He Talks of 'A Fear of Jesus' That Is Caused by a Fear of Change
By Margaret Ramirez
Chicago Tribune [Chicago IL]
May 3, 2007
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-070503cardinal,1,3698717.story?coll=chi-news-hed
As Cardinal Francis George marks his 10th anniversary as spiritual leader of Chicago's 2.3 million Roman Catholics, he sat down Thursday with the Tribune to reflect on his decade of service.
The cardinal spoke candidly about the sexual abuse scandal, saying, "It has wounded the church." He expressed concern about the secularization of society: "There's a fear of Jesus, a fear of faith, a fear of love. ... That's a great tragedy."
When asked about challenges for the future, he spoke of transforming the Catholic identity to "keep the church in people's lives 24-7 and not just for an hour on Sunday."
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| Cardinal Francis George takes questions Photo by Jose More |
Following is an edited transcript of that conversation.
Q: Looking back on the early years, some priests have said the transition was difficult. Could you talk about how you settled into your new position?
A: My experience of it was probably different from others. The difficulty I felt was to try to learn as much as I could as quickly as I could.
I knew the city in the sense that I grew up here. I knew how to find my way around. But it's a whole new cast of characters and a whole new history that I wasn't a part of for 38 years.
What I had to do was clear enough. The church told me what I had to do ...
I think it took awhile to get to know me, it takes awhile to get to know anybody. What gets in the way of knowing people are rumors or images. That's true for anybody.
Q: You have focused on evangelization as a priority. Why is that important to you?
A: It's important to me because it has been important to the church for 2,000 years. The last words that Jesus spoke to his disciples before he ascended to the Father, "Go teach, baptize, make disciples of all nations." We still have to do a lot of work. We've tried a lot of things. But we have to do a little bit more in the future. Preaching to others, teaching others, showing others who Jesus Christ really is. Because he suffers from bad press sometimes, too. [Laughs.] We've got all kinds of rumors and odd ideas about who Jesus is out there. It's a struggle for people to come to know who he is.
Q: Do you think there is a fear of faith in society today?
A: People are afraid to believe who Jesus is because then he can call us to something. If they whittle him down to size, he can't make any demands on us. But he really is Lord and offered us a new life, one we have to change. And people don't like to change. So there's a fear of Jesus, a fear of faith, a fear of love... . That's a great tragedy.
Q: During your time as archbishop in 2002, the sexual abuse scandal unfolded. Can you tell us how your views on the crisis have changed since then and how the scandal has impacted the church?
A: Since then it's become a legal process that doesn't touch all the bases that the church is supposed to cover. We're supposed to speak to forgiveness and caught in the legal process, you have a hard time doing that.
If you take a look at sexual abuse, society as a whole has become more aware of it than it was. But it's always been there. It's in the canon law of crime for each priest to be tried canonically. The church has been aware of it, but she treated it as part of the sacrament of penance, which meant confidentially. Then in the 1970s the church tried to treat it therapeutically, which is also a confidential process.
With 2002, it became a legal process, which is public. At that same time, especially talking to some of the other victims besides victims of priests, we've become aware this is far more widespread than we had imagined.
In the church, as we tracked it, the years of incidents are basically from 1972 to 1986. It's a curve that goes up, and then it goes down. So we should ask: Why in those years? What happened in the church, what happened in the society that all of a sudden the floodgates seem to have been opened to a large scale of incidents of abuse of minor children? It's something that we're doing more studies on now to try to understand ... and we have to keep caring for the victims, so we'll be doing that for years to come.
But we believe that God can bring good out of evil. And this is a great evil and a great scandal ... and hopefully God will use it to convert us.
Q: The Catholic Church struggles with more followers and fewer priests. At the same time, the majority of priests now being ordained are foreign-born. How will this trend impact the church?
A: The fact that the majority of priests being ordained are immigrants or sons of immigrants tells us that in the fully assimilated Catholics—third-, fourth-, fifth-generation Irish, German, Italian—the vocation to ordained priesthood is not being responded to. We're looking to see how we can be clearer in calling men to the priesthood.
At the same time, there are a lot more men being ordained deacons, there are a lot of ecclesial lay ministers. We've got a human and spiritual formation program to try to accompany these [lay] people who will be responsible pastorally for people in front of them. I think we're prepared to be sure the people are cared for, although the percentage of care given directly by ordained priests will be less.
Q: You have spoken out for immigration reform. Why is that so important to you?
A: The fundamental Gospel teaching is that every human being deserves respect because every human being is made in God's image and likeness, no matter what they do or who they are. We don't approve of what everybody does, but you respect every person.
Q : What are your challenges for the future? A : What we have to be sure we do well is to relate people to God, because nobody else is going to do that. To create new moments when Catholicism again becomes a way of life, searching for new practices in a very complicated world that will keep the church in people's lives 24-7 and not just for an hour on Sunday. So how do you address spirituality in our kind of culture, our kind of society? That's what I'm trying to work on now.
Contact: maramirez@tribune.com
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