Saturday, April 24, 2010

Stoning the Rock

The Church is in the national news most every day, and none of it is good. Sex abuse allegations, many dating back decades, have resurfaced, bringing out the Church-hating sharks that smell blood in the water. They would like nothing more than to bring down Pope Benedict by somehow connecting him to a cover up. In this age where the Catholic Church stands alone in claiming authority to speak for God in condemning abortion, artificial birth control, and same-sex marriage among other things, secularists are determined to destroy the Church and everything she stands for.

Yes, members of the Church committed grave sins. These things should have never happened. From what I have read, sexual abuse is even more prevalent in Protestant communities and our educational system, but those cases do not get the same media attention as the ones in the Catholic Church. Don’t get me wrong. The Catholic Church should be held to a much higher standard than any other ecclesial community or institution, but these stories do not make the front pages because the media holds the Church in high regard. On the contrary, they despise the Church for having the audacity to claim moral authority while seemingly trying to hide its own indiscretions. This is a natural reaction that we will have to live with.

The Church has put itself in a difficult position. The secular media is not going to present the magisterial side of the story. Not understanding Holy Orders, they do not realize the difficulty in “unlaying” of hands. They will not consider the attitude society had forty or fifty years ago, when counseling was often the prescribed remedy for sex abusers. We will never hear that civil authorities were usually not notified because the alleged victims’ families did not want them notified. Certainly, any of the victims could have called the police at any time. That is not to say everything was handled properly. Terrible mistakes were made. Yet, the lawsuits and other pending actions likely have little to do with aiding the victims, and everything to do with destroying the Church.