AUKLAND (NEW ZEALAND)
NZ Catholic
Nov. 13, 2019
By Dan Stollenwerk
Like so many of the faithful, I was greatly saddened to read that Bishop Charles Drennan had resigned — a complaint having been made against him of “unacceptable behaviour of a sexual nature”.
He was the new face of the hierarchy: young, able, polished, strong in financial discipline, a spokesman for economic justice and committed to cleansing the Church of the scourge of paedophilia.
And now this.
“Jerusalem Athens Alexandria / Vienna / London / Unreal.” T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland comes to mind. To which we might now add Palmerston North.
Things are falling apart.
I suppose, like so many as well, I’ve become weary of the scandals — financial, sexual, paedophiliac. Angry too, of course. Especially if one knows victims of sexual exploitation, one understands a bit of the soul-destroying nature of the sin.
There’s a reason why Dante Alighieri places traitors in the innermost circle
of hell — Judas getting the centre seat. Traitors break trust. And it’s but a short leap from political traitor to sexual betrayer. Adultery, after all, is one of the top 10 Mosaic sins.
Sexual betrayal consumes not just the victim; it poisons a web of social
relations in ways that the sinner could never imagine. As Genesis pointed out ever so long ago and Sigmund Freud confirmed much more recently, sexuality runs deep — very, very deep.
Which is why the sexual scandal of the Church will not go away. In fact, the repercussions of the scandal have only just begun. (Whence, for example, our future leaders?)
Some have said that a healthy ecclesial purification may be in store. Maybe. Not all fire destroys.
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