Category: Uncategorized

Good Friday

by His wounds

I didn’t pick a word of the year for 2023. I can’t really call it a tradition yet, just something I did two years in a row at the behest of a friend. And while I scoffed at the idea originally, it was meaningful in the end. So I really did try to think of one for this year, but nothing stuck. Yet as Lent draws to a close, I think I’ve found it, the word of the year: wounds.

One of the reasons I was opposed to the idea of a word-of-the-year is that it seemed like a goal-setting mechanism, and that’s really not my style. Goals are anxiety-inducing, just threats of failure looming in the distance. I tend to do better with a day-by-day go of things, so I can go to sleep taking note of little victories and examining little failures. But the word-of-the-year is more like a sacramental, a mode through which Christ speaks to me. The year my seventh baby was born, the word was healing, and that year would reveal a path of healing I couldn’t have anticipated. The next year it was receptivity, and soon I was listening to the heartbreaks of my children, which set us on a road of discernment to relocating, something I couldn’t have imagined. And this year wounds have been the mode through which I’m learning to know myself, and this Lent, a mode through which Christ is revealing Himself.

Listening to Him through wounds has been very challenging. For a while, all I could hear was self-loathing, neglect, and despair. It cast a shadow over everything in my life. At times I thought I could retreat again, push it all back into the shadows and manage like I have for the past many years, but once a leviathan like that has been unleashed, it’s out. It will have its reckoning. All I could do was surrender to the time it would take to process and heal. In the meantime, facing the ugly and walking around with open wounds has been exhausting.

My reckoning with God has taken time, but has left me with significant moments of revelation. It was during the 33 days of consecration to Jesus through Mary that I first realized how distorted my view of Father-God was. It was at the confession-of-my-life where the priest opened that pandora’s box for good and allowed me room to express anger at God. He explained suffering to me in a way that I could understand, and inserted Christ as a light of hope into my darker memories. On my way to daily Mass a year ago, I suddenly was given an image of the Trinity with the words, “Everything I [Christ] am, God is. He has given me everything”. And just in the short time I’ve been in counseling, I feel like I’ve been able to organize feelings into right places, redirecting the anger I had towards God.

What has become increasingly clear over Lent is how well God knows me. That probably sounds silly– of course He does as my Creator. But I think there’s always been a self-protective front between myself and Him. There were parts I hid from Him, not completely on purpose. But He always knew what was there in the deep and waited for the right moment in my life to face those dark depths with me. And He hasn’t left my side.

At times Mass has been difficult, sometimes impossible to sit through. But a source of strength is the wounded, crucified, naked Christ on the cross lifted up for all to see. He leads the way in vulnerability, exposure, and suffering. This is what turned the heart of the thief on the cross. The thief shows us how to approach Good Friday: “He sees a Cross and adores a Throne; he sees a condemned Man, and invokes a King”*. Sometimes we want to turn this around and believe that Christ’s divinity made suffering beautiful, and Christ’s salvific work made the cross easy and light. But suffering is still terrible, the cross is still the way of death. But we’re no longer alone; our pain is seen and experienced by the Creator of the cosmos. We are on a cross beside Him, tempted to curse the day we were born, but strengthened by His fortitude in suffering and the look of love in His eyes as He suffers alongside us.

If I can know myself better through my wounds, and I can know Christ better through His wounds, then I have to believe that the only way to understand others better is through their wounds. It’s hard to watch others suffer, and I think sometimes out of our discomfort we try to fix it, fill the void with platitudes, and sometimes pretend it doesn’t exist. But here lies one of the beautiful mysteries about not just Good Friday, but Christ’s entire mission on earth: he dresses the wounds of others—both physical and spiritual—and is wounded Himself for all to see. There is no hurt unknown to Him, no wound too terrible to mend, no cry of the heart that escapes Him. It’s not simple, nor is it easy. It’s tiring and exhausting, requires a heroic amount of courage and patience. But He is all of that on the cross for us, showing us the way, ever before us.

*From The Seven Last Words, Fulton J. Sheen

Holy Thursday

navigating the priesthood post-2002

It’s Holy Thursday, the day we remember the last meal Jesus shared with His disciples. We remember that it was on this night that Jesus instituted the Eucharist, our shared meal of His Body and Blood.

It’s Holy Thursday, the day we remember that it was at the Last Supper when Jesus instituted the priesthood, by modeling a self-sacrificial life of service as He washed the disciples’ feet.

It’s Holy Thursday, and years of sexual abuse by clergy in the dioceses of Baltimore has been exposed. It’s all over the news. And God be praised it’s out. The only way to expel evil is to bring it to the light.

I wanted to write about the priesthood today, specifically how fortunate I have been to know priests striving to model Christ, struggling to be holier, humble in their office. I was going to write about scandals, Church wounds, and healing. And this news from Baltimore doesn’t change that, but makes it all the more necessary.

I came into the Church in the Archdiocese of Portland, Oregon in 2001, and the very next year in 2002, years of clerical sexual abuse and cover-ups were exposed. Bankruptcy soon followed. On the opposite coast in Boston, the same thing was happening, though on a much larger scale. We would move there in 2011 and see for ourselves the fallout: closed parishes, abandoned churches, diocese reorganization. The diocese of Seattle where we lived for a time had also gone through its own slew of scandals.

In all three of these archdioceses post-scandals, there were extensive steps required to volunteer, including background checks and training. When my husband worked as a youth coordinator at our parish, the background checks were actually useful in determining who could volunteer and who could not, and in one case just the mention of a background check scared away a probable offender. All these precautions are no guarantee, and how can we laypeople trust that necessary reform is happening in the seminaries? Sadly, there will still be predatory laypeople, monastics, and clergy, just as there are predatory coaches, teachers, and ministers (though predatory clergy is especially heinous). But I do believe the precautions have slimmed down chances, and hopefully prepared laypeople to watch for signs and suspicious behavior.

However. Oh, damn that however.

I am still shocked to see a lack of outrage and urgency in areas of the Church, both among laypeople and clergy. I am, right now, living in an area near a Catholic institution that refuses honesty and transparency about accusations against its beloved priests and brothers. I feel like I’ve stepped back in time, as though 2002 never happened, as though the Dallas Charter* was never created, as though scandal after scandal hasn’t rocked the Catholic Church.

As though they are untouchable.

It’s strange to have just moved from the Archdiocese of Portland, where reform is in active motion. When people hear “Portland” they think of the news from Covid lockdowns of rioting in the streets, the out-of-control homeless population, and liberal politics. Portland is so much more than that, and one of its treasures is the clergy. They aren’t all perfect (several years ago a Portland priest fled the country before he could be charged with criminal activity), and I’m sure there’s much I don’t know, but the priests I have known are joyful, struggling pilgrims. They’re openly struggling with holiness, openly asking for prayers, and preaching with humility. I think one of the reasons these priests are so obviously hungry for holiness is their shepherd, Archbishop Alexander Sample. One priest said to me once that as a priest, it’s easier to want to be a better priest when you have a bishop like Sample leading the way.

Not long before we moved away, some of my priest-friends had mentioned that during the Covid shut-downs of public spaces, including churches, Sample had been worry-laden. He had a conversion of sorts, realized wounds in his own spirit, and after seeking counsel and healing, his eyes were opened to the probable wounds of his priests, the men under his care. How could they offer Christ’s healing to the people of Portland when they themselves were so deeply wounded?

In a conversation I had with Bishop Sample before we moved away, he told me about how St. Therese had given him a sign that she was watching over his priests. He renewed his devotion to her, and entrusted his priests to her care. Then he began to do the work, making himself more available to his priests and having them attend retreats and seek counseling if needed. Wounds and healing became a part of the priests’ vocabulary in Confession.

It was an exciting time in the Portland archdiocese, and I was sad to move away from it, and even more sad to move to a place that lacks transparency, honesty, and humility when it comes to the abuse that has already been reported and actively suppressed. Take a clue from Portland. Confess. Repent. Heal.

It’s Holy Thursday, the day we spend our last moments with Christ before he is abandoned, condemned, and crucified. I will be thinking about the latest reports of abuse in Maryland; I pray the victims, and those affected by association, and the archdiocese can begin to heal. We all take the wounds of this crisis on ourselves, the Body of Christ, battered and bloody. Let it be crucified. And I hope the Archdiocese of Baltimore will rise with Christ and offer healing to its wounded members, as is happening elsewhere in the Church at this moment.

*The Dallas Charter is a comprehensive set of procedures originally established by the USCCB in June 2002 for addressing allegations of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy. Read more about it HERE.

Want to pray for priests? Try This prayer by St. Therese of Lisieux.

Want to listen to a fascinating, heart-breaking, enlightening podcast about the abuse crisis in the Church? Check out some fine research, analylsis, and hope moving forward with the Crisis podcast.

Want to hear the story of a survivor? Check out Faith Hakesley.

Gaude, Gaude; Pivot, Pivot

Usually, St. Nicholas’s feast day is a big deal in our home. Usually, we open stockings before breakfast. Usually, these stockings have the traditional chocolate coins, clementines, maybe a small gift or two, and a striped candy cane. Usually, we feast on a supper of Greek roast, mashed potatoes, and broiled vegetables. Usually, we enjoy delicious gingerbread for dessert. Usually, we read The Miracle of St. Nicholas, and I do the voices. Usually, it’s magical.

But this year was different.

This year, for the first time, I have three teenagers in away-school, as opposed to home-school. Sure, they come home every night, but they’re tired and people-saturated, and after a quick debriefing, they retreat and complete homework. They’re also in band and theater and board game club and sports and they have a peer group that appropriately takes up a lot of their social energy. AND they have to GO TO SCHOOL on the feast of St. Nicholas.

With younger children still at home– and it’s already been hard for them to adjust to a quieter house with their siblings away– I refused to let these Advent feasts pass by. We had a family meeting, we rearranged expectations, we set the date for our St. Nicholas celebration this weekend. I shall not be moved! Family feasting shall prevail!

But… (sigh)

I forgot that three of my children were going to birthday parties, and one had closing night of the high school play which was followed by a cast party, and inevitably, we ate Greek roast and gingerbread in shifts. Lame.

But… (sigh)

I asked for this. My teenagers were depressed a year ago, desperately wanting more of a community, hungry for peer affirmation, bored with home-schooling. And around this time last year, I started pleading with God to do something: make me ready to do whatever I need to do to help them through these difficult years, open my ears, move mountains, part waters, heal their wounded hearts.

Remember that scene in Friends when they’re moving the new couch up a flight of narrow stairs and Ross keeps shouting, “PIVOT! PIVOT!” That is the secret sauce to parenting that no one ever tells you. You never arrive. You never do it perfectly. People change, times change, communities change, and so we PIVOT-PIVOT. And sometimes that damn couch is never going to get through the narrow stairway. I think in this new age of parenting I’m going to have to let go of a lot of traditions or expectations I hold onto which I love in exchange for something that looks different but might just be better.

It happens to be Gaudete weekend, the third weekend of Advent, the rose candle, the we’re-almost-there-so-rejoice Sunday. This St. Nicholas feast wasn’t quite what I wanted it to be, but damn, I’m so happy. My kids are busy! Dudes, they are going to birthday parties! In an alternate version of my life, I could have easily resented today with all its driving around and having all of us in different places, but my kids are feasting socially with wonderful peers. They are becoming more confident in who they are through performance and music and sports and peer affirmation. I am rejoicing.

totus tuus: Act of Consecration

The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a mighty Savior; He will rejoice over you with gladness, And renew you in his love.

Zephaniah 3:17

“And now you belong to Mary.”

Father said this after praying a special blessing over me after Mass today, along with my dear friend who renewed her act of consecration. He said it matter-of-factly, and that was that. Now I belong to Mary, 18 years to the day after my baptism on the Feast of the Visitation, 2001.

St. Louis de Montfort suggests having specific intentions with the consecration. There were a few pointed things that came to mind immediately, but mostly I wanted to simply be comfortable with the idea of belonging to Mary. I wanted to understand why and how Christians for hundreds of years—particularly saints I love and admire, like St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Faustina, St. Maximilian Kolbe, Pope St. John Paul II—have grown closer to Jesus through Mary. At the end of this 33-day period, I can truly say that at this moment I feel no hesitation, no discomfort in saying I belong to Mary.

In fact, it makes me pretty happy. I belong to Mary.

There are small suggested daily practices intended to aid prayer and reflection in this new consecrated stage of life. St. Louis de Montfort suggests wearing something as a reminder that all you are belongs to Jesus. I’ve been in the habit of wearing a scapular for several years, on and off, but I’m thinking I need something I can’t take off or hide… another tattoo might be in order…

But what a blessed day this is, the Feast of the Visitation. It hearkens back to the Ark of the Covenant and heralds the world’s redemption, a shared joy and revelation through the Holy Spirit between two holy women. I feel really lucky that this is the day I get to celebrate my own baptism, and now, in addition, the consecration.

I am yours, and all that I have is yours, O most loving Jesus, through Mary, your most holy Mother.

St. Louis de Montfort, True Devotion

totus tuus: day 33

The Virgin of Nazareth became the first “witness” to this saving love of the Father, and she also wishes to remain its humble handmaid always and everywhere.

Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater

I’ve been wanting to write for several days, but the only thing I’ve eked out has been some partially coherent dribbling in my journal. This final week of the 33-day consecration to Jesus through Mary, which is called “Knowledge of Jesus”, has been more intense in a way. I think I was hoping to write in order to ease the interior tension I could feel building, even though I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly. Today, the Gospel reading opened the floodgates. From the gospel of John, Mary Magdalene is in the garden weeping after finding the tomb empty, and Jesus calls her by her name. I started weeping—good, solid, necessary tears.

I mentioned this before, but these 33 days of consecration have been very different from what I anticipated. I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting—maybe more of an interior desert, something really difficult, trudging through spiritual mud, getting to Confession with a good, rich, long list of previously unearthed sins… or something like that—and that’s how I would ultimately grow closer to God, by becoming a more pure version of myself, someone more amenable, attractive—someone more lovable.

But it wasn’t like that. It went much deeper than that. I ended up wrestling with one of the most basic truths of following Christ, a primal matter of faith: I am a child of God and He loves me—not because I have done or will do things right, but because I was created by Him and baptized as His own.

That sounds so simple, but integral to the Christian life. After all, how can I fully surrender to Someone of whose love I’m ultimately uncertain?

I really thought I had that down. I mean, I grew up singing “Jesus Loves Me”, and as a child had memorized, “Behold what manner of love the Father has given unto us, that we should be called children of God” (I John 3:1). But maybe there was a sense as a child, and even as a young adult, that I would ultimately become a better person one day, and maybe I would know that by all the amazing missions God would call me to and sufferings He would ask of me. And when the going got tough, and I realized how challenging living a virtuous life could be, I grew discouraged… or something like that. Whatever it was, I don’t think I’ve believed—fully, with all that entails—that God actually does love me unconditionally.

It makes complete sense that this Truth would become clearer and stronger by growing closer to Jesus through Mary. Mary, as daughter of God, spouse of the Holy Spirit, and mother to Our Lord, has experienced the love of God thoroughly and received it humbly. She didn’t just withstand the cross to receive the crown—all of it was a gift to her because she truly embraced God’s love and will for her, first as daughter and handmaid.

On my refrigerator, I have a quote from Love Alone is Credible by Hans Urs von Balthasar, which reads:

Faith is ordered primarily to the inconceivability of God’s love… Love alone is credible; nothing else can be believed, and nothing else ought to be believed… The way God, the lover, sees us is in fact the way we are in reality- for God this is the absolute and irrevocable truth.

This really struck me when I first read it, only a couple months ago. If it had made such an impression on me then, it must have pierced a weak spot. I wouldn’t have known that it would also be a central theme during the consecration.  

Mary’s faith, which we Christians admire so greatly, was complete trust in the inconceivability of God’s love. She believed that she was the person God saw her to be. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been able to say, “Let it be done unto me according to thy word,” at the annunciation. She would have responded like Moses—“Send someone else, Lord”—or like Peter—“Depart from me Lord, I am a sinner”. She had no vanity; it did not occur to her that God may have made a mistake. She trusted Him, and this is why her cousin Elizabeth said to her, “Blessed is she who has believed.”

Reflecting on all of this is what made me realize that I don’t trust fully in the inconceivability of God’s love for me. It still seems inconceivable a lot of the time. One prayer that I have often prayed throughout my adult life is, Help me Lord to see you as you are, not just what I want you to be. But I’m realizing I also need to pray that God helps me to see myself as He sees me—like the father and the prodigal son, or Jesus with Mary Magdalene in the garden.

totus tuus: knowledge of Mary

knowledge through beauty

Mary and I have a troubled history. By Mary, I mean the Blessed Mother, Queen of Heaven, Theotokos. Maybe you know her simply as Mary from the Gospels, which is how I first knew her.

As a child, I remember the Nativity set that came out every Christmas—the carved, wooden pieces booby-trapped on that angel-hair decorative down that would delicately slit your finger, as though to say, “Do not touch these—they’re from Bethlehem!” That’s the only time of year I really thought of Mary, or any of the other figures—Joseph, the shepherds, wisemen, and Christ as a child. The whole Nativity scene was a thing of beauty, peace, and calm; thus Mary remained in my mind, a lifeless figure, but very beautiful and peaceful.

As an older, little girl, I wanted to be her in the Christmas play, partly because she was the only girl (if you weren’t Mary, you had to be a cross-dressing shepherd). But I think I also wanted to play her because she was the ideal ingénue: a young, beautiful small-town girl gets her fortune turned around and becomes the star of the story, looking beautiful in blue and oddly luminous post-labor at the cradle. You could say that as a little girl, around Christmas and only then, I was drawn to what I perceived to be a kind of girlish, whimsical charm in Mary.

I thought of her a little more around the age of 13 and 14 since it’s believed she gave birth to Jesus around that age, which was difficult for me to comprehend in the midst of my early teenage angst. I had recently become a member of the Quaker church and I was ready to take my faith seriously. I loved Jesus and wanted to commit myself to Him in a powerful way (“missionary in Africa” was how I interpreted that). I thought of Mary briefly in context of my own desire to be thought of as remarkable in God’s eyes, so remarkable as to be given a great commission. But as far as the person of Mary, the Gospels were the only place I could encounter her; I strove to become the Biblical scholar all we young church-goers were encouraged to be, so it didn’t escape my notice that post-Nativity story, Mary all but vanished from the Gospels.

Somehow, and I don’t know how this happens, I absorbed the anti-Mary-ness of my Protestant tradition. It wasn’t as though I heard a sermon against Mary; it’s just that she was never talked about, while other exemplary followers of God—Abraham, Moses, David, the prophets—were talked about at length.

Many converts from Protestantism have had the same experience and shared similar stories; mine is unoriginal in that way. Let it suffice to say, Mary was little more than a nativity figurine, or felt character on the board in a Sunday school room; her silence rendered her dumb, her absence rendered her unimportant.

Then she quietly showed up when I was 16 years old. I had just started dating a Catholic. He wasn’t really practicing his faith at the time, but was offended when I nonchalantly referred to how he wasn’t really a Christian, and worshiped Mary. (I guess I hadn’t quite mastered the subtlety of evangelization.) It wasn’t that he said or did anything that convinced me otherwise (at least, at that time), but the very fact that I knew a Catholic forced me to re-examine my perception.

That summer, I went on a tour of the Iberian Peninsula with my grandparents. The final aim of this tour was to meet up with old friends in Valencia for a week; the weeks preceding were for sheer pleasure and education. This was my first experience with cathedrals: Madrid, Segovia, Toledo, oh the cathedrals! And religious art… There’s a lot of stories there, but the main drive of this little story is our first stop in Portugal: Fátima.

I knew nothing of Fátima. Before we got off the tour bus, our tour guide gave us a brief history of how, in 1917, three shepherd children had claimed to see Mary, and that she allegedly appeared on the 13th of every month for five consecutive months and gave the children three secrets, the last of which had not yet been revealed (in 1998). This last bit was said like we were in a late-night crime show, “… had not yet been revealed…”. “But,” the tour guide added with relish, “many speculate that the third secret tells of the fall of the Catholic Church.” The fall of the Catholic Church? Let’s go see this place! No, I wasn’t that enthusiastic, but I was definitely intrigued.

There was a part of me that wanted it to be true—not the destruction of the Catholic Church—but that Mary had appeared there. I loved the mystery of God. As a Quaker, I had been taught to pray contemplatively. I had tasted the power of God in prayer; I had sensed Him intimately, in a way that I could not explain. I knew inexplicable mystery was possible.

But via Maria?

It was a beautiful afternoon; it was pleasantly warm, the sun reflected off of the bright stone and marble, and the sky was blue. It was a very peaceful place, this Fátima. I walked the grounds and observed the penitent: one man was walking on his knees towards the church. I was in awe. My grandmother’s voice behind me broke the mood as she quietly said, “It’s so sad Catholics think they need this.” I was aggravated by her words, but I wasn’t sure why. I knew I should technically have agreed with her. But there was something greater happening, something I knew I didn’t quite understand. I walked the long path towards the church in prayer. Instead of closing my heart to the foreignness of that place, I opened it.

I spent a good chunk of time in the gift shop, oddly enough, and snapping photos of elderly Portuguese women dressed in black, carrying their purses on their heads. As the tour guide hailed everyone back to the bus, I was pressed with this sudden urge to run into the chapel. I ran as fast as I could and squeezed through the crowds just to get one glimpse inside, then I ran back to the bus. I didn’t get to see much because of the crowds. But
Fátima is one of the most distinct memories I have of that month-long trip.

I was still a long way off from becoming Catholic, and an even longer way from making my peace with Mary and her role in the Church, but it was a worthwhile introduction, one that gave me pause, and very Marian: one of contemplation, peace, and beauty.

in response to the present crisis

Earlier this week, ironically on the feast of the Chair of St. Peter, I started leafing through a new thread of news about the scandals in the Church, and the anti-abuse summit. Reading through it all renewed the anger, sorrow, and desperation I feel for the Church right now. There are lots of ways to respond to all of this, and like everybody, I think I’ve gone through them all in my head.

I hear and see people leaving the Church. Some of them are victims, and Lord have mercy, I wouldn’t dare begrudge that; I can only plead with God for healing. But my assumption for the others is that they are fed up, feel they can’t trust the Church anymore, and are generally disgusted because it is full of sinners and hypocrites. I understand this, but…

Yes, the Church is made up of sinners. Here’s the deal: growing up Protestant in the United States, I knew there was corruption in the Catholic Church. But it made all the difference to realize that the Church herself was not corrupt, rather many of its members are corrupted by sin. If there are butchers, bakers, and candle-stick makers in hell, then there are priests, bishops and popes. We’re all sinners, dependent on the grace of Jesus Christ, working out our salvation with fear and trembling. We fail, we go to Confession, we resolve to do better with the help of God’s grace.

Yes, there are hypocrites in the Church. I heard someone tell my mother once that they didn’t go to church because of all the hypocrites there, and my mother, who has a clever retort for everything (which I LOVE about her), replied, “Then you better not go grocery shopping anymore. Because there’s hypocrites there too!” There are hypocrites everywhere. Should we hold our clergy to a higher standard? Possibly. Does it hurt more when we see them fallen? Of course it does, because we look to them to shepherd us. However, they are human and will fall, and we might even see them do it.

Every time I hear about another sexual abuse case, I want to go on a castration rampage (though to be fair, women are perpetrators as well). As recent reports suggest, pedophilia is not just a canker in the Church. I grew up in the relatively small Quaker church and even I knew kids who had been abused by their youth pastors. When I was a high school student, there was a teacher who had an illicit homosexual relationship with a student. She was moved districts. We found out later, she had been moved from another district previously for doing the same thing. Schools move pedophiles around, the Church moves pedophiles around: STOP DOING THAT. The protection of minors is a universal issue that needs to be addressed by the entire human race. Is it worse when a priest commits such a heinous act? Yes, absolutely. Because, again, we look to them as our shepherds. The Church should be the one to lead the way in protecting our most vulnerable.

I also hear and see Catholics (including myself at times) picking a scapegoat to blame (i.e. clericalism, Vatican II, homosexuality, celibacy, etc.). I understand that intense desire to put the scarlet letter on someone or something and get rid of it. But I don’t think it’s going to be that simple. What I see happening with the pick-a-scapegoat-faction of Catholics is an “us vs. them” mentality that worries me. This kind of thinking often leads to spiritual pride. I think this is a temptation to overlook the root causes. If you start the blame-game, before long you’re running in a circle.

Yes, clericalism is to blame: clergyman abused their office. There was clearly a lack of accountability, and a fear of reporting on the part of the victims because the perpetrator in many cases was not just a family confidant, but claimed to be a representative of Christ. But why is the abuse happening in the first place? Many Catholics claim homosexuality is to blame, but I think a more accurate target would be sexuality in general. We’re seeing the consequences of sexual gluttony, and that doesn’t just pop up overnight. Sick, sexual addiction builds over time. I believe some of these men became priests with good intentions, but their sinful inclinations were not only unchecked, but were encouraged and fostered. The biggest failure were the loopholes which allowed perpetrators to live like kings in their “empire of dirt”.

There is yet another choice, another way to respond to this exposé of sin and betrayal of trust, and that is to continue on as before, but with renewed vigor in Catholic life in hopes of revitalizing the Church from the inside out.

I truly believe there are things we ordinary people can do to help the Church—and that is to focus on our own spiritual growth and the spiritual nurturing of our families and parishes. One of the focuses of Vatican II was to instill in the laity the need to grow in holiness. We can faithfully practice the teachings of the Catholic Church, especially the teachings on sexuality. We can love our priests and pray for them. We can hold our priests and bishops accountable.

We can be faithful to the Church’s teachings on sexuality, within marriage or the single life. The Catholic Church’s teachings and standards of sexuality are challenging and difficult for all of us; they are also good and true. It is particularly difficult now in our society when the message of self-gratifying sex is absolutely everywhere, where pornography is rampant, where one is encouraged to “scratch your itch”, whatever that may be; that pursuing your sexual desires is discovering the “true you.” Clergy have been riddled with the same soul-penetrating bullets we all have. It’s no coincidence that at the same time sexual impurity among the clergy is coming to light, marriage as a vocation is also in a state of crisis within the Church. While we call out the clergy’s sexual sin, we also need to address our own, and make sure we remain faithful to the Church’s teachings. And the Church is not just a purity brigade—the “theology of the body” is multi-faceted and rich, beautiful and enlightening—it’s just good stuff. But the more entrenched our society becomes in sexual gluttony that’s mislabeled as sexual freedom, the more at risk all of us will be of heinous crimes.

I have been really blessed in my years as a Catholic to know awesome priests. But they are human and will fall, just like the rest of us. I recently heard a priest say, “A man goes into seminary, what do you think, the devil falls asleep?” We have to pray for our priests and seminarians. St. Therese of Liseiux had a vision once of how sinful a certain priest was; it was made known to her how in danger the soul of this particular priest was, which inspired her to re-double her prayers for clergy. We don’t need private visions today—it’s all over the news. We need to pray for them.  

The way of mercy includes calling out shit when it’s shit. It is a good thing all of this terrible, rotten awful-ness is coming to light. It’s been festering long enough, stinking to high-Heaven before we all knew about it. We can hold our bishops accountable and still respect their office as our shepherds. I don’t know exactly what this would look like, but I do know that admonishing the sinner is an act of mercy. We can’t be afraid to admonish a sinner even if that is a clergyman.

In the end, as much as I love the priests in my acquaintance, I know I didn’t become Catholic because of the holiness of the clergy. I became Catholic because it is Truth. I became Catholic because I wanted to be as close to Jesus Christ as I could here on earth, and I receive that gift in the Holy Eucharist. I need the Church—I need her Sacraments, her tradition, anchored with the promise from Christ himself that the gates of hell would not prevail against it. The Church will go the way of her Lord, and I will go with her; there is no resurrection without the crucifixion. The Church is not characterized by the evil men and women that are within it, nor is she characterized by her saints—she is who she is because of Christ himself. He established her, He sustains her, He will see her through.

{St. Therese’s Prayer for Priests}

O Jesus, I pray for your faithful and fervent priests;
for your unfaithful and tepid priests;
for your priests laboring at home or abroad in distant mission fields;
for your tempted priests;
for your lonely and desolate priests;
for your young priests;
for your dying priests;
for the souls of your priests in Purgatory.

But above all, I recommend to you the priests dearest to me:
the priest who baptized me;
the priests who’ve absolved me from my sins;
the priests at whose Masses I’ve assisted and who’ve given me Your Body and Blood in Holy Communion;
the priests who’ve taught and instructed me;
all the priests to whom I am indebted in any other way, especially ____

O Jesus, keep them all close to your heart,
and bless them abundantly in time and in eternity. Amen.