Sunday, September 12, 2021

 TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY

(Isaiah 50:5-9; James 2:14-18; Mark 8:27-35)

Bishop Richard Sklba has been a gift to the Catholic Church. Trained as a Biblical scholar, he became Auxiliary Bishop of Milwaukee. Over the years he held various responsible positions in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Catholic Bible Association of America. What Bishop Sklba wrote about today's gospel is worth pondering. He said, “… We are all followers of Peter because our testimonies of Christ are very immature and imperfect.”

In the gospel Peter correctly names Jesus as "the Christ" or Messiah.  He realizes that Jesus has come to save Israel. However, Peter is wrong when he thinks that Jesus is not going to suffer in the work of salvation. It would never have occurred to Peter at this stage that Jesus is like the Suffering Servant in the first reading. That is, Jesus will endure beatings and torments, insults and being spit upon to fulfill his mission.

Jesus is not gentle in correcting Peter's mistake. He tells Peter that he talks like Satan when he says that the Messiah will not suffer. In time this lesson, which seems incomprehensible to Peter, will make more sense. Peter will witness the resurrection of Jesus after his death on the cross. He will have seen that Jesus’ sacrifice did not end in his death but in the glory of the resurrection.

In the last twenty years, Church leaders have experienced something of Peter's hard lesson in this gospel. As Peter does not want to have the Messiah thought of as one who suffers, some bishops have not wanted people to see the Church in a negative light.  That is why they hid the sins of priest-abusers. Instead of removing the culprits from ministry, they sometimes them new assignments. Yes, often they did it with the assurance of psychologists that the culprits were truly reformed. However, they often ignored the laws requiring that such crimes be reported to the authorities. Most regrettably, concerned with the reputation of the Church, the bishops overlooked the grave needs of the victims. The young men and women were allowed to suffer alone the trauma of having been sexually abused.

Unfortunately, the same thing happens too often in families. Particularly disturbing is the fact that girls are abused by relatives with impunity. Abusers are often never corrected for their crimes. Sometimes parents don't even want to hear their daughters mention what an uncle or cousin has done to them. They say they don't want problems in the family. However, problems only grow with silence. Victims feel worse and worse about themselves, and the abuse continues.

In the second reading, James asks: "What good is it … if someone says he has faith but does not have works?" James has in mind neglect of the poor, but his question can be applied to sexual abuse. What good is it for us to believe in the salvation of Jesus if we are going to allow the abuse of children? Isn't it that in order to prove ourselves as his disciples, we have to bring the abusers to justice and help the victims? Certainly, these questions apply to families as well as to the Church at large.

We have a hard time talking about sexual abuse. It is like the famous elephant in the room whose presence no one wants to acknowledge for fear of stirring up the animal. But unless we want to continually live with the threat, we have to do something. God has sent us his Son to save us from all sins including sexual abuse. Counting on his justice, we have to correct the guilty and help the victims.

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