"The summit drew mixed reacations."
"The summit drew mixed reacations."
This Ash Wednesday, we are once again called to mind our sins and ask for God’s forgiveness. It ushers in the season of Lent to commemorate Christ’s passion and death on the cross. It is the season of prayer, fasting and asking for forgiveness for the many times that we deliberately and intentionally transgressed God’s commands and obstinately refused to follow God’s will and perfect plan for us.
Ash Wednesday is especially significant and thought-provoking this year. Finally, after years of trying to cover up and evade the issue, the Roman Catholic Church during the pontificate of Francis has finally owned up to its accountability for the horrific sexual depredations committed by the clergy around the globe. No continent—Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, and North America—has been spared from this plague. The Philippines is no exception. We will have our day of reckoning too. In my view, this is likely to happen after the presidency of Duterte who has no credibility on the issue given his political statements against the Catholic Church.
It’s about time, though, to face the child sex abuse and related to it the behavior of priest and church leaders to all persons in vulnerable situations such as religious nuns, lay workers, and students of Catholic schools. As a Catholic who loves the Church and will defend it always, I believe this is a welcome development.
The Church has a long history of mishandling clergy sex abuse cases—by covering it up or playing down these cases to protect the erring priests and the institution. The perpetrators can be found across the entire hierarchy of the Catholic Church—from the lowly parish priest in a remote village up to the highest cardinal. Cardinal Geoge Pell, a close advisor of the pope and other cardinals close to popes before him (Cardinal Theodore McCarrick), has been accused and found guilty (Pell’s case is still under appeal while McCarrick has already been tied and found guilty by a Vatican tribunal) of such wrongdoing. Many others have been accused of covering up child abuse within the Church, actions that are also very reprehensible and has caused immense suffering to victims and their families.
The shameful scandals committed against the young by their supposed shepherds have compelled the highest authorities of the Catholic Church to go into a long and careful soul searching and look for ways to protect the young and exact accountability from the guilty. As a result of the mounting pressure from the numerous victims, civil authorities and the Catholics themselves, Pope Francis called on all the bishops for a four-day sexual abuse summit, officially called the Meeting on the Protection of Minors in the Church that ran from 21 to 24 February 2019.
On the first day of the summit, Francis said, “The holy people of God are watching and expect not just simple and obvious condemnations, but efficient and concrete measures to be established. He called on the participants to come up with concrete actions and not just words.
The Cardinals called for accountability and transparency. Our very own Cardinal Chito Tagle opened the summit with the elephant in the room question: “Our lack of response to the suffering of victims, even to the point of rejecting them and covering up the scandal to protect perpetrators and the institution, has injured our people, leaving a deep wound in our relationship with those we are sent to serve.” Cardinal Blase Cupich called for transparent legal procedures on how to report and investigate those accused of abuse and those negligent in handling abuse cases. During the summit, German Cardinal Reinhard Marx made a shocking revelation, admitting that the Catholic Church destroyed files that documented sexual abuse of children.
The four-day summit ended with a speech by Pope Francis that condemned the abuses by clergy but cautioned against being too extreme in response to the crisis. He called the Abusers “tools of Satan” and characterized such criminal behavior as “utterly incompatible with [the church’s] moral authority and ethical credibility.” However, he also cautioned the church about falling into the extreme of “justicialism.”
The summit drew mixed reactions with some praising the positive steps taken while others including many among the abuse victims criticizing the summit as not being comprehensive and concrete enough. In the next few weeks, for my Lenten columns, I will summarize some of the speeches and discussions during the summit. This is a good season to do this for it is a time of conversion and that includes ourselves as individuals but also of our social institutions. The Church is not excluded from that call for conversion.
I end with and make mine the final words of Pope Francis in his opening address during the summit:
“Allow me now to offer a heartfelt word of thanks to all those priests and consecrated persons who serve the Lord faithfully and totally, and who feel themselves dishonored and discredited by the shameful conduct of some of their confreres. All of us—the Church, consecrated persons, the People of God, and even God himself—bear the effects of their infidelity. In the name of the whole Church, I thank the vast majority of priests who are not only faithful to their celibacy, but spend themselves in a ministry today made even more difficult by the scandals of few (but always too many) of their confreres. I also thank the faithful who are well aware of the goodness of their pastors and who continue to pray for them and to support them.
Finally, I would like to stress the important need to turn this evil into an opportunity for purification. Let us look to the example of Edith Stein—Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross—with the certainty that “in the darkest night, the greatest prophets and saints rise up. Still, the life-giving stream of the mystical life remains invisible. Surely, the decisive events of history of the world have been essentially influenced by souls about whom the history books remain silent. And those souls that we must thank for the decisive events in our personal lives is something that we will know only on that day when all that which is hidden will be brought to light.” The holy, faithful People of God, in its daily silence, in many forms and ways continues to demonstrate and attest with “stubborn” hope that the Lord never abandons but sustains the constant and, in so many cases, painful devotion of his children. The holy and patient, faithful People of God, borne up and enlivened by the Holy Spirit, is the best face of the prophetic Church which puts her Lord at the centre in daily giving of herself. It will be precisely this holy People of God to liberate us from the plague of clericalism, which is the fertile ground for all these disgraces.
The best results and the most effective resolution that we can offer to the victims, to the People of Holy Mother Church and to the entire world, are the commitment to personal and collective conversion, the humility of learning, listening, assisting and protecting the most vulnerable.”
A humbled church is good. That can lead to conversion. Likewise, there is no grace greater than acknowledging one’s sinfulness. Conversion comes also to a humbled person. This Lent, I pray for such humiliation for the Church and for myself, and for all Christians serious in their faith.”
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