Grim News from Philadelphia Archdiocese

Words fail.  What can the faithful do?  What should the faithful do?  Excerpts:

...To read the grand jury report is to invite a crisis of faith.

Many Catholics may quit the church or, in fear, remove their children from Catholic schools. At least they will stop dropping money into collection plates. Who can blame them?

But before heading to the exits, Catholics should consider this.

Judas was an apostle.

That is to say, the church from its earliest days, has been convulsed with heartbreaking scandal.

In the 16th century, after Tetzel and other scandals sparked the Protestant Reformation, Saint Francis DeSales began the church anew.

It was a sullen task. Twice, he was beaten and left for dead in his evangelical travels through Europe.

Asked why he stuck with it, he said, "While those who give scandal are guilty of the spiritual equivalent of murder, those who take scandal, who allow scandals to destroy their faith, are guilty of spiritual suicide..."

Ladies and gentlemen, to read about what has occurred is to reinforce everything Paul VI said about the devil's continued existence. It is to reinforce the truth that we are engaged in mortal combat with the powers and principalities of this present darkness, that all of us are subject to temptation, all of us are concupiscent or inclined towards disordered desire and sin by birth, and that nobody is immune from the combat.

We are in a war, everyone--a war for our souls, and a war for all those we hold dear. Prayer, and fasting, and works of mercy--cause God knows we need them--are the tools, the weapons, given us to hand. The sacraments, and the Scriptures, and the hierarchy, and the whole mystical body of Christ are given us as our family, our safeguard, our fortress, and our font of grace. Why should it be any surprise that there are sinners in the ranks? We are in the ranks, for starters, and I the greatest sinner among them.

We are in the field, where the enemy has sown weeds among the wheat, and the bad fish shall have to be separated from the good, and the angels of the Lord, at the end of the ages, will gather the bad from among the Church and throw them into the fire. And it would then be better for a millstone to have been put around their neck and them thrown into the sea than that any among us shall have caused the children to fall. Jesus was not joking.

So this is not the final word, or even the beginning of the final word. Nor is this the worst trial we shall have to face in this lifetime, or in this age of the Church. Pray for our priests and our bishops. Hold them to account, but pray for them. Forgive, as Christ forgives us, as we ask the Father to forgive us--for it is not the light sins that need forgiving most, but those sins we call unforgivable. For Jesus. even when we were enemies of his, came among us for the salvation of sinners and the reign of God among men. He loved us before we loved him, loving us even to death, even death on the cross. And it is for sins such as these that he was crucified.