Pope Francis said in response to horrific sex abuse charges involving children, “we showed no care for the little ones.” A grand jury report in Pennsylvania recently revealed that at least 1,000 children were abused by some 300 priests over the past 70 years, and that generations of bishops failed to take measures to protect their flocks. At least this is what the media is reporting.
I am not a member of the Roman Catholic church but I am a member of the global church of Jesus Christ, so I take this personally. The crimes and sins against the most vulnerable were committed by men that I would have probably considered “brethren.” Never mind that sex abuse by people in power against the least powerful is not only a church problem, the church is supposed to be the one true “safe space” in culture. Hollywood producers, school teachers, gymnastic coaches, and scout leaders have a duty to “the least of these,” but we members of the clergy have a sacred duty to them.
We must find out what the current equivalent symbol of sackcloth and ashes is and wear it before a world that deserves better from the church. My own corner of the church world has know it’s share of scandals over the years including sexual exploitation. Let me be very clear here, I am not standing apart from my Roman Catholic brothers and sisters and saying, “they have a problem.” I am saying, “we have a problem.”
My evangelical Christian church and my personal ministry style is about as non Roman Catholic as you could get. Our worship is not liturgical, it’s serious but casual. Our music is closer to rock than Bach. I don’t give homilies, I preach sermons. I don’t wear vestments, but business casual attire or worse. But at this time I join my heart to the good sincere Roman Catholic clergy who want to repent, repair, and then rethink the church’s relationship with the outside world. A whole lot of people won’t differentiate the church of Rome from my contemporary Christian expression of church; they will paint us all with the same broad brush, fair enough. I am not going to say, “they must get better.” I am going to say, “we must get better.”
For we who are committed to the church, it’s not time to be less committed; the Church needs us now more than ever. Any time a force proves it has the power to ruin it is showing you just how much power it has; therefore, it has equal power to redeem. The power of the atom can manifest itself in the nuclear bomb or nuclear medicine. The haters of religion aren’t really the people I am concerned about reaching, it’s the people who really have no healer but the church.
Now, I have no admiration or patience with a lot of the virtue signaling variety of guilt sharing I see going around every time a man’s sexual misconduct makes news. The kind of response I feel called to isn’t the pharisaical social media hand wringing that seems to shout, “I’m so thankful I’m not a sinner like one of them.” This repentance has to be deeper than another social trend of the “call out” culture. This repentance has to be similar to our response to the Holocaust which has caused us to be alert to Nazi Symbols and cry, “never again.” Many years ago I read in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago” where he said he believed he was also capable of being like the guards in the unbelievable oppressive Soviet prison where he was incarcerated. We are really able to be redemptive when we think like that. Pharisees spoke only against other people’s sin and they only made the world worse. James 4:9,10 says, “Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” This is time for tears and if there are perpetrators who feel no remorse, then the victims need us to cry vicariously for them. Dying in the place of others defines the Christian cross.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying we all share equal blame for what a few have done. Taking responsibility is not saying, “this is my fault,” it’s saying “this is my burden.” The weeds in a garden aren’t the gardeners fault but they are the gardeners responsibility. Could I have been a better friend to a clergyman who was struggling with dark desires and gotten them help? Yes, I know I could have. Have I also cooperated in a sort of conspiracy of silence about church leaders and sexual desire? Probably. Sex is an incredibly powerful desire that resides in almost every person on the face of the earth and even we evangelical Christians seem to try and live in denial of this fact. From presidents to pastors, sexual desire is proving to be universal and so is the inability to control it. As far as I can tell there’s no class of human who by virtue of their calling in life are asexual. A vow of celibacy is an honorable thing but the assumption of celibacy is naive. If a Christian leader is going to make the vow to abstain from sexual contact there should be accountability partners who say, “prove it.” There’s too much at stake to do otherwise. Pastors like me don’t take vows of celibacy but we do take a vow of fidelity and breaking that promise can be just as devastating.
Another problem that deserves attention is what I call “the stewardship of power.” When we are respected and revered by virtue of our position we have a proportionately increased responsibility to humbly serve those looking up to us. A sad phenomena in evangelical circles is the so called “celebrity pastor.” The “celebrity pastor” trend is not pastoral it’s pathological and it’s producing weird honor cultures that are dishonoring to people and to God. Honestly, I don’t know how well I would have handled the opportunity to be a “celebrity pastor,” if it had ever been offered to me; therefore, I’ll repent of what I might have been if it will help you who have been molested or seduced by a member of my sacred office.
I hope I haven’t offended anyone by what I have written. That certainly isn’t my intention. I have spent most of 63 years loving this institution called the church and then in the last twenty years or so I have awakened to a desire to build a bridge to the community beyond the church, to the community at large. John 3:16 says, “God so loved the world.” My two loves are the Church and the world. I know that when church is done right there’s no organization that’s better for the world. It’s too early to ask some of you to try church again, but I’m really praying hard that such a day will come.
Here’s an excellent article entitled “The Titanic and the Unethical Behavior of Leaders,” by Diane J Chandler. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2018/08/22/the-titanic-the-unethical-behavior-of-leaders/
