This quote from Ephesians 4:26 was put on my heart this evening as I finished up my therapy session. I am experiencing a wave of anger the likes of which I’ve never before known. This scripture popping into my head was like God telling me “Good! You’re angry! Now go do something about it it.”
And so I begin:
The current sex abuse scandal in the Church is just the tip of the iceberg. It is simply visible evidence of the fact that for too long the Catholic Church has been infested with abusers, narcissists, crooks, and power-hungry knaves and villains of every possible description. They prey on the sheep, the good people of God, who (more often than not) trust their spiritual leaders implicitly and with a sense of reverence which is passed down from generation to generation. And the hierarchy of the Catholic Church encourages this blind and reverent trust.
Why? Why is this blind trust so encouraged? Because the hierarchy of the Church is running a corrupt Good Old Boys’ Club… and they know it.
And this makes me angry.
My Holy Mother Church is being gang-raped by the very men who should be protecting Her.
And this makes me furious.
For nigh on two millennia, the shepherds of Christ’s flock have largely not only been turning a blind eye to the wolves who attack the most vulnerable sheep -usually children and women, but not exclusively so- but those same shepherds have also become wolves themselves and have feasted on their God-given charges.
And this has got to stop. NOW!
The sexual, spiritual, psychological, and emotional abuse of the People of God by the ministers and clerics of His Church is tearing at Christ’s Heart. It is a festering wound which had its beginning in the earliest centuries of the Church: the Council or Synod of Elvira early in the fourth century AD addressed sexual sins of clerics which had been so much of a problem in the first three centuries that it was at least in part the motivation for calling that council. And yet, since then, the problem, the stench, the rot has only gotten worse.
Can we still pretend that this is a new or modern problem? Can we still trust that the hierarchy of the Catholic Church will police itself? Can we still believe this two-millennia-old issue will be resolved successfully by priests and bishops holding themselves accountable and disciplining each other?
No. We can’t.
It is high time for the laity to rise up and clean house.