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{"id":39412,"date":"2012-11-08T00:37:47","date_gmt":"2012-11-08T07:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=39412"},"modified":"2014-12-30T11:01:49","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T18:01:49","slug":"some-people-are-gloating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/11\/some-people-are-gloating.html","title":{"rendered":"Some People are Gloating"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I think that the main thing to do here is to keep the focus on two things: 1) the victims and their need for help and 2) the emerging sociological question of how the same results keep happening across a broad spectrum of human institutions, secular and religious.\u00a0 In other words, it\u2019s becoming apparent that there wasn\u2019t something peculiarly Catholic about the Church\u2019s response, but rather there was\u00a0something depressingly human about it.\u00a0 The problem is not that the Church was more evil that other institutions in its cowardice, coverups\u00a0and failure to address the problem.\u00a0 The problem is that the Church was average.<\/p>\n

Seen sociologically, that\u2019s to be expected, I suppose.\u00a0 The average Catholic is average, and the Church is, among other things, full of average people\u2013including among its clergy.\u00a0 So it\u2019s to be expected that you get an average institutional response to the presence of a grave threat to institutional integrity.<\/p>\n

And yet, how depressing to\u00a0be reminded that we are indeed jars of clay.\u00a0 Saints remain a rare thing in the Church, and the mystery is, \u201cWhy?\u201d\u00a0 I don\u2019t have an answer for that.\u00a0 But I am assured by revelation that it does not *have* to be so.\u00a0 The net catches bad fish as well as good, to be sure.\u00a0 But we have it available to us to be extraordinary by the grace of God.<\/p>\n

One good thing that has come out of this\u2013perhaps a providential thing\u2013is that the Church, by being the first institution to really be confronted in a massive and global way with this phenomenon, has been forced by Providence to pioneer institutional responses that actually seem to be effective.\u00a0 No, it\u2019s not all perfect yet.\u00a0 But it\u2019s a lot better.\u00a0 So perhaps one of the ironies of this tragedy is that other institutions\u2013the Beeb among them\u2013will come to learn from the Church\u2019s experience and profit from it.\u00a0 It would be humbling work of grace for all involved, not least the Church herself, to truly be in the position Paul says we are always in, of not being able to boast.\u00a0 If such humility comes of this terrible trial, it will be a redemptive fruit our arrogant culture could certainly stand to display.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"