
Such a passionate topic for this family...as we have one of those victims in it.
I do feel badly for those truly holy priests...for they, too, are victimized by the acts of sick humans.
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