Letter

to a
Suffering
Church
A BI SHOP S P E A K S ON THE
S E X U A L A B U S E CRISIS

BISHOP RO BERT BARRON

 L etter
to a
Suffering
Church
A BISH O P S P E A K S ON THE
S E X U A L A B U SE C R ISIS

B IS H O P R O B E R T B A R R O N
 All rights reserved.

Word on Fire. Park Ridge, IL 60068

<£>2019 by Word on Fire Catholic Ministries
Primed in the United States of America
All rights reserved.

22 21 20 19 2 3 4
ISBN': 978-1-943243-48-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019903919

Rarron, Robert F.

w v w.wordon ft re .org

onFIRE
 TABLE OF

Contents

PREFACE i

CHAPTER ONE 1
The Devil’s Masterpiece

C H A P T E R TW O 17
Light from Scripture

C H A P T E R TH R EE 39
We Have Been Here Before

C H A P T E R FO U R 55
Why Should We Stay?

C H A P T E R FIVE 79
The Way Forward

C O N C L U S IO N 99

PRAYER/ora S U F F E R IN G C H U R C H 103
 PREFACE

T
~* his book is a cri de caur, a cry from (.he
heart. I am a lifelong Catholic, and I’ve
been a priest for thirty-three years and a
bishop for four years. I have dedicated my life to
the Church. The sexual abuse scandal has been
for me, for millions of other Catholics, and espe­
cially for the victim-survivors, lacerating. I have
written this book for my fellow Catholics who feel,
understandably, demoralized, scandalized, angry
beyond words, and ready to quit. W hat I finally
urge my brothers and sisters in the Church to do is
to stay and fight— and to do so on behalf of them­
selves and their families, but especially on behalf of
those who have suffered so grievously at the hands
of wicked men. O f course, I ’m also happy if those
outside the Church find some illumination in these
chapters as well.

i
 L E T TE R TO A SUFFERING CHURCH

I want to be clear about something at the

outset: I am not speaking in the name of my
brother bishops, or of the United States Conference
of Catholic Bishops, or of the Vatican. 1 have no
authority whatsoever to do so. I am speaking in my
own name, as a Catholic, a priest, and a bishop.
Mv prayer is that these reflections might encourage
Catholics who are attempting to navigate today in
very choppy waters.

11
 CHAPTER ONE

The D evil’s Masterpiece

7
mt has been a diabolical masterpiece. I am
talking about the scandal that has gripped the
Catholic Church for the past thirty years and
that continues to wreak havoc even today. When
I was going through the seminary, it was fashion­
able to conceive of the devil as a symbol for the evil
in the world, a sort of colorful literary device. But
the storm of wickedness that has compromised the
work of the Church in every way and that has left
countless lives in ruins is just too ingenious to have
been the result of impersonal forces alone or merely
human contrivance. It seems so thoroughly thought
through, so comprehensively intentional. Certainly,
in the ordinary run of history, bad things happen,
but this scandal is just too exquisitely designed. It has
corroded Catholic credibility so completely that

3
 L E T TE R TO A SUFFERING CHURCH

the Church’s work in evangelization, catechesis,

preaching, outreach to the poor, recruitment of
vocations, and education has been crippled. And
most terribly, members of the Church, especially its
most vulnerable, have been forced to live through a
nightmare from which it seems impossible to wake.
If the Church had a personal enemy— and indeed
the devil is known as the enemy of the human
race— it is hard to imagine that he could have
come up with a better plan.
In saying this, I am by no means implying
that human beings bear no responsibility; just the
contrary. T he devil works typically through sugges­
tion, insinuation, temptation, and seduction. He is
essentially powerless until he finds men and women
who will cooperate with him. The best visual
depiction of this dynamic is in a fresco by the early
Renaissance painter Luca Signorelli, which can be
found in the cathedral at Orvieto. It is a dramatic
picture of the advent of the antichrist. The central
figure, looking every inch the stereotypical Christ
figure, is listening intently to the whispered sugges­

4
 The D tvtl’s Masterpiece

tions of the devil, who presses in close to him. Only

a careful examination reveals that what looks like
the antichrist’s left arm is in fact the arm of the
devil, which has reached creepily through the anti­
christ’s vesture. Whose voice is it? Whose gesture is
it? Both the m an’s and the devil’s. So it goes. And
so it has gone these past several decades as the dark
power, through far too many willing cooperators,
has done his work.
Surveying the landscape of the Church today
brings to mind a dismal and arresting passage from
the book of the prophet Jerem iah. In the wake of the
Babylonian devastation of the Israelite capital, the
writer takes in the scene in and around Jerusalem:
“If I go out to the country. Behold, those slain with
the sword! O r if I enter the city, Behold, diseases
of famine! For both prophet and priest have gone
roving about in the land that they do not know”
(Jer. 14:18). O n the blasted and devastated ground
today, landmarks have fallen, and even the insiders
have lost their way. Conservative estimates indicate
that the Catholic Church in the United States has

5
 L E T TE R TO A SUFFERING CHURCH

paid out four billion dollars in sex abuse settlements.

Let that figure sink in. Four billion dollars that
came, in large part, from the generous donations of
Catholic people; four billion dollars that could have
been used to build parishes, schools, universities,
hospitals, and seminaries; four billion dollars that
could have gone to educate children, to heal the
sick, to care for the hungry and the homeless, to
propagate the Gospel.
But that is an aspect of the devastation that
is relatively easy to measure. The hurt and alien­
ation felt by Catholics goes so far and deep that it
is scarcely possible to gauge. Consider this: every
particular act of sexual abuse by a priest establishes
an extraordinary ripple effect through families,
parishes, and communities. A single child might
have been directly mistreated, but the anger, fear,
and shame radiate out to mothers and fathers,
aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, friends and
classmates. Now think of the thousands of cases of
sexual abuse by clergy and the sickening influence

6
 The Devil's Masterpiece

that has gone out from each one of them. The rot
has reached to virtually every cel! and molecule in
the Mystical Body of Christ.
T hat priests perpetrated this abuse makes it. of
course, particularly awful. In accord with sound
Catholic theology, the faithful have long taken
priests to be not merely ministers or preachers but
sacred figures, conformed in a unique way to Christ
through ordination. T he Spanish word for ‘'priest”
catches this nicely: sacerdote (holy one). Fr. Raniero
Cantalamessa, preacher to the papal household,
has said that, due to this unique identity, the smile
of a priest is, for many Catholic people, the smile
of God himself; a word of comfort from a priest is
a word of comfort coming from the mouth of God.
Tragically, this same logic obtains when priests
become abusive. A child or teenager who was
sexually assaulted by a priest felt violated by God,
aggressed by the one he expected to be the source
of greatest comfort and peace. The explosion that
this cognitive dissonance has produced in the

1
 I.F.TTF.R TO A SL'FFERLVG CHURCH

minds and souls of the abused is beyond stagger­

ing. It has given rise to a suffering that can only be
characterized as metaphysical: the Creator of the
world has turned into an enemy.
In the summer of 2018, the Attorney General of
Pennsylvania issued a report of the cases of sexual
abuse of minors by clergy in that state over roughly
the previous seventy years. The number of abusive
priests was depressing enough (roughly 300 priests
and 1,000 victims), but the details of the cases
sickened the Church— indeed, the whole country.
A group of priests in the Pittsburgh diocese acted as
a predatory ring, identifying potential candidates
for abuse and passing information about them back
and forth. They would take Polaroid photos of the
children, in one case requesting a young man to
take off his clothes and stand on the bed in the
attitude of the crucified Jesus. To children that
they found particularly attractive they would give
gold crosses to wear around their necks, so as to
signal their availability to other pedophile priests.
One priest raped a young girl in the hospital, just

8
 The Devil’s Masterpiece

after she had her tonsils removed. Another raped

a girl, got her pregnant, and then arranged for the
young woman to have an abortion. A Pittsburgh
priest would give homeless boys drugs, money, and
alcohol in exchange for sex. And while these crimes
were being committed, the priests in question w'ere
typically removed from the parish or institution
where the complaint originated but then reassigned
somewhere else in the diocese, free to abuse again.
As is now well established, this pattern of abuse,
reassignment, and cover-up was repeated again
and again across the Catholic world, fueling the
massive frustration of the offended parties.
In that same terrible summer of 2018, it was
revealed that then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick,
retired Archbishop of Washington, DC, had been
a serial abuser throughout his clerical career. The
case that broke open the story had to do with a
young altar server whom McCarrick, then a priest
of the Archdiocese of New York, sexually abused
in the sacristy of St. Patrick’s Cathedral just
before Midnight Mass, as the boy was vesting for

9
 LET TE R TO A SUFFERING CHURCH

the liturgy. But as more and more victims came

forward, it became d e ar that the Cardinal, in his
various assignments as Bishop and Archbishop,
preyed especially on seminarians, those young
men over whom he had almost complete control.
His favorite tactic was to invite those he found
attractive to a beach house that he kept in New
Jersey, always careful to include one more student
than the beds in the place could accommodate,
forcing one of them to sleep with him. One of his
victims recounts a particularly sickening story of
McCarrick watching the young man change into
his bathing suit and subsequently, on the beach,
slipping his hand under the seminarian’s suit.
If anyone wonders why these young men didn’t
object, run away, or punch the C ardinal in the face,
he has to recall that these victims wanted—more
than anything in the world— to be priests, and that
McCarrick was the one who had the absolute power
to determine whether that dream would be realized
or not. And he was, as far as they were concerned,
the supreme religious authority in their lives. To

10
 The Devil’s Masterpiece

whom would they complain? The apostolic nuncio,

the pope’s American ambassador? Even supposing
they knew such a person existed, they probably
would have feared reaching out to him, presuming
he either wouldn’t believe them or would chastise
them for bringing such a charge. In a word, it was
a situation not unlike that involving young actors
and actresses and their abusive studio bosses: the
enormous power differential allowed the aggressor
to get what he wanted and keep the victims quiet.
Just as bishop after bishop around the country
quietly reshuffled abusive clergy from parish to
parish, so it seems numerous bishops, archbishops,
and cardinals, both in this country and in the
Vatican, knew ail about M cCarrick’s outrageous
behavior and did nothing in response to it; or, rather
worse, they continued to advance him up the eccle­
siastical ladder, from auxiliary bishop, to bishop of
a diocese, to archbishop, and finally to cardinal.
Even after he resigned from his post in Washing­
ton, DC (immediately upon turning seventy-five,
apparently at the urging of Pope Benedict XVI),

11
 L E I TER 7 0 A SUFFERf.YC CHURCH

McCarrick continued to be a roving ambassador

for the Church and a kingmaker in the American
hierarchy again, while everyone knew about his
disturbing and abusive tendencies. The average
Catholic in America could certainly be forgiven
for thinking that something like a conspiracy of
silence and a deep corruption obtain within the
institutional life of the Church.
Just days before I composed these words, one
of the most popular comedians in the United
States, who happens to have been raised a
Catholic, appeared on Saturday Night Live. In his
monologue, he observed that his mother wondered
whether his Jewish wife might one day convert
to his Catholic faith. The audience immediately
began giggling and guffawing in anticipation of
his response. He gazed into the camera and said,
“Can you imagine someone actually voluntarily
choosing to become Catholic?” As the crowd broke
into raucous laughter and applause, it struck me
that things have gotten so bad that the comedian
needed no further elaboration or explanation to get

12
 The D evil’s Masterpiece

his laugh. It is just taken for granted that Cathol­

icism is twisted and dysfunctional. I say this with
deep regret, as a lifelong Catholic and as a bishop
of the Church: Can we entirely blame them for
making such an assumption?
In my capacity as Auxiliary Bishop of Los
Angeles, I make frequent visits to the parishes in
my pastoral region. In the wake of the McCarrick
revelations and the Pennsylvania report, as I moved
among the people of God, I came across anger, to
be sure, but more frequently, tears. Standing in the
vestibule of churches after Mass, dressed in the full
liturgical regalia of a bishop, I functioned rather
effectively as a symbol of Catholicism, and people
would react to me and speak to me as such. In
their bitter words and their even more bitter tears,
I would sense both a deep love for the Church and
a practically bottomless disillusionment with it.
W hat was particularly galling about the McCarrick
situation was that Catholics had heard, since 2002,
that protocols and reforms were in place that would
prevent abuse going forward. Now, real and sub­

13
 L ET TE R TO A SUFFERING CHURCH

stantive changes have indeed been put in place and

they have made a significant difference (more on
this later); nevertheless, I understood the frustration
and the embarrassment. Many, many parishioners
told me, after the McCarrick debacle, that they
were once again ashamed to admit in public that
they were Catholics. Just when they thought they
were over the worst of the humiliation, the bottom
fell out again. Again, I w'ould emphasize that the
frustration, anguish, and fury are grounded in a
deep love for the Church and what it stands for. If
people didn’t fundamentally believe in the Church,
they would not be so angry and so hurt over this
disastrous and ongoing betrayal.
For years now, I ’ve been tracing the phenom­
enon of the “nones”— that is to say, the religiously
unaffiliated, those who have simply opted out
of identification with a religious tradition. In the
early 1970s, roughly 5% of Americans identified
as having no religion. By the early 1990s, that
figure had slightly risen to 6%, but it still indicated
a relatively small number of people. But today,

14
 The Devil’s Masterpiece

the percentage of religiously unaffiliated in our

country is 25%! O ne quarter of Americans now
claim no religion at all. The count is even more
striking when we narrow our focus to the young.
The percentage of “nones” under the age of thirty
rises to 40%, and among Catholic youth, the figure
is an incredible 50%. Also, studies have indicated
that for every one person who joins the Catholic
Church today, roughly six are abandoning their
Catholicism. There are, of course, multiple causes
for this dramatic increase in disaffiliation, espe­
cially among Catholics, but all the surveys clearly
state, to no one’s great surprise, that the clergy
scandals have contributed significantly to a loss of
confidence in the Church. 1 am just as concerned
about these armies of young people who are simply
walking away from the Church as I am about those
who, crying tears of rage, hang on. In regard to
the latter group, I can appeal to the affection that
still remains. But in regard to the former, it is much
more difficult to get any traction.

15
 L ET T E R TO .4 SUFFERING CHl ttCft

So, many Catholics are understandably asking,

“Why should I stay? Why not abandon this sinking
ship before it drags me or my children under?’' It
is my conviction that this is not the time to leave;
it is the time to stay and fight. The Scriptures shed
a great deal of light on our present situation; we’ve
been here before in our history and we’ve survived;
everything you love in the Church is still present
and is worth defending; there is a path forward. If
you’re willing to read on. I will try in brief compass
to defend each of these claims.
Has this explosion of wickedness been the devil’s
masterpiece? Yes. But Jesus said that the gates of
hell would not prevail against his Church. Do the
powers of darkness seem triumphant? Perhaps. But
the Lord promised us he would never leave us, even
until the end of the age. So we are forbidden to give
up hope.

16
 CHAPTER TWO

Light from Scripture

7
* his terrible crisis has, God knows, been
analyzed from numerous perspectives:
psychological, interpersonal, criminal,
cultural, etc. These are all valid and illuminating
paths, but the problem will not be adequately in­
vestigated until it is seen in the light that comes
from the Word of God. And it turns out that the
Bible has a great deal to say about human sexuality,
both what it is supposed to be in the plan of God
and the myriad ways that sin twists and distorts it.
The Bible is not the least opposed to bodiliness or
sex. In fact, over and against all forms of dualism,
it insists that everything that God has made— from
the stars and planets to animals and insects—is
good. Moreover, practically the first command
that God gives to human beings in the Garden of
Eden is to be fruitful and multiply. And whenever

19
 L ET TE R TO A SCTFERI Mi CHL RCH

God makes a covenant with his chosen people, he

seals it, as it were, with the injunction that they go
forth and have many children. Throughout the
Scriptures, marriage is used as a master metaphor
for the passionate, faithful, and life-giving love that
God has for his people Israel. In a word, sex is not
a problem; it is, instead, a kind of sacrament.
O n the biblical reading, trouble arises when sex
is wrenched out of the context of love and used as a
tool of domination or manipulation. In accord with
the ancient adage corruptio optimi pessima (the cor­
ruption of the best is the worst), distorted sexuality
becomes a vivid countersign of the divine. The
sacred authors offer a number of examples of what
this reversal looks like.
I should first like to consider the strange but
richly illuminating story from the eighteenth and
nineteenth chapters of the book of Genesis, which
treats of an angelic visit to the patriarch Abraham
and its troubling aftermath. We are told that the
Lord appeared to Abraham through the mediation
of three angelic figures. After the patriarch received

20
 Light from Scripture

and served them, the visitors predicted that, despite

their advanced years, Abraham and Sarah would
have a son a year hence. Overhearing the conver­
sation, Sarah laughs at the absurdity of the sugges­
tion that she and her husband could still experience
“sexual pleasure,” but the Lord remonstrated with
Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I
really bear a child, old as I am?’ Is anything too
marvelous for the Lord to do?” (Gen. 18:13-14).
W hat is marvelous, of course, is not simply that
an elderly woman would bear a son, but that the
promise made to Abraham — that he would become
the father of a great nation— was. against all odds,
about to come true. G od’s lordship, faithful human
cooperation, the fulfillment of the covenant, repro­
duction, laughter, and even sexual pleasure are all,
in the typically Israelite manner, folded in together.
And this is why it is extremely instructive to
examine the stories of sexual perversion and mis­
conduct that immediately follow this one, for they
demonstrate the negation of G od’s plan for human
sexuality. At the beginning of the nineteenth

21
 L ET T E R TO .! SIT-EE R IS C CHURCH

chapter of Genesis, wc hear that the angels who

had visited Abraham have made their way to the
city of Sodom, the home of Abraham ’s nephew Lot.
After enjoying a meal in Lot’s home, the angels find
themselves hemmed in by a startlingly aggressive
and lustful band of men— indeed, we are told, all of
the men, both young and old, of the town. Without
the slightest hesitation or shame, they announce
their intentions: “W here are the men who came
to your house tonight? Bring them out to us that
we may have intimacies with them” (Gen. 19:5).
The gang rape being proposed—violent, imper­
sonal, self-interested, and infertile— is the precise
opposite of what God intends for human sexuality.
In the feral men of Sodom, the image of God has
been almost completely obscured.
The narrative becomes, if anything, more
unnerving as we consider the reaction of Lot. The
nephew of Abraham begins promisingly enough:
“I beg you, my brothers, not to do this wicked
thing.” But then he proposes a rather appalling
solution: “1 have two daughters who have never

22
 Light from Scripture

had intercourse with men. Let me bring them out

to you, and you may do to them as you please”
(Gen. 19:7-8). In order to stave oft'a brutal sexual
assault, he presents his own virgin daughters for a
violent gang rape. Could we imagine a more thor­
oughgoing undermining of the Creator’s intention
regarding sex? T he men of Sodom, simmering
with rage, are having none of it, and they press
Lot against the door of his home. At this point, the
angels intervene, pulling Lot inside and striking the
men of the mob blind. The dramatic intervention
should not be read simply as an intriguing twist in
the narrative, but rather as the symbolic commu­
nication of a spiritual dynamic. Having devolved
morally to the level of pack animals, the men of
Sodom have become blind to any of the deeper
dimensions of sexuality and human community. In
response to the polymorphous dysfunction of the
city, God, we are told, rained fire and brimstone
upon Sodom. We must never interpret divine pun­
ishment in the Bible as arbitrary or the result of
an emotional affront; rather, we should read it as a

23
 L E T TE R TO A SL El'ERL.VO UL CECIL

sort of spiritual physics, God allowing the natural

consequences of sin to obtain.
Following the destruction of Sodom and
Gomorrah, Lot and his daughters, we are told, flee
to the surrounding hill country, where they take
up residence in a cave. Musing on the annihilation
of their city, Lot’s older daughter suggests to the
younger that since all the men have been wiped
out, they should couple with their father and so
bring forth children. Accordingly, on successive
nights, they get their father drunk and sleep w'ith
him, and through these incestuous relations, both
girls become pregnant. They thereby give rise to
the Moabites and the Ammonites, two tribes that,
in time, would come to be at odds with Israel. Can
anyone miss the connection between the shocking
psychological and sexual abuse to which these girls
were subjected—their own father offering them to
a violent mob— and their subsequent abuse of Lot?
Haven’t we seen over and again in our time the
sadly familiar dynamic of sexual abuse begetting
sexual abuse, the sin passed on like a contagion

24
 Light from Scripture

from generation to generation? That this perver­

sion of sexuality took place in a cave, the dwelling
place of animals and primitives, is still another
indication that the imago Dei has been rather thor­
oughly effaced. And that the warped unions are
the source of two peoples antagonistic to Israel is
a further sign that what transpired between Lot
and his daughters stands completely athwart G od’s
purpose.

The narrative of Eli and his sons, recounted

in the first book of Samuel, is an eerily accurate
anticipation of many of the features of the clergy
sex abuse scandal of the present day. The first
glimpse we get of Eli, high priest of Shiloh, is not
edifying. Demonstrating not an ounce of pastoral
sensitivity, Eli upbraids the distraught H annah,
who had been praying aloud in the sacred place,
begging God for a child: “How long will you make
a drunken show of yourself? Sober up from your

25
 L E T TE R TO A SUTTER/XG CHURCH

wine!” (1 Sam. 1:14). Then we hear of Eli’s sons,

Hophni and Phineas, who are priests like their
father, but wicked, having regard neither for God
nor for the people. We are told that they took the
best meat from the sacrifices piously offered by the
supplicants at Shiloh and that they were sexually
abusing the women who worked at the entry of the
meeting tent. The victims of their abuse brought
complaints to Eli, and the high priest responded
with strong enough words, remonstrating with his
sons, “No, my sons, you must not do these things!
It is not a good report that I hear the people of the
Lord spreading about you. If a man sins against
another man, one can intercede for him with the
Lord; but if a man sins against the Lord, who can
intercede for him?” (I Sam. 2:24-25). But Hophni
and Phineas disregarded their father’s warning
and continued on their path of corruption, and Eli
apparently took no further action against his sons.
It is against this background that we must read
the famous and poignant story of the Lord’s call to
Samuel, the son whom H annah had sought from

26
 Light from Scripture

the Lord and whom she had given to the Lord

for service in the temple. We are told that, at this
time, “a revelation of the Lord was uncommon
and vision infrequent” (1 Sam. 3:1). O ne might be
permitted to wonder whether this was a function of
the Lord’s refusal to speak or rather of the blindness
and corruption of the spiritual leadership of the
nation. D uring the night, God calls to Samuel, but
neither the boy nor his spiritual father understand
the nature of the summons. Only after several false
starts does Eli give the proper instruction: “If you
are called, reply, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is
listening’” (1 Sam. 3:9). Since the version of this
narrative that is found in the lectionary ends at
this point, most Catholics don’t know the devas­
tating words that the Lord finally speaks to young
Samuel: “I am about to do something in Israel
that will cause the ears of everyone who hears it
to ring. On that day I will carry out in full against
Eli everything I threatened against his family”
(l Sam. 3:11 -12). And God specifies precisely why he
will exact such a severe punishment: “I announce

27
 LE T TER TO A SL'FFERlHd CHURCH

to him that I am condemning his family once and

for all, because of this crime: though he knew his
sons were blaspheming God, he did not reprove
them’’ (1 Sam, 3:13). In short, it was not the crimes
of Hophni and Phineas that particularly aroused
the divine ire, but rather Eli’s refusal to act when
he was made aware of them.
Just after this unnerving revelation, the Philis­
tines engaged Israel in battle, and the result was an
unmitigated disaster. After four thousand Israelites
were slain in a preliminary skirmish, the army
regrouped and resolved to bring the Ark of the
Covenant itself into battle. Despite the presence of
this talisman of the God who had brought Israel
out of Egypt, the Philistines won a decisive victory,
killing thirty thousand Israelites, including Hophni
and Phineas, and carrying away the Ark as booty.
When news of the catastrophe reached Eli, the old
priest was sitting by the gate of Shiloh. So over­
whelmed was he that he fell over backward and
broke his neck, thus bringing... as the Lord had
predicted— his entire family to an end.

28
 Light from Scripture

Now, does any of this story strike you as

familiar? We hear of priests abusing their people
both financially and sexually; complaints are
brought to their superior, who uses strong words
and promises decisive action but does nothing to
stop the abuse. And the result of this double failure
is a disaster and deep shame for the entire people, as
they are delivered into the hands of their enemies.
I would suggest that the story of Eli and his sons is
an almost perfect biblical icon of the sexual abuse
scandal that has unfolded over the past thirty years.
At the apparent height of the troubles, in the early
2000s, many Catholics in America were dismayed
at the frank anti-Catholicism on display in many
of the newspapers, journals, and television stations
that covered the scandal. Those with a biblical
frame of reference shouldn’t have been surprised:
the new Israel of the Church had been handed over
to its enemies, precisely for the sake of purification.

29
 L E T T E R TO .-i S IT -T E R I \ ( , C H L R C H

The endlessly fascinating and psychologically

complex tale of David and Bathshcba, recounted in
the eleventh and twelfth chapters of 2 Samuel, has
beguiled artists, poets, and spiritual writers across
the centuries. It is one of the most sensitive and
subdc narratives that has come down to us from
the ancient world, and it sheds a good deal of light
on our subject.
The commencement of the story is worth close
attention: “At the turn of the year, w'hen kings go
out on campaign,” David “remained in Jerusalem”
(2 Sam. 11:1). David was the greatest of Israel’s
campaigners, never shrinking from a fight, always
at the head of the army, willing to undertake even
the most dangerous missions. So why is he lingering
at home, precisely at the time of year when kings
typically sally forth? A clue to David’s reticence is
provided in the next verse: “O ne evening David
rose from his siesta and strolled about on the roof
of the palace” (2 Sam. 11:2). To be sure, people in
M editerranean cultures typically take a siesta after
the midday meal, but it is significant that the king

30
 Light, from Scripture

rose in the evening, implying that he had been in bed

quite some time. W hat the biblical author sketches
here, in characteristically laconic manner, is a
portrait of a king gone to seed, a military leader
grown a bit indulgent and indifferent. W hen he was
in his spiritual prime, David invariably inquired of
God what he should do, even in regard to minor
matters; but throughout the Bathsheba narrative,
he never asks God for direction. Rather, he does
the directing. From his godlike vantage point on
the rooftop of his palace, David can see in every
direction, and he can order things according to
his whim. It is precisely from this perspective that
he spies the beautiful Bathsheba, wife of Uriah the
Hittite, and through a series of quick and staccato
commands, takes her to himself. The biblical
author is likely aware of Bathsheba’s own cooper­
ation with the affair— does she just happen to be
bathing within easy eyeshot of the king?— but he
is especially interested in the king’s deft but wicked
use of his power to manipulate another.

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 L E T T E R TO A STFFERIAC CHVIICH

In the wake of Bathsheba’s pregnancy, David

attempts to cover up his sin using every means at
his disposal, cruelly playing with the upright Uriah
who, though an outsider, nevertheless proves more
faithful to Israel’s laws than does Israel’s king.
Finally, of course, David arranges things so as to
bring about Uriah’s death, stooping so low as to
compel the man himself to unwittingly carry his
own order of execution to Joab, the commander
in the field. The murder of Uriah allowed David
to take Bathsheba as his wife and definitively to
cover up his sin, but we are told that “the Lord
was displeased with what David had done” (2 Sam.
11:27). Again and again, the Scriptures insist that
any human power is grounded in and derived from
a more fundamental divine sovereignty. No matter
how much rangy authority a human being has, he
does not escape the moral oversight and sanction of
God. This is the sense of Jesus’ reminder to Pilate,
the representative of the most powerful political
institution of his time: “You would have no power
over me if it had not been given to you from above”

32
 Light from Scripture

{John 19:11). In his laziness, self-indulgence, ma­

nipulation, and cruelty, David stands here as an
icon of the abuse of power.

After this brief tour of some Old Testament

narratives, I would like to conclude this biblical
section with a look at Jesus in relation to children.
The eighteenth chapter of M atthew ’s Gospel
commences with a lovely and incisive medita­
tion on the spiritual significance of children and
of Jesus’ attitude toward them. Exhibiting their
customary tendency to miss the point, Jesus’ entire
company of disciples approached him with the
question, “ Who is the greatest in the kingdom of
heaven?” (Matt. 18:1). Their inquiry, of course, is
born of a false or fallen consciousness, a preoccu­
pation with honor and worldly power. In answer,
Jesus called a little child over and placed him in
their midst— which is to say, in the focal point, the
center. By so situating the child, he physically in­

33
 L E T T E R TO A SUFFERING CHURCH

terrupted their jockeying for position and notice. In

his innocence and humility, the child exemplifies
what the spiritual masters call the true sell', which
is able to relate simply and directly to reality. This
is in opposition to the false self, which is so layered
over with preoccupations with honor that it gets at
reality only haltingly and through a kind of buffer.
Though they take on the qualities of the false self
soon enough, little children typically exemplify
this spiritual alertness precisely in their ability to
lose themselves in a game or a conversation or the
beautiful facticity of the simplest things.
It was a commonplace in the ancient world to
hold up distinguished figures as models: military
commanders, religious leaders, political potentates,
etc. But what Jesus is doing is turning this tradition
on its head, placing in the position of honor a figure
of no social prominence, no influence, no connec­
tions. Within the standard societal framework of
the time, children were expected to remain silent,
and it was assumed that the powerful could m anip­
ulate them at will. Jesus reverses this, identifying

34
 Light from Scripture

the socially negligible as the greatest. Indeed, for

those who have moved from the false self to the
true self, the very meaning o f greatness has been
adjusted: “Whoever humbles himself like this child
is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt.
18:4).
W hat follows is a remark of rich theological
significance: “And whoever receives one child such
as this in my name receives me” (Matt. 18:5). In the
second chapter of Philippians, we find the exquisite
hymn that Paul has adapted to his purposes. It
commences with an evocation of the self-emptying
quality of the Son of God who, “though he was
in the form of God, did not regard equality with
God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied
himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in
human likeness; and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death,
even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:6-8). In short, the
child— humble, simple, self-effacing—functions as
a sort of iconic representation of the divine Child
of the divine Father. The route of access to Jesus is

35
 L ET TE R TO A SUFFERING CHI RCH

therefore to move into the spiritual space of a child,

to “accept'1 him in the fullest sense. This truth
becomes especially clear in M ark’s version of this
story. When the disciples disputed about which of
them is greatest, Jesus said, “If anyone wishes to be
first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all”
(Mark 9:35). Then he took a child and, in a gesture
of irresistible poignancy, placed his arms around
him, simultaneously embracing, protecting, and
offering him as an example. T he clear implication
is that the failure to accept, protect, and love a
child—or, what is worse, the active harm ing of a
child - would preclude real contact with Jesus.
And this helps to explain the vehemence of
the statement that immediately follows: “Whoever
causes one of these little ones who believe in me
to sin, it would be better for him to have a great
millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned
in the depths of the sea” (Matt. 18:6). Mind you,
this is from the mouth of the same Jesus who, just a
few chapters before, had urged the love of enemies!
I don’t think for a moment that the earlier teaching

36
 Light from Scripture

is being repudiated, but I do indeed think that the

extraordinary gravity of the offense is being em­
phasized. There is no other sin— not hypocrisy, not
adultery, not indifference to the poor— that Jesus
condemns with greater passion than this: “Woe to
the world because of things that cause sin! Such
things must come, but woe to the one through
whom they come. If your hand or foot causes you
to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for
you to enter life maimed or crippled than with two
hands or tu'o feet to be thrown into eternal fire.
And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and
throw it away. It is better for you to enter into life
with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into
fiery Gehenna" (Matt. 18:7-9). It cannot possibly
be accidental that Jesus mentions Gehenna in the
context of condemning those who attack children,
for Gehenna was the place where, throughout
much of the Old Testament period, children were
sacrificed to idols.
This extraordinary section concludes with
an evocation of the angels: “See that you do not

37
 L E T TE R TO A SUFFER!,\C CHURCH

despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that

their angels in heaven always look upon the face of
my heavenly Father” (Matt. 18:10). This is far more
than pious decoration. The abuse of children is a
function of the objectification of children, turning
them, as we saw, into mere means. In reminding his
listeners that every child is assigned a supernatural
guide who is, in turn, intimately linked to God,
Jesus is insisting upon the incomparable dignity
of those whom society— then and now— is likely
to disregard or undervalue. The central tragedy
of the sexual abuse scandal is that those who were
ordained to act in the very person of Christ became,
in the most dramatic way, obstacles to Christ.

38
 CHAPTER THREE

We Have Been Here Before

 ^here is, to be sure, a unique texture to the

T crisis we are presently enduring. Precise­

ly because it involves, on such a massive
scale, the abuse of young people by men meant by
ordination to be distinctively configured to Christ,
it is peculiarly twisted and sickening. I would fur­
thermore contend that it certainly constitutes the
darkest moment in the history of the Church in the
United States, far surpassing the aggressive perse­
cution of Catholics that took place in the nineteenth
century. At the same time, I want to insist that the
current darkness must be seen in historical perspec­
tive. The Church, from the very beginning and at
every point in its development, has been marked to
varying degrees by sin, scandal, stupidity, misbe­
havior, misfortune, and wickedness. Commenting

41
 L E T T E R TO A SEEFERISG CHVRCU

upon dysfunction within the very first Christian

communities, St. Paul said something that has shed
light up and down the ages: “We hold this treasure
in earthen vessels” (2 Cor. 4:7). The treasure is the
grace of Christ, the new life made available through
the dying and rising ofjesus, and the vessels are the
deeply flawed, fragile, and morally suspect people
who have received that grace and who are endeav­
oring to live that new life.
Eighteen hundred years after Paul, John Henry
Newman, one of the most perceptive theological
minds in the tradition, made this rather startling
and sweeping observation: “The whole course of
Christianity . . . is but one series of troubles and
disorders. Every century is like every other, and
to those who live in it seems worse than all times
before it. The Church is ever ailing . . . Religion
seems ever expiring, schisms dominant, the light
of truth dim, its adherents scattered. The cause of
Christ is ever in its last agony.”
And lest we think that the corruption of priests
and bishops is unique to our time, we should recall

42
 He Have Been Here Before

one of the wittiest rejoinders in Church history.

The Emperor Napoleon is said to have confront­
ed Cardinal Consalvi, the secretary of state to
Pope Pius V II, saying that he, Napoleon, would
destroy the Church— to which the Cardinal deftly
responded, “O h my little man, you think you’re
going to succeed in accomplishing what centuries
of priests and bishops have tried and failed to
do?” In a similar vein, the early twentieth-century
Catholic writer Hilaire Belloc made this rather
acid observation in reference to the moral and
intellectual quality of the Church’s leadership:
“The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound
to hold divine—but for unbelievers a proof of its
divinity might be found in the fact that no merely
human institution conducted with such knavish
imbecility would have lasted a fortnight.”
When I was a first-year seminarian, I took a
course in Church history taught by a legendary
Chicago priest, Msgr. Charles Meyer. Naturally,
Msgr. Meyer rehearsed the key events, the pivotal
dates, and the heroic players across the two

43
 L ET T E R TO A SUFFERWC CHURCH

millennia of the Church’s life, but he took a par­

ticular, even slightly devilish, delight in recounting
the numerous misdeeds and outrageous sins of
priests, bishops, and popes. I will admit that many
of us were initially scandalized by this litany of
crimes, but I came eventually to see Msgr. Meyer’s
course as a real, though odd, grace. Hearing these
dark tales was a bit like receiving an immunization.
Having taken in the very worst of Church history,
we could even more clearly understand that there
is nevertheless something good, even indestruc­
tibly good, about the Mystical Body of Christ.
And therefore, we were less likely to despair of the
project. It is with this “immunizing” purpose that I
write this chapter.

There is, in the Acts of the Apostles, an idyllic

account of life in the primitive Church. The first
followers of Jesus, we are told, engaged in prayer
and service of the poor, and each member of the

44
 We Have Been Here Before

community placed his goods at the feet of the

Apostles for the benefit of the most needy. But
trouble set in soon enough. In his first letter to
the tiny Christian family that he had established
in Corinth, St. Paul upbraided the Church for the
factionalism and divisions that had already arisen:
“For it has been reported to me about you, my
brothers, by Chloe’s people, that there are rivalries
among you. . . . Is Christ divided?” (1 Cor. 1:11,
13). We find much the same thing in his letter to
the Romans: “I urge you, brothers, to watch out
for those who create dissensions and obstacles, in
opposition to the teaching that you learned” (Rom.
16:17). We also hear, in these earliest Christian texts,
of sexual misconduct in the Church. Listen again
to Paul in first Corinthians: “It is widely reported
that there is immorality among you, and immorali­
ty of a kind not found even among pagans— a man
living with his father’s wife” (1 Cor. 5:1). And a bit
later in the same letter, we hear: “ Do you not know
that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I
then take Christ’s members and make them the

45
 L E T T E R TO A SUFFER ISO C H IR C H

members of a prostitute? O f course not!’' (1 Cor.

6:15). And we find this rather remarkable summary
statement in the letter to the Galatians: “Now the
works of the flesh are obvious: immorality, impurity,
licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry,
jealousy . . . occasions of envy, drinking bouts,
orgies, and the like. I warn you . . . that those who
do such things will not inherit the kingdom of G od”
(Gal. 5:19-21). It goes without saying, of course, that
Paul wouldn’t have delineated these misbehaviors
were they not actually present in the community.
If we move forward a few centuries from the
time of Paul, we come to the dawn of the monastic
movement within Christianity. Figures such as
Antony of the Desert in the East and Benedict
of Nursia in the West sought refuge from a world
that they perceived as hopelessly corrupt— and
mind you, the “world” in question was, at least
in principle, Christian. The young Benedict, for
example, was so scandalized by the immorality
on display in Rome where he had come to study
that he fled to a cave in Subiaco. In the isolation of

46
 We Have Been Here Before

that place, he commenced to live as a hermit, and

the first monks of the Benedictine movement were
those who were drawn by his austere example.
The office of Peter has been filled by a number
of saintly and accomplished men over the ages, but
it has also been occupied by far more questionable
figures. The tenth and eleventh centuries were
particularly characterized by papal corruption.
Arguably the worst pontiff in history was John X II,
who reigned from 955 to 964. John’s wickedness
was so egregious that bishops and cardinals en­
deavored to remove him. Gathered in synod, they
accused him of “sacrilege, simony, perjury, murder,
adultery, and incest.” Summoned to defend himself
against these charges,John instead excommunicat­
ed his accusers and executed judgment on them,
striking off the hand of one, scourging another, and
removing the nose and ears of a third. Pope John
died in the act of coitus, either from apoplexy or by
the murderous hand of an offended rival.
John had some competition for the title of worst
pope in history from a successor in the eleventh

47
 L E T T E R TO A S lF F E R I M i C.HL'RCH

century— namely, Benedict IX . This man became

pope when he was a layman in his early twenties,
the beneficiary of family influence and intrigue.
While occupying the throne of Peter, his lifestyle
was “straight out of Suetonius . . . marked by al­
legations of rape, murder, bribery, adultery, and
sodomy.” Here is how one nineteenth-century
historian summed up Benedict’s character: “ It
seemed as if a demon from hell, in the disguise of a
priest, occupied the chair of Peter and profaned the
sacred mysteries of religion by his insolent courses.”
One of his successors, Pope Victor III, referred to
“ his rapes, murders, and other unspeakable acts of
violence and sodomy,” and he concluded, “his life
as a pope was so vile, so foul, so execrable that I
shudder to think of it.”
As we consider the corruption of Church
leaders, three literary figures come readily to mind:
one from the fourteenth century, one from the
fifteenth, and one from the sixteenth. I am speaking
of Dante Alighieri, the author of the Divine Comedy;
Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales;

48
 We Have Been Here Before

and Erasmus o f Rotterdam, author of In Praise of

Folly. Each of those texts is a masterpiece, and each
contains a world of insight and inspiration. And
each also clearly lays out the stupidity and moral
decrepitude of far too many of the clergy. Think,
for instance, of Dante’s assignment of numerous
priests, bishops, cardinals, and popes to some of
the lower circles of hell, or of Chaucer’s wicked
skewering of clerics in “The Pardoner’s Tale,” or of
Erasmus’ mocking of priestly self-importance and
duplicity. All three of these authors, it is important
to remember, were devout churchmen; but all
three were, at the same time, more than willing to
complain when ecclesial leaders failed to live up to
their calling.
There was a pope in the early sixteenth century
who was so morally dysfunctional that his name
has become a code word for institutional cor­
ruption. 1 am referring to Rodrigo Borgia, who
became Alexander VI upon his election to the
papacy. In the course of his clerical career, when he
was formally bound to a vow of celibacy, he had a

49
 L E T TE R TO A SUFFFRl.VC CHURCH

string of mistresses with whom he fathered at least

ten illegitimate children, including two who were
born during his papacy. Throughout his years of
activity within the Church, he was notorious for
the two characteristic clerical offenses of simony
(buying ecclesial offices) and nepotism (unfairly fa­
voring his family). Like other popes of the Renais­
sance period, Alexander was also a ruthless military
figure, waging war throughout Italy. His death in
1503 was. fittingly enough, prompted by the inges­
tion of poisoned wine. Alexander’s third succes­
sor was the son of the great Florentine humanist
Lorenzo de’ Medici, and upon his election, he took
the name Leo X. A sensuous libertine, Leo loved
fine food, choice wine, banquets, revelry, and espe­
cially the hunt. Even as the Church was facing the
crisis of the Protestant Reformation, Leo remained
caught up in distractions and trivial amusements.
He is reported to have said, soon after his election,
“Since God has seen fit to give us the papacy, let us
enjoy it.”

50
 We Have Been Here Before

There is obviously much more that could be

recounted under this heading of ecclesiastical
corruption, but I would like to focus particular
attention on only one more case, since it has so
many resonances with our present predicament. In
that notorious eleventh century, w'hen the papacy
was so compromised, sexual abuse of young people
by the clergy was also rampant. The man who,
above all others, shed light on this situation and
raised his voice in strenuous protest was St. Peter
Damian. In the year 1049, Peter, who was at the
time prior o f a hermitage in Umbria, composed a
letter to Pope Leo IX in which he complained of a
distinctively foul corruption within the clergy. Not
one to mince words, he got specific: “The befouling
cancer of sodomy is, in fact, spreading so through
the clergy, or rather like a savage beast, is raging
with such shameless abandon through the flock of
Christ.”
By the term “sodomy,” Peter Damian meant a
range of homosexual behaviors, but what particular­
ly vexed him were acts of sexual predation by older

51
 L E T TE R TO A SUFFER! AG CHURCH

clergy of young boys and the lax attitude of those

religious superiors who knew about such outrages
yet did nothing to stop them. Some offending
priests, he said, even chose sympathetic confessors
who would underplay the sin and give only light
penances. For them he had choice words: “Listen,
you do-nothing superiors of clerics and priests.
Listen, and even though you feel sure of yourselves,
tremble at the thought that you are partners in the
guilt of others, those I mean who wink at the sins
of their subjects that need correction and who by
ill-considered silence allow them license to sin.”
But his greatest scorn— and how startlingly con­
temporary this sounds— was directed to bishops
who acted out sexually with young priests and sem­
inarians: “W hat a vile deed, deserving a flood of
bitter tears! If they who approve of these evildoers
deserve to die, what condign punishment can be
imagined for those who commit these absolutely
damnable acts with their spiritual sons?” Relying
upon the master metaphor of spiritual fatherhood,
St. Peter Damian concluded that all of this abuse

52
 He Have Been Here Before

amounted to a kind of “spiritual incest”— the

fathers, as it were, preying sexually on their own
children. As I read this cri de cmr from a thousand
years ago, I can sense the same righteous anger,
the same spiritual frustration, the same existential
sadness that I sense in so many Catholics today.
Now, not one bit of this historical survey is
meant as an excuse, much less a justification, for
the wickedness on display in the Church today. But
it is indeed meant to place in a wider context what
we might be tempted to see as uniquely horrific.
We have been here before, and weVe survived.
I will say more about this in the closing chapter,
but a time of crisis is not the moment to abandon
the Church; it is the moment to stay and fight—
precisely in the spirit of St. Peter Damian.

53
 C H A P T E R FO UR

Why Should We Stay?

 'n the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel, there is

/ a scene of absolutely pivotal importance.

Finding the Lord’s words concerning the
Eucharist simply too much to take, the majority of
Jesus’ followers abandoned him: “Because of this
many of his disciples turned back and no longer
went about with him.” Turning to his inner circle,
the tiny band of his most ardent apostles, Jesus
said, simply and plaintively, “Do you also wish
to go away?” The entire future of the Christian
movement was hanging in the balance as Jesus
awaited an answer. Finally, Peter spoke: “Lord, to
whom can we go? You have the words of eternal
life” 'John 6:66-68). Now, to be sure, the context
today is different, but the fundamental principle
remains the same: if you have found in Jesus ev-

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 L E T TE R TO .1 SUFEF.RIMi CHURCH

erlasting life, salvation, the answer to the deepest

longing of your heart, then no matter how difficult
things become, and no matter how many of your
fellows might drift away, you must stay.
As we saw, Paul spoke of the treasure in earthen
vessels. 1 don’t think anyone who has read to this
point could doubt that I have taken fully into
consideration just how fragile and compromised
the vessels are and have been. If we look around
at the situation today, we see it; if we look back to
the Scriptures, it is evident; if we survey the twenty
centuries of Church history, we cannot miss it. Yet
the treasure remains. And we stay because of the
treasure.
In the fourth century, St. Augustine did battle
with the Donatists. These were Christians who
claimed that priests and bishops who had deserted
the Church during times of persecution, and sub­
sequently returned, were not worthy to administer
the sacraments. Sensing that the integrity of the
Church itself was in question, Augustine raised his
voice in eloquent protest, arguing that the sacra-

58
 H A) Should Me Slay?

merits remained valid despite the unworthiness of

those at whose hands they were offered. This great
teacher of the Church did not deny for a moment
the seriousness of the moral offense in question, but
he insisted that, despite the sin of t he ministers, the
grace that they mediate remains.
In the course of this brief chapter, I would
like to present the treasure, which is the life of
Christ available in and through the Church. This
will, quite obviously, not be a detailed theological
treatise, but rather a hymn, a poem, a celebration.
We do indeed have to look hard at the wickedness
in the Church today; but we also have to be clear­
eyed about the beauty and veracity and holiness
on offer in that same Church. The vessels are all
fragile and many of them are dow nright broken;
but we don’t stay because of the vessels. We stay
because of the treasure.
Beiore getting to the substance of tltis chapter,
let me make one more rather blunt remark: there
is simply never a good reason to leave the Church.
Never. Good reasons to criticize Church people?

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 L E T T E R TO .1 SVFEER1XU CHl'RCH

Plenty. Legitimate reasons to be angry with cor­

ruption, stupidity, careerism, cruelty, greed, and
sexual misconduct on the part of leaders of the
Church? You bet. But grounds for turning away
from the grace of Christ in which eternal life is
found? No. Never, under any circumstances.
The first dimension of the treasure I would
like to present is this: the Church speaks of God.
It should come as a surprise to no one that we
live in a time, at least in the West, when secular­
ism is dramatically on the rise. For the first time
in recorded cultural history, large swaths of the
population are explicitly or implicitly denying the
existence of God and pretending that fulfillment
can be had through the goods and experiences of
this world. As recently as fifty years ago, practical­
ly nobody, even in Western countries, would have
believed this, but now armies of people, especially
the young, take it for granted. And this indifference
is doing irreparable damage, for— as St. Augustine
reminded us long ago—our hearts are wired for
God and therefore will remain restless until they

60
 Why Should We Slay?

rest in God. The best proof of this is that nothing

in this world— no amount of money, sex, pleasure,
power, or esteem—perfectly quiets the longing of
the soul. And as C.S. Lewis insisted, we know this
truth most painfully precisely at the best moments
of life, when we have reali2 ed our fondest worldly
dreams and yet remain dissatisfied. St. John of
the Cross compared the unconditioned desire of
the heart to infinitely deep caverns. No amount
of finite goods hurled into those abysses will ever
fill them up. It is, as the Psalmist sang, only in the
infinite God that our souls find rest.
Certainly, one of the reasons for the chronic de­
pression that seems to bedevil so many people today
is this loss of a transcendent point of reference. The
philosopher Charles Taylor speaks of the “buffered
se lf’— which is to say, the self that is hemmed in,
divorced from any contact with what goes beyond
this world. Living in that cramped space is simply
deadly for the human soul. It is akin to forcing an
eagle to occupy a tiny cage. The Church, despite its
many failings, speaks of God, of the transcendent

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 L E T T E R TO A SUFFERING CHURCH

Mystery, of that which corresponds to the most

ardent desire of the heart, of the Ultimate Reality—
and this word, especially today, is like water in the
desert. To Catholic parents, legitimately worried
about their sons and daughters compelled to soak
in the acids of secularism and materialism, I say,
“Don’t abandon the Church, which is one of the
few' remaining institutions in our society that will
speak to your children of God!” In both the high
and the popular culture, secularist ideology in­
creasingly holds sway, and in the universities, an
aggressive atheism is typically the default position.
Stay with the Church, because at its best it properly
orients the hungry heart.
A second aspect of the treasure: the Church
is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ. According
to the ancient faith, Jesus is not one more prophet
among many, not simply a spokesperson for God;
rather, he is “God from God, light from light, true
God from true God.” In him, two natures, divine
and human, come together. Though this latter
formula can sound rather abstract, it is conveying a

62
 Why Should We Stay?

fundamental and existentially compelling truth—

namely, that in Jesus, divinity and humanity meet.
In other words, what the heart aches for— real
union with G od—is realized, personally and com­
pletely, in him. W hat Israel of the Old Testament
gestured toward through the holy temple, through
the preaching of the prophets, through law and
covenant—real reconciliation with G od—is, in
Jesus, an established fact. He is the faithful God
finally and utterly meeting faithful Israel, and hence
he is the savior of the human race. T hat English
word “savior” is derived from the Latin term salus,
meaning health. Through Jesus’ perfect humanity,
God “salves” or heals a broken humanity— and
how wonderfully this is exemplified injesus’ mighty
acts of restoring sight to the blind, hearing to the
deaf, mobility to the crippled, and life to the dead.
A ndjesus teaches not simply as one wise person
among many, but as the divine Truth manifesting
itself in human words and in a human voice. Hence,
upon hearing him, the clouding of our minds,
which is itself an effect of sin, is overcome; our

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 L E T T E R TO A S U F F E R I\ ( , C H U R C H

habits, instincts, and m anner of seeing, which flow

from selfishness, are transformed. In his inaugural
address in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus says, simply
enough, metanoiete, which is usually rendered as
“repent” (Mark 1:15). But the word literally means
“go beyond the mind you have.” And St. Paul urges
the earliest Christians, “ Let the same mind be in
you that was in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:5). Like sheep
that respond eagerly to the voice of the shepherd,
so men and women, up and down the ages, have
responded to the voice of Jesus the preacher. In
many iconic representations of the Last Supper, St.
John, the beloved disciple, is pictured leaning on
the breast of Jesus in such a way that his head is
aligned just below the Master’s head. The point is
that he sees the world from the same angle as the
Lord; he has the mind of Christ, for he has spent so
many years listening to Jesus.
At the climax of his life, Jesus died on a Roman
cross, an exquisitely designed instrument of torture.
W hat brought him to such an end? We have to
understand that Jesus is consistently presented in

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 Why Should We Slay?

the Gospels as a warrior and a king. From the first

moments of his life, he is opposed, for we hear that
Herod tries to wipe him out and ail of Jerusalem
trembles in fear of him. From the beginning of his
public ministry, his enemies come out to meet him:
the demons who scream their recognition of him;
the scribes and Pharisees— the official keepers
of the religious establishment—who conspire to
humiliate him and then to kill him; the ordinary
people who call him mad, a drunkard, a trouble­
maker. But he fights— not with the weapons of the
world or by employing the strategies of worldly
rulers, but rather with compassion, forgiveness,
nonviolence, the characteristic moves and attitudes
of what he calls “the kingdom of God,” G od’s way
of ordering things.
As was inevitable, the struggle between the
kingdom of God and what John’s Gospel calls
“the world” came to a climax. Just a week before
his death, Jesus entered Jerusalem in the manner
of a king, as the prophet Zechariah had said he
would, and he was hailed by adoring crowds. But

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 L E T T E R TO A SUFFERING CHURCH

when he caused a ruckus in the temple, calling

down judgment upon the holiest place in Israel, he
stirred the ferocious opposition of both the Jewish
and Roman establishments, the former accusing
him of blasphemy and the latter of sedition. O n
the way to his death, he was met by stupidity, insti­
tutional injustice, hatred, cruelty, betrayal, denial,
scapegoating, and shocking violence— by all of the
darkness of the fallen world. Hanging from the
cross, in literally excruciating {ex cruce, from the
cross) pain, abandoned by his friends, at the limit
of physical and psychological agony, he cried out,
“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
(Matt. 27:46). T he still dizzying claim of Christian­
ity is that we are meant to see in that figure not
only an unjustly accused man, not simply a heroic
martyr, but God himself, having gone to the limits
of godforsakenness. And in that heart of darkness,
he uttered the prayer, “Father, forgive them, they
know' not what they do” (Luke 23:34). W hat this
signaled was the swallowing up of all of the world’s
negativity in the ever-greater divine mercy, the

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 Why Should We Stay?

breaking of the power of sin.

But what gives us the confidence to say that this
story is more than a hero’s tale with a tragic ending?
It was what happened on the third day following
the terrible execution. Coming to the tomb early
on Sunday morning, a number of his disciples
found the body of their Lord missing. While they
were still wondering what this absence meant, they
saw him. Not a ghost, not a fantasy, but him. The
same Jesus whom they knew, with whom they had
eaten and drunk, w'ho had beguiled them with his
preaching and healed them of their illnesses, who
had walked the roads of Galilee and Judea with
them— that Jesus was alive, presenting himself to
them. M any people of that time, formed in the
Greek philosophical tradition, might have believed
in the immortality of the soul, but the first Chris­
tians were not talking about Jesus’ soul having gone
to heaven. Many Jews of that time believed that
the dead would be physically raised at the end of
time, but the first Christians w-eren’t talking about
a general resurrection at the close of the age. They

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 L E T TE R TO A SUFFER 1X0 CHURCH

were describing the bodily resurrection and glori­

fication. in time, of their friend and Lord. And this
meant, in a word, that everything had changed. The
old world was broken, because now they knew that
God's love is more powerful than hatred, cruelty,
injustice, and violence. Even more wonderfully and
unnervinglv, they realized that death itself was
overcome. That which had always hung as a dark
cloud over the whole of human life, that which had
haunted the human race from the beginning, that
which had been used by every tyrant in history to
intimidate and manipulate his subjects, was now a
defeated enemy.
And this explains their strange relationship
to the cross of Jesus. A Roman cross was meant
to terrify people into submission. Run afoul of us,
the Roman political leadership said, and we will
hang you, naked, on a device that will guarantee
a slow, painful, and deeply humiliating death. It is
no accident whatsoever that the authorities would
place crosses in very public locations, for they were
meant to be seen. If anything symbolized the terror,

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 Why Should Wt Stay?

cruelty, and violence of the corrupt world, it was this

awful thing. But the first Christians, in a manner
that must have struck their listeners as bordering
on insanity, held up the cross, spoke of it, cele­
brated it. W ho can forget St. Paul’s strange claim:
“I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus
Christ, and him crucified” (l Cor. 2:2). This would
be roughly akin to someone today announcing that
the single theme of his proclamation would be a
criminal executed by lethal injection. They could
do this only because they were utterly convinced
that the Resurrection had disempowered the
cross and all that it entailed and the twisted world
that made it possible. If I dare to put it this way,
they held it up as a kind of taunt: “You think this
frightens us? God is more powerful!”
Much of this was summed up in a phrase that
was frequently on the lips and under the pen of
St. Paul: “Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil. 2:11). In the
culture of that time and place, Caesar was consid­
ered the Lord— which is to say, the one to whom
final allegiance was due. But the first followers of

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the risen Jesus knew that the Resurrection had

undermined the supremacy of Caesar and all his
colleagues and imitators up and down the ages.
Now the one to whom ultimate allegiance is due
is Jesus, whom Caesar killed but whom God raised
up. No wonder that, in M atthew’s telling, the death
of Jesus was accompanied by an earthquake, for
indeed, the cross of Christ represented the shaking
of the old order. And what delicious irony in Jo h n ’s
telling that Pontius Pilate, Caesar’s local represen­
tative in Palestine, could put over the cross of the
Lord what was meant to be a bit of mockery but
what was, in fact, a frank declaration: “Jesus of
Nazareth, the King of the Jews” (John 19:19).
I mentioned just a few' paragraphs above that
the Church is called the Mystical Body of Christ.
This characterization implies that the Church
is not the ‘Jesus Christ Society,” a gathering of
like-minded people who fondly remember the life
and works of a distant historical figure, like the In­
ternational Churchill Society. It is an organism, not
an organization. Those who have been grafted on

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 Why Should He Slay?

to Jesus Christ are the eyes, ears, hands, feet, and

heart through which Jesus continues his properly
subversive and re-creative work in the world.
And this brings us to a third aspect of the
treasure: the Holy Spirit. The first followers of the
risen Christ felt that they had been inhabited by
the Spirit of their Lord, which lifted them up, gave
them courage, breathed through their words and
actions. In the Acts of the Apostles, we hear that
the Spirit was sent to the Church by the ascended
Jesus. We must never think of the Ascension as
Jesus’ leave-taking, but rather his assuming, in the
manner of a general commanding a field of battle,
a vantage point from which he directs the opera­
tions of his Church. It is this same Holy Spirit who,
throughout the history of the Church to the present
moment, gives vitality and energy- to the Mystical
Body.
And now that we’ve spoken of the Holy Spirit,
we are ready to present a fourth dimension of the
treasure: the strange doctrine of the Trinity, which
presents the one God as a unity of three persons.

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I realize that this sort of language can seem

either hopelessly abstract or just incoherent, but it
actually speaks a truth that is of central and saving
significance. The Father sent his only Son into the
world, all the way to the limits of godforsakenness,
and then, in the Holy Spirit, he drew the Son back
to himself. But on that return journey, the Son
carried with him, at least in principle, all those he
had reached through his descent. We are saved
precisely because God opened himself up in a great
act of love, the Father and the Son gathering us
into the Holy Spirit. This outward manifestation
of G od’s love reflects, the Church teaches, an even
more primordial set of relationships within G od’s
own inner life. From all eternity, the Father speaks
the Son, who is a perfect image of the Father;
the Son and the Father look at one another and
they fall in love. The love that they breathe back
and forth is the Spiritus Sanctus, literally “the holy
breath.” Therefore, as G.K. Chesterton observed,
the Trinitarian doctrine is simply a technically
precise way of saying that God is love. In his very

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 Why Should II VStay?

unity, there is a play between lover (the Father),

beloved (the Son), and the love they share (the
Holy Spirit). Almost every religion and religious
philosophy would defend the proposition that God
loves or that love is one of G od’s attributes; but only
Christianity makes the odd claim that love is what
God is. The Church bears this truth to the world:
what is ultimately real is love. I cannot imagine a
more indispensable message, especially now.
The Christ-life that we have been describing
comes into us, the Church teaches, through the
sacraments, and this brings me to a fifth feature
of the treasure. Baptism, Confirmation, and the
Eucharist initiate us into the life; M arriage and
Holy Orders give that life missionary direction;
Confession and the Anointing of the Sick restore
the life when it has been lost. As necessary as lood
and drink are to the body', so are the sacraments for
the health of the soul. Now, Thomas Aquinas said
that, though all the sacraments contain the power
of Jesus, only the Eucharist contains Jesus himself.
W hen we consume the Eucharist, we are taking the

n
 L E T T E R TO .4 Sl'FFERl.VG CHL'RCH

whole Christ— body, blood, soul, and divinity—

into ourselves, becoming thereby conformed to
him in the most literal sense. Through this great
sacrament, we are Christified, eternalized, deified,
made ready for life on high with God. And as we
saw earlier, St. Augustine clarified that the validity
of the Eucharist is in no way compromised by the
immorality of the priest involved in its consecration.
Therefore, let me state it bluntly: the Eucharist is
the single most important reason for staying faithful
to the Church. You can’t find it anywhere else; and
no wickedness on the part of priests or bishops can
affect it.
Those who have put on Jesus Christ, who
have been divinized through the sacraments, who
have the Holy Spirit in them, who have become
conformed radically to the Trinitarian love are
called saints. The entire purpose of the Church is
to produce them, and they are a sixth dimension
of the treasure. Even as we look around and see
sickening corruption in the Church today, and
even as we look back at myriad examples of im-

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 Why Should We Stay?

morality on the part of ecclesial leaders, we must

never overlook the saints, who are present in every
age and are operative in the world now. They are
the lights shining in the gloom.
We remember St. Paul, who careered around
the world to announce the kingship ofjesus and who
wrote of his Lord in words of surpassing eloquence;
we think of Sts. Polycarp, Sebastian, Felicity,
Perpetua, Lucy, and Agnes, all of whom witnessed
to Christ with their lives; we recall St. Francis, the
troubadour of Lady Poverty, who revolutionized
medieval Europe by his reckless abandon to G od’s
providence; wc ruminate on St. Catherine of Siena,
who looked with mystical vision into heaven and
tended the wounds of the poorest here on earth; we
celebrate St. Francis Xavier, who crossed oceans
to proclaim the Gospel to those who had never
heard of Christ; we think of St. Francis de Sales,
who showed how the most ordinary things of life
can be sanctified; we reverence St. Peter Claver,
whose service to African captives coming to the
New World was so devoted that he was called

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 L E T T HR TO A SUFFERING CH IR CH

“the slave of the slaves”; we hold up St. Damien

of Molokai, who volunteered to care for lepers in
Hawaii, knowing that he would never leave their
island enclave alive; we consider St. Teresa of
Kolkata, who quit her ministry at a relatively pros­
perous school and walked into the worst slum in
the world in order to help the poorest of the poor;
and we remember Pope St.John Paul II, who as a
young man survived the outrages of both Nazism
and Communism and who, as pope, brought down
a wicked political system— not by leading armies
but by unleashing the power of the Gospel.
Among the saints we find the brilliant Thomas
Aquinas and the scholastically challenged Jean
Vianney; the wealthy Thomas More and the
abjectly poor Benedict Joseph Labre; the warrior
Joan of Arc and the pacifists Nereus and Achilleus;
the mystic John of the Cross and the social activist
Oscar Romero; King Louis IX and the humble
porter Andre Bessette; John Henry Newman, who
lived to be ninety, and Dominic Savio, who died
as a boy; Theresc of Lisieux, who spent her entire

76
 Why Should HVStay?

religious life in a tiny convent in an obscure town,

and Frances Xavier Cabrini, who crossed oceans
and continents; Ignatius of Loyola, who walked
only with difficulty, and Pier Giorgio Frassati, who
loved to climb mountains. The point is that each of
the saints, in his or her own utterly unique manner,
shows forth some aspect of G od’s beauty and
perfection. No one saint could ever exhaustively
express the infinite holiness of God; and therefore,
God makes saints the way he makes plants and
animals and stars: exuberantly, effervescentlv,
and with a preference for wild diversity. The one
thing, of course, that all the saints have in common
is that they are friends of Christ, and this is why
we, who are striving to deepen our own friendship
with the Lord, find such powerful fellowship with
them. Though we are separated from the saints
by culture, personality, and in some cases, oceans
of time, we are joined to them because we share
a best friend. This is a crucial reason why we stay
connected to the Church. Though there are, God
knows, lots and lots of people, even among the

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 L E T T E R TO A SUFFERING CHURCH

top leadership of the Church, who fall far short

of holiness, the saints remain as beacons, models,
companions on the way.
Just a w'eek or so before I composed these
words, a national poll showed that, in the wake
of the scandals, 37% of Catholics are seriously
considering leaving the Church. I understand the
frustration and the rage that lie behind this consid­
eration. But I also hope that this particular chapter
has made clear that I don’t think such a move
is warranted. In the end, we are not Catholics
because our leaders are flawless, but because we
find the claims of Catholicism both compelling and
beautiful. We are Catholics because the Church
speaks of the Trinitarian God whose very nature is
love; ofjesus the Lord, crucified and risen from the
dead; of the Holy Spirit, w-ho inspires the followers
of Christ up and down the ages; of the sacraments,
which convey the Christ-life to us; and of the saints,
who are our friends in the spiritual order. This is
the treasure; this is w'hy we stay.

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 C H A P T E R FIVE

The Way Forward

7
* he devil, with the cooperation of lots of
people inside the leadership of the Church,
has produced a masterpiece, and many,
many Catholics are naturally angry and even
tempted to give up on the operation. The Catholic
Church, it seems, is just too corrupt, too compro­
mised, too wicked and clueless. Yet the Sacred
Scriptures shed considerable light on the dynamics
that produced this very problem; the history of the
Church reveals that we have found ourselves, in
point of fact, in worse situations and have survived;
and the all too human vessels in which the grace
of Christ is found don’t finally obviate that grace.
If you can accept all of this, you are willing to
consider a way forward. Though you might still
feel a temptation to leave, you are persuaded that

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 L E T T E R TO A SUFFER ISO CHURCH

the better option is to stay and fight, especially on

behalf of the victims. In this final section, I would
like to explore this properly pugnacious path.
A first step, necessary but inadequate, is to
make serious institutional reforms. And I want to
speak clearly and positively here about what the
Church has already done in this regard. After
the first great outbreak of this tragedy in 2002,
the bishops of the United States gathered for their
annual spring assembly in Dallas. In the course of
that crucially important meeting, they hammered
out a series of protocols to govern the handling
of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. A simple
internet search will provide the C harter for the
Protection of Children and Young People in full
detail, but l want to highlight just a few' features
for our purposes. First, the bishops agreed to a
zero-tolerance policy regarding the sexual abuse
of minors. For decades. Church leadership had
seen such behavior as simply a sin that could be
dealt with through prayer, spiritual counseling, and
perhaps an extended retreat. Then, appreciating

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 The Way Forward

the unreliability of this approach, they adopted a

psychodynamic framework of interpretation and
concluded that therapy and other forms of psycho­
logical therapy would deal with the problem. To
be fair, many bishops in the seventies and eighties
reassigned offending priests after they had received
assurance from psychological counselors that
these men were fit for ministry. Within the context
of understanding in vogue at the time, these
decisions seemed defensible. But the whirlwind and
maelstrom o f2002 disclosed that no amount of such
therapy could definitively “solve” the problem of
sexual abuse. And therefore, “one strike and you’re
out” became, after Dallas, the policy. Relatedly,
any charge of sexual abuse of a minor that comes
to the Church’s attention must be reported, without
delay, to the relevant civil authorities.
A second key feature of the Dallas accords is
the insistence upon background checks, not only
for priests but for any employee of the Catholic
Church. Anyone with an incident of sexual abuse
on his or her record simply cannot minister in

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 L E T T E R TO A SL'EEER/.XG CHI RCH

any capacity within the structure of the Church.

When I was rector of Mundelein Seminary in
the Archdiocese of Chicago, I had the obligation
to preside over the admission process for all pro­
spective students. I can testify that criminal back­
ground checks, careful psychological screening,
and numerous interviews were de rigueur for every
candidate. When I became Auxiliary Bishop of
Los Angeles, I willingly submitted, within a few
days of my arrival in LA, to fingerprinting and an
updated background check.
A third element of the Dallas protocols is spe­
cialized training— again, for any and all people
who work for or minister within the Church— in
recognizing the signs of sexual abuse and in the
procedure for reporting the offense to the police.
A fourth requirement is one to which 1 would
like to draw particular attention. Any accusation
against a priest that is deemed credible results in
the immediate removal of that priest from ministry
and the engagement of a lay review board, which
has the responsibility of investigating the case and

84
 The Way Forward

making a recommendation to the relevant bishop

or archbishop. This involvement of lay people—
competent in law, psychology, criminal investiga­
tion, etc.— assures that clergy are not judged simply
by other clergy, who would perhaps be prejudiced
in favor of their brothers.
Finally, the compliance of each diocese or
archdiocese with these norms is guaranteed by
the oversight of a National Review Board— again,
largely composed of lay people— who perform
regular audits.
There is more that I could say about the Dallas
protocols, but these are the principal features. And
the plain truth is this: these institutional changes
have made a substantial difference. Numerous
careful studies have revealed that instances of
clergy sex abuse peaked in the 1960s and 1970s,
declining steadily thereafter, and precipitously
after 2002, so that now the reporting of new cases
is down to a trickle. I wouldn’t dream of denying or
underplaying the horrors reported in the Pennsyl­
vania Attorney General report already cited, but I

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 L E T T E R TO A SLT'FERI.XC C/IL RCH

would say that it is regrettable in the extreme that

even churchgoing Catholics tended to believe that
the terrible instances mentioned in that study were
recent cases. In point of fact, of the four hundred
or so crimes reported, precisely two occurred after
2002.
In the wake of the McCarrick outrage, a general
cry went up for similar regulations to govern the
reporting of abuse on the part of bishops. As I
write these words, the bishops of the United States
are refining protocols precisely of this nature, in­
stituting largely lay-led regional review boards to
receive and investigate accusations against bishops.
Once again, these institutional changes aren’t
going to solve the problem definitively, but they
will represent an enormously important step in
the right direction. I believe that another essential
move, if the Church is serious about preventing
McCarrick-like situations going forward, is to
launch a formal investigation, both on this side
of the Atlantic and in Rome, to determine how
someone like Theodore McCarrick, whose serious

86
 The Way Forward

misbehavior was well known, could possibly have

risen so high in the government of the Church.
But much more is needed than a tightening of
protocols, as crucial as that is. W hat is especially
needed is a deep and abiding spiritual reform.
And this ought to begin w'ith the priesthood. Can
anyone doubt at this point that there has been a
serious rot in the Catholic priesthood? Mind you,
Pm not blaming all of my brothers; Pm not saying
all priests are equally guilty; Pm not denying that
there are real saints and heroes in the ranks of
the priesthood. However, the scandals of the last
many decades—both the crimes themselves and
the cover-ups— disclose that something has gone
deeply wrong. That significant numbers of priests
felt insufficient moral restraint when it came to
physically, psychologically, and spiritually abusing
some of the most vulnerable members of their flocks
is simply unconscionable. And that a not inconsid­
erable number of bishops felt that it was permissible
to shuffle offending priests from parish to parish,
without even a word of warning to the people,

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 L E I TER TO A SUFFER fXO CHURCH

clearly putting children in acute danger, beggars

belief. Something in the moral compass of these
men was haywire. Attempts to explain the crisis by
noting that the percentage of abusers among priests
is roughly equivalent to the national average don’t
satisfy. Have we settled for a bar that low? When
it comes to moral and spiritual integrity, priests
are meant to be leaders, exemplars. Hewing to the
national average of sex abuse is hardly anything to
crow about.
Moreover, we have to look beyond the explicit
offenders and raise some serious questions about
the clerical culture that made this kind of abuse and
its cover-up possible. A moral relativism, especially
in regard to matters sexual, came to be taken for
granted in the years following the Second Vatican
Council, and this attitude was adopted by too many
within the priesthood itself. How many priests and
bishops saw what was happening but looked the
other way, convinced that it w;as not their business
to question the moral decision of a brother? O r how-
many priests and bishops simply lacked the courage

88
 The Way Forward

to engage in fraternal correction, especially if that

meant losing a friend? O r how many went even
further, overlooking or condoning these aberrant
sexual expressions because “Father has given up
so much”? O r how many priests and bishops acted
like David, striding on the roof of his palace and
ordering that Bathsheba come to them? Priests had
(and have) a good deal of power over their people,
and this power can be used for enormous good and
for enormous wickedness. W hat should have been
a liberating and life-giving authority became ma­
nipulative in the extreme. And how many bishops
and diocesan officials winked at sexual crimes,
persuaded that the Church had moved beyond an
obsession with sex?
Therefore, a renewal of the priesthood is imper­
ative. I don’t think for a moment that a change in its
essential structure or discipline is called for. In my
judgment, it is naive in the extreme to imagine that
allowing priests to marry or women to be priests
will greatly ameliorate this situation. The last time
I checked, all human beings arc fallen, and celibate

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 L E T T E R TO A SU FFERIM ! CHURCH

males do not have a monopoly on selfishness,

stupidity, and wickedness. Rather, what is needed
is a reinvigoration of the priesthood, a rededication
to its ideals. As Fulton Sheen said, the priest is not
his own, for he belongs to Jesus Christ. He acts in
the very person of the Lord, speaking his words
and drawing people into his power. Accordingly,
a priest must be devoted to Christ, conformed to
him at all levels of his being. His mind, his will, his
passions, his body, his private life, his public life,
and his friendships must all belong to the Lord.
Period. A priest whose central preoccupation is
money or pleasure or power or career advancement
or fame will, sooner or later, fall apart and wreak
havoc around him. The institutional reputation of
the Church must never become the supreme value
for any Church representative. The institution
serves the people of God, and if any one of the
people of God is in danger, action must be taken,
even if this means that the institution will suffer
embarrassment or financial loss.

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 The Way Forward

And the needed renewal must be broader still,

very much including lay men and women. In saying
this, I am by no means trying to exculpate priests
or to imply that everyone is equally to blame. But
priests do not arise from a vacuum. They come,
in the overwhelming majority of cases, from
Catholic families, and they are (or at least ought
to be) shaped by a Catholic culture. Therefore,
fellow Catholics, this scandal is our problem. All
of us Catholics ought to appreciate this painful
time, therefore, as an invitation to rediscover and
to deepen our own baptismal identity as priests,
prophets, and kings. Priests are those who are
committed, all the way down, to holiness of life;
prophets are those who have dedicated themselves
to proclaiming Christ to everybody; and kings are
those who are resolved to order the world, as far as
they can, to G od’s purposes. W hat does it say about
the priestly resolve of the baptized in this country
that 75% of us regularly stay away from Mass, that
prayer which Vatican II described as “the source

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 L E T T E R TO A SUFFERING CHURCH

and summit of the Christian life”? O r that the

numbers of those seeking Baptism, M arriage, and
Confirmation in the Church are trending dramat­
ically downwards? And what does it say about our
prophetic effectiveness that young people are aban­
doning our Church in droves? Obviously, the full
exploration of this complex phenomenon would
require another entire book, but suffice it to say that
we {and I do mean we) have been, rather obviously,
derelict in our obligation to proclaim Christ and
to make membership in his Church appealing to a
culture grown skeptical and secularist. And what
does it say about our effectiveness as kings when
our society seems, more and more, to run on purely
materialist and egotistic principles, and when poll
after poll reveals that, on the major moral issues
under discussion today, Catholics more or less track
with the secularist consensus?
The bottom line is this: if we want holier priests,
we all have to become holier ourselves. Cardinal
Francis George once characterized clericalism as
an attitude predicated upon the assumption that

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 The It'ii)' Forward

the link between Holy Orders and Baptism has

been severed. He was implying that priesthood, au­
thentically interpreted, is in service of the baptized
and not the prerogative of a privileged class. But
there is another way to understand his intuition—
namely, that the baptized are the community from
which priests come and from which they ought to
receive ongoing sustenance. A better and stronger
laity shapes a better and stronger (and less clerical­
ist) priesthood.

As the ancient Roman cultural order was col­

lapsing in the sixth century, a young man called
Benedict, as we saw, elected to absent himself from
the city of Rome where he had been studying and
to take up residence in a cave in the wilderness.
There he lived for three years, communing with
God and seeking perfection of life. In time, others
came to join him, and from this original band
there grew' the Benedictine Order. In the course of

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 L ET TE R TO A S7 'FEER I S C CHI ECU

centuries, the Benedictines effectively re-civilized

Europe, preserving what was best from the ancient
world and providing a framework, both economic
and spiritual, for the development of communities
and cities. In a moment of crisis both moral and
cultural, God inspired this man to lead a movement
of renewal.
In the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries,
the European clergy was marked by corruption,
laxity, and worldliness. Far too many bishops and
priests w-ere not liv ing in accord with their priestly-
promises, and far too many of the Benedictine
houses that once had brought the Gospel and civic
order to the community were now simply centers of
commerce and political power. From the little town
of Assisi in Umbria there came a simple man named
Francesco, who endeavored to live the Gospel in its
most radical form, embracing poverty, the lifestyle
of an itinerant preacher, and radical trust in G od’s
providence. To this odd troubadour of Christ came
dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of people,
eager to share his life. The Franciscan movement,

94
 The Way Forward

within a few decades, had established itself as a

reforming force all over the Christian West. O n
clear display was the familiar pattern of crisis and
renovation.
In the wake of the Protestant Reformation in
the sixteenth century', when Western Christianity
found itself bitterly divided and many were aban­
doning the classical Catholic faith, a young man
called Inigo de Loyola, like his spiritual forebear
Benedict, felt called to spend a considerable time in
a cave, purging himself of attachments and learning
to follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit. O n the
basis of that experience, Ignatius (he had Latinized
his name) composed a series of “exercises” designed
to help people discern the will of God in their
lives. Some who practiced these exercises formed a
family around Ignatius, and from that family grew
the Jesuit order, which spread with extraordinary
rapidity throughout the Catholic world and which
gave rise to an army of poets, missionaries, evange­
lists, and theologians, who addressed the spiritual
crisis of that moment.

95
 LETTER TO A SUFFER!VG CHURCH

After the French Revolution, when Europe was

in political turmoil and the faith under assault from
rationalizing and secularizing ideologies, a whole
coterie of orders and movements arose: the Oblates
of M ary Immaculate, the Congregation of Holy
Cross, the Society of Mary, and many others. Their
purpose was to preach, teach, and evangelize those
who had effectively forgotten their Catholicism.
So fruitful were these communities that many of
them sent missionaries to the far ends of the world.
Once again, suffering and corruption called forth
a response of the Spirit.
M any more tales with this theme could be told,
but the point is this: we find ourselves at one of
these decisive moments. Who can deny that a deep
and abiding corruption has invaded the Mystical
Body of Christ? Who is so blind not to see that the
pressing need of our time is a purification of the
Church? And therefore, who can fail to appreciate
that this is precisely the time for new orders, new
movements, new works of the Spirit! Whereas the
reforms that I have enumerated so far were largely

96
 The Waji Forward

clerical, I believe that our time calls for renewal

movements that will involve both priests and laity.
Perhaps Communion and Liberation, the Alliance
for Catholic Education (ACE) movement, Opus
Dei, L’Arche, Cursillo, and the Fellowship of
Catholic University Students (FOCUS) give some
indication of w'hat forms these could take. But
something new must come forth, something specif­
ically fitted to our time and designed to respond to
the particular corruption that currently besets us.
Above all, we need saints, marked by holiness of
course, but also by intelligence, an understanding
of the culture, and the willingness to try something
fresh. Somewhere in the Church right now is a new
Benedict, a new Francis, a new Ignatius, a new
Teresa of Kolkata, a new Dorothy Day. This is
your time!

97
 CONCLUSION

r know many Catholics are sorely tempted

7 just to give up on the Church, to join another

religious group, or perhaps to become one of
the religiously unaffiliated. But this is not the time
to leave; it is the time to stay and fight. If I may,
I’d like to make one more historical reference, this
one to a key moment in our political history. By
the 1850s, it had become unmistakably clear to
Abraham Lincoln that slavery was not only a moral
outrage but also an institution that posed a mortal
threat to American democracy. O ne can hear his
arguments along these lines in the great speeches
he gave while debating Stephen Douglas during
the 1858 Illinois senatorial campaign. But nowhere
was his case more pithily put than in his famous
address before the Illinois General Assembly just
after his nomination for the Senate. “A house

99
 L ET TE R TO A SUFFERlAG CHURCH

divided against itself cannot stand. I believe that

this government cannot endure permanently half­
slave and half-free.”
It was this conviction that led Lincoln,
upon becoming President in 1861, to accept and
prosecute a terrible war. Midway through that
conflict, while dedicating a cemetery for those who
died in its decisive battle, Lincoln explained why he
continued to fight: “Four score and seven years ago
our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new
nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal. Now we
are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether
that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so
dedicated, can long endure.” There were indeed
many people in the North who, appalled at the
losses on the battlefield and less than persuaded of
the utility of the war, were rancorously calling for
Lincoln to give up, to let the Confederacy have what
it wanted. But the President knew' that something
more than military victory or national pride w'as
at stake in the struggle; he knew that slavery con-

100
 Conclusion

stituted a rot upon American democracy, a disease

that undermined the principles of our founders.
Therefore, despite the pain, he had to fight.
I understand that it’s not a perfect analogy, but
I think it sheds at least some light on the present
situation in the Church. The sexual abuse of young
people by some priests and the countenancing of
that abuse by some bishops is more than a moral
problem; it is a rot, a disease, a threat to the great
principles of the Church that we hold dear. Yes,
an easy option is to cut and run, to give up on
the operation. But if you believe, as I do, in those
doctrines and practices and convictions that I
mentioned in the fourth section of this book, if you
think it is indispensable that the Mystical Body of
Jesus Christ abides as a light to the world, then take
the Lincoln option: stay and fight!
Fight by raising your voice in protest; fight by
writing a letter of complaint; fight by insisting that
protocols be followed; fight by reporting offenders;
fight by pursuing the guilty until they are punished;
fight by refusing to be mollified by pathetic excuses.

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 L E T TE R TO A SUFFERING CHURCH

But above all, fight by your very holiness of life;

fight by becoming the saint that God wants you to
be; fight by encouraging a decent young man to
become a priest; fight by doing a Holy Hour every
day for the sanctification of the Church; fight by
coming to Mass regularly; fight by evangelizing;
fight by doing the corporal and spiritual works
of mercy.
God is love, and he has won the victory through
the cross and resurrection of Jesus. Therefore, we
inhabit what is finally a divine comedy, and we
know that the followers ofjesus are on the winning
side. Perhaps the very best way to be a disciple of
Jesus right now is to stay and fight for his Church.

102
 PRAYER FOR A SU FFER IN G CHURCH

LordJesus Christ, throughyour Incarnationyou accepted

a human nature and lived a real, human life. Setting aside
the glory o f your divinity,you met usface toface in the
vulnerability of our humanity.

Though without sin, you accepted sinners, offering

forgiveness andplacingyourself before even the most
unworthy as a servant and afriend. You became small and
weak in the estimation of the powerful, so thatyou might
elevate to glory the small and weak of the world.

Your descent into our nature was not without risk, as

it exposedyou to the assaults o f the darkest and most
terrifying of humanity’sfallen desires— our cruelty and
narrowness, our deceptions and our denials. All this
culminated in the cross, whereyour divine love was met
with thefullfury of our malice, our violence, and our
estrangementfrom your grace.

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 L E T TE R TO A SUFFERING CHURCH

You offered,yourself to us with innocence and receptivity,

and this was met with the abuse o f your body humiliation
and mockery; betrayal and isolation, torture and death.
All this— even the dereliction offeeling abandoned by
God—you accepted. You became a victim, so that all those
victimized since the beginning o f the world would knowyou
as their advocate. You went into the darkness, so that all
those compelled into the dark by human wickedness would
discover inyou a radiant light.

Grant we pray 0 Lord, healingfor all victims o f sexual

abuse. Purityyour Church of corruption. Bringjustice
to those who have been wronged. Grant consolation to all
who are afflicted. Cast your light to banish the shadows of
deception. Manifest to allyour advocacy of those who have
been so cruelly hurt, andyourjudgment upon those who,
having perpetrated such crimes. remain unrepentant. Compel
those inyour Church whomyou have entrusted to safeguard
the innocent and act on behalf of the victims to be vigilant
and zealous in their duties. Restorefaith to thosefrom
whom it has been stolen, and hope to those who
have despaired.

104
 Prayer for a Suffering Church

Christ the Victim, we call out toyou!

Strengthenyourfaithful to accept the mission placed before
us, a mission o f holiness and truth. Inspire us to become
advocates o f those who have been harmed. Grant us strength
tofightforjustice. Impart to us courage so that we might
forthrightlyface the challenges to come. Raise up saintsfrom
your Church, and grant us the grace to become the saints
you desire us to be. This we ask o f you, who live and reign
with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God,
forever and ever.
Amen.

105
37% of Catholics are considering leaving the
Church due to the sexual abuse crisis ...

This book can help.

S u ffe r in g
If C hurch
A 6ISHOP 0N r K l
SCXIM L ABUSE

Order more copies of this book for your

friends, family, or parish, and access free
resources for discussing the sexual abuse
crisis, by visiting:

SufferingChurchBook.com
W h y S ta y C atholic w ith So M u c h Sca n d a l?

This book is a cry from the heart. I am a lifelong Catholic,

and I’ve been a priest for thirty-three years and a bishop for
four years. I have dedicated my life to the Church. The
sexual abuse scandal has been for me, for millions of other
Catholics, and especially for the victim-survivors, lacerating.

I have written this book lor my fellow Catholics who feel,

understandably, demoralized, scandalized, angry' beyond
words, and ready to quit.

What 1 finally urge my brothers and sisters in the Church to

do is to stay and fight—and to do so on behalf of themselves
and their families, but especially on behalf of those who have
suffered so grievously at the hands of wicked men.
FROM THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE

Bishop Robert Barton is the thunder of Word on

Fire Catholic Ministries and Auxiliary Bishop
for the Archdiocese of l» s Angeles.

Any and all profits from the sale of this lx>ok will
go to trusted chanties that support the victims of
sexual abuse. Ibr more information, please visit
SufT eringC hurchB ook.com .

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