21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

          In light of the message from Bishop Zinkula that I read just before Mass and all of the news that has been swirling around the Church these past few weeks regarding the ongoing clergy sexual abuse scandal, I feel like I can’t not address this.  I can’t simply pretend that this is not happening and just focus on happier things.  It also occurred to me in a conversation with a student this past week that is a very fresh wound for most of our students.  Our students, by and large, were too young to remember when as a Church we went through all of this some sixteen years ago, when in 2002 “the first domino fell” with the breaking of the scandal in Boston.  These latest reports also hit home for me more personally, as now Archbishop McCarrick ordained me a transitional deacon my last year of seminary along with twenty or so of my classmates from various dioceses throughout the United States in 2003.  At the time he was still, of course, a much respected churchman, the Cardinal Archbishop of Washington, D.C. and, ironically, one of the most vocal supporters of a “zero tolerance” policy within the Church when it came to the sexual abuse of minors.  And so, I hope you will understand if I take some time today to talk about this.

          But I want to couch this, if I can, in terms of the readings for this Sunday.  In the Gospel that we just heard proclaimed, the conclusion of the “Bread of Life Discourse,” we heard that at the end of Jesus’ preaching in the synagogue at Capernaum many who were listening said, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?” And many “returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.”  They walked away from Jesus.  Now, of course, didn’t walk way because Jesus or any of the Twelve had done anything wrong or committed any scandalous crime, though they were certainly shocked by his words.  Nonetheless they turned away.

I think many in the Church are struggling right now.  Many have already turned away, some a long time ago, and now there may be little (if any) chance of them ever returning.  For many, what is happening right now, or more precisely what has happened largely in the past and is once again coming to light, is simply more than they can bear.  Perhaps some of you feel this way.  For some, this is the “last nail” in the “coffin” of the Catholic Church, or Christianity or perhaps religion all together – saying effectively that “if this is how people who claim to believe in God act, then count me out.” 

I will share a phrase with you that over the years has been very helpful to me, especially in my own study of Church history and of times that, as hard as it may be to believe, were in many ways much worse – much more scandalous – than what we are presently enduring.  The phrase is this:   Don’t leave Jesus because of Judas.  In other words, there will be, as there has been since “day one,” those who fail to live up to the teachings of Jesus, that literally betray him, but this doesn’t mean that Jesus isn’t who he says he is or what he came to do and to teach us isn’t true.  If anything, this is the time to cling all the more to Christ, to seek his mercy and to devote ourselves more fervently to living as he lived and taught.

I would even extend this phrase – “Don’t leave Jesus because of Judas” – a little further to say, “Don’t leave Peter because of Judas either.”  What do I mean?  Peter, though he often put his foot in his mouth and even denied our Lord three times in his hour of greatest need, is nonetheless the one to whom Jesus said, “You are Peter, and upon my this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.  I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.  Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”  Peter is, in a sense, the first representative of what many (usually pejoratively) refer to as the “institutional church.”  But as many evils as have occurred within the “institutional church” over the centuries and even in more recent decades, there is something in this “institution” worth keeping, and so, to use another more familiar phrase, we should not “throw the baby out with the bath water.”  We should not say that there should be no pope, no bishops, or no priests, because there have been bad popes, bad bishops and bad priests.  We should not conclude that there should be no Church because the members and even the leaders of the Church have not always acted according to their own professed ideals.  And let’s not forget that we have benefited from the so-called “institutional church.” 

This university is a part of the “institutional church.”  In 1881 a new diocese, the Diocese of Davenport, was created by Pope Leo XIII and a bishop was appointed to lead that diocese, Bishop John McMullen (for whom McMullen hall is named). In 1882 Bishop McMullen decided he wanted to found a school in this new diocese and name it after the St. Ambrose of Milan, and here we are today.  And let’s not forget that the very university system itself emerged from the “structures” of the Church in the Middle Ages, in the cathedral and monastic schools of that era.  As one popular Catholic speaker once put it, “The Catholic Church has fed more people, clothed more people, educated more people than any other institution in the history of the world,” hands down.  It takes a lot of organization, a lot of structure to do that.  I don’t mean to come off as overly defensive, especially in light of these horrific crimes and sins against God and his children in these days, but before we condemn too far the “structures” or “institution” of the Church, we should at least be mindful of how they have benefitted us and, indeed, the world.  

To use the image of the “body,” the “Body of Christ,” the Church, is sick.  There is a malignant cancer in this “body.”  But now is the time seek healing, to do everything in our power to remove the cancer and make sure it never returns.  It is not the time to give up on the patient.  Or to use the image of the family, the “family of God,” the Church, is hurting right now, and from wounds caused by her own members, but now is not the time to abandon the family.  Rather, this is the time for us to rally as a family, to heal our family, to save our family.

And so, when I think of the all of the news in the past weeks about the scandals with the Church, I come back to that last, beautiful exchange that we heard in the Gospel today.  With a broken heart, Jesus watches as many of his followers turn and walk away, and then he turns to his closest friends, the Twelve, and asks them, “Do you also want leave?”  To which Peter, in one of his rarer moments of brilliance replies, “Master, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”  That is how we can go on as a Church.   On a personal note, that is why as a priest I have absolutely no reservations in dedicating my life to the Church.

When this scandal was originally busting wide open in the early 2000’s I was still in seminary.  And many of us who were studying for the priesthood at the time were asked, “Do you want to leave the seminary because of this?  Does this make you not want to be a priest?”  To a man, at least among my peers, our response was “no.”  If anything, we wanted all the more to be priests after the heart of Jesus, to be the priests that so many of our brothers should have been and were not.

And so, is the beginning of the end for the Church?  I don’t think so.  I am reminded of that story of Napoleon Bonaparte who threatened a Cardinal in the Vatican that he would “destroy the Church.”  To which the Cardinal replied, “Your majesty, [the clergy] have done our best to destroy the Church for the last 1,800 years.  We have not succeeded, and neither will you.”

So, no I don’t think this is the end at all for Church.  I don’t know exactly what will happen in the weeks, months and years to come, but I think it at least has the potential to be very purifying for the Church.  But in this time of uncertainty, in this time of anger and confusion (and for good reason), “far be it from us to forsake” the Lord or even to forsake the Church that needs us now more than ever.  I invite you to join me in these next weeks and month, as Pope Francis in his recent letter has urged us, in more intentional fasting and prayer in reparation for these sins and for the healing of the Church.  May we never forget, but may we learn and grow from this to become more the Church, more the Body of Christ, more the family of God that we are called to be.