Vacation is a wonderful time…to think. Vacation is an awful time…to think. I like to take time to think and usually during the busy schedule of ministry the “amount of thinking” I get done isn’t what I would like as the doing of ministry outweighs the thinking about ministry. Please don’t think that I solely think about ministry but I truly spend most of my time thinking about God and how many blessings and joys He places into my life on a daily basis…but there are also those times when my thinking about God and all the wonders also forces me to confront the evil and sin of the world.
I have been thinking, reading and praying about the unfolding scandal of the ugly sin of abuse that is engulfing our Catholic Church with former “Cardinal” Theodore McCarrick and the implications it has on the leadership of our Church. I will share with you below a few articles and links from priests, bishops and lay women and men who will write much more eloquently and with greater knowledge than I would be able to do. For me, it is even difficult to read because when you love someone so much, and I am talking about Jesus and his Holy Catholic Church, it is painful and heartrending to read and contemplate the implications of what this all means. It is especially difficult because in many ways, I and all of us, must answer the question: What can we do?
Because it is not as this is a new problem. Growing up Catholic the reality of saints is in the very air we breath. We learn about St. Paul, St. Peter early on and then we find the great saints and teachers like Leo the Great and Gregory the Great as leaders of the Church. We also hear about the reformers like St. Catherine of Sienna, St. Benedict, St. Theresa of Avila or St. Francis of Assisi who call the Church back to order. We don’t really dwell too much on what they are reforming or teaching against. And it is not as if we don’t see and hear about it even in popular culture. When I first read Alexandre Dumas’s novel “The Three Musketeers” in high school I was confronted with the corrupt Cardinal Richelieu that I could put off as just a convenient plot device or later in college when I picked up Dante’s “The Divine Comedy” and found in the first part on Hell, “The Inferno” how many of the named characters were Popes, Cardinals, Bishops and Priests. The didn’t seem to be real because of the fictional nature of the novel or the removal in time and history. And yet, they were very real. And of course, in Sacred Scripture, both in the Old Testament (see Jeremiah 23:1 and Ezekiel 34:2) and New Testament (see Matthew 26:31 and Mark 14:27) we are warned about shepherds who use their flocks for personal gain and destroy them because of rapacious appetites. So, should we be surprised…on a practical level, maybe not but on a hope filled level…of course we should be. Our Christian witness calls us to see others in the light of our faith in Jesus Christ.
So we get back to the initial question: What can we do?
The answers are not new nor are the fashionable…because we might take St. Catherine of Sienna as our model today…first she lived a life of penance and prayer. She recognized the sins of her time, even though they were not her sins, and chose through penance and prayer to be an example of holiness to those around her. Second, she spoke forcefully about the need for Jesus Christ at the center of life for the leaders of the Church, including the Pope, and the call to holiness against the scandals and worldliness of the leaders. Lastly she gave herself fully to Jesus Christ. The need for holy women religious is vital for the life of the Church and their example and call to holiness of the priests within the Catholic Church. I know my relationship with the Eucharistic Missionaries of the Most Holy Trinity (MESST) during my 13 years as an ordained priest has challenged me to greater holiness through their example of faithful obedience to the call serve God.
What can we do? Pray and live a holy life. Pray for the holiness of your priests. Pray for and encourage vocations for holy young men and women to follow the call to the priesthood and consecrated religious life.
God Bless
Fr. Mark

Catholic Bishops statement http://www.usccb.org/news/2018/18-136.cfm

Pia de Solenni https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/column/with-mccarrick-timing-is-everything-3931

Ralph Martin http://www.renewalministries.net/wordpress/dear-troubled-catholics-a-letter-from-ralph-martin-about-the-current-crisis/

Fr. Dwight Longenecker http://www.patheos.com/blogs/standingonmyhead/2018/07/the-collusion-and-confusion-of-catholic-bishops.html