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.
