It has taken me some time to get to writing this. I just can’t get my head around it: people whose calling and mission is to care for others, especially the most needy, children, those struggling with deprivation, mental illness and so much more, have knowingly allowed sexual abuse by predatory priests to continue—moving them around to avoid ‘gossip’, but never stopping it. A Royal Commission has found this to be so, concerning the most high ranking Catholic priest in this country and yet he continues to hold that office.
But that is only the half of my anguish and lament.
Consider this story. A man in his later life, at last retired from a busy and demanding career, finally has the time to enjoy his hobbies, his golf, his wide circle of friends and his many grandchildren, all with the love of his partner. Then comes a stunning diagnosis. His life is in peril. Perhaps medical care can contain the disease. Maybe not. This is serious stuff! Once a devout and committed Catholic, he has not been to Mass for some time. He is one of the dozens of people I know who no longer attend Mass because to do so brings forward such anguish and pain. The disgust is one thing, but so too the sheer reminder of earlier times when abuse was simply brushed under the carpet. There are personal things to be dealt with, back then and now.
Exactly now, when a person might well turn to their church, for pastoral care and spiritual solace, exactly now it hurts like hell.
There is a story in the Gospel where it seems to Jesus that even his followers may abandon him. The going is tough. The crowds have turned away. Will his close ones also turn away? One of them answers: To whom shall we turn? You are the one, you have the words of eternal life. (John 6. 66 – 70).There, Peter expresses the view that Jesus is the one sent from God to nurture life in its fullness. But this confident affirmation does not last—and is not the experience of so many today. That is not because Jesus has failed but because those who claim to represent him, even to be his symbolic personification at the altar, are seen as exactly the opposite. Yes there are many, many good priests, who suffer from this same deep and bitter disappointment.
The people turn away. To what? To whom? To whom shall we turn?
This is a lament, for those who need a more Christian church, a church that is not so damnably concerned for its own reputation, self-preservation and continuing privilege.
This is a lament for those who need to pray, who need to weep before the presence of their God and seek what comfort and assurance their faith is meant to offer, even in the face of our deepest distress.
In another Gospel story, Jesus looks upon a crowd of people with compassion, ‘because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd’. (Matthew 9.36). Throughout the Bible the image of a shepherd is used for those whose role and calling is to lead and care for the people and there is some very strong critique of those who fail to care properly for the people, the nation, the community.
This is a lament, for those who need a shepherd, a pastor, a pastoral community, to care for them when they are in deep need, to help them find hope even when there is no cure (that is a kind of healing), and to nurture that understanding that our life is worth more than things, money, popular acclaim—indeed our lives are in the hands of a loving, eternal presence, into which we can live well and die in peace. This is what a more Christian church might be about.
Lord, have mercy.
Frank’s latest article, “Lament: For those who need a more Christian church”, is well named and directed. As an admirer of the theology of Paul Tillich, I feel sure that Frank knows Tillich’s “Theology of Culture”. Towards the end of this book, Tillich speaks of the “stumbling blocks” to the Church in the communication of the Gospel. He states that there is only one genuine stumbling block, the decision to accept or reject the Gospel. In turn, this decision is dependent on the way the Church presents the Gospel so that a genuine decision can be made.
This is an existential decision and, for the Church to be able to communicate the Gospel in a genuine way, the Church must “understand the others, we must somehow participate in (their) existence so that their rejection means partly an ejection, a throwing it out in the moment in which it starts to take root in them. To this point we (the Church) can bring them, and this is what communicating the Gospel means.”
However, to what extent does the Church genuinely participate in the lives of others? This is the real existential question for the Church. To what extend, for example, does the Church genuinely participate in peoples’ anxieties, guilt and the tragedies of existence (to name a few of Tillich’s categories)? How far does the Church stand apart from understanding the human predicament? How is it possible for the Church to hold a mirror before people so that they may see themselves – and for the Church to see itself?
Of course, the ministers of the Gospel should avoid becoming engulfed in, overwhelmed by, this participation in life. The disciplines involved in this should be part of their training and ongoing participation in the communication of the Gospel. My own experience would suggest that this is generally not the case, but it is by participatory sharing in the lives of others, not condescending or identical behaviour, that we share in the reality with and of others.
Unless I am mistaken, this is what Tillich means when he states that communicating the Gospel “centers around what we might call ‘healing reality’, around the courage to say ‘yes’ in the encounter with nothingness, anxiety, and despair.” It is to be truly lamented that, in the Church, this does not happen to the extent that it must.