Why Atone?

Tonight at 7 PM in our Cathedral, the Bishop of Richmond, will celebrate a mass of atonement. In a gesture that is a liturgical aberration, the priests are asked to not concelebrate but to sit in the pews as if we were laity, and the bishop will celebrate mass without any of the insignia of his office. This will be accompanied by other penitential gestures. 

Some will call it show.Some will ask why should we participate, what do we have to atone for, we didn’t abuse children or cover it up. The anger is real and deep, and the question deserves an answer. 

To answer the question we need only look at the word atone.  It doesn’t come from Latin or Greek. It is a truly English word, a contraction for “at one.” Something that was once united has been broken. Something must be done to heal the break, to make it whole, to restore the unity. To atone is to do what is necessary to make it one again, to be “at one.”

At every level of the Church the unity has been broken. Many of the laity look at the clergy with suspicion and distrust. Priests look at their bishop and wonder if he covered something up or will he throw them under the bus to save himself. Bishops and Cardinals attack the Pope, even when it was his predecessors who promoted the bishops in question. The Church is fractured like a piece of glass. 

The original act of atonement was of course that of Jesus Christ. Did he suffer and die on the cross to make reparations for His sin? Of course not. He suffered an agonizing death for the sins of others, for the sins of all, for our sin. 

The Church, as St. Paul tells us is a single body with Christ as the head. What happens to one part effects the entire body. It is because of that unity that the death of one is able to save all. 

We know that we are called to imitate Christ. This means more than being nice. It means that, like Jesus, we must, of our own free will, embrace acts of penance, not just for our own sin but for the sins of others within the Church, other members of the body. 

Many of those who abused and those who covered it up are now dead. There is no penance they can do, no earthly punishment that can be inflicted on them. But we who are alive can walk in the footsteps of Christ. We can offer ourselves up.  We can take up the cross and follow him. 

Tonight in our Cathedral it will feel much like Good Friday. And that certainly seems to be where we are a Church, probably where we are called to live for some time to come. And we need to live there for a while because the only path to Easter is through Good Friday. There is no way around. 

Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself take up his cross and follow me. 

No one is naive enough to believe that a Mass of Atonement is going to fix the problem, but it is the right place to start. If we truly believe that the Eucharist is “the source and summit of the Christian life” then where better to start than with the Eucharist. If the bishop is the visible sign of unity then who better to celebrate the mass than him. 

In John’s gospel before Jesus goes to his death for us, he utters his great prayer for the unity of the Church. Now we must pray for that unity. In our prayer let us offer up our hurt, our anger, our frustration, our disappointment. Let us lay it all at the foot of the cross. And in the original sense of the word, let us do it as one, in the power of the one Holy Spirit, that the unity of our fractured Church be restored. 

The Right to Judge

For 18 years I have served as a judge in the tribunal of my diocese. More than once I have been asked “Who gives you the right to judge?” The answer is found squarely in the first reading for Monday’s mass. 

In a scene right out of modern daytime television a man is described as living with his father’a wife. Whether it is cohabitation or whether he is married to her, we do not know. What we are sure of is that St. Paul condemned it and pronounced sentence. 

I, for my part, although absent in body but present in spirit, have already, as if present, pronounced judgment on the one who has committed this deed

He does not say “God has pronounced judgement”. He uses the pronoun “I.”  He not only pronounced judgement but imposed the most severe penalty, excommunication. 

The one who did this deed should be expelled from your midst. 

Over time the Church developed a system for exercising this role of judging and appropriately punishing her members. Much of the world today can thank the Church for its judicial system of laws, tribunals, advocates, judges,assessors, and notaries. They continue to use the structures that the Church adapted from the Romans. 

Sadly, in the latter half of the previous century, following the council. we ceased exercising the judicial function in the Church and even today in many places our tribunals are relegated to dealing only with marriage. 

In Tuesday’s first reading St. Paul chastises Christians for taking each other to civil court, instead of handling their disputes within the Church. Sadly, we now find ourselves in a position where because the Church abdicated her judicial responsibility in the matter of abuse, the civil authorities are being called in to do what we should have done. 

Perhaps this will be the time when the Church will make the necessary reforms to our own system.  As Pope Francis has called to make the system more available to people for marriage cases, let us teach the people of God all of the matters that they can bring to a tribunal. And create some protection for judges and other tribunal personnel who currently serve at the whim of the local bishop.  

Our current Code of Canon Law was promulgated in 1983. Imagine if, even beginning that year. laity, religious, deacons  and priests in the Church could have brought their charges to a panel of judges to be heard, the accused been properly tried, and if convicted, punished. Imagine if the system had allowed a bishop to be accused and tried. Would people have sued diocese after diocese? 

Yes, the gospels tell us that as individuals we are not to judge. But as a Church unless we begin to judge more than marriage, we will be severely judged by the world.  

Sin of omission

In today’s gospel, we encounter the story of the master who gave coins to each of three servants.. To one he gave five, to one two and to one he gave one. 

As we know, the last one did nothing with coin he was given.

Why? Because he was afraid. His fear kept him from doing anything.

As we deal with the current crisis there are those who love to cook up complex conspiracy theories. But the answer to why many people who knew things did nothing is very simple. They were afraid, afraid to displease their superiors, afraid to tell the “people at the top” anything they didn’t want to hear. 

This behavior is not unique to the Catholic Church. We can look around and find countless examples of organizations where the same is true. A scandal erupts and after some investigation it is discovered that a host of people up and down the chain knew something but said nothing for fear of the blowback. It’s human to behave this way. 

The gospel today reminds us, however, just how wrong it is. The servant who did nothing is severely punished. They are commanded:

throw this useless servant into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth

As we deal with the current crisis in the Church there is much that needs to be said out loud, and there have been and will be a host of meetings at various levels. But how many people will say the things that need to be said? And how many of us will be the useless servants who sit in silence out of fear?

Yes, we all need to find our courage. But there must also be a systematic, an environmental change. 

Our bishops must, in the words of Pope Francis, “smell like sheep”. They must be accessible. The current system in too many places where the pastor talks to the dean, who talks to the vicar, who talks to the bishop, has proven that it does not work.  In the days before modern communication it was necessary. Now there no excuse. 

But all of the access in the world will not help unless the people no longer have to be afraid. Unless people can feel that their leaders are willing to hear hard truth. 

This can happen one of two ways. Either bishops themselves can make it clear they will listen and not punish. 

Or, there will have to be some protections imposed from outside. 

The servant in today’s gospel was paralyzed by fear. In 1 John we are told that

Perfect love casts out fear

We must do everything in our power to make the Church a place where laity, deacons, priests, and bishops can speak without fear. 

Patron for bishops

Today the Church celebrates St. Augustine, Bishop and Doctor, and it is my honor to currently pastor a parish dedicated to his honor. 

The story of St. Augustine as it is usually told involves him living a rather debaucherous life and his mother St. Monica praying for his conversion which eventually happened. Tehnrpoblem is not with how we tell the story up to the conversion, but how we like to imagine the story after. 

We like to imagine that after his conversion he was totally transformed. His life post-conversion was as the perfect Christian, the perfect bishop.That version, as pretty as it may be, robs his teaching of its power. 

The real bishop St. Augustine was profoundly aware of his own brokenness, not only before but after his conversion. He did not try to hide or deny his sin and constant struggle with temptation. His personal struggles shaped his, and ultimately the Church’s, understanding of sin and how it operates in the human heart. He moved the focus of blame for sin from outside to inside the human person.

The good news is, he also  understood our absolute dependence on God’s grace in the struggle against sin. He believed in our ability with God’s help to live, not a sin free, but a good moral life.

On this Feast of St. Augustine, let us pray that he may be an example to all Bishop and church leaders.

Spirit not Letter

At first glance it is easy to look at today’s gospel and think of our bishops as the “blind guides” of which Jesus speaks. And this wouldn’t be inaccurate. But personally, I have always found it more helpful for my spiritual growth to ask how the gospel challenges me.

In the gospel Jesus is not condemning the taking of oaths as much as he is condemning the way in which they very carefully parse the words. So somehow swearing by the gold of the temple is binding but swearing by the temple is not. In the old days Catholics would do the same with mass attendance. How much of mass must I attend for it to “count”? 

 In th post Vatican II days, it became how much stuff in mass can we change and how much made up stuff can we add on. The dodge used by this group was the untrue statement, “whatever isn’t forbidden is allowed.”

We are disgusted when we see our politicians and church leaders carefully parsing their words to explain how what they did want technically speaking illegal. 

And yet, which of us does not on some level play this game. The speed limit is 60, but I am going 70, because no one is around. Even the phrase “white lie” is a dodge. What whitens a lie?

Jesus is once more calling us to. be better than this. Searching for excuses or clever rationalizations when we sin should not be the way we live. We should be honest, first of all, with ourselves. 

And when we do sin, Jesus has given us the Sacrament of Penance through which we can be assured of forgiveness and receive the grace we need to be transformed. 

The Clairvoyant Pastor

Whenever I read or hear today’s gospel about leaving the 99 to go after the one lost sheep, my mind flashes back to a friend who said of his parish, “I could stop going tomorrow, and no one would notice.” He did; and they didn’t. The next time he heard from the parish was his computer generated end of the year tax letter. And this is not just a Catholic phenomenon. When my brother died, the church from which he was buried kept him on the mailing list for youth events. 

As church communities grow it becomes more and more difficult to keep track of every single person. The problem is exacerbated by belief in the clairvoyant Pastor. The best example of this is the irrate coversation that goes something like this:

– My mother was in the hospital for a week and no one came to see her.

–Did you call the church to let us know?

–No.

Somehow Fr. John or Pastor Bob is supposed to magically know who is sick, who has died, who is in need of help. In larger communities, this expectation is extended to the staff. We can forget that by virtue of our baptism each of us shares in the ministry of the church. 

Each week around the world hundreds of people step back from their church family for a host of reasons. Today’s gospel reminds us that we are all our brother’s keeper. We all have an obligation to notice when the person next to us is missing that week. We all have an obligation to notice the one new person sitting all by themselves.  It is easy to chitchat with your friends before or after mass. How often to we “leave the ninety-nine” our friends, and go talk to the one?

There are some ministries that are reserved to the clergy, evangelization, reaching out to others is not. 

A Higher Law

Today the Church celebrates St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher. They are a reminder to us that as Christians we have a duty to critically examine all human law. They remind us that we believe there is always a higher authority. 

As Americans the existence of our country is based on the belief that human rights are not granted either by a legislative body or by a constitution. Human rights are given to every person on earth by God. “They are endowed by their creator.” Basic human rights we believe to be inalienable. 

Whether or not a law is just is not based on popularity. As Christians, we believe that a law is just to the degree that it reflects God’s law. Even if 99% of the citizens of a country favor a law, it was passed by a legislative branch and signed by the executive; if it is a violation of God’s law, it is unjust. And as Christians we have an obligation to denounce it. 

St. Thomas More was faced with a leader who did not understand the limits of his authority. But St. Thomas More could neither be cojouled or coerced to surrender his allegiance to a higher authority.