Reading Francis

There’s kind of a lot for a somewhat vocal Catholic convert to react to today. I’m still processing the news of yesterday’s Pennsylvania grand jury report documenting graphic allegations by more than 1,000 victims over 70 years against more than 300 priests in six of Pennsylvania’s eight dioceses. I feel the need to say something, if only because silence has been the hallmark of a complicit Church over decades of unconscionably heinous crimes. What’s different about this report, which seems to indicate that the changes in policy implemented by the Church in 2002 may have improved things to some degree, is that it outlines how bishops and priests routinely, systematically squelched, hid, covered up abuse, including rape, of young children and teens by priests. And while that may have changed in 2002, many of the same men are in charge of the Church now who were party to those coverups.

I flipped around the radio a few times today, between the local Catholic station (which, when I listened, focused on music), EWTN (which focused it’s “open line” on emails about doctrine and discussion of the Feast of the Assumption), and the Sirius Catholic Channel (on which several hosts, including some I don’t care for, engaged in serious, honest soul-searching with their callers and guests and looked for ways that lay people can be part of the solution to this issue). I have much greater respect for the Catholic Channel than I did before. I am happy that my own bishop (one of recent vintage, incidentally) was quick to put out a statement. It seems to me that Catholics, from Pope Francis down, need to  affirm that, not only are crimes against vulnerable children totally contrary to the Gospel, but silence is complicity and complicity should disqualify people from leadership roles in the Church.

Today is the Feast day of the Assumption, which celebrates one of the three final barriers I had to becoming Catholic. It celebrates the dogma that Mary was assumed directly to heaven at the end of her life and did not experience earthly death, and while it was a part of Church tradition since the sixth century, it wasn’t made an official part of Church dogma until 1950. Like the dogma of the Immaculate Conception (that Mary was born without original sin), it was proclaimed by a pope invoking the doctrine of papal infallibility; in fact, those are the only two instances in which a pope has invoked the infallibility of his office to proclaim a dogma.

Those three things – papal infallibility, the Immaculate Conception, and the Assumption of Mary – were the things I really couldn’t buy into about Catholicism, and when I did join the Church almost 25 years ago, it was not out of conversion on those doctrines but humility. I still have serious doubts about them, but I am just humble enough to know I might be wrong about those doubts.

On the one hand, you could argue that the revelations of the grand jury underscore the fallibility of human leaders of the Church and call those doctrines even further into question.

On the other hand, because of the Assumption, Catholics were obliged to celebrate together as a community and hear these words, spoken by Mary in Luke 1:

He has shown the strength of his arm, and has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.

At yet another crossroads on the scandal of abuse by leaders of the Church, it is perhaps God’s working that we hear that Gospel proclaimed and ask ourselves, in this time, whether we side with the proud, might and rich or with the lowly and hungry. Especially when it can seem as though our leaders are motivated primarily by protecting the name and holdings of the institutions they lead.

Anyway, Mary was really clear about which side God was on. Maybe she’s worth paying attention to after all.