QUOTE TO NOTE: Finding Hope in Overcoming Ugliness
A few weeks ago, Bondings 2.0 reported on Australia’s Bishop Geoffrey Robinson’s call for a new Vatican Council to address the sex abuse crisis and sexuality generally. Bishop Robinson led the investigation of Australia’s clergy sex abuse crisis, and the experience transformed his views on sex and power in the Catholic church. Recently, Jamie Manson interviewed Bishop Robinson for The National Catholic Reporter. At the close of the interview, Manson asked Robinson, “What keeps you hopeful?” His answer:
‘Cardinal John Henry Newman, before he became a Catholic, wrote to a friend, ‘There is nothing on this earth so ugly as the Catholic Church and nothing so beautiful.’ We’ve all seen the ugliness, and abuse is one of the ugliest chapters of all, but I’ve also seen the beauty, mostly in all of the good people I’ve worked with over the years. I don’t want to just walk away and leave that beauty behind. So I’ll work to overcome the ugliness wherever I can.”
–Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry
Nice one !! Thanks . We need to remember this. It also reminds me of Carlo Caretto’s love letter to the church “How much I much criticise you my church and yet how much I love you !
You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe you more than I owe anyone. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence.
You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness. Never in the world have I seen anything more obscurantist, more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful.
Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face – and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your arms!
No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you.Then too – where should I go? To build another church?But I cannot build another church without the same defects, for they are my own defects. And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ’s church. No, I am old enough. I know better!”
A very spiritual lady and faithful Catholic used to say, The Catholic Church is a whore, but she’s OUR whore! And in today’s gospel, Jesus forgave the lady who was “known as a sinner”