George Menezes

As someone who has been involved with the Catholic Church in India and with Christian movements in general I am deeply concerned at the widely spread sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic church and the resultant crisis in Europe and in the United States, slowly but surely affecting the Church in India and other parts of the world. We already have a couple of cases of erring priests about to be arrested in the United States being given shelter in India by their Bishops.

Watching the disturbing details of cover-ups by clergy — even those at the highest levels — unfold during Holy Week, of all times, I can’t decide whether to cry out in despair or be ever-so-slightly optimistic that real changes may result from this tragedy. Most days, I feel both.

Tears come easily when I think of the abuse and the horrifying realization that some within the church clearly believe that protecting priests is more important than safeguarding children. When I think of Jesus suffering during Holy Week, it is the broken bodies of children, betrayed by their own religious leaders, that come to mind. They bear the crosses of the church’s abuses of power.

That said, I also weep because this latest sex scandal adds to our distrust of religious leadership in general and keeps us from remembering all the good work the Roman Catholic church does for the poor, hungry, and homeless, and has done for many decades. I am personally indebted to countless nuns and priests I’ve encountered over the years, who patiently taught me what it means to “stand with the least of these.”

Here I would like to quote extensively from a mail I’ve received from a very enlightened Protestant and President of a well-known seminary known for its commitment to progressive theology.

He talks about the great Roman Catholics of recent times. Thomas Merton and his outspoken protest of the Vietnam war. Dorothy Day and the Catholic worker movement that began during the depths of the Great Depression and which continues today to give care and comfort to the forsaken

He talks about the Catholic bishops who stood side by side with Caesar Chávez in his fight for justice among the farm workers in California. He remembers Archbishop Oscar Romero in the struggles of San Salvador for which he paid with his life. He applauds passionately the wonderful work done by priests, nuns and committed Catholic laypeople in the blighted neighborhoods across America (which are totally ignored by the State) who offered hope to the nearly hopeless through soup kitchens, schools and community centers.

For such people including women who are unjustly banned from priesthood that sorely needs them… the importance of justice making always exceeds the importance of collars and confessions, .he says.

Tragedies come and go; issues like labor and immigration burn bright in the public consciousness for a time and then are forgotten. Long after the rest of the world has moved on, however, often enough the Catholic Church alone continues to affirm economic justice, offer a moral critique of capitalism, and, most importantly, insist that a radical love of the powerless and marginalized is the truest form of faith.

All this, he says, at makes these latest reports of priests molesting children — and getting away with it — that much more upsetting. Will the faithful work done by so many Catholics be overshadowed by a church hierarchy that goes on the defensive when questioned about cover-ups and complicity? I pray this will not be the case. I also pray that the church might change for the better as a result of these terrible discoveries. And I pray, too, for the deep, ongoing grief — indeed, belly-wrenching lamentation — suffered by so many everyday Catholics who feel betrayed by their own leadership.

What more can I add to this wonderful opinion from a Protestant. I am terribly distressed and I feel I am drowning helplessly in a cesspool together with the Catholic Church which I have loved and for which I have, despite moments of anger and sadness and dissent, contributed the little that I could,

In the parish as a Councillor , as President of Bombay’s Council of the St Vincent de Paul Society, as National President of the All India Catholic Union, as a member for five years of the Pontifical Council for the laity and as a member of the Asian Bishop’s Think Tank,

More than that, the tons of articles I have written and the many protests I have led in defense of the Catholic Church.

In all this I’m also slightly relieved to think that we may finally have come to the end of the line. How much higher up can a scandal go, after all, than implicating those standing at the very top? And, I breathe a bit easier in anticipation that a chastening bright light may be about to shine into previously impenetrable realms of the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

I am a also completely conscious that power corrupts everybody. Disregard for public accountability is dangerous, in any form. It is not only in politics that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. No church is immune. No person is.

The Catholicism I cherish — and the Catholicism that the world so desperately needs — is one that models an unguarded honesty about human failing, a gentleness of spirit that welcomes criticism, and a determination to hold all people, no matter their station, accountable for their actions.

This is the lesson of Holy Week, and it is one that Christians all — bishops, popes, and pew-sitters alike — would do well to consider carefully in the days ahead.

Finally, if the Holy Father is un-accountable, are we going to arrest the Holy Spirit ?