At last Pope Benedict XVI is moving the Catholic Church toward the truth: the victims need justice and the Church needs transformation. In this, he shows the human struggle for and against change — and the path of renewal ahead.

Last Easter, the Roman Catholic Church, my beloved church, seemed to retreat into a shell of institutional defensiveness. Some of the top clerics absurdly complained of an anti-Catholic backlash similar to “anti-Semitism” when, in fact, it was facing the cry for justice among the victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests for decades.

But when you love someone, or some community, you see the greatness that lies within the heart. Every parent knows what the faith of love is like. You weep with grief over the child’s destructive behavior, but you never think these actions are the final verdict of the child’s nature. With the eyes of love, you see that your child’s destructive actions are only mistaken aberrations and that his or her inner goodness always remains the truer self.

Pope Benedict XVI during his arrival in the Lisbon airport on May 11, 2010. Credit: M.Mazur/www.thepapalvisit.org.uk.

That’s why I castigated the Church for its self-pity — a dominant Euro-centric organization of 1 billion members is not a very convincing candidate for victimhood — but also explained why I have faith in the Catholic Church. Back in April I wrote:

It is precisely at the moment of moral challenge, whether from the suffering of the sexually abused or the victims of anti-Jewish genocide, that the Catholic Church has the opportunity to show its true self. It has the powerful spiritual tools of prayer and Gospel values for uncovering the roots of the errors of the past and making the necessary changes.

It is my faith and conviction that this will – and must – happen. This is why the sturm und drang of the moment does not disillusion me. The best in the Catholic tradition reflects a pilgrim Church on the journey of growth and change.

Now it is time to acknowledge, and celebrate, that the best in the Church is emerging, at least for the moment. It is taking responsibility for its own sins, recognizing the attacks from the world are justified and that the Church needs to change.

The latest sign of this came on Monday. Pope Benedict XVI was answering reporters’ questions on a trip in Portugal when he admitted that the Church is to blame for the attacks on it over the pedophilia scandal. “The greatest persecution of the church doesn’t come from enemies on the outside but is born from the sins within the church,” he said.

In a sharp turn away from institutional self-protectiveness, he also recognized: “The church needs to profoundly relearn penitence, accept purification, learn forgiveness but also justice.”

And he did not attempt to excuse crimes under the false banner of Christian “forgiveness.” He said: “Forgiveness cannot substitute justice.”

Bravo! We only gain the right to criticize failures when we have the honesty to acknowledge successes. And these comments show that the pope he is showing signs of succeeding in facing reality. From these words must now come actions, actions and more actions.

These comments are actually in line with the slow progression of the pope toward admitting an important truth: The modern secular world is doing the Church’s own job. It is acting as a modern prophet calling for the Church to repent. The secular world is the prophet Nathan challenging the king over his sexual misconduct. (2 Samuel 12:1-14)

One sign of the pope’s growing awareness came on April 15. In an impromptu homily at the Vatican, the pope admitted that the “attacks of the world” were actually calling the Church to face its sins. Christians are wrong to think Jesus gave them a “get out of jail free” card, a kind of grace without penance and transformation, he said. No, Christians — (including the Catholic clergy!) — are called to face their sins, suffer purification and change. The pope said:

This for me is a very important observation: penance is a grace. There is a tendency in exegesis that says: Jesus in Galilee had announced a grace without condition, absolutely unconditional, therefore also without penance, grace as such, without human preconditions.

But this is a false interpretation of grace. Penance is grace; it is a grace that we recognize our sin, it is a grace that we know we need renewal, change, a transformation of our being. Penance, being able to do penance, is the gift of grace. And I must say that we Christians, even in recent times, have often avoided the word penance, it has seemed too harsh to us.

Now, under the attacks of the world that speak to us of our sins, we see that being able to do penance is grace. And we see that it is necessary to do penance, that is, to recognize what is wrong in our life, open ourselves to forgiveness, prepare ourselves for forgiveness, allow ourselves to be transformed. The suffering of penance, of purification, of transformation, this suffering is grace, because it is renewal, it is the work of divine mercy.

Another sign of progress: On April 18, he met with eight victims of sexual abuse by priests in an emotional meeting in Malta which apparently left everyone in tears. He thanked one, Lawrence Grech, who is suing the Church, for coming forward. “I’m proud of you,” the pope said, according to Mr. Grech. “I pray for you for your courage to come forward and speak out.”

Anyone who has tried to confront a parent with a history of abuse knows how difficult this confrontation is for the entire family. Some members of the family deny the abuse, criticize the victim, defend the parents. The parents are outraged at the “ungrateful” child. If this is true in a family with four to six members, how much the more it is true for a family with one billion members. Over the past months, we’ve seen a very human struggle in the Church between its resistance and its need to change.

It is always a mistake to rely too much on external events to confirm one’s faith, since the essence of faith is the understanding that the really real reality is transcendental and by definition lies beyond this world. Faith sees signs of this larger and mysterious reality in the material world, but only occasionally and only in glimpses.In the past few weeks, we’ve seen some glimpses of the inner heart of the Catholic Church. These glimpses point toward a path of justice and healing for both victims and the Church itself.

No matter what stumbling and bumbling turns up tomorrow, it shows this is a Church of wonderful surprises. After all, when each of us looks deeply into our own lives, who among us is not, in our own way, stumbling and bumbling, struggling with the resistance and the need to change? The Catholic Church is sinful, human and guided by God — like everyone sincerely seeking the truth. To believe in the possibility of transformation in Church is to believe in the same possibility within each of us.


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