BishopAccountability.org

Church mission of evangelisation further 'hobbled' by abuse revelations, says London Oratory provost

By Edward Kendall
Tablet
August 28, 2018

https://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/9657/church-mission-of-evangelisation-further-hobbled-by-abuse-revelations-says-london-oratory-provost-

The London Oratory
Photo by Nick Ansell

'The Church has experienced a paradigm shift in which PR-speak has lost any power it might once have had to reassure'

The Provost of the London Oratory has said recent revelations of clerical sexual abuse has further "hobbled the church's mission of evangelisation". 

Father Julian Large, former Fleet Street journalist and Provost of the London (or Brompton) Oratory writes that “the recent Grand Jury report on sexual abuse in America details events of such wickedness and depravity as to leave the most cynical tabloid reporter shaken.”

“That pastors who have been ordained to be the living image of Our Lord and Saviour on earth could deliberately do such harm to those little ones whose angels behold the face of their Father in Heaven defies words,” Father Large says in his most recent pastoral letter. He adds that the “resulting crisis of credibility which has hobbled the Church’s mission of evangelisation in recent decades can only have been exacerbated wherever the institutional response has been to issue defensive official statements crafted by expensive lawyers and spin doctors.”

“With the latest revelations, and the promise of worse to come, the Church has experienced a paradigm shift in which PR-speak has lost any power it might once have had to reassure,” he continues. 

In light of such revelations the temptation for many might be to leave the Church. But Father Large reminds his readers that despite “the transgressions of Her members” the Catholic Church remains “the Mystical Body of Christ, founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of mankind. She is where we find saving truth in its fullness, and where we encounter Our Lord in the Sacraments and receive Him in His entirety in Holy Communion.”

Father Large alludes to last Sunday’s reading from John’s Gospel in which many of Jesus’s disciples are scandalised by his words and start to leave him, prompting him to ask his twelve Apostles, “Will you also go away?” To which Peter replies, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we have believed and have known, that thou art the Christ, the Son of God.” Peter’s response, Father Large argues, should be the model for the faithful when the Christ’s Church faces scandal.

 “If we now begin to witness a new exodus of members from the Church in response to revelations of dreadful scandals, we need to keep these words of the fishermen inscribed on our hearts” and “hold tight to the Faith,” writes Father Large.

 Father Large then returns his attention to the victims and urges his readers to “pray for the victims of those shepherds who have turned out to be wolves. The consequences of this betrayal include ruined lives of isolation, sustained anguish and sometimes suicide.” He prays that they may “encounter the healing presence of Our loving Saviour from which they were driven by pastors who were demons in disguise.”

 Read the text of Father Large’s letter here.




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