What Will the Catholic Church Do?

It seems every day brings more allegations in the sex abuse scandal shaking the Catholic Church. What seems to have changed in the last few weeks though, is that the focus has shifted from the misdeeds of individual members of the clergy to the role of the Church hierarchy. That's why the apologies for the sins of the abusers have failed to stem the tide of criticism: they haven't been seen as addressing the decades-long efforts at cover-up by church officials.

The current controversy threatens the very basis of the Church's legitimacy. If it behaves like any other human organization, what makes it special? If it cannot, or will not, respond honestly and compassionately when evil is done by its representatives, how can it claim to be divinely guided? In short, if it can't act as Jesus would, how can it call itself the body of Christ?

The Church has survived many scandals and schisms in its 2,000-year history. In the early sixteenth century, when the world was being reshaped by increasing literacy as a result of the invention of printing, the abuses of the gangsterish Borgia popes incited the Protestant Reformation. Depending on your point of view, that did, or didn't, turn out well for the Church.

Today it's the global mass media that have focused attention on the Church, examining its institutional character in a effort to understand why it responded the way it did and to predict how it will react to the present crisis. Many see a connection between its patriarchal authoritarianism and its reaction to the sex abuses.

I don't know what will happen. I wish the Church would be less authoritarian. I also wish it would relax the rule of celibacy for clergy to allow the option of marriage for priests and would permit women to be priests. However, the present Pope doesn't have a reputation as a reformer and such changes would amount to a second Reformation, so the Vatican may decide to hunker down and ride out the storm. But the Church is not as monolithic as many people think, so change is not out of the question.

Those who were abused certainly have justifiable reason to be angry at the Church. And there are always those who would wish the Church harm. But I think the majority of those directing anger at the Church today (meaning most people), are doing so out of a sense of disappointment.

I think the road forward for the Church is one of humility and repentance, but the road doesn't have to be walked alone. In some sense, and this may be a product of Pope John Paul II's popularity and widespread travel, we are all Catholics. And we don't want to see the Church destroyed; we want to see it reborn. We want to see it truly be the "light of the world" that it professes to be, for the world sorely needs light.