Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Catholics must confront scandal, not ignore it

In a recent Opinion post on USA Today's site, several contributors issued their opinion on Rod Dreher's OpEd piece entitled, How much is too much? where Dreher essentially admitted that his faith was so challenged by the entire ordeal that he left the Catholic church and has now become a member of the Eastern Orthodox church. This does not surprise me in the that there has been an exodus from the Catholic church in America due to these revelations of sexual abuse and scandal since 2001 when these revelations broke onto the public scene. What is surprising, however, is that Dreher has made a conscious decision not to report on any scandalous material in the EOC, something that I am sure cuts across the grain of his journalistic spirit.

These issues will no doubt be with us for a long time to come, and so they should. Church corruption, whether it be in Rome, Alexander, Springfield, or any number of small town churches throughout America and the world, will always be with us. Jesus, a devout Jew saw corruption in his day and confronted it vehemently. There was no stick your head in the sand and hope it goes away mentality. Jesus knew that faith was practiced by people and as such, it was subject to all the weaknesses and corruptions that humans are subject too.

One might rightly ask the question, if corruption exist in the upper echelons of power within these faiths, does it negate the entire faith as a fraud? Jesus was a Jew and I seem recall him confronting those making merchandise of worshipers right within the Temple complex, driving them out with a whip and the proclamation that his father's house should be a house of prayer, not merchandise. It was the High Priest and chief religious rulers that offered him up to Pilate, yet Jesus never renounced his Jewishness or the religion of his birth. Jesus is and will forever be known as a Jew. Even the apocryphal portrait of his return has him sitting down upon the throne of David in the city of Jerusalem; you can not get more Jewish than that!

This should tell us something about religion and the nature of those who adhere to them. We are not always the best examples or qualified to represent our faith to a world who desperately needs to believe in something. But, we can also take solace in the fact that sincerity outweighs imperfection every time. The Divine sees our hearts and there are example after example of where Jesus embraced those who were not doing things according to the book, so to speak, but whose hearts were contrite and pliable.

Yes, we must confront scandal where we find it. We can not turn a deaf ear to those who have been mistreated and despised by the very people they looked too for love and comfort. At the same time, however, we can't throw the baby out with the bath water. As Bonhoeffer said, there is a God shaped void in the soul of every man and our religious faith's-- with all their diversity and variety--serve to satisfy this irreducible need of mankind. Corruption is but a mere distraction from the real issues of personal fulfillment and satisfaction (this certainly is not making light of those recipients of abuse by any means).