How Could It Happen?

How could the sex scandals in the Church happen?  And how could such a culture of secrecy and deep complicity exist among men who have supposedly devoted their lives to Christ and His Church? 

I am currently reading a book entitled Hold On To Your Kids.  This book is about the dangers of peer-orientation over healthy attachment between children and their parents.  Healthy attachment is the way we humans are meant to develop.  Attachment grounds the child in a secure, unconditional love that allows maturation and personal flourishing.  Unhealthy attachment to peers destabilizes a child's development, stunts the child's emotional and psychological growth, and we see the repercussions every day in the increase of suicides, bullying, cutting and many other more subtle dysfunctions. 

I see a parallel in the Church hierarchy's cover up of scandal, the silence about and protection of corrupt bishops.  I fear that the clergy have an unhealthy, spiritually stunting attachment to the institutional organization of the church, rather than the healthy attachment, that is a deeply loving relationship that they can rest in, with Christ Himself. 

Father Dwight Longenecker, who by the way, is a convert from the Anglican church and is now a married with children, Roman Catholic priest, wrote a very good blogpost on where he sees the problem lie.  The situation of dependence on the institutional structure of the church leads to a perverted orientation to the power of the organization itself, rather than a loyalty to following Christ.  The Church is to serve as a conduit to holiness, and is not an end to itself.

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