24th Sunday Year C - Homily 3

Homily 3 - 2013

A friend was talking to me recently of two people, both of whom I respect. Though their faith in God remains intact, both have stopped practising as Catholics because they are disillusioned with past and current Church leadership around the issue of clerical sexual abuse.  They see a Church more concerned with damage control than with attention to victims. I don’t know – perhaps they tend to see the bishops more like Pharisees than like Jesus.

Against the background of that experience, I find today’s Gospel quite confronting.  What is Jesus like?  Pharisees criticised him because he welcomed sinners and ate with them.  Would Jesus be seen eating with clerical sexual abusers? Would he be seen eating with defensive, even perhaps pompous, bishops?   If he would, would his welcoming  be a kind of  “pretend” welcoming? or warm and sincere?  What is your first reaction to this Jesus?

There is joy in heaven over one sinner who repents.  That seems to imply that the sinner’s repentance is necessary before God rejoices.  That may be so – but today’s stories also make the point that God’s deep concern and involvement are not conditioned by any prior repentance.  Jesus ate with tax-collectors and sinners, presumably independently of any conversion on their part.

Can I comfortably belong to a Church that leaves room for them, and their contemporary equivalents? that leaves room for sexual abusers, and defensive and inadequate leaders?  Or would I feel compromised, and check out somewhere else?  Do I judge myself distinctly different, even a bit superior?

I think that forgiveness is something of a mystery.  It is certainly different from reconciliation.  Forgiveness is one-way; it flows from the innocent party to the offender.  Reconciliation is two-way; it requires repentance from the offender.  God offers forgiveness, calls to repentance and hopes for reconciliation.  God’s forgiveness, however, does nothing for the unrepentant unless they accept it, allow themselves to be empowered by it and begin to change.  Both forgiveness from the innocent one and repentance from the guilty are necessary for reconciliation to happen; and until repentance happens, reconciliation might even be dangerous or too destructive of a still-too-fragile innocent one.

Personally, I find myself in something of a bind.  I am painfully aware that there are many badly bruised, betrayed, and deeply-hurting people in our midst – some of them still coming to Church, many no longer doing so.  Though they are not the only ones, I have in mind primarily victims of clerical abuse and their families.  Most feel they have been overlooked, their stories not heard, their pain not appreciated, their eventual speaking out resented and their search for support and compensation resisted.  To talk only of forgiving perpetrators without talking even more of victims’ needs, without responding compassionately, and doing something practical to meet those needs, can be cruel.

Both are necessary.  Up until the recent past, and perhaps still, victims’ needs have gone largely unaddressed.  Right now, talk of forgiving perpetrators, at least in media circles, is hardly the flavour of the month.  But offenders will never be truly free until they repent; nor will victims be truly free until they forgive.  That is why God invites us to do both.

In the meantime, for the rest of us, Church, at any one time, will have its share of sinners not yet genuinely open to change but possibly wanting something, and hurting people struggling with forgiveness and sometimes unwilling or unable to.  If that is what the Church is like, do we feel too perfect to be at home in such a Church?

Just before we receive Communion today, we are invited to say together: Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof.  Say but the word, and my soul will be healed.  Today, let’s say it thoughtfully.