Sacraments, grace and questions about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church

The sexual abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church is huge and continually unraveling throughout the world, country by country. It’s sick and tragic. It’s infuriating and mind-boggling. It is actually not a new concern, which is awful, and it will not be healed soon. The truth of the crisis is that it’s rooted in the Catholic belief on priestly ordination and to open up that can is to see all of the worms such as married men and women in the priesthood. It brings up the whole idea of central authority and the community of trust that Catholics are asked to join by where they agree to balance their own individual conscience with the will of the church.

As a Catholic I get asked questions, and am sometimes interrogated, on the subject of the sexual abuse crisis. I have obvious replies: unbelievable, horrifying, wound on the Body of Christ. I can think of obvious reactions: kick the offenders out, turn them over to civil authorities, and demote the Bishops who protected them. But I know that the cause of the crisis is deeper and wider than the solutions we have planned will be able to conquer.

Catholics believe very particular details about sacraments in general. We believe that God gives us the grace to be able to cooperate with the divine will. We also believe that when we cooperate with God through the grace that has been given to us that grace multiplies so that we will be ever and ever more able to cooperate in fuller and more significant ways. One of the ways in which we cooperate is through celebration of the sacraments. The sacraments themselves not only involve our cooperating grace with divine operating grace, but they also impart their own grace.

Some sacraments deposit a kind of grace that will be active through our life time, kind of like a time release capsule. This grace is found through baptism and confirmation because they are special marks in the life of a Christian as signs of participation in the life of the church as it fulfills the mission of Jesus Christ. Other sacraments like Eucharist, reconciliation/penance and anointing of the sick are singular infusions of grace that can be re-experienced over and over again. The grace of the vocational sacraments, marriage and ordination, are similar but different.

The church recognizes that marriage is a sacrament because it requires a special kind of grace through which two individuals can share their consciences with that of the church in order to form a new family. Marriage shares symbolism with the Trinity in that it is a relationship of three beings (male, female and Christ). The grace of the sacrament of marriage is both infused during the nuptial Mass as well as over time throughout the marriage.

Ordination shares these ideas. When a man is ordained, he is being recognized for two important distinctions. First, he has been called forth from the community by the Holy Spirit to live a particular life of holiness in service to the church and her people. The sacrament thus recognizes a divine action already in place. Secondly, ordination deposits the “time capsule” of grace that will continue to inspire and lead the man throughout his priesthood so that he will cooperate in an even more special way with the divine will and in specific obedience to the church.

All of these graces cannot be undone. God is permanent and therefore is sacramental grace that comes from God. In fact, Catholics believe that sacramental graces affect a real change in one’s being as a person. If the soul had calls, then the change from sacramental grace could be seen on the cellular level. Catholics call this a “permanent mark” of a sacrament. You cannot be unbaptized or unconfirmed. You can freely decide to ignore the call to cooperate with God and to not heed the movements of grace within you. With enough vice and ignorance you can hide the grace so that you forget but it is always there, waiting for you to remember.

The sacraments of marriage and ordination are also permanent marks, forever changes made to the soul. This is why Catholic teaching continues to oppose divorce because it argues that the two married people were gracefully configured together to Jesus Christ in the work of the Trinity to live in relationship. It cannot be undone. Likewise, a man cannot stop being a priest. Even if he breaks a vow or two, the grace of his ordination continues to call him back through repentance and reconciliation. He has been reconfigured to be closer to Jesus Christ — on a spiritually cellular level. This very special grace allows him to listen to the Holy Spirit in a distinctive manner that results in decision making in line with church teaching and the divine will.

In the case of priests, it is difficult to discern when and how the grace is working. Is it continuous? Even when he is watching a football game? Is it only during the celebration of sacraments? What about making decisions about roof repair? Is that the same grace operating and cooperating as with decision making about penance and spiritual direction? What if the priest gambles or is alcoholic? It’s quite confusing. Some priests are amazingly humble and loving. Others are jerks. They are still human and they sin and make mistakes.

How do Catholics understand priests who sin? Usually like everyone, they sin and go to confession, repent and reconcile through prayer and atonement. Since the 3rd century A.D. the church has taught unequivocally that the moral state of the priest (in or out of sin) does not affect the celebration of sacraments nor the grace involved. We had a schism back then with a group called the Donatists. It was more complicated then what I am implying here but the end result was that Catholics believe that during the celebration of sacraments the priest is configured even more closer than usual to Christ, in a sense standing in the place of Christ as Christ in memory and in the present. The sacrament belongs to God and therefore the grace is active and the sacrament valid regardless of the state of the priest’s soul. He could be a murderer and the baptism counts.

If we return to the sexual abuse crisis and apply these ideas, it quickly becomes muddy. A priest who is told he is no longer able to celebrate the sacraments with validity is termed laicized. It’s like an annulment for priests. Who gets laicized? Alcoholic priests? No, they get sent to rehab. Embezzling priests? Not necessarily. Why? Because we are human and we make mistakes. We all deserve the chance to reform, repent and atone. What if there is a pattern of behavior that is detrimental to the vocation? It depends. I wish there were clear directives but so much is contextual and dependent on the bishop. If you think the pope has authority, wait until you meet the bishop of each diocese. The bishop is ordained as a priest and as a bishop with special grace to lead his local flock.

It seems obvious to say that any priest who has sexually abused a child is acting so outside of normal behavior much less his vows that he has immediately excommunicated and laicized himself. But the sacramental grace is permanent. The sacrament also recognized that he was called by God. Did God know?  oes God still call him? Did God make a mistake? That can’t be so the church made a mistake in discerning the vocation of this person. But the church is inerrant. Why would this happen?

If God calls pedophiles why doesn’t he call married men and women who are not molesters? Does the gender chromosome trump common sense? I cannot believe that God knowingly allowed serial child rapists to enter his church and celebrate sacraments. Is this a case of a bad person who does good things as a priest or a good person who does bad things as a molester?

If we have this kind of sin taking place, what else is going on? Are we getting good priests? What is going on at the seminary that these things are not figured out? Have we lowered our standards in our anxiety over priestly shortages? I would rather go months without the Eucharist than have one of these criminals stand at the altar. Studies and studies have been done and continue to be done to figure out what happened and why. A lot of the problem has been the fact that we still think these horrible sick men are chosen by God to be priests rather than admit that the Church erred in passing them through.

This is not an exhaustive study of the situation, or an academic treatise. I am just trying to figure out what is going on with what we believe about ordination and whether or not it is allowing men to be in the priesthood that should not be. I am trying to figure out why it was not obvious to some bishops about what to do with these guys.  Sometimes I have to remind myself that regardless of the ordination issues, most pedophiles are sociopaths and sociopaths are liars. They lie to themselves, to their victims and to everyone around them. They lie from beginning to end.  They make promises and say prayers, but they are lying.

I think I would rather have an alcoholic married man or a gambling woman priest that one of these liars who stands in the place of Christ at the altar but walks in the steps of the devil otherwise. But then again my Catholic teaching kicks in and I wonder if I really believe that supernatural and cooperative grace can save a person from themselves. Do the sacraments really change us for the better? Or is it a case of people going through the motions without the intent and so all is pretense of grace and false hope? Where is forgiveness and where is justice?  Why did God call or did God not call? How is God’s call being discerned? I have more questions than answers.