An interesting question

Mark Silk of the Religion News Service asks an interesting question about the sexual abuse scandals that have hit Penn State and the Catholic Church. What if the Catholic Church responded to its sexual abuse scandal the way Penn State officials responded to theirs?

Imagine an alternate universe where the Catholic Church behaved the way the trustees of the Pennsylvania State University have when confronted with evidence of the cover-up of sexual abuse of minors by the leadership of one of its important institutions.

The implication is that Penn State handled the abuse scandal better than the Catholic Church. Better is a relative term since both ignored or actively covered up evidence of sexual abuse of children for at least a decade. There are two problems with such comparisons.

First, one person was responsible for the abuse at Penn State whereas the scandal in the Catholic Church had too many perpetrators to count across the world. In terms of scale, there is no comparison.

The larger problem, however, is that one institution was secular and one served Christ. Penn State tarnished the reputation of a university, especially its high profile football program. The leaders of the Catholic Church betrayed Christ. The Messiah. The Son of God. They allowed priests to harm a mind-boggling number of children across the globe and bankrupted dioceses across the United States.

In the parable of the faithful servant, Jesus closes with a pointed warning (Luke 12:47-48):

“The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked."

The Catholic Church was entrusted with much and chose to betray Christ. That betrayal goes beyond squandering billions of dollars and shattering the public trust. The bishops have compounded their many sins by setting the worst possible example for fellow Christians on what it means to repent. When news of the scandal broke, did you see Catholic leaders figuratively don sackcloth and ashes? Did you see tearful confessions and mass resignations of bishops and cardinals? All we heard were promises the problem had been fixed and abuse by priests would no longer by tolerated. Any accountability has come through the courts in the form of prosecutions and lawsuits. To this day, bishops in half of the dioceses across the globe have yet to even finish drafting anti-abuse guidelines, missing a May deadline set by the Vatican.

What the bishops have lacked in contrition, they have more than made up for in arrogance. Over the past 5 years, Catholic leaders have presented themselves as authorities on sexual morality, beating their breast over same-sex marriage and contraception. Ah yes. Let those with many sins distract the public by throwing as many stones as possible at others. Huzzah.

When King David lusted after the wife of one of his generals, put the man in harm's way, and then married the widow, he spent the rest of his life apologizing and writing love poems to God. The sins of David, while terrible, pale in comparison to the sins of Catholic leaders in their handling of the sex abuse scandal. Remember what the Lord told David through Nathan (2 Samuel 12:7-10):

Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you all Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.’

Christ had an adversarial relationship with the religious authorities of His day because of their hypocrisy, exploitation, and substitution of ritual for heartfelt practice. Now imagine what He would say about the abuse of children, hiding the abuse, squandering the resources of the church, failure to take responsibility for misdeeds, and setting a terrible example for the faithful.

The latest Gallup survey shows continued erosion of public confidence in organized religion, particularly among Catholics. That is one fruit of highly publicized scandals, but there is more to it than that. The trend shows a fairly steady decline in confidence since the mid-1980s rather than a few valleys attributable to scandal. It is a symptom of systemic failure. Perhaps if our religious leaders thought more about the body of Christ instead of their own power and privilege, we could be a more effective force to help repair a broken world. These leaders demand obedience when they deserve condemnation.