Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I.

Betrayal

Sunday, March 28, 2010

“On the night he was betrayed,” we pray in the Eucharistic Prayer, just before the priest consecrates the bread and wine. The Scriptures and the ceremonies of Holy Week bring us into the mystery of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection; but the stage for the Paschal Mystery is set by Judas’ betrayal of Jesus. Other betrayals also mark the Lord’s life and death, betrayals that continue when the life of the church is wounded by sin and evil.

In recent days, in both Ireland and Germany, the church has come face to face with the sin of sexual abuse of minors by some priests and religious. The actual betrayal of children and of the church herself occurred years ago, but the public knowledge of it now makes it part of our lives again this Holy Week.

After speaking to the bishops of Ireland, Pope Benedict XVI has written a letter to the Catholics of Ireland. He expresses a sense of shame that I have heard him speak of more than once, and he announced an apostolic visitation of some Irish dioceses and religious orders. The Vatican Press Officer Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi mentioned that the church in the United States was able to face this crisis through changes in the Code of Canon Law that were negotiated in 2002. These changes have enabled the bishops here to remove from public ministry permanently any priest who has abused a child, no matter when the abuse occurred.

Some of these changes were anticipated by policies that were initiated in the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1992. From that year, every allegation of abuse of a minor, no matter when it is said to have happened, has been reported to the civil authorities. The Review Board has to judge that there is “reasonable cause to suspect” that abuse occurred in order to remove a priest permanently from ministry, and they are faithful in their task of sorting out evidence for events of decades past. Perhaps the two areas that have been most improved in recent years are the training of children to recognize when there is danger of abuse and the training of adults, including church volunteers, to recognize the signs of abuse. Reaching out to victims with appropriate spiritual and psychological help has also proven effective in many but not all cases. The effects of abuse are long lasting, and sexual abuse is far more extensive than many of us once thought. In recent months, the archdiocese has opened up the therapy groups for victims of priests to include those who have been abused by family members or counselors or public school teachers or youth workers.

God is present when evil is turned into good. That is the Paschal Mystery: The extinction of Jesus’ life on the cross is transformed into the new life of the risen Christ. From the death of the old body comes the life of the new, the life in the Spirit that the Lord shares with his church after his resurrection from the dead.

Holy Week invites us to face the times we have betrayed the Lord, the times others have betrayed us, the times the church has been betrayed, in her moral life or in her faith, even by those consecrated to her service. In the midst of these betrayals, we find ourselves with Christ, who was betrayed by Judas and then by Peter and those who fled from him in his passion. In Christ, we find new life beyond betrayal and we rejoice in the hope his resurrection brings.

We believe in the resurrection of the body when Christ returns in glory; we experience now the resurrection of the heart when, with the help of the new life of grace, we find evil transformed into good in our lives and the lives of others whom Christ has given us to love. May the courage and joy of the resurrection of the heart be our experience again this Holy Week of 2010.


Sincerely yours in Christ,

Francis Cardinal George, OMI
Archbishop of Chicago

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