14th Sunday Year B - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2012

I watched 4-Corners last Monday night on the ABC.  It was on the subject of clerical sexual abuse in the 80s and 90s.  It highlighted the devastating effects on the victims particularly, but also on their families.  With the Parliamentary Enquiry soon to begin in Victoria, I presume we shall hear more of such things in the future.

How do you feel about it all?  Have you become more aware of the on-going, long term, destructive effects on the innocent victims, and the enormous heart-break of their parents and families?  Can you understand the depth of their hurt and the anger that they feel?  How does that affect you?  Do you feel protective of the Church? - defensive? Or, do you take it on the chin, trying to understand, perhaps, how it could ever have happened, and wondering if there's something you can do?  Do you ever think: "Where might God be in all this?"  Is the painful publicity, as well as being cause of genuine lamentation, also opportunity to learn? to grow?

Like today's Second Reading, for example – that paradoxical answer that Paul got to his prayer: He was convinced that Jesus said: My power is at its best in weakness.  Whatever Paul's unidentified weakness was, it was something real, something that distressed him.  Can God's power work in our only too obvious and distressful weakness?  Can God enable good to come out of evil?  And if so, how?

Paul's reaction was to boast of his weakness – which sounds a bit "over-the-top".  But at least it meant that he owned it, he wasn't paralysed by it, and somehow he probably learnt from it.  What can we learn from this on-going painful ordeal?  Pope Benedict's response so far has largely centred on two areas: Some years back he put legal measures in place to guide the responses of the bishops.  And he has clearly denounced the perpetrators, and described their behaviour as both sinful and pathological.

I recently read – skimmed through actually - an excellent book on this issue.  The author, Marie Keenan, is a very accomplished, professional therapist and researcher, intimately involved in the Irish abuse scene.  She made the comment a few times that the surprising thing was, not that so many clerics offended, but that so few did.  In her opinion, the way things were in the Irish Church, it was virtually inevitable that problems would occur.  She is one of the few researchers to have interviewed the offenders.  Interestingly, she said that they all started off their training as good men, deeply and honestly wanting to be good priests or religious.  The bishops involved were not mavericks, but conscientious, obedient to Rome, observant of Canon Law, and devoted to what they saw as the good of the Church for which they were responsible.  What then went wrong?

She believes that the Pope's response goes nowhere near far enough.  She found that the perpetrators were emotionally immature, compulsively perfectionistic, confused about and repressive of their sexuality and heavily into denial.  They were lonely men, struggling to live celibate lives without having the gift of celibacy, avoiding love rather than allowing it to blossom.  She does not excuse them, but seeks to understand what happened.

Like a lot of other priests and bishops, [and I inevitably include myself in this], they belonged to a clerical culture that gave them a certain prestige and power - but hardly called them to accountability, and offered little deep friendship and support.  She believes that seminary formation encourages cover-up – "Keep your nose clean and your head down, and you will get ordained" … that it skips too easily over the continuing challenge of psychological and moral development. … that it is oblivious to the difficulty of real dialogue so long as every sexual thought or action is regarded as a mortal sin.  The clerical culture kept women at a distance … and still has a very confused sense of clerical celibate masculinity.  The practical implications of obedience and loyalty are rarely discussed, nor are the tensions around confidentiality and trust.

My personal hope is that the current pressure on the Church will encourage us to look deeply and humbly not just at the appropriateness of our efforts to police acceptable behaviour, but to examine Church culture as a whole and to move forward in the direction of personal and systemic maturity.  I don't believe that that can happen unless laity and clergy work together.

We are not perfect, and never will be.  But God's strength is at its best in weakness.  God desires, as Paul wrote elsewhere, to make all things work together for the good of those who love him.