A Higher Standard

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - January 12, 2007

Last week we marked the fifth anniversary of the revelation of the horrible, systematic sexual abuse of minors by Fr. John Geoghan. That started an avalanche of disclosures of abuse allegations against scores of other priests over the past several decades, first in the Archdiocese of Boston and then in other dioceses across the country. Many priests resigned or were put on leave. Bishops who knew about the abuse but did not adequately intervene to stop it had their episcopal ministry severely weakened, and Cardinal Law eventually resigned. The heart-wrenching stories of victims anguished and incensed the whole Church. The faith of so many Catholics in the holiness of the Church and of her clergy was shaken.

God always tries to draw good of evil, and he has already effected much good in the painful past five years. Clergy who have harmed the young are no longer able to exercise any public ministry. There are programs in place to ensure that no Church employees or volunteers have abused children. Far greater training is done with Church staff to catch signs of abuse and to report them immediately. Children receive training to help them to spot potential predators. There are tougher guidelines for the selection of seminarians and for their formation in chastity and holiness. There is a move toward greater transparency and accountability across the board.

Much still remains to be done and improved, but even the most vocal critics of the Church's response to the sexual abuse of minors note that the situation is much better now than a half-decade ago, particularly with respect to removing the church of abusers.

One area that many cite as still in need of improvement is the accountability of bishops. In their June, 2002 meeting in Dallas in response to the scandals, the members of the U.S. episcopacy did not put themselves under the same norms they wrote for priests and did not propose any stringent procedures for the disciplining of bishops who deliberately failed to remove abusers from pastoral situations where they could continue to inflict harm. The bishops were clearly constrained by some procedural issues in Church law, but by not at least proposing disciplinary norms for bishops, they failed to address what for many was the most spiritually disturbing part of the scandal revelations. It was easier for many of the faithful to comprehend the crimes of priests with grave psychological and spiritual problems than to grasp that some bishops who knew about it did not do everything possible to stop it.

The faithful instinctively call bishops, as successors of the apostles, to higher standards of holiness, goodness, wisdom and justice than they do priests in general, and they want bishops to hold themselves to those same higher standards. Today, a bishop's holiness, more than his office, is the source of his moral authority with the people of God.

The importance of a bishop as an icon of Christ's holiness was at issue in Poland last weekend when the new Archbishop of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus, resigned the day after he took canonical possession of the Archdiocese. Earlier in his tenure as a young priest and university professor, Wielgus had cooperated with the Polish communist spy agency, the SB. While any priest wanting to travel abroad needed formally to meet with the SB, a report released by the Polish bishops states that Wielgus participated much more than those who were merely going through the motions. Those disclosures led many Poles, and it appears Pope Benedict, to insist on his resignation.

The issue of cooperation with the communists is highly sensitive to Poles, since so many priests, religious and family members were imprisoned, tortured and killed by the communists. The Church, moreover, had always been seen as an uncompromising beacon of hope and light in opposition to communist evils. The revelations that some priests were cooperators in this evil has shocked and scandalized this very Catholic nation and led many Polish commentators to predict that its impact will be similar to what occurred in the United States after the sexual abuse scandals.

The clamor for the resignation of the new archbishop of Poland's largest diocese shows that the people of God want above all successors of the apostles who they think are uncompromising with evil. They want men like Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, the indomitable former archbishop of Warsaw who was imprisoned for his defiant anti-communist resistance. They want men like Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II, who tirelessly and patiently negotiated but never compromised. Both men — so different in personality, temperament and style, but so alike in their unfailing witness to the truth — are now servants of God, the first step toward canonization.

Archbishop Wielgus' resignation was a sign he recognized that — whatever the level of his former cooperation with the communist authorities and whatever the eventual willingness of Catholic Poles to forgive past communist collaborators — he was incapable of being the inspiring witness to holiness for which the people of God naturally aspire and look. He recognized that his failure to live up to a higher standard had "harmed the Church." Knowing that his own authority to lead people to Christ and for Christ was gravely undermined, he did what was best for the Church and his nation, lest the Church's overall moral authority be undercut.

Every crisis is a crisis of saints. Every scandal needs to lead to a rebirth in holiness at every level of the Church, but particularly in her leaders. That was the essential and still valid message Pope John Paul II gave the U.S. Cardinals in April 2002 in response to the sexual abuse crisis. His words are just as applicable posthumously to the crisis in his native land:

"We must be confident that this time of trial will bring a purification of the entire Catholic community, a purification that is urgently needed if the Church is to preach more effectively the Gospel of Jesus Christ in all its liberating force. Now you must ensure that where sin increased, grace will all the more abound. So much pain, so much sorrow must lead to a holier priesthood, a holier episcopate, and a holier Church."

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.