Sex
scandals form of pruning for church: Rosica
By Deborah Gyapong
Canadian
Catholic News
OTTAWA (CCN) — The recent “tsunami” of news reports
of clerical sexual abuse is pruning the universal church and calling
her priests and bishops to a deeper holiness.
That was the message Basilian
Father Thomas Rosica gave to the Diocesan Vocations Directors of Canada
conference that brought about 30 priests from across the country to
Ottawa May 31 - June 4.
“We must recognize
the wounds and be about the work of healing and reconciling,”
said the CEO of the Salt + Light Media Foundation during a time of eucharistic
adoration June 1.
The church must seek forgiveness
from those who have been wounded, “seek accountability from those
who made mistakes and transparency in how those cases have been handled,”
he said. “New policies and protocols must be implemented in every
diocese around the world.”
“Throughout this difficult
period of church history, we are invited to renew our devotion and grow
in our selflessness toward the sheep entrusted to our care and the vineyards
given to our stewardship,” he said. “Our value must come
from who we are and how we are living off the vine that is the Lord
himself.”
Rosica stressed it is Christ
who does the work of salvation through “weak human beings like
you and me.”
“To victims, we must
be an advocate; for the aimless we must be shepherds; for the disheartened,
heralds of good news; for sinners, disturbers of conscience; and for
the guilty, forgivers,” he said. “To those who flinch before
the Lord, we must show the unclouded smile of his face.”
“To those who shelter
behind custom or law, we must be ruthless prophets.”
Rosica’s meditation
on John 15:1-8 on Jesus as the true vine, included an explanation of
pruning. Pruning does not only involve the cutting away of dead or unproductive
branches, but also the cutting back of productive ones so they bear
more fruit. “You get the knife either way; and that’s precisely
what postmodern spirituality doesn’t want.”
Yet at no time is the vinedresser
closer to the vine than when he is pruning it, he noted.
Rosica used the life of Rev.
Jerzy Popieluszko as an example of a priest who was “truly grafted”
into the vine of Christ.
Though the Polish priest
was non-political, his Christlike example inspired Poles to be unafraid
of the totalitarian regime, Rosica said.
His brutal murder in 1984
hastened the fall of the Communist regime, he said. Popieluszko was
beatified as a martyr June 6 on the Feast of Corpus Christi in Warsaw’s
Pilsudski Square.
“In this Year for Priests,
when the priesthood and the church have suffered much because of the
past ‘sins of the fathers,’ the life and death of Father
Jerzy Popieluszko reminds us what the priesthood and the church are
all about,” he said.
Rosica urged his fellow priests to “take heart” and find encouragement in the example of the apostles and martyrs of both the early and contemporary church and to “never be afraid of giving our lives wholeheartedly to the Lord of the harvest.”
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