Dr. Keyes is founder and chairman of the Declaration Foundation, a communications center for founding principles. Tune into his new television show “Alan Keyes is Making Sense” on MSNBC, Monday through Thursday, 10 p.m., ET.
The Pope said simply, “[A]s priests we are personally and profoundly afflicted by the sins of some of our brothers who have betrayed the grace of Ordination in succumbing even to the most grievous forms of the mysterium iniquitatis at work in the world.”
The solution: “[A]ll of us – conscious of human weakness, but trusting in the healing power of divine grace – are called to embrace the “mysterium Crucis” and to commit ourselves more fully to the search for holiness.”
By citing the “mystery of iniquity,” the Pope identifies the unqualified objective evil involved. In these words he invokes the very departure of Judas from the Last Supper – and he does so, significantly, in his Holy Thursday message to priests. The Church has suffered a betrayal by priests of the grace which comes through ordination: a betrayal of the sacrament itself which is at the heart of the clerical life. Embracing the “mystery of the cross” is the only, and all-sufficient, remedy.
This betrayal includes not only those directly involved in the sin, but also any in the hierarchy who have treated evil as a mere carnal affliction or administrative challenge. Soul-killing scandal has been given to the innocent young. The objective evil of such scandal is deeply theological, and it must be dealt with as such by the American hierarchy.
“We must beg God in his providence to prompt a whole-hearted reawakening of those ideas of total self-giving to Christ which are the very foundation of the priestly ministry.” There will be no abandonment of faith, no abandonment of celibacy. The answer does not lie in adopting the errors of the world, but rather in profound recommitment to the truths of the Christian faith. These awful episodes may finally move the Church in America to look at human sexuality in God’s way, not in the world’s way.
And it’s about time. The inclination of the American hierarchy to treat the crisis within the Church as a managerial problem, or a matter simply of violation of secular laws, has been astonishing. The moral implications of the sexual abuse of children by priests are infinite – for such abuse creates the occasion for mortal sin in its victims, which is the death not of the body, but of the soul. Clerical sexual abuse is serial spiritual murder.
But if the Faith says such abuse is a mortal sin, far deadlier than any assault on the body, why wasn’t it treated as such by the bishops without any prompting from secular society?
The evil in the Church is not its neglect of proper secular procedures to handle sexual abuse. The hierarchy has neglected to value the providential wisdom of a pope who has thought, and who has written, more deeply about the spiritual dimension of human sexuality than perhaps any other living mortal. This guidance of John Paul II has not been received and applied in the formation of American clergy and young people in any systematic way by those in authority.
The American hierarchy has for decades willfully resisted its duty to apply the wisdom of the Church to sexuality and other vital areas of human life. Just to give one example, much sex education for Catholic children has been simply borrowed from secular liberal ideology. Why has not the development of a genuinely Catholic curriculum been the central concern of Catholic sex education?
Now that the Church in America is forced to face a crisis directly related to compromised priestly formation, it would be a further terrible mistake to respond to that crisis in worldly and secular ways. Surrendering the doctrine of celibacy on the grounds that clergy dedicated to God cannot discipline their sexual impulse would mean the loss of much more than priestly celibacy. It would belittle the power of faith over one of the most important elements of the human soul and spirit. Such an acknowledgment implying the impotence of grace would have dire implications, theological and otherwise, far beyond the issue of the priesthood.
A hierarchy facing a spiritual crisis must respond, finally, to the wisdom offered by Christ’s Vicar. The mystery of the cross has not lost its power, and we all must summon the courage, and pray for the grace, to take up our own crosses in this time of trouble. For the Bishops of America, this means accepting the long-avoided burden of forming a priesthood ready to carry the truth about the sacredness of human sexuality to a flock that has wandered. This, with Christ’s grace, will heal the Church.
