Post-disaster scenario

The Church is slowly emerging from the grave of the screamingly scandalous cases of clerical sexual abuse of minors that exploded practically all over the world these past years and even up to now.

This seems to be the thesis of a recently published book, “Pope Benedict XVI and the Sexual Abuse Crisis: Working for Reform and Renewal” (Our Sunday Visitor, 2010).

Authors Matthew Bunson and Gregory Erlandson claim that the crisis has led the Church to make institutional reforms and initiate the process of spiritual renewal for priests and everyone.

As to the practical aspect of the problem, the authors said the crisis made the Church more knowledgeable about the illness of pedophilia. They said that the 10-year experience of the American Church in dealing with this problem can now serve as a good model for other dioceses to follow.

This is the good part of any problem we encounter in life. No matter how destructive, if handled well, such problem can occasion tremendous benefits for everyone.

We seem to need darkness to get to the light. We seem to need to be dirty to value the beauty of cleanliness. We cannot escape the ways of sinfulness, but the paths of redemption are neither lacking.

St. Paul said it much better: “Where the offense has abounded, grace has abounded yet more.” (Rom 5,20) Still, we cannot belittle the damage caused by this predicament. The authors described the injury in this way:

“The Church has suffered a grievous wound in this sexual abuse crisis. Not only is it a humiliation and a blow to its reputation, but it has had to recognize that those who bore the greatest responsibility for the souls of others—priests, deacons, bishops, Church employees—had failed terribly.”

Aggravating the situation is when the enemies of the Church take advantage of this crisis to harm the Church further, or even to destroy it. Cases like this have also come in abundance.

The Pope is now leading the way to confront this problem, admittedly a long and painful process. He has instituted reforms that will more effectively tackle these cases as they come. He acknowledges that the problems of the Church do not come so much from outside as from inside.

Again, we are made to realize that we can be our own worst enemy. We don’t have to look outside of the Church to find her most insidious enemies. The ones inside are more than enough. It’s in our blindness, our tendency to fall into spiritual lukewarmness, into hypocrisy and other spiritual anomalies that can evolve slowly but surely if not detected and treated promptly.

The situation is akin to anybody’s health problem especially when he approaches old age. In spite of one’s care for his health, problems just come. These are problems that now require some paradigm shift in one’s life, or a lifestyle change.

They can show that through the years one has been steadily hamstrung into complacency, leading a sedentary life, wallowing in privileges and comfort. They now demand that we go back to the basics—a regimen of exercises and simpler diet.

The body needs to sweat it out and to detoxify itself from the excesses of food and beverages that we tend splurge in. We actually eat much more than what is necessary for us.

Just like in our physical health, the recovery of our spiritual health does not really need extraordinary measures. Some form of spiritual brisk walking may be all that is needed. As to diets, one may just need to eat more spiritual “moringa,” the lowly but nutritionally rich “malungay.”

We are always in need of some spiritual antioxidants and vitamins that can be found in relearning the art of prayer, of making daily sacrifices, of resorting to the sacraments, and of engaging our mind and heart with the things of God and of other souls even as we continue doing our daily tasks.

We need to be more wary of the requirements for a vibrant spiritual life. This is the main problem we have, since we tend to ignore this. For this purpose, we have to help one another, reminding ourselves and giving good example to the others.

We have to remember that our spiritual life, unlike our physical life, has the capacity to elude aging and defy death. It has the capacity to be eternally healthy and alive if cared properly. It has an endless power to renew itself.

There is no substitute for authentic holiness to solve the Church’s problems, both internal and external.

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