Someone once called my columns ‘home-spun’ (I think it was kind of a
compliment).
I have to admit that I find in the minutiae of daily family life all sorts of metaphors and paradigms that help me personally make sense of the spiritual life, our relationship with God and the dynamic of the Church in the world.
Parent/child relationships are particularly fertile ground for these observations, especially as your children grow up and your ability to influence their actions lessens, but your love for them and concern for their welfare does not.
In some ways this period of young adulthood is more trying than your children’s infancy, and can be the one most requiring courage, tact and wisdom. There are times it can be most challenging of a parent’s love for their child. It is as though we parents are being asked to put our money where our mouth is where our unconditional love for our children is concerned in these years.
Some of the paths our children choose, be they career or personal, can cause a hapless parent to quiver in their shoes and curl up and die within as they contemplate the possible ramifications of their children’s decisions. But even the abject fear and trembling of a quivering mass of jelly masquerading as a parent of young adults can be put to good use, I find!
The Holy Father is no doubt feeling similar emotions towards the erring members of his flock who have caused our beloved Church so much anguish lately. These perpetrators of crimes against vulnerable people who were in their care should be exposed, tried and punished in the civil justice system. They do not deserve to be permitted to continue practising their priesthood. Their victims do deserve apology and restitution made to them, and the Church should seek their forgiveness for the wrongs done them.
But the Holy Father, along with all members of the Catholic Church, also has the Christian obligation to forgive, and not completely turn his back on the guilty ones. The Holy Father still must show the love of a father for his children towards these men who have so betrayed their sacred priesthood and the trust placed in them. The genuineness of their penitence is ultimately a matter between themselves and God, but if they seek Sacramental confession and absolution it must be offered them, just as it is given to any sinner who seeks it.
Benedict XVI, as the leader of a publicly humiliated, wounded and suffering Church, is bearing the burden of sorrow and pain like every loving parent whose children make decisions contrary to those they have been brought up to make, contrary to everything their parents believe in and hold sacred. And whilst he must see that justice is done, he cannot disown his children and completely abandon them to the consequences of their actions any more than any of we parents can.
Every Catholic parent should be praying for the Pope in parental solidarity and support: May the Lord preserve him, and give him life, and make him to be blessed upon the earth, and deliver him not up to the will of his enemies.