In an article about the Church abuse scandal in the Catholic News Herald’s Aug. 31 issue, it was suggested that the solution to this crisis in the Church was to go back to “tradition” because what has been going on for the past 100 years hasn’t worked. I couldn’t disagree more.
It was the Council of Trent, with its “circling of the wagons” rather than confronting the clear sickness in the Church at the time, that accelerated the decline to where we have come today. We became an even more imperial Church, ever more rife with clericalism and triumphalism. We became a Church with no accountability, answering only to itself and killing (either literally or virtually through “silencing”) anyone who dared to dissent or question through the Inquisition and its later form, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The last thing we need is to go back to an environment where priests and the hierarchy are unquestionable little kings rather than “servants of the servants.” No matter how “pure” their original calls and vocations may be, “absolute power corrupts absolutely” and unaccountable power will only lead to consistent abuse. Certainly not all priests succumb to these temptations, but those prone to power grabs would continue to be enabled.
What we need is true servant leadership that actually looks to furthering the Church’s mission: to bring people into ever-growing relationship with God, rather than using the power of the Church for crowd control and self-preservation of the hierarchy and its institutions. This must be coupled with outside accountability and transparency that is not beholden to the hierarchy. The Church is most assuredly not a democracy, but if the clergy don’t start to come to grips with what their actual role is, I strongly suspect the faithful will be “voting with their feet.” I, for one, won’t stand any longer with the Church if it continues to hide behind power and legal strategies to protect its might rather than standing with the “least of my brothers.” I will trust that, as Ezekiel said in chapter 34, God Himself will shepherd His lost sheep and remove those who have been plundering them.
John Knippel lives in Hayesville.