Mass notes: All about Uncle Ted?

Sunday, September 16, 2018 – 24^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

A whole homily about “Uncle Ted” Cardinal McCarrick and sexual abuse scandals in the Church? Is that really what my family and I need to hear about? I’m not saying ignore it, I’m not saying don’t address it, but isn’t the adversary perhaps quite happy that we’re so focused on this sensational news story and thereby distracted from worthier topics of contemplation? Oh well, I’m not in charge: Uncle Ted it is, but let’s not overdo it!

So yes, on this Sunday, visiting at another parish, we got to hear a bunch about “Uncle Ted” and related scandals. It was not very edifying, I thought, but in particular it seemed ironic that in his impassioned homily against abuse and abusers and protectors of abusers, the priest – following the Alberta bishops – elected to quote none other than Pope Francis in denouncing these evils. Heaven forbid that bishops and priests just go ahead and speak out against evil in their own voices, instead of needing to quote the pope!

At the climax of his homily the priest made the emphatic point: “Make no mistake: Jesus stands with the victims, not the abusers!” Oh? But didn’t Christ come to save sinners? Hurt people hurt people. Victims make new victims. Victimizers are/were themselves victims of abuse. So at what point, exactly, does Christ cease to “stand with” a sinner (with me, for example)? (Only) when my sins become a sensational news story? (Only) when they take on an overtly ‘political’ dimension?

Anyway, complications about the problem of evil, the perfection of God’s merciful love, etc., aside, we may well accept the rather banal point that Jesus does not stand with the abusers, at least in the sense that he warns them rather pointedly, “it would be better for you to be thrown into the sea with a great millstone around your neck” than to carry on as you do. But also we might note that Pope Francis – the guy the priest had just been quoting – actually has been standing with, defending, promoting the abusers (right up until it becomes overwhelmingly obvious in a given case of patronage that the political cost has become too heavy). And it’s very easy to condemn sexual abuse – it’s like when world leaders step up after an act of terrorism and reassuringly announce to the wondering world that they (still) unequivocally condemn such acts of non-state-sanctioned violence – but as Jonathan V. Last writes, there is a bigger picture:

The abuse itself is terrible, of course. We should say that out loud, because while the details are unspeakable they must be spoken of. Without the release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report, we would know much less about the evil inside the church. (It is also instructive to note that authorities within the church opposed the release of this report.) But individual priest-abusers aren’t catastrophic to the church in any structural way. Predators will always be among us. It is a human pathology from which not even priests are immune. But the remedy for predation is straightforward: Whenever and wherever such men are discovered, they should be rooted out and punished.

The institutional damage is done not by the abusers but by the structures that cover for them, excuse them, and advance them. Viewed in that way, the damage done to the Catholic church by Cardinal Wuerl—and every other bishop who knew about McCarrick and stayed silent [e.g., Pope Francis?!]—is several orders of magnitude greater than that done by McCarrick himself.

So at this point surely Pope Francis makes a rather poor choice as a go-to for quotes about standing against abuse and not sheltering and promoting abusers.

In order to tie his homily to the day’s gospel, the priest used Jesus’ admonition to Peter, “Get behind me Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as humans do.” The preacher claimed an analogy here between Peter and abusive clergy. But it seems to me that sexually abusive clergy are not thinking “as humans do” in the way Peter was; they are thinking as vicious, pathologically perverted humans do, that is, they are thinking in a way that is really inhuman. Peter was not doing this. The rejection of the cross is human. Even Christ prayed that this cup be taken from him, because he was human, he had a real human nature and human will, and to embrace the cross requires a grace-powered act of will to transcend the merely human, that which is naturally human, that is, that which, at a strictly natural human level, is good. Sexual predators of young men, by contrast, are not acting in a way that is properly human, naturally human, in accord with human nature, that is, in a way that is humanly good. Suggesting an equivalence here between Peter and the abusers confuses the important distinction between the natural and the supernatural good. Grace both heals wounded nature and elevates what it heals. Peter’s desire to save his friend, our Lord, from suffering and death was naturally good; Peter just did not yet understand and was not ready to embrace the greater, supernatural good which it was necessary for him to take into account. In contrast, McCarrick’s perverse desires and actions to corrupt young men and in the process to do grave damage to the Church are far from any kind of good, natural or supernatural.

The priest also quoted the morally and intellectually rather more impressive authority of Thomas Aquinas in his homily. He noted that justice, according to Aquinas, is “rendering to each his due” (something to that effect). Great! But then the priest also claimed, I guess on his own say-so, and without further ado: “And what we need is not retributive justice, but restorative justice!” Excuse me? So is the priest claiming that retribution is not anyone’s due? Sexual predators should only be ‘restored,’ not punished? But is that not the very disastrous policy that he had been railing on against: “don’t punish abusers; restore them to ministry in some other parish!”? So I wonder what he could have meant. Jesus, anyway, along with common sense and a host of other witnesses too numerous to list, seems to teach us that justice requires restitution, that retributive punishment is indeed what is due to criminals and sinners. Aquinas too clearly teaches that punishment is retributive, so if the priest, after quoting Aquinas on justice, has some other view, I think he owes his listeners an explanation. And before attempting that explanation he might do well to read some of the Ed Feser’s exceptionally lucid work on the subject (see here for example), so that he is aware of what it is he needs to respond to if he really wants to maintain his anti-retribution position.