KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter
January 18, 2019
by Ken Briggs
Pope Francis’ personal preacher had good news for American bishops on retreat in preparation for the upcoming papal summit on church sex offenses: Despite the church being “overwhelmed” by the clergy sex abuse scandals, “and rightly so,” he declared that they had emerged into a “golden age” in comparison to past times when bishops placed territorial needs over pastoral care.
That success was largely due to the refining fires of the crisis itself, said Capuchin Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the papal household, who spoke 11 times to the retreat at Mundelein Seminary earlier this month. At the beginning of his talks, Cantalamessa suggested it was “time for taking a break” from that preoccupation, in order to ponder “root issues” which were “both different and deeper than the issues that usually come to mind.”
The ones that usually pop to mind include the continuing scourge of accusations, sanctions against hierarchical cover-up and, perhaps the toughest, a searching critique of clericalism. Cantalamessa promptly declared himself unqualified from talking about those main elements of the uproar still convulsing American Catholics. But it seems he did. Tom Roberts adroitly shows in his NCR review that all 11 messages, Cantalamessa took indirect aim, choosing to reassure bishops that nothing needed urgent repair or re-examination.
He felt their pain. The scandal had damaged their standing, reducing the bishopric from an “honor” to a “burden.” He likened their suffering to that of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, innocent victims of the world’s sins. His listeners could take comfort that their burden was inflicted by outsiders and that taking on those sins, however agonizing, served the cause of redemption.
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