Editorial: Catholic Church at Precipice

By Sentinel Editorial Board
Santa Cruz Sentinel
March 9, 2013

http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/opinion/ci_22756190/editorial-catholic-church-at-precipice

The voting begins Tuesday.

That's when the cardinals in the Roman Catholic Church will file into the Sistine Chapel and begin secret balloting to select a new pope.

It will be an opportunity to finally end decades, if not centuries, of secrecy.

Writing about a religious organization is a dicey matter. But the church has been badly shaken, damaged, by many years of reports regarding sexual abuse by priests, bishops and, most recently, a cardinal.

And so the church stands upon a precipice. On one side are the scandals and abuses committed under its watch. On the other is the faith and devotion of hundreds of millions of people. And there is a Dante-esque divide between them that can only be bridged by repentance and renewal. Repentance is a taking of responsibility, without casting blame on others, for personal, or in this case corporate, misdeeds -- followed by a changing of the mind, a resolve to be guided on a new, moral and spiritual, path.

While many outside the church believe a solution lies in ending the rule of celibacy, that will be up to the church itself, and the next pope, to decide.

This opportunity to repent and renew, was set in motion by the resignation Feb. 28 of Benedict XVI, who became the first pope to do so in almost 600 years.

Benedict, 85, said he was stepping down because advancing age and infirmities left him without the energy and physical stamina to remain as the spiritual father for the world's 1 billion Roman Catholics.

But, it's difficult to believe that the seemingly unceasing tide of sex scandals washing across the historic church did not add to his weary burden.

Amid a tawdry swirl of rumors and reports from an Italian newspaper that Benedict made his final decision to resign after he was informed about a gay sex ring operating inside the Vatican Curia, the Vatican's usual denials were dismissed as just more of the same.

Unfair?

Consider that Cardinal Keith O'Brien of Scotland has announced he will not be attending the conclave, after admitting to "sexual conduct (that) has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal." Cardinal O'Brien, long outspoken against homosexuality, has been accused of having made unwanted advances on three priests and a seminarian, all male, decades ago.

Then there is former Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, who was removed from any official or public duties for his role in a cover-up for priests who sexually abused children. Despite calls to step aside, Mahony is one of the electors for the new pope.

And the list goes on and on, growing by the month -- an awful situation for the vast majority of priests and church leaders who are not involved in sexual abuse or cover-ups of abuse.

But that doesn't mean that the church is somehow absolved of all that has happened.

The church preaches against homosexuality, even as gay men in particular are drawn to religious life, often as diocesan priests.

The church also preaches against hypocrisy.

Even in a secular age, the Catholic Church matters greatly and its moral authority is needed more than ever. Although his papacy also was tainted by the revelations of sexual abuse, Pope John Paul II's battle against godless totalitarianism helped bring down the Soviet Union's communist stronghold. A quarter-century later, there is even more of an imperative for a courageous and morally authentic church to fight for human rights, an end to sexual slavery, against the encroachment of technology and materialism at the expense of the human spirit, and against religious persecution and the autocratic regimes of this age.

To do so, the Roman Catholic Church has to undergo a rebirth, just as Jesus commanded for the religious authorities of his day.

Some cardinals have already indicated that while there is no frontrunner, the next pope needs to be both a gifted communicator and a strong administrator. The cardinals are expected to make their choice relatively swiftly.

Easter week is approaching; for Catholics it begins March 24, Palm Sunday. And then the resurrection.