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Recent Church Scandals - 'That Body has Wounds'

Over the weekend, our Pastor used his homily to preach on the most recent Catholic Church scandals involving child sexual abuse, and as this has been filling up news agencies, I wondered why I wasn't bothered by the whole thing.  Perhaps I should be, but in reflecting on his homily, I've discovered something I knew all along. 

As humans, we aren't perfect and never will be. 

Only God is perfect.  Only God can claim that.  We should seek out perpetrators and bring them to justice, but if it shakes our very nature, if the crimes shake our Faith, then we have placed our Faith in imperfect humans, who are prone to sin and fail us.

The Church is made up of humans.  We sin, we fail, we make big mistakes, small mistakes, all the reasons why Christ came as a man, lived and died for us.  Our Pastor said something that stuck with me: "We are all members of the Mystical Body of Christ, and that Body has wounds."

Now that's profound....and true.

This is said not to excuse the crimes, which are reprehensible, and to think on them, churns my stomach.  All this is said to remind us who we place our Faith in.  God is our rock, our strength, our unwavering Father.  How He must cringe to see His Church being racked with scandal. 

To a certain degree we must place trust in the leadership of our Church, just as we believe people can change for the better when they have made mistakes.  To simply give up on our Church means we believe change for the better is impossible.  And I refuse to believe that.

All things are possible with God, that I know.  And I speak from experience as a child victim myself of similar crimes.  It may take years and years of hard work to rebuild trust and faith in people and in institutions that may have betrayed us or those we assume will betray us.  We are forced into the difficult task of forgiveness.  And it's a big one to forgive, as those victimized will attest, these things stay with you for the rest of your life.  The betrayal of trust is just as difficult to forgive as the act itself, if not more so.  It's a cross to carry.

It becomes our cross to carry, even if we are just one of the many sitting in the pews on Sunday, never having experienced these types of betrayals.  It's a cross to admit, yes, we are Catholic, yes, our priests may have made big mistakes, .....we are all sinners, we fall, we fail, we hurt others.  What keeps us coming back is the fact that we can get up again.  We can be better.  We can change.  What keeps us coming back is a glimmer of Hope, sometimes the faintest thing to hang on to, but with that glimmer, we see God's help and grace.

The Saint is the sinner that keeps getting back up and tries again.  The Saint is the sinner that HOPES.
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