The Pain That Keeps On Giving

The Holy See is in a "lose-lose" situation. Should the Vaticans public relations experts continue to dodge around a frank response to cases of sexual assaults by priests around the globe, the pain will never go away.

Are the Roman Catholic Church and Pope Benedict XVI being unfairly targeted? Of course they are. Many of those that are "stirring the pot" are more interested in bringing down the Church than in providing support to victims and working to ensure such abuse does not happen again? The SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) is only secondarily interested in securing justice and comfort for victims. SNAP's primary interest is in generating publicity for their organization. Of course, the media is biased against the Roman Catholic Church. We see multiple articles about the recent priest abuse scandals in newspapers. We see very few articles about the huge outpouring from Roman Catholics to the people devestated by the earthquake in Haiti. We never hear about the many priests that are regularly called away, often during the middle of the night, to provide comfort and reassurance to those that are struggling with the challenges of life and/or are near death.

Recent remarks by the Vatican press office claim nothing new: that SNAP is a publicity-mongering prostitute of an organization (my words, not the words of the Vatican) and that the Roman Catholic Church is being targeted by a scandal-loving media.

The only way to work through the pain of this situation is for the Vatican to, once and for all, admit to being human. Priests have sexually assaulted people, including minors. Church leaders at every level have mishandled many situations related to the sexual assaults of minors. The Vatican needs to clearly state that there are consistent guidelines that must be followed in the handling of allegations of sexual assault by any church/school employee, deacon, priest or religious. Those guidelines should be made public.

Do the continuing scandals bother me? Of course they do. However, the Roman Catholic Church is a reflection of the full humanity and divinity of Christ. Being comprised of humans, the Church suffers greatly and has for 2000 years. However, through the grace of God, the Church has remained strong for 2000 years. No institution has provided the level of care, be it health care, education, pastoral care, etc., than has the Roman Catholic Church - and the Roman Catholic Church often provides such care in areas where nobody else dares to go. The Roman Catholic Church would not be able to do this if she did not share in the suffering of humanity nor enjoy the divine grace of God.