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	Fr Anthony Paganoni Cs: Make No Mistake, Abuse Scandal Is a Spiritual Crisis The Record September 15, 2010 http://www.therecord.com.au/site/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1962&Itemid=30 A crisis in the soul: Christian foundations begin to totter This title, above, is the title of chapter 3 in Henri Daniel Rops' volume The Protestant Reformation. He begins by stating something extremely important: "The crises which shake human societies are always, first and foremost, spiritual crises: political events and social unrest merely translate into deeds a disequilibrium whose real cause is something far more fundamental. "The destiny of the world is shaped in the secret recesses of the mind, through the hidden dialectic of ideals and passions, and the new forces which make old empires crumble are the selfsame forces which each individual confronts in the depths of his own soul, making him the abettor of destruction… "Everything points to the fact that a crisis of the soul explained and directed them; and this spiritual crisis provides the true explanation of their tragic history" (p 106). No one, not even in Church circles, ever mentions the crisis that has been looming over the whole of Western civilisation. Ironically, in some quarters, this disequilibrium may be regarded as an enlightenment, as a substantial progress over and against the often repeated statements that Europe in particular is losing its Christian heritage and roots. The very fact that the global plague of abuses committed on young people affecting many nations in the world of today has been sidestepped is a sure sign that something is wrong. The call is out for the Church to modernise its methods and mindset. But on what basis? If the empirical evidence shows that in the world, in the USA, Canada and Australia, sexual abuse is not a uniquely and strikingly Catholic problem, then why has such a campaign been mounted to make the Catholic Church appear as almost the sole perpetrator? In Bernard of Clairvaux, Daniel Rops reports that in one of the poorest Cistercian monasteries in the world, above the door of the central building, a little stone Virgin welcomes the visitor. She bears a mysterious name: "Our Lady of the Peril". Is there another of that name in all Christendom? A mysterious name, but also full of significance. Does it refer to the great risks each one of us confronts in that long and uncertain struggle which is waged in the very depth of our souls? Is it a question of the risks our sinful humanity runs, that horde of wanderers on the face of the earth, fascinated by the abyss and ready to roll into it? "The handful of monks gathered in a monastery to lead a heroic life of asceticism and prayer assumed all of those risks; they take them on their shoulders, according to the reversibility of merits, in the order of the Communion of Saints" (p 223).
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