Pope Francis: Jesus is found in the community of the Catholic Church

Denver Newsroom, Nov 11, 2020 / 05:10 pm (CNA).- Ordinarily, a news analysis attempts to bring some context or expertise to a situation, in order to assess why something has happened, what might happen next, and whether any of it will prove to be important.

A news analysis often speculates about what newsmakers will do: At CNA, analysis considers often what the pope might do, or USCCB leaders, or bishops of prominent dioceses.

But this analysis will speculate about what ordinary Catholics – people who practice the faith and love the Lord and try to follow Jesus – will do after the publication of the Vatican’s McCarrick Report.

To do that, some context in this analysis will be personal. There is a reason I offer this personal narrative. Please bear with me.

I began working for the Catholic Church in 2005, while I was in canon law school. After finishing my canon law degree, in 2007 I began working regularly on cases involving clergy misconduct.

I have sat with priests guilty of sexual assault and coercion, of grooming young men, of acting with serial disregard for the promises of their priesthood and the spiritual health of their victims. I have also sat with priests falsely accused of those things. I have seen problems ignored, and I have seen problems treated with the attention they deserve.

I have seen priests get justice, and I have sometimes seen them face terrible injustice. I have seen victims mistreated, and victims treated with compassion and respect. I have seen cases in which every rule and protocol is followed, and cases in which most of them are ignored.

Before the initial McCarrick allegations were made public in June 2018, I had already seen some things. As friends dealt with grief and shock, I told some cynically “Now you know why I’m ticked off all the time.”

I had not known about McCarrick, but I knew about clerical abuse, and about the sins of omission and commission that allow it to happen.

The 449 pages of the McCarrick Report detail a story decades long, in which institutional and personal failures allowed a man who abused his power to act with serial and serious immorality — to, put simply, hurt people.

It includes accounts of both cowardice and courage, of institutional blindspots exploited by a manipulator, of naïveté, misplaced kindness, and ill-placed trust, of dysfunction, bureaucratic ineptitude, and malice. The report demonstrates that sin begets sin – it recounts stories of abusers who were themselves abused. It depicts the exploitation of crises for personal gain.

The report documents the damage wrought by a crippling bias towards institutional self-preservation, ironic for a Church that follows a crucified Lord.

There are few heroes: A mother who tried her best to speak out. A priest who blew the whistle to protect seminarians. A cardinal who came to realize, only over time, that he needed to make clear a serious problem.

The McCarrick Report also traces a broad trend of growing awareness of the importance of addressing abuse allegations, and addressing them properly. An increased understanding that presuming on good will is not helpful in the presence of manipulators. Efforts, often faltering, and sometimes failing, to learn from previous mistakes. But even amid that trend, there are appalling personal failures at every stage of McCarrick’s career.

The report does not document, or seem even to consider seriously, how McCarrick’s ambiguous and unmonitored financial situation enabled his decades of abuse. It mentions briefly his ability as a fundraiser, but offers no forensic analysis of his discretionary accounts. U.S. dioceses maintain records of those accounts, and to date have given no indication they plan to release them. 

The report addresses bishops who lied for McCarrick, and about him, to the Holy See, but it does not ask why those bishops were willing to lie. It does not give serious attention to McCarrick’s social networks and their influence on the life of the Church – mention is made of a friend leaking high-level documents to McCarrick in the Vatican, but no attention is given to what influence networks that friend has.  Many analysts have said it does not address whether there remain in ministry bishops who were gravely negligent, or even who compounded or facilitated cover-ups.

It brings many things to light, but the report is not a complete account of the McCarrick affair. A complete account may never emerge. Further, the Vatican’s report does not seem to consider present-day implications of McCarrick’s life and ministry, nor to draw lessons for the Church beyond McCarrick.

Questions remain, and those questions are very likely to go unanswered. Catholics who hope to see particular individuals brought to justice are likely to go disappointed.

And new scandals will inevitably emerge.

Since the retirement of Theodore McCarrick, there have already been some institutional reforms designed to prevent a situation like McCarrick’s from happening again. Institutional audits in U.S. dioceses, review boards, the promulgation of Vos estis lux mundi. Pope Francis or the U.S. bishops may well add more layers of policy reform.

But Pope Francis has emphasized that policy reform can not substitute for personal integrity. And the McCarrick Report demonstrates how much personal integrity actually matters. The report will likely bring statements from bishops committing to that personal integrity, and it might even inspire real conversion to that effect among some bishops and Church leaders.

Inevitably, though, there will be new failures in the Church’s life, because the Church is both human and divine: The mystical Body of Christ protected in certain ways by the Holy Spirit, and a community of sinners, each of them in need of a savior, few of them yet saints.

The Church is always and everywhere holy— its members are not usually so.

That paradox is a challenge to every believer.

But the future for the Church in the U.S. seems to depend a great deal on how ordinary Catholics respond to disappointment, discouragement, and somewhat unresolved scandal.

Religious disaffiliation is on the rise in the U.S. – a growing number of Americans identify themselves with no religion, or have no religious practice. And many ordinarly practicing Catholics are out of the habit of going to Sunday Mass, because of the pandemic. It will be unsurprising if the McCarrick scandal exacerbates religious disaffiliation, especially among young Catholics, who say in surveys that they prioritize the perceived personal integrity of leaders ahead of institutional affiliation.

Within the Church, there is a small but growing pocket of Catholics who are increasingly strident toward the authority of the pope and of U.S. bishops. In crises past, pockets like those have eventually become schisms. That seems practically unlikely in the contemporary U.S., but it is not impossible or unprecedented — there are more than 25,000 members of the “Polish National Catholic Church,” a schismatic group that began in the U.S in the early 20th century.

The point is that scandals have the capacity to discourage the practice of the faith, to foster cynicism, anger, bitterness, or indifference.

Hence the personal narrative.

My own experience has taught me that confronting the oft-disappointing humanity of the Church is an exercise in accepting that disappointment is real, and that it can be only be relieved by embracing the cross, and the Crucified Savior.

In the spiritual life, moments of disappointment present a choice: One can nurture anger or indifference, or one can turn to Christ on the cross.

One of those choices brings life, the other does not.

That’s true for the spiritual life, and for the mission of the Church itself.

A movement of Catholics who respond to crisis with an increase of prayer, fasting, charity, and evangelization is counter-intuitive. It is also a counter-witness to the “black eye for the Church” contained in the McCarrick Report. It is confounding, and compelling.

Catholics who seek holiness in times of scandal tend often to be conduits of Christian renewal.

Making such a choice, I’ve learned by my failures, is easier said than done.

There is very little saccharine or romantic about following Jesus, especially when confronted with the sinfulness of the Church’s own leaders. There is often more setback than progress.

Humility helps – remembering our own failures tends to put the sins of others in perspective. Confession and the Eucharist help all the more.

Embracing the cross does not mean accepting or tolerating the presence of sin in the Church. Rather it means both assiduously calling for reform and repenting seriously for one’s own sins and shortcomings. Maintaining communion with the Church, even while helping to rebuild it.

The mission of the Gospel probably has very little to do with tweeking existing policy. A statement of regret from the U.S. bishops’ conference is unlikely to spark a renewal of faith in Jesus Christ.

In the wake of the McCarrick Report, renewal of the Church likely has most to do with whether ordinary Catholics will turn to Christ, and embrace his suffering on the cross. That isn’t easy. But it is the path to eternal life, and, in this life, its consequences might well be surprising.

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Vatican City, Oct 9, 2019 / 08:05 am (CNA).- Newly published manuscripts belonging to Karol Wojtyła have offered a glimpse into the future pope and saint’s deep devotion and prayer throughout his writing process.

The 39 handwritten pages contain Wojtyła’s reflections on St. Paul’s Areopagus address to the Athenians described in the Acts of the Apostles. It is believed that these meditations and catecheses were written in or shortly after 1965, while Wojtya was Archbishop of Krakow. He was made a cardinal in 1967 and elected pope in 1978.

On each page, Wojtyła wrote a little prayer in Latin on the top right corner, such as “Veni, Sancte Spiritus” (Come Holy Spirit) and “Adoro te devote latens Deitas” (I devoutly adore you hidden God), a Eucharistic Hymn written by St. Thomas Aquinas. 

On the top of the first page he wrote, in Latin, the full quote of St. Louis de Montfort from which he had taken his episcopal motto, Totus Tuus: “I belong entirely to you, and all that I have is yours. I take you for my all. O Mary, give me your heart.”

The writings have been published in a book titled “Christ, the Church and the World: Catechesis of the Areopagus.”

Speaking at the launch of the publication, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re reflected that the inscription of a prayer on each page was a discipline Wojtyła continued as pope, even while drafting encyclicals.

“When he wrote Redemptoris Hominis, before every page, before the beginning, he wrote in Latin: ‘Totus Tuus Ego Sum,’ The second page: ‘Et omnia mea tua assunta,’ like this he continued,” Re said. 

Cardinal Re worked with St. John Paul II as sostituto, or deputy, at the Secretariat of State from 1989 – 2000 and later as the prefect of the Congregation of Bishops. He said that when the Polish pope wrote Redemptoris Mater about the Virgin Mary, he wrote out the Litany of Loreto with a different title of Mary on each subsequent page. 

“That’s why, in a certain sense, every page that he wrote it was an act of prayer,” Re said in Italian. “It reveals to us a little of  … the great spirituality, devotion that he had.”

Re said he was always impressed with the “intensity” of St. John Paul II’s prayer: “He had a great capacity for concentration. When he gathered himself for prayer whatever happened around him did not disturb him. He was so immersed in God, so concentrated on God.”

The retired cardinal remembered that when faced with a decision or problem, the pope would respond, “We need to pray more about this.”

The manuscripts were first published in Polish in 2018 to mark the 40th anniversary of Wojtyła’s election as Archbishop of Krakow. No decision has yet been made about publication in English or Spanish.

Wojtyla began writing the meditations on St. Paul’s speech at the Areopagus following two trips to Athens in the mid-1960’s. Within the text, he references documents from Vatican Council II, including Nostra Aetate, Dei Verbum, and Gaudium et Spes. 

Dr. Marta Burghardt, who conducted historical and philological analysis of the original manuscripts, concluded that the Wojtyla wrote several passages of conciliar texts and Scripture from memory. 

Burghardt said it is still unknown to whom, if anyone, Wojtyła was writing these reflections on St. Paul or whether they were intended for a series of speeches or publication. 

“The depth of these texts perfectly reflects his extraordinary conception of the world from the point of view of communion with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,” Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz wrote in the introduction to the book, published by the Vatican library. Dziwisz served as St. John Paul II’s personal secretary throught his time as a bishop and pope.

“In this particular historical moment we all feel again the need for a profound and general catechesis on the truths of the faith, of a catechesis that completely introduces us into the mystery of God’s work in our human history,” Dziwisz said.

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Vatican City, Feb 14, 2020 / 01:45 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis met with leadership of the Knights of Columbus on Wednesday, for the second time in a week, in the Cappella Paolina of the Apostolic Palace.

The pope met with the Knights’ officers and directors with their families Feb. 12, following a Mass said by Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, Supreme Chaplain to the Knights.

Francis prayed an Our Father and a Hail Mary with the Knights, promising to pray for them and asking their prayers in turn.

Archbishop Lori gave the pope an Italian edition of a biography of Fr. Michael McGivney, founder of the Knights.

Francis had already received the leadership in an audience in the Clementine Hall Feb. 10.

“It was a great honor for our delegation to meet with the Pope not just once, but twice,” Supreme Knight Carl Anderson said.

“We are touched by the fact that Pope Francis took so much time with us, and we remain inspired by his words and grateful for his prayers. I ask all brother Knights and their families to take seriously the Holy Father’s request and commit to praying for him each day.”

The administrative council of the Knights of Columbus is on a pilgrimage to Rome to mark 100 years of charitable activity in the Eternal City.

At their Feb. 10 meeting, Pope Francis had praised the organization’s charitable work in Rome and in defense of life.

“Today the Knights of Columbus continue their work of evangelical charity and fraternity in a variety of fields,” the pope said. “I think in particular of your faithful witness to the sacredness and dignity of human life, evident at both the local and national levels.”

He also noted the Knights’ dedication to aiding, “both materially and spiritually, those Christian communities in the Middle East that are suffering the effects of violence, war and poverty.”

“I thank all the members of your Order for seeing in our persecuted and displaced brothers and sisters of that region neighbors for whom you are a sign of God’s infinite love,” he said.

Pope Francis noted the centenary of the group’s humanitarian aid in Rome, which started after World War I at the invitation of Benedict XV.

“The Knights responded generously, establishing sports centers for youth that quickly became places for education, catechesis and the distribution of food and other essentials so needed at that time,” he said.

Francis also praised the group for its “unswerving devotion to the Successor of Peter,” including through the Vicarius Christi fund, the annual proceeds of which are given to the pope for his personal charities.

The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal order, was founded in New Haven, Conn., in 1882 by Venerable Michael J. McGivney, a parish priest. It has 1.8 million members worldwide who perform volunteer service and advance the order’s key principles of charity, unity, fraternity and patriotism.

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