God's Response to Scandal

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - November 2, 2007

After every scandal in the history of the Church, God has raised up great saints to bring his Church back to holiness. These saints are the ones who show the true face of the Church after others have disfigured it.

After the infamous scandals that led to the Protestant reformation, God raised up many of the greatest saints in the history of the Church: Teresa of Avila, the foundress of the Discalced Carmelites; Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits and so many heroic Jesuits with him; Francis de Sales, Bishop of Geneva and co-founder of the Sisters of the Visitation; Philip Neri, the founder of the Oratorians; as well as scores of saintly women and men who planted seeds that continue to bear fruit to this day.

On November 4, we celebrate the feast of perhaps the greatest counter-reformation saint of them all: Charles Borromeo. His whole life and ministry are paradigmatic not only for pastors and bishops but for the Church as a whole in responding appropriately to scandals.

At the age of 22, after the death of his parents, he was named a cardinal by his uncle, Pope Pius IV, even though he was not yet in holy orders. Despite his youth, he was was summoned to Rome and given enormous responsibility in the day-to-day operations of the Vatican. Since he was a member of the Medici family, the famous mercantile clan that built Renaissance Florence, he had enormous administrative abilities, but his management skills were surpassed by his zeal and piety.

When his uncle decided to reconvene and successfully finish the Council of Trent, which had broken up in disagreements twice before, he entrusted its preparation and supervision to Charles, even though he was not yet 25. Under his leadership, he brought the oft contentious prelates to agreement and the Council passed its most important dogmatic and disciplinary decrees. After the Council, he tried to make its teachings intelligible and effective by overseeing the composition of the Catechism, and reforming the liturgy and sacred music.

Once his uncle died and Pius V was elected, he begged for the opportunity to be able to go to Milan, where he had been appointed administrator years before. He knew it was in a terrible state of disarray; in many villages, the people were debauched and their priests were worse. He had been governing the enormous diocese by vicars and trying to reform it with the help of the Jesuits, but he knew that his personal presence was needed. The new pope, who hated to lose him, reluctantly gave him permission. He was ordained a priest and a bishop and arrived in Milan in 1566.

The first thing he did was to hold a plenary council with the bishops, priests, and faithful of the region in order to ensure that the reforms of the Council of Trent were being implemented. They focused first on the discipline and training of the clergy, and the duty priests had to celebrate the Mass and other sacraments faithfully and to teach the faith by word and example.

This was easier said than done. Many priests and monasteries resisted these reforms and turned a deaf ear to their need for deep conversion. For this reason, he traveled from place to place in his diocese and held local synods, to make sure the reforms were not ignored. With wayward priests, he first dealt as a tender father, seeking to persuade them to change their way of life. If they refused, with great courage and firmness, he showed them the door and replaced them with worthy clergy who could teach and exemplify Christian faith and morals. It is a sign of how corrupt many of the clergy were that a group of them conspired to try to assassinate him. One morning, when he was kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament in his chapel, a priest snuck up from behind and shot him in the back. God miraculously prevented the bullet from penetrating his tattered cassock.

At the same time as he was reforming his priests, he built three seminaries to ensure that future priests would receive not only solid formation but clear supervision and evaluation to guarantee that they were holy men capable of sanctifying rather than harming their people.

Once he had reformed his shepherds, he sought to reform his flock. He was the first bishop to institute Sunday Schools in his diocese and to require his priests to teach catechism on Sundays and Holy Days, not just to children but to adults. Among his flock were also many corrupt civil leaders. He met with them individually and called them to conversion, since he knew the power of their example. When they refused to convert in private, he went public and denounced their scandalous behavior for what it was. When they threatened him, he did not back down. Charity did not allow him to back down: their and others' salvation was dependent on it.

This love for others and their true good, in this world and in the next, was his greatest characteristic. His self-sacrifice knew no bounds. He gave away most of his possessions and income to the poor. He barely heated his residence so that money would be available to help heat the houses of indigent families. After a great famine, with his own hand, he fed 3,000 people each day for three months. When the plague struck the region, and most of the civil leaders had fled, he with priests and religious cared for all those who remained. For two years, he arranged food for 70,000 people a day, exhausting all his resources to help them.

He worked himself to a glorious death at the age of 46, an icon of God's master plan for the reform of the Church after scandal.

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.