About 25 years ago, a friend and I discovered a blues singer, Chris Smither, performing in a college town bar. One of his songs has been playing in the background of my mind for sometime. The song is entitled, “The Devil’s Real,” and the first line of the refrain is, “The devil ain’t a legend, the devil’s real.” If we really need proof that there is a devil – a personal, intelligent force of evil – we need look no further than the scandal of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
Bishop Robert Barron, of Los Angeles, has written a book that will soon be released entitled, Letter to a Suffering Church: A Bishop Speaks on the Sexual Abuse Crisis, and I was lucky to receive an advance copy. The first chapter, “The Devil’s Masterpiece,” make this point, “...the storm of wickedness that has compromised the work of the Church in every way and that has left countless lives in ruins is just too ingenious to have been the result of impersonal forces alone or merely human contrivance” (p. 3). He strong believes that the scandal has been designed by Satan to corrode the credibility of the Catholic Church and its acts of charity. This does not mean that human beings bear no responsibility; Satan is essentially powerless until he finds men and women who will cooperate with him. Sadly, there are too many people who give in to Satan’s suggestions, insinuations, seductions and temptations.
The damage has been on a scale that is almost impossible to comprehend. The easiest measurement is the conservative estimate that the Catholic Church in the USA has paid out $4 billion in sexual abuse settlements. Just think of all the good that could have been done with that money: the parishes, schools, universities, and hospitals that could have been built and funded, or the number of children that could have been educated, the number of homeless who could have been given a decent place to live, or the number of hungry mouths that could have been feed.
Yet the monetary cost is nothing in comparison to the hurt and alienation that so many Catholics are feeling. Each child abused causes a ripple effect that touches their families, friends, parish, and communities.
The fact that this evil was perpetuated by priests makes it even more profoundly awful. According to Catholic theology, priests are not merely ministers and preachers – they are sacred figures, configured in persona Christi, to act in the person of Christ. For many Catholics, a smile, a word of consolation and encouragement from a priest was seen as coming from Christ Jesus Himself. Tragically, this is also true when a priest becomes abusive; the victim fells violated by God.
Bishop Barron goes into more details, and his experiences as a bishop listening to people when he is at Confirmations and other church functions. People tell him that they are ashamed to admit in public that they are Catholics. They are hurt and angry, and because they fundamentally believe in the Church they feel terribly betrayed. Certainly the scandal has contributed to the growing number of “nones,” those who claim no religious belief at all.
Bishop Barron concludes his opening chapter by noting that many Catholics are asking themselves, “Why should I stay?” While this is understandable, like Bishop Barron, I do not think that this is the time to leave, but rather the time to stay and fight. Over the next few weeks I plan to summarize Bishop Barron’s path to move forward, a path that looks at what light Scripture sheds on our current situation, how we have been here before in Church history and have survived, and how despite the scandal, everything we love in the Church is still present and worth defending.
Jesus told us that the gates of hell would not prevail against his Church. The devil might beat us up some, and win some battles, but Christ has won the war. Jesus will be with us always, until the end of time. We must always be people of hope.