By Sandro Magister
Chiesa
March 25, 2010
http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1342641?eng=y
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The scandal of pedophilia has always been there, but it was magnified by the cultural revolution of half a century ago. Benedict XVI makes the claim in his letter to the Catholics of Ireland. Two cardinals and a sociologist comment
ROME, March 25, 2010 – Law and grace. Where earthly justice does not reach, the hand of God can. With his letter dated March 19, Benedict XVI has given the Catholics of Ireland an order never before given by a pope of the modern era to an entire national Church.
He told them not only to bring the guilty before the canonical and civil courts, but to put themselves collectively in a state of penance and purification. And not in the privacy of their consciences, but in a public form, before the eyes of all, even of their most implacable and mocking adversaries. Fasting, prayer, reading the Bible, and works of charity on all the Fridays from now until Easter of next year. Frequent sacramental confession. Continual adoration of Jesus – " himself a victim of injustice and sin" – present in the sacred host, exposed on the altars of the churches. And for all the bishops, priests, and religious, without exception, a special period of "mission," a long and strict course of spiritual exercises for a radical review of life.
It's a daring step, this one taken by Pope Benedict. Because not even the prophet Jonah believed any longer that God would forgive Nineveh its sins, in spite of the penitential ashes and sackcloth worn by all, from the king to the lowliest beast of burden.
And today as well, many conclude that the Church remains irremediably under condemnation, even after the letter in which the pope himself expresses shame and remorse for the abomination committed against children by some priests, with the culpable negligence of some bishops.
And yet God's forgiveness descended even upon Nineveh, and the skeptical Jonah had to face this fact, and Michelangelo painted this very prophet at the top of the wall behind the altar in the Sistine Chapel, to show that God's forgiveness is the key to everything, from the creation of the world to the last judgment.
On Sunday, March 21, while his letter was being read in the churches of Ireland, Benedict XVI commented to the faithful, at the Angelus in St. Peter's Square, on Jesus' forgiveness of the adulterous woman: "He knows what is in the heart of every man, he wants to condemn sin, but to save the sinner and unmask hypocrisy." The hypocrisy of those who wanted to stone the woman, even though they were the first to sin.
Ruthless with sin, "beginning with our own," and merciful towards persons. This is the lesson that Joseph Ratzinger wants to apply to the case of Ireland, and, by extension, to the entire Church.
On the one hand, the rigors of the law. The price of justice must be paid to the last penny. The dioceses, the seminaries, the religious congregations in which the abuse was allowed to run free have been warned: apostolic visitors will come from the Vatican to uncover what they have done, and even where there is nothing that can be prosecuted under civil law, canonical discipline will punish the negligent.
But at the same time, the pope is kindling the light of grace. He is opening the door of God's forgiveness even to those guilty of the worst abominations, if they sincerely repent.
As for the foremost accusers, those most armed with stones to throw at the Church, none of them is without sin. It is a stretch for those who exalt sexuality as a pure instinct, free from any constraint, to object when it is abused.
The tragedy of some priests and religious, Benedict XVI has written in the letter, was in part that they gave in to these widespread "ways of thinking and assessing secular realities without sufficient reference to the Gospel," to the point of justifying the unjustifiable.
A lapse that certainly cannot be attributed to Ratzinger as bishop and pope, not even by his staunchest adversaries, if they are sincere.
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