Roberto de Mattei
Corrispondenza Romana
September 12, 2018
The courageous denunciation of ecclesiastical scandals
made by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò
has generated the consensus of many, but
also the displeasure of others, convinced that everything discrediting the
representatives of the Church should be covered up by silence. This desire to
safeguard the Church is understandable when the scandal is an exception. There
is the risk in that case of generalizing, by saddling the behavior of a few onto
everyone . Quite different is the case when immorality is the rule, or at least
is a widespread way of living accepted as the norm. In this case public
denunciation is the first step towards the necessary reform of “morals”.
Breaking the silence is part of the duties of a pastor, as St. Gregory the
Great admonishes: “What in fact is the fear of a pastor to state the truth, if
not the turning of his back on the enemy with his silence? If, instead, he
fights in defense of his flock, he builds a bastion for the House of Israel
against its enemies. For this the Lord through the mouth of Isaiah admonishes:
“Cry, cease not, lift up thy voice
like a trumpet” (Isaiah, 58,1).
At the
origins of a guilty silence there is often the lack of distinction between the
Church and the men of the Church, be they the simple laity, bishops, cardinals
or Popes. One of the reasons for this confusion is precisely the prominence of
the authorities involved in the scandals. The higher their dignity, the more
the tendency to identify them with the Church, attributing good and evil
indifferently to the one and the other. In reality the Good is the sole
business of the Church, whereas all the Evil is due to the men who represent
Her. For this the Church cannot be defined as sinful: “She – writes Father
Roger T. Calmel O.P. (1920-1998) – asks forgiveness to the Lord not for the
sins She has committed, but for the sins committed by Her children, insofar as
they do not listen to Her as Mother.” (Breve apologia della Chiesa di sempre,
Editrice Ichtys, Albano Laziale 2007, p. 91). All the
members of the Church whether of the teaching or student parts, are men, with
their own nature, wounded by original sin. Neither Baptism renders the faithful
faultless, nor Holy Orders render the members of the Hierarchy such. The Pope
himself can sin and fall into error, except for that which concerns the charism
of infallibility.
It must
be said, moreover, that the faithful do not constitute the Church, as happens
in human societies, created by the members that form them and dissolved as soon
as they separate. To say “We are Church” is false, since the belonging of the
baptized to the Church, does not derive from their will: it is Christ Himself
who invites us to belong to His flock, by repeating to everyone: “You have not
chosen me but I have chosen you” (John 15, 16).
The Church founded by Jesus Christ has a Human-Divine constitution:
human as it has a material and passive component, made up of all the faithful, part
of both the clergy and the laity; supernatural and divine for Her soul. Jesus
Christ, Her Head, is Her foundation and the Holy Spirit is Her supernatural
propeller.
The
Church therefore is not holy because of the holiness of Her members, but it is
Her members that are holy thanks to Jesus Christ Who directs Her and the Holy
Spirit Who gives life to Her. From them comes all Good, that is, all that is
“true, noble, just, pure, lovable, honorable and worthy of praise” (Phil. 4,8).
And from the men of the Church comes all the Evil: disorders, scandals, abuse
of power, violence, turpitudes and sacrileges.
“So – writes the Passionist theologian Enrico
Zoffoli (1915-1996) who dedicated many fine pages to this theme – we have no interest in covering up the faults
of bad Christians, of unworthy, cowardly, inept, dishonest and arrogant
priests. The intent to defend the cause and mitigate their responsibilities would
be ingenuous and useless along with minimizing the consequences of their
errors, having recourse to historical contexts and singular situations in order
then to explain away and absolve
everything” (Chiesa e uomini di Chiesa,
Edizioni Segno, Udine 1994, p. 41).
Today
there is great filth in the Church, as the then Cardinal Ratzinger said during
the Via Crucis of Good Friday 2005, which preceded his rise to the papacy. “How much filth there is in the Church, and
even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to Him! (Jesus)”.
Monsignor
Carlo Maria Viganò’s testimony is praiseworthy, since, by bringing to light
this filth, he renders the work of purification of the Church more urgent. It
must be [made]clear that the conduct of unworthy bishops or priests is not
inspired by the dogmas or morals of the Church, but constitutes their betrayal,
as it represents a negation of the law of the Gospel. The world that accuses the Church for Her
faults accuses Her of transgressing a moral order: but in the name of what law
and doctrine does the world claim to indict the Church? The philosophy of life
professed by the modern world is relativism to the degree that there are no
absolute truths and the only law of man is to be devoid of [all] laws; the
practical consequence is hedonism according to which the only form of possible
happiness is the gratification of one’s desires and the satisfaction of one’s
instincts.
How can
the world, devoid of principles as it is, judge and condemn the Church? The Church has the right and duty to judge
the world because She has an absolute and immutable doctrine. The modern world,
child of the principles of the French Revolution, develops with coherence the
ideas of the libertine Marquis de Sade (1740-1814): free love, free blasphemy,
total freedom to deny and destroy every bastion of Faith and Morals, as in the
days of the French Revolution when the Bastille, where Sade was a prisoner, was
destroyed. The outcome of all this is the dissolution of morality, which has
destroyed the foundations of civil society and over the last two centuries has
created the darkest age in history.
The life
of the Church is also the history of betrayals, defections, apostasies and
insufficient correspondence with Divine Grace. But this tragic weakness always goes along
with extraordinary faithfulness: the falls, even the most terrifying, of many
members of the Church, are interlaced with the heroism of the virtue seen in
many other of Her children.
A river
of sanctity gushes out of the side of Christ and runs flowing through the
course of the centuries: the martyrs who face the wild animals in the Coliseum;
the hermits who abandon the world to live a life of penitence; the missionaries
who go to the ends of the earth; the intrepid confessors of the faith who
combat schisms and heresies; the contemplative religious who sustain the
defenders of the Church and Christian civilization with their prayers; all
those, who, in different ways, have conformed their lives to the Divine one. St. Theresa of the Child Jesus wanted to
gather up all these vocations in one supreme act of love to God.
The
saints are different from one another, but what they all share is union with
God: and this union, which never flags, makes it so that the Church, prior to
being One, Catholic and Apostolic, is first of all perfectly Holy. The holiness
of the Church doesn’t depend on the holiness of Her children; it is ontological, given that it is connected
to Her very nature.
For the
Church to be called holy it is not necessary
that all Her children live a saintly life; it is enough that a part, even a
small part, thanks to the vital flow of the Holy Spirit, remain heroically
faithful to the law of the Gospel during times of trial.
Translation:
Contributor, Francesca Romana
