Easter, Sacrifice, and the Suffering Servant

The workings and events of the very first Easter pivoted on the cold betrayal of Jesus by one of his closest chosen followers. In his homily over EWTN yesterday, Father Joseph Mary, MFVA, addressed an ongoing, present-day betrayal of a different – yet parallel – kind. He began by quoting a recent article by the conservative Catholic author and commentator George Weigel... whom I like as long as he's not writing on politics, but instead less controversially steering through matters of recent Church history; he's particularly noted for his well-written, wide-ranging biography of our late former pontiff, the Venerable John Paul II, who passed away five years ago tomorrow. Father said:

Recently George Weigel wrote an article, and he said this in the beginning of his article:

"The sexual and physical abuse of children and young people is a global plague; its manifestations run the gamut from fondling by teachers, to rape by uncles, to kidnapping and sex-trafficking. In the United States alone, there are reportedly some 39 million victims of childhood sexual abuse. Forty to sixty percent were abused by family members, including stepfathers and live-in boyfriends of a child's mother – thus suggesting that abused children are the principal victims of the sexual revolution, the breakdown of marriage, and the hook-up culture.[...]

"Hofstra University professor Carol Shakeshaft reports that six to ten percent of public-school students have been molested in recent years – some 290,000 between 1991 and 2000. According to other recent studies, two percent of sex-abuse offenders were Catholic priests – a phenomenon that spiked between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s, but seems to have virtually disappeared.[...]

"Yet in a pattern exemplifying the dog's behavior in Proverbs 26:11 [he "returns to his vomit"], the sexual-abuse story in the global media is almost entirely a Catholic story, in which the Catholic Church is portrayed as the epicenter of the sexual abuse of the young, with hints of an ecclesiastical criminal conspiracy involving sexual predators whose predations continue today. That the vast majority of the abuse cases in the United States took place decades ago is of no consequence to this storyline. For the narrative that has been constructed is often less about the protection of the young (for whom the Catholic Church is, by empirical measure, the safest environment for young people in America today) than it is about taking the Church down – and, eventually, out, both financially and as a credible voice in the public debate over public policy."

This past Palm Sunday, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York – at the conclusion of the Palm Sunday Mass, ...asked the congregation to sit for a couple minutes of patience, and then he said:

"The somberness of Holy Week is intensified for Catholics this year... [by a] tidal wave of headlines about abuse of minors by some few priests, this time in Ireland, Germany, and a rerun of an old story from Wisconsin.[...]

"What deepens the sadness now is the unrelenting insinuations against the Holy Father himself, as certain sources seem frenzied to implicate the man who, perhaps more than anyone else, has been the leader in purification, reform, and renewal that the Church so needs.

"The 'Sunday Mass is hardly the place to document the inaccuracy, bias, and hyperbole of such aspersions, but...' it is 'the time for Catholics to pray for Benedict our Pope'."

(The congregation responded with twenty seconds of applause.)

"No one has been more vigorous in cleansing the Church of the effects of this sickening sin than the man we now call Pope Benedict XVI. [And] That he is responsible for '[t]he dramatic progress...' made by the Church, which 'could never have happened without the insistence and support of the very man [who's] now being daily crowned with thorns by groundless innuendo.

"Does the Church and her Pastor, Pope Benedict XVI, need intense scrutiny and just criticism for tragic horrors long past?

"Yes! He himself has asked for it, encouraging complete honesty, [and] at the same time expressing contrition, and urging a thorough cleansing.

"All we ask is that it be fair, and that the Catholic Church not be singled out for a horror that has cursed every culture, religion, organization, institution, school, agency, and family in the world."

Peter Kreeft, a convert to the Catholic faith – speaking of one of the reasons for becoming Catholic – said it is the opposition to the Church; that the Church, he said, is like a steel ball in the stomach: it refuses to be assimilated. And so that's why we will find, in every age, opposition to the Church.

The Lord said: "Do not be surprised to find that the world hates you, because it has hated Me before you. If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you."

And we can think of some of the calumny that was directed toward our Lord Himself. In the Gospels, we find that he was accused of being possessed, of casting out demons by [the power of] the prince of demons. Others accused Him of being a glutton; some said he was a drunkard; He went to His death being called a "blasphemer"; some suggested He was a suicidal man who was going to kill Himself.

So we think of all these accusations that our Lord endured, and we should not be surprised that the Church – His [mystical] body – would also endure calumny. Not that She is not in need of purification – of course; She is made up of sinners; She is always in need of purification. But let us be fair, that there's no organization in the world that's not in need of cleansing and purification, and especially of this horrible atrocity of the abuse of children.

And faithful priests, who so generously and sacrificially give themselves for the good of others: like our Lord, they too must defend what is true against the present relentless media attacks – for the sake of the flock, lest they be discouraged. Yet there's always an element, for any priest, of victimhood, of joining Jesus in Isaiah's prophetic vision of Him in the [Suffering-]Servant Song we listened to this week.

And today we heard from Isaiah, Chapter 50: "I gave my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who plucked my beard; my face I did not shield from buffets and spitting." And on Friday, from Isaiah 53: "Though he was harshly treated, he submitted and opened not his mouth; like a lamb led to the slaughter or a sheep before the shearers, he was silent and opened not his mouth." Also from today's Psalm [reading], 69: "The insults of those who blaspheme you fall upon me."

And so there will always be an element of victimhood, for the ministerial priest, but also for all of us – for all of us, who are members of the Body of Christ in being faithful to Christ. We, too, are going to endure some of the things that our Lord endured – in a less intense way than our Lord did (He is exemplar for all of us; He a model for all of us), but nonetheless the Church Herself is going to share in some of this too. And it shouldn't really be such a surprise to us that at times we endure these things.

Peter Kreeft, again, says that this was one of the reasons that brought him into the Church, that he was always opposed, like a steel ball in the stomach of the world that refused to be assimilated.

And we can ask the question, "What can we do, now, to protect vulnerable children?" Not just dredging up things decades-old – of course, it's necessary for the Church to endure that for purification. But what can we do now?

The media is [sic] often at the forefront of being that instrument which is bringing these very things about. Because the media really should be that instrument that is helping to ennoble man, to help him to grow in virtue: virtues like fidelity, loyalty, generosity, charity, chastity, courtesy, respect, reverence. Purity is a reverence: it's a reverence, Dietrich von Hildebrandt says, for the other; a reverence for God; it's a reverence for ourselves.

This is what the media ideally should do, and what EWTN is striving to do: to inculcate virtue; to ennoble man, to help him to reach his potential, which is the good for the individual, and for the society as a whole.

But instead the media often feeds [sic] what is worse to man, and then reports that they have been shocked that people have been influenced. Freedom of speech, yes, but not without responsibility for the consequences that one sets in motion. We just can't say or do everything or propagate it through the media without some responsibility for the consequences this is going to have in influencing people – and particularly the young.

So, what are we doing now, what are we doing today, to protect our vulnerable children? The Church is at the forefront of this as well, as She always has this concern for the faithful; She is the largest charitable organization in the world, including helping vulnerable children.

Last night I went to the US Department of Education's website, their office for Safe and Drug-Free Schools, and the title of this article was about human trafficking: "Human Trafficking in the United States: a Fact Sheet for Schools", referring to it as a modern-day slavery.

And it says: "What Is the Extent of Human Trafficking in the United States?" And it answers:

"Contrary to a common assumption, human trafficking is not just a problem in other countries. Cases of human trafficking have been reported in all 50 states, Washington D.C., and some U.S. territories. Victims of human trafficking can be children or adults, U.S. citizens or foreign nationals, male or female.

"According to U.S. government estimates, thousands of men, women, and children are trafficked to the United States for the purposes of sexual- and labor exploitation... primarily for sexual servitude.

"Trafficking can involve school-age children – particularly those not living with their parents.

"Sex traffickers target children because of their vulnerability and gullibility."

The U.S. State Department in [its] Trafficking in Persons Report, June 2009, estimates fifty thousand people are trafficked into and transited through the U.S. annually as sex-slaves, domestics, garment- or agricultural slaves; largely from Mexico [and] east Asia, but also other countries as well. And then, it is also reported that up to two million people worldwide are victims of this trafficking, primarily women and children.

So what are we doing now about abuse? This is what is important.

There is the International Catholic Migration Commission, founded in 1951 by Pope Pius XII – then to help migrants and refugees, and now [also to help] trafficked persons. It has helped to resettle 900,000 refugees; this group is often called upon by the United Nations and different governments to contribute her expertise in helping refugees. Because there's where we find children at their most vulnerable: when they're refugees, and often without an accompanying adult to help them and to protect them and to guide them.

They're among the most vulnerable people on earth: they arrive at refugee camps alone, scared, and at times abused and exploited. Through the Safe Passages Program, the USCCB/MRS (so this is the Bishops' outreach), children traveling without adult relatives and without legal travel documents are provided a safe haven, [and] receive appropriate child-welfare standards of care; it works with more than thirty diocesan offices.

There is, on the Bishops' website, the coalition of Catholic organizations against human trafficking, some twenty groups: to provide safe haven for such people; conducting prevention projects; providing national training; meeting with government officials.

What are we doing, now? That is the question that is most important and most pressing for our young, vulnerable children today. The Catholic Church is at the forefront of seeing this both in our own cleansing and evaluation, but also in assisting those that are most vulnerable today.

Finally, I'd like to close with a quotation from Louis Lavelle, who was a prisoner of war during World War I, and a French philosopher. And he speaks about the grace of hatred. He says:

"No one realizes his life alone, but only through the mediation of others. I need the reassurance and help of friends, but I need men's hatred too. It tests me; forces me to become aware of my limitations; to grow, to perform a work of ceaseless self-purification. It makes me more faithful to myself, protects me from all temptations to take the easy way to 'success'. It compels me to fall back on what is deepest, most secret, and most spiritual in me, where those who hate me are powerless to hurt, where they meet no object into which to fix their claws, and nothing they can destroy. They recognize in us someone who has begun to be sufficient unto himself. The world hates all those who are not of the world; it hates all those who have access to another world, in which public opinion counts for nothing. For here, every individual is sufficient unto himself; in this world, reality is interior, and invisible; appearances melt away; public opinion has no weight."