I gave up on Catholicism back around 2000, even before I ultimately came out of the closet. I was sickened by the homophobia of the institutional Catholic Church and its desperate clinging to 12th century knowledge. So I became an Episcopalian. Ultimately, through a fluke, I ended up switching to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America ("ELCA"), the liberal version of Lutheranism. When the sex abuse scandal exploded in Boston in 2002, I felt my decision to leave Catholicism was the correct move given the moral bankruptcy of the Church leadership all the way up to John Paul II. For a time, some family members remained in the Church, but now, most have left as well, some moving to the ELCA, many of the younger ones simply walking away from religion as has been the case with so many Millennials. With the damning revelations of the Pennsylvania grand jury report - I suspect a similar investigation in other states would reveal similar findings - many Catholics are likely pondering whether it isn't finally time for them to walk away in a realization that reform of the Church from within is most unlikely. Only one man could change that equation if he wanted to do so. As a column in the New York Times ponders, will Pope Francis defy the fossilized and utterly corrupt curia and hierarchy and make radical changes to save the institution. Here are column highlights:
The Roman Catholic Church’s clergy sex abuse crisis has come roaring back to life as if it were the worst days of 2002, when the scandal tsunami out of Boston seemed to inundate the entire church.
The shock waves this time came from substantiated allegations that a well-known cardinal, Theodore McCarrick, a retired archbishop of Washington, had molested boys; he was forced to resign last month from the College of Cardinals. Then came the grand jury report out of Pennsylvania detailing 70 years of horrific abuse by some 300 priests, too much of it facilitated by bishops.
It has all landed on the desk of the current pope, and the scandals have the potential to undermine the Francis pontificate.
It shouldn’t. Indeed, if Pope Francis lives up to his own words and actions, this could be a chance for him to advance his vision of church reform and turn a long-running crisis into an opportunity for long-term renewal.
This eruption was inevitable. At a historic meeting in Dallas in June 2002, American bishops agreed to a comprehensive set of policies designed to protect children and punish offending priests. . . . as the bishops effectively exempted themselves from genuine oversight or discipline for failing in their jobs, the sin that truly scandalized the faithful.
Only Rome could investigate bishops, they said, and only the pope could punish them. That wasn’t likely. The Vatican under John Paul II was not very keen on the United States hierarchy’s new policy against priests, and the pontiff certainly didn’t want to throw his own bishops under the bus.
Now the scandal has even some of John Paul’s staunchest fans questioning the wisdom of his canonization in 2014, and it bedeviled Pope Benedict up to his stunning 2013 resignation.
[I]n March 2013, Pope Francis — then Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires — gave a brief, powerful address in which he said the church needed to open up or risk becoming “self-referential” and “sick” with “theological narcissism” that leads to the worst evil, the “spiritual worldliness” of an institution that is “living in itself, of itself, for itself.”
As pope, he has saved his harshest rhetoric for his fellow clerics, especially the cardinals and bishops, criticizing them as “careerists” and “airport bishops” who spend more time flying around the world than tending their flock.
“Clericalism is a perversion of the church,” Pope Francis told 70,000 young Italian Catholics at a rally this month. “The church without testimony is only smoke.”
Pope Francis’ vision of the church is clearly more radical than the defensive posture of John Paul or the nostalgic traditionalism of Benedict. But is he willing and able to implement it?
The pope has had spotty record on disciplining bishops and on the sex abuse issues as a whole, but a promising trajectory. For example, in 2015 he investigated and dismissed two American prelates, Bishop Robert Finn and Archbishop John Nienstedt, who had been accused of covering up for abusive priests. (Both men were favorites of conservative Catholics and found sanctuary elsewhere.) In 2014, Francis removed a conservative Paraguayan bishop who had sheltered an Argentine priest who had left the diocese of Scranton — yes, a diocese cited in last week’s grand jury report — under suspicion of sexual abuse.
Yet earlier this year, Pope Francis faced what had been the greatest crisis of his papacy when he firmly defended a Chilean bishop accused of covering for a notorious and influential priest who led a scandalous double life. Then in April, faced with evidence that the bishop, Juan Barros, and many other in that country’s hierarchy had in fact been complicit in the scandal, the pope suddenly reversed course, . . .
When Archbishop McCarrick was found to have molested minors as well as young men, the pope not only ordered the retired 88-year-old churchman confined to virtual house arrest but also accepted his resignation as a cardinal.
These are encouraging steps, but much more is needed: not only the kind of spiritual renewal that Pope Francis demands but also the kind of systematic change that can safeguard children and vulnerable adults, restore some credibility to the institutional church and begin to dismantle the culture of clericalism — the spiritual elitism of holier-than-thou cliques who cover for one another as they try to run the church.
Pope Francis has frequently been excoriated by church conservatives . . . . But on the issue of abuse, the Catholic right is often proving to be the pope’s unlikely ally, with many calling for a top-to-bottom overhaul.
It’s not like the church has to rewrite the creed. Instead, Catholicism can start by creating a human resources department to ensure that any person who is sexually harassed or assaulted — especially by a bishop or cardinal — can report it in confidentiality and safety.
It’s a simple first step, but even that would have been unthinkable under the ecclesiology of previous pontificates. Now such changes are both unavoidable and integral to the kind of humble, open church that Pope Francis desires. They also work. . . . and they will work for addressing the church’s two outstanding problems: protecting adults as well as minors, and holding accountable bishops who cover up for abuse as well as those who commit abuse.
“Test everything; retain what is good,” Saint Paul wrote to the Thessalonians nearly 2,000 years ago. It was good advice for the church back then, and it is even more relevant today.
I am not optimistic and continue to believe than only plunging membership figures and plunging revenues - America remains one of the largest financiers of the Vatican - will ultimately force change. If you want the Church to change, the first step is to walk away.
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