We all know about the latest sex abuse scandals at present emerging from the Catholic Church in the United States, especially in relation to senior, most influential clerics in the nation being involved this time not with minors, but with not-fully-consenting adults (ergo non-consenting); in particular, chronologically adult males. Reams upon reams of commentary and judgments have been written over the past couple of weeks in this regard, at every level of the Church in America (and even more). But in all the discourses on the above, one thing remained (and remains) missing, which is notable by its very lack. That one thing is:
Where is God in all this?
Why has there been zero reference by anyone, anywhere, to the causal relationship between impurity* and the fact that God cannot reside where the darkness of serious sin abides? (The sin of the sexual abuse itself and the sin of the abuse of power, to mention just the minimally obvious). Why has no one spoken of the grief that the abusers (a term here comprising both the abusers themselves and their omerta’-enabling peers) have caused not just to their victims, but also to God; the God Who is Immaculate?
Is it possible that no one cares?
In all the discourses set forth to date, every possible ramification of the above abuse has been discussed to death by the Church-at-large from every imaginable standpoint: legal, civil, moral, ethical, and so on. Yet, in a parallel manner to what happened originally with the Dallas Charter, all of these dimensions have been addressed from a purely humanistic context. None of them included even a mere mention – or even just a wink and a nod – about the direct, causal relationship outlined in the previous paragraph.
Why not?
How can you claim to be a voice for the Church – the voice of the Church, hence the voice for God – when you cannot acknowledge in public what you have done to God Himself, the Pure God, for the sake of power; personal and institutional power? Because, make no mistake, this is all about power; not about sexual abuse per se, which is egregious enough in itself, but about the deliberate abuse of power. The sexual abuse is just a first-order symptom, not a second-order cause. How can you perpetrate seemingly without hesitation, in public, one of the first sins of Adam – the deflection of your personal responsibility onto others in order to safeguard your hide/s?
Where is the role of grace in your lives and your cooperation with grace?
Silence is consent by the omission of speech to the contrary. The Church is not yours. It was given to you by God, for God and His people. It was never given to you, to become your personal playground. So, where is your accountability to God – the Father of all those you have abused by both your actions and lack of action? Has it not occurred to you that He is allowing all this to come to public light, because you have remained intransigent in your deliberate noncompliance with His desires for His people?
Do you not care one iota about how you have wounded Him and betrayed His trust?
Do you no longer believe?
*Not taken to mean only homosexual impurity as an ultra-conservative faction in the Church would like to reinterpret all of the above for their own personal-religiopolitical agenda.
