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The Scandal of Healing
BY MARK SHEA May 18-24, 2008 Issue |
Posted 5/13/08 at 10:41 AM
The “scandal” of the Gospel used to be a badge of honor for
Catholics.
It was “scandalous” that God should become man, die on the
cross, and grant us life through death. All of these affronts to the world’s
wisdom were summarized by St. Paul:
“For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God
through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save
those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach
Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those
who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of
God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is
stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:21-25).
“Scandal” comes from skandalon (stumbling block). Some
things about the Gospel are supposed to be “scandalous” in that good, Pauline
sense of the word.
But not sin. Not the sexual abuse of children. Not the shame
of pastors who shuffled around abusers rather than protecting their victims.
That sort of skandalon is not a stumbling stone, but a millstone that Jesus
hated and solemnly warned against. It has been one of the many painful
realities of the Long Lent of 2002 that the Pauline meaning of the “scandal of
the Gospel” has been buried under the disgraceful scandal caused by those to
whom the Gospel had been especially entrusted.
On April 17, 2008, Pope Benedict had a private meeting with
several victims of the priest sex abuse scandal. It was, by all accounts, a
powerful encounter in which the Pope both apologized to these wounded men and
women and listened very attentively to them. As author and blogger Amy Welborn
beautifully summed up Benedict’s pastoral leadership, not only at that meeting,
but throughout his visit to America:
“First of all, [he came] to do what he emphasized in his
talks — do what he can to meet the needs of victims and bring healing. But
secondly, he is, very pointedly, teaching the bishops how to be pastors. You
cannot watch these people speak of their past suffering and what the Pope
listening to them today accomplished without hoping and praying that in
humility, those of his fellow pastors who have refused to listen and instead
dedicated inestimable resources to re-victimizing victims are watching and
learning from him.
“And perhaps feeling something. A word Benedict has used
time and time again these past days. Shame.”
The shame of these crimes and of their coverup needed to be
named, and I am grateful that he did it. But even more, I am grateful that by
naming it, I think he finally seems to me to have lanced a spiritual boil and
really begun the process, not merely of preventing such tragedies in the
future, but of healing the wounds of the past.
For me, the single most arresting display of Christlike
humility in the meeting of the Pope and the sex abuse victims belonged to Olan
Horne. After Benedict apologized to them and asked forgiveness, there occurred
this amazing exchange:
“I asked him to forgive me for hating his Church and hating
him,” said Olan Horne, 48, of Lowell, [Mass.,] who gave the Pope a picture of
himself as a 9-year-old boy, just before the Rev. Joseph Birmingham started
molesting him. “He said, ‘My English isn’t good, but I want you to know that I
can understand you, and I think I can understand your sorrow.’”
Horne’s act is, quite simply, a miracle only possible by the
supernatural power of the Holy Spirit. It will be seen by no small number of
people as scandalous (like the cross itself). The notion that a victim should
apologize for his unforgiveness will (according to the “It’s All About Power”
interpretive grid of the world) be taken as an act of self-hatred, of the
hideous Mind Control of the Church, etc.
In fact, what Horne did was liberate himself from the last
and most insidious shackle of the monstrous sin committed against him: the
temptation to believe that bitterness is healing.
More than that, by his unfathomably noble act, Horne made it
possible for many others to likewise forgive and let go of the imprisoning rage
that always tempts us to remain in the power of those who have harmed us.
This act of forgiveness and humility is the power and the
scandal of the Gospel on display in full strength. I am humbled and shamed by
it as I look at my own slowness to relinquish anger and bitterness when I am
hurt.
God bless this man and Good Pope Benedict for this beautiful
scandal of reconciliation and healing!
Mark Shea is senior content editor
for CatholicExchange.com.
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