they are talking about 'Them'...

What is happening to the men of the Church? This question reminds me so vividly of such a not-so-good scenario that took place in the Catholic Church years ago when I was still teaching at a Catholic school in the Philippines.

For sometime of that year, the Catholic clerics have been placed by the media at the center of juicy controversies. It only started with a pastoral letter published and read which aimed at addressing the issues of the government’s move to change the constitution. Indeed, a noisy minority called it foul and branded it as Church interference.
But when the Church leaders kept quiet and implied approval, no one cried foul and interference in politics. I remember how the noisy minority called Church officials names. But Catholic Church officials maintained their stand. The parishioners agreed quietly with the wisdom of the pastoral letter. It was not coercive. It was supposed to guide the faithful in making the right moral decisions.

Then came the report about a priest being caught in the act inside his car. That priest was accused of the offense in the media. The police had no case against him. But the media raised a case of indecency in a public place against the priest. He faced his media accusers with the silence of a lamb, like the Lord before Pilate. He issued no statement to the media. Instead, he turned to his parishioners, seeking the help of their prayers and quietly went into prayer and penance away from the people, closer to God.

He was stripped of his name, robbed of his dignity and integrity and made to join Christ crucified not in Calvary, but in the Golgotha of the media. This incident is still embedded in my memory so clearly that it distresses me every time it is recalled.

Priests are not saints, they are sinners like all of us. When they commit sin, they ask for forgiveness from God too. They were not called because they are better than other men. They were chosen and become priests by the choice of God in spite of their human limitations.

I remember how Cardinal Bernandin of Chicago was accused of sexually abusing a young boy. The international press carried the news and was brought to the local papers and tabloids under foreign news. In the face of the false accusation, the Cardinal sent not a legal suit but words of forgiveness to his false accuser. Later on, the young man admitted that the accusation was baseless. Cardinal Bernandin did not rebuke him. He offered to say Mass for him and the young man died at peace with God and with the victim of his false accusation.
Before he passed away three years after, in November, the Cardinal said that the pain his false accuser brought to him was more painful than the pain of his cancer. He died a great man, a great priest, a holy pastor of the Church.

Nowadays, there seems to be a thirst for exposing the sins of priests. Everybody talks about the sins of the few priests they see.

Many love to complain about the long and boring homilies on Sundays, clergymen interfering in politics, and so on and so forth. We want to talk about the bad side of those mysterious priests, but who talks about the secret sacrifices so that others may be blessed?

Everybody talks about the sins of priests, but who talks about their hidden sacrifices and unknown apostolates of so many others who are faithful to their vows? If our focus is on the bad side of the priests, could it be a symptom that in life, we really have a greater interest in the negative rather than on the beautiful and the good?

I have a priest friend who has quietly been working in the hospital for so many years now. One day, while blessing a young boy affected with cerebral palsy, he asked the boy, “Are you not afraid to die?” The boy answered, “Father, if God is like you, I am not afraid to die.”

Take the case of this friend of mine who is a member of the Religious. He has discreetly been helping a father of three, and a husband of a beautiful woman in her forties, who suffered a serious ear infection and had to be sent to a hospital for immediate surgery. With the surgery, the man was cured but was not able to return to his work, which was the only source of the family’s livelihood and survival, for so many months.

The Religious had to pay the surgery expenses, send a certain amount to the family as help for their monthly expenses while the man was still in its convalescense, and he continued giving financial support and prayers to the family until the man was able to go back to work.

Nobody knew that, except the man and his wife of course. Nobody knew of such great act of kindness and goodness coming from a servant of God.

Who talks about such good deeds of so many other ministers of God? Oh, I’m sure they are not juicy stories. They do not sell. What sells is sex, rape, corruption, kidnapping, murder, massacre, grandstanding.

Certainly, the media has power, but it should be used responsively. The media have freedom, but it should not be used to abuse the freedom of others to have a good name, to a reputation and integrity. When we destroy a good name that took so many years to build, who can restore it?

The Church has investments. The Church has money. But to conclude that the Church is for profit is not fair. The Church has money but the beneficiaries are more than Its resources.
The Church has buildings and real estate properties but the parishioners who need a roof over their heads when they pray are more than the lands and buildings available. The Church has schools and hospitals and orphanages and homes for the aged that needs financial support and help. Everybody wants to talk about the wealth of the Church. But as far as the Church is concerned, Its treasures are the poor, the sick, the homeless and the destitute. The wealth of the Church is not in stock certificates and land titles but it is in the hearts of its Faithful. The wealth of the Church is people. God in His people.

Have a blessed peaceful Easter to all of us!