A few days ago, a dear friend living in Canada and holding a high office in a plant which employs people of different religions wrote to me about the macabre discovery of the remains of 215 indigenous children buried in a mass grave in the grounds of the school in Kamloops, Canada, which they were forced to attend.
It was government policy to make the indigenous population adopt the culture of the chiefly Anglo-Saxon settlers. Naturally, they started with children. The same thing happened in Australia and elsewhere. Not having enough structures to do this, they often sought the help of the Churches – both Catholic and Protestant – in order to implement their plan.
The Return of the Prodigal Son by Pompeo Girolamo Batoni. We are freed of our sin if we acknowledge it and repent. Photo: Shutterstock.comSomething different – but at the same time similar – happened in Ireland with the mother-and-baby homes for unwed mothers. In all these cases, most probably with the best of intentions, the Churches got embroiled in cruel government policies and shared responsibility for the evil of the projects.
My friend’s dilemma is twofold. His own faith is shaken – how could communities of religious commit such atrocities! And how can he proclaim the Church to his fellow workers!
Such questions arise because we have been led to believe that the Church is sinless. Well, it isn’t, even if the official Church often sought to present itself as such. Already at the time of the concordats, the Church insisted that erring priests should be arrested during the night so that people would not know that a priest was guilty of misdeeds.
Appearing without a blemish had become an obsession with the Church, and every effort was made to hide any vestige of sin. It was believed that if the Church were to appear sinful, its ministry of evangelisation would suffer. It is enough to see how paedophile priests had been protected until recently. This fear was baseless. The opposite is true: acknowledging sin would make the Church much more credible. Thank God that Pope Francis has understood this and is working so hard to rectify things.
Another thing which often escapes most is that the Church is not the hierarchy but the community of every baptised Christian. Priestly ordination makes one a priest, not a holy person! Priests and religious should live the Gospel, but so should every Christian.
The Church, priests and the faithful are a community of human beings who are vulnerable and liable to sin. Whenever we say the Hail Mary, we ask Our Lady to “Pray for us sinners”. We need to take this prayer very seriously and mean it wholeheartedly.
The Church’s message will be more efficacious if the Church presents itself as it actually is, a community of sinful people although redeemed by Christ. Acknowledging its sin, the Church would be able to transmit the Gospel message with transparency and with greater truthfulness. We are freed of our sin if we acknowledge it and repent. Hiding it does not help. This applies also to the Church as institution.
And repentance should not be only for the sins of our forefathers but also for those we commit ourselves. This is the only way in which the Church can become credible and a wounded but an efficacious healer.
Fr Alfred Micallef, member, Society of Jesus