Rejoice! Your Light Has Come!

I keep hearing faithful Catholics speaking about how depressing it is with each new revelation of sordid activities by corrupt clerics and episcopal dereliction of duty. Not me. I've been depressed about the state of the Church in the United States and the West in general for almost 20 years.

My reaction to the current troubles is "finally!" "At last!" The crud that has accumulated in the so called "American Church" is finally being mucked out, and it is being done by none other than God Himself. Everyone who has ever worked for the Church for any length of time has known about these things for years and felt helpless to do anything about them.

You can feel that things are not as they should be, but it is shrouded in secrecy. Some of secrecy is necessary. But nobody with any sense of awareness in the Church can say they didn't know there was a "Lavender Underground" in the seminaries, and in some clerical cliques. Or that certain members of the clergy were molesting children. (John Geoghan was my parish priest when I was a kid and I knew he was screwy when I was 14 years old.)

You couldn't not know, but you seldom knew enough to really make a case. My attitude has always been to at least let the bishop know when I got wind of something and whether he chose to act or not it was on his head. And now we see a lot of things crashing down on their heads.

Cardinal Law is a friend of mine, but alas, he suffers for American Bishops Syndrome; that inexplicable condition of apparent paralysis when it comes to addressing wrongdoing within the Church.

The scandal and tragedy is not that pedophililia and the molestation of teenage boys by priests has come to light, but that it has been going on for at least 50 years. God only knows how much further back than that it goes. The unchecked sin is the tragedy, and, as always, unchecked sin leads to disaster. And as always with sin, the innocent suffer.

When you see clergy actively watering down Church teachings, especially Church teaching on sexual morality you have to wonder at some point, "Why are they doing that?" The so-called "American Church" stopped preaching "reform your lives" and started preaching "water down the rules!"

Watering down the rules is impossible - the rules are written into the core of nature and the human heart. Should anyone really be surprised that ghastly sex scandals break out when a deliberate movement to dilute Church teachings on human sexuality has taken place for 40 years by so-called "liberal" priests and nuns? Especially when good solid orthodox priests were persecuted by their brethren?

And why, when someone comes along, like a prophet of old, defending those teachings, showing they are right and true and should be upheld, they get hammered, and must be gotten rid of by any means necessary-like the prophets of old. Dissident clergy can stick the knife in your back with one hand and preach social justice on the other, preaching the need for labor unions on one hand while forcing lay employees out of their livelihood for the sin of orthodoxy.

Everyone dislikes legalistic rigidity, but as a college student once said to me, "I don't want them to lower the bar to 80 percent because then I might reach 60. I'd rather the bar be set at 100 percent because then I might reach 80." My young friend hit upon a profound truth of human nature when he said this to me in 1986. Someone who lowers the bar and dilutes moral truths doesn't love you.

I am not an "American Catholic" who thinks 2000 years of pastoral wisdom and experience must conform to the anti-ethos of the modern world. I am a Roman Catholic who is an American. I am not ashamed of the Gospel. I am not ashamed of the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church which come to us from the Apostles, who got them from Jesus who breathed His Spirit into them, and promised that Spirit would guide them in the way of all truth and protect them from all error when teaching on faith and morals in union with the Successor of Peter.

I am proud of my Church for her teachings on contraception. I am proud of my Church for her teachings on abortion. I am proud of my Church's teachings on sexual morality, because it gives us something to live up to, not a pit to fall into. I am proud of my Church's teaching on homosexuality, not because I "hate" or "fear" people but because there is more to a person than their sexual attractions. I am proud of my Church's discipline of a celibate priesthood, because it says there's more to life than sex. I'm proud of my Church's teachings on the male-only priesthood, because priesthood is not the road to "empowerment" but to humility and service; something it's good to see men give their lives to these days.

We stand on the brink of the long prophesied New Springtime where Christ says to His Bride the Church, "Come my love, my Dove, my faithful one, the night is passing, see, your light has come."

John Mallon is contributing editor to Inside the Vatican magazine and an editorial consultant and contributor to The Daily Oklahoman editorial page. Read more about John here!