Homily for 20th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
20th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Aug. 19, 2018

John 6: 51-58
Nativity, Washington, D.C.

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world” (John 6: 51).

Jesus speaks very clearly in the gospel we just heard that whoever comes to him in faith and eats his flesh and drinks his blood will have life.

In the last couple of months we’ve had our faith drastically tested—not in the Eucharist but in the Catholic Church.  The scabs of old wounds have been ripped off and the wounds rubbed and scratched painfully:  the wounds caused by disgraceful priests, brothers, deacons, and other church personnel and—to use a mild word—inadequate bishops, which we learned about in 2002 thanks to aggressive reporting by secular media.

We may wish that the reporting were just as aggressive in exposing sexual abuse and its cover-ups in other institutions such as the public schools and Planned Parenthood.  (Almost everyone[1] thinks abortion should be legal when the pregnancy is a result of incest, but PP and everyone else protects the abusers of those girls.)

But the secular media have done right to expose the shameful sins of Catholic clergy and others in positions of trust—and now, more than in 2002—of our bishops.  You as faithful Catholics and I as a priest feel betrayed and we’re angry.  Not to mention the terrible harm that’s been done to victims and their families by predators whom they trusted or who were in authority over them and were supposed to protect them.

There were truckloads of apologies in 2002, and there was serious action to protect the young and vulnerable thenceforth.  That serious action has been hugely successful.  More than 99% of abuse cases that have been revealed since 2002 concern incidents that predate 2002.

Even 1%, of course, is too many new incidents, too many new victims.  We are sorry, we are angry, we need to help victims heal, we need to be ever vigilant to protect our young people and the vulnerable.

And we need action from our bishops and from the Roman Curia, not more apologies.  We need them to obey the law—the secular law and the moral law.  We need them to come completely clean and to police themselves as much as they’re policed the clergy and teachers and church workers.  We have a God-given right to shepherds whose 1st priority is to tend their flocks with loving care.

As a priest in 2002, I was unhappy (putting it very mildly) that the Dallas Charter held priests and religious and other church workers to a very high standard of moral behavior—that was right—but ignored episcopal responsibility for what bishops had ignored or covered up or, as we’ve now learned, were actively doing themselves, at least in the case of Abp. McCarrick.

As a Salesian and a Boy Scout chaplain, I was in a quandary about how best to minister to young people.  Sometimes a touch, an embrace, is an appropriate pastoral action.  Dare I?  Sometimes you have to have a confidential conversation—or confession—but how “alone” can you be with a kid?  16 years after the Boston Globe blew open this scandal, I still feel a little awkward when a minor comes to confession face to face even tho that’s a beautiful way to celebrate Reconciliation.

I can hardly begin to imagine the hurt of those who’ve been abused by an adult they trusted, maybe admired at one point, or who was expected to be their shepherd and not a wolf.  Whatever I’ve experienced as a priest, whatever you feel as Catholic faithful, is nothing compared to what victims have endured, and their families.  May God help us all!

Christ Blessing the World

(Melozzo da Forli)

And that’s the point:  our faith is in Jesus Christ, not in cardinals, bishops, priests, or any other human beings.  It’s for Jesus, the Bread of Life, that we come to church—not for Cardinal Wuerl, not for former Cardinal McCarrick, not for Fr. Evans, not for Fr. Mike, not for anyone else.  They haven’t poured out their blood on a cross for the redemption of your sins.  Only Jesus is our Savior.  Only he is the bread that has come down from heaven.  Only he in the Eucharist offers us communion with God and access to the banquet of eternal life.

Do what you can to let the bishops know that they have failed us and need to do far more to be shepherds of the flock.  Pray for them, and for Pope Francis and the Curia in Rome that they may see what needs to be done to purify the Church—not only in America but in too many countries, too many episcopates around the world.

And pray for us priests that we may be faithful shepherds, truly alteri Christi, other Christs who care for you, nourish you, and sacrifice ourselves for you.

Pray for the victims of abuse by church people, and pray for the perpetrators too.  May God’s grace be upon us all.

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      [1] “Everyone” does not include the Catholic Church or the natural moral law.  Every unborn human being, no matter how he or she was conceived, has a natural right to life.  To interrupt that life on account of incest or rape is a crime against humanity and a grave sin.