The Healing Task Ahead

The Rev. J. Bryan Hehir spoke at Gonzaga University last night. The former head of Catholic Charities USA and former head of Harvard Divinity School now seems to be doing about a half dozen jobs for the Boston Archdiocese. He covered a range of topics, but I was most fascinated with his take on the priest sex abuse scandal.

He said, "Sins were committed against the most vulnerable. The sins were crimes. These sins and crimes were against children."

Hehir said, "The healing task will be with us for generations." Church members must rebuild pastoral trust and public credibility. He said the church cannot just recognize the mistakes and forge ahead. "This is spin." Nor can the church retreat in silence. Instead, all church members must bear "modest witness."

He said, "In all that we say and do, we must carry a modesty. When you speak, convey that you carry a sense of the burden of the past two years."

Hehir said the positive acts of social justice can form a bridge to the healing. "We don't say if you are Catholic and hungry, we will feed you. We say if you are hungry, we will feed you."

He believes the church has the capacity to rebuild trust, but it will take "multiple actors" and it will be done "brick by brick."

Hehir also pointed out something I'd never thought of before. Catholics have an "institutional instinct." In other words, Catholics "lay their hands on life" through institutions, such as hospitals, soup kitchens, universities. This is a good instinct with a fine tradition, Hehir said.

But I wondered later if that institutional instinct also allowed abusing priests to hide so long in institutions that protected them.

All in all Hehir's talk was thought-provoking and filled with hope. About the abuse scandal, Hehir believes that "all that is to be known is already known." He believes the media has moved on and "I don't think the New York Times will run 35 stories on it in 2004."

I agree with his take on the New York Times, but I'm afraid he might be too optimistic that "all that is to be known is already known."

We'll see...