Philadelphia urgently needs truth, compassion and healing

Sept. 12, 2011
NCR editorial

Philadelphia is an archdiocese in which the people have been deeply wounded by a significant number of their priests and the last three cardinal archbishops. It is a place where children, mostly boys, have been raped and molested, in some cases repeatedly and over years. It is a place where the wounds of the priest sex abuse crisis are perhaps the most exposed of any diocese, and where, with each new revelation of testimony by former archdiocesan officials, the wounds are scored open anew.

It is a place where the last three cardinal archbishops have deeply betrayed the trust of the Catholic community and that of the wider culture. They deceived the Catholic community, were complicit in hiding crimes and criminals and acted first to protect their own reputations and that of the institution to the detriment of the community’s most vulnerable.
The Catholic community in Philadelphia is in desperate need of a credible example of the truth of the Incarnation that sustains us: That the divine is mediated through the human. In that context it is not God’s intent that we passively accept abuse and betrayal from our leaders, hoping that somewhere down the line we’ll understand the will of God.

But that’s what the faithful of Philadelphia were told by their new archbishop, Charles Chaput, in his first homily as leader of the archdiocese: “All the events of a believer’s life are shaped by the will of a loving God. God’s purpose undergirds everything that happens to Christians, for God is truly in control. So in the midst of the turmoil of the church in our time, specifically in Philadelphia, this feast of Mary’s birth should remind us of God’s loving plan” and that “all things work for the good of those who love God and who are called according to his purpose.”
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Sex abuse is the respectable term we apply to rape and sodomy of the most vicious sort against children. In his homily, Chaput couldn’t even bring himself to use that term. He spoke of the church in Philadelphia facing “serious challenges,” “failures,” “problems.” What better context than the Catholic Mass for acknowledging the victims, but Chaput never uttered that word either.
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Philadelphia presents a particularly urgent case in need of truth, compassion and healing. What isn’t needed at the moment is someone who insists that the church “is not defined by its failures” and its “critics and those who dislike us.”
The church in this case is rightly being defined by its “failures” and will continue to be until it regains the trust of its own people. And it won’t regain trust by blaming the problems on its critics. In this instance, outside enemies are the least of the problem. The church’s leaders and certain of its priests have been enemy enough to the community.
In this first encounter with their new leader, however, the faithful in Philadelphia found little acknowledgment of the pain they’ve endured and the degree to which they’ve been betrayed.

Read full article at National Catholic Reporter