NO PRESUMPTION of innocence but an instant assignment of guilt.
That, for simply being a priest.
Hence, the aggrieved husband filing charges of adultery and unjust vexation against his wife and her supposed lover, the priest, has readily branded the latter with the scarlet letter across his very forehead.
And the whole clergy is indicted, the Church scourged anew. The fixity of our intellectual habits pre-ordaining hasty generalizations out of even the most isolated specifics.
I stop here. Hard as I tried for the past several days to write something rationally substantial on the issue, I could not. Leading me to accept some superior force damming the flow of my thoughts to my netbook.
So what is there to do in this instance but to read and quote here previous texts finding relevance to this current issue.
Thus, John Paul II’s initial statement on what were horrifyingly called then wolves in sheep’s clothing that strayed into the Church to prey on the innocents:
As priests we are personally and profoundly afflicted by the sins of some of our brothers who have betrayed the grace of ordination in succumbing even to the most grievous forms of the mysterium iniquitatis at work in the world.
Grave scandal is caused, with the result that a dark shadow of suspicion is cast over all the other fine priests who perform their ministry with honesty and integrity and often with heroic self-sacrifice.
As the Church shows her concern for the victims and strives to respond in truth and justice to each of these painful situations, all of us…are called to embrace the mysterium Crucis and to commit ourselves more fully to the search for holiness.”
The mystery of the Cross ever triumphant, as total antidote to the mystery of evil. In hoc signo vinces. So have we forgotten?
In his open letter to seminarians issued on October 18, 2010 to mark the close of the special Year for Priests that ended in June, Benedict XVI wrote:
Recently we have seen with great dismay that some priests disfigured their ministry by sexually abusing children and young people.
Instead of guiding people to greater human maturity and setting them an example, their abusive behavior caused great damage for which we feel profound shame and regret.
Yet even the most reprehensible abuse cannot discredit the priestly mission which remains great and pure.
So still, clerical iniquities notwithstanding, I hold the priesthood in the highest esteem. Keeping the belief sown in my seminary years that “a priest is the greatest gift of God to men, as well as the greatest gift of men to God.”
So shall I always offer them that prayer composed by the John Joseph Cardinal Carberry, the late Archbishop of St. Louis:
Keep them; I pray Thee, dearest Lord.
Keep them, for they are Thine
The priests whose lives burn out before
Thy consecrated shrine.
Keep them, for they are in the world,
Though from the world apart.
When earthly pleasures tempt, allure —
Shelter them in Thy heart.
Keep them and comfort them in hours
Of loneliness and pain,
When all their life of sacrifice
For souls seems but in vain.
Keep them and remember, Lord,
they have no one but Thee.
Yet, they have only human hearts,
With human frailty.
Keep them as spotless as the Host,
That daily they caress;
Their every thought and word and deed,
Deign, dearest Lord, to bless.
AMEN.
