Herald Malaysia - daily news source with Malaysian and Global coverage of the Catholic Churches. Catholic News,World Christian News, Malaysia Church News
By Jérôme Chapuis
How does one describe the endless crisis that the Catholic Church of France is going through? An earthquake? A collapse? A catastrophe? There’s probably another more appropriate word, and that word is apocalypse, as understood in its literal sense of an “unveiling”. For it is indeed a test of truth that French Catholics have been facing for more than a year since the Independent Commission on Abuse in the Church published its devastating report.
Week after week, serious acts have come to light, provoking disgust, incomprehension and despair. The unexpected announcement that Archbishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, president of the French Bishops’ Conference , made on November 7 was astonishing. He revealed that 11 of his confreres – some who are still in active ministry, others who are retired – are currently being subjected to civil or canonical justice for various matters related to abuse.
Jean-Pierre Ricard, archbishop emeritus of Bordeaux, admitted to his fellow bishops that he had committed reprehensible acts on a 14-year-old girl 35 years ago. Cardinal Ricard is a member of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican body charged with examining cases of abuse committed by clerics. This fact alone should be enough to explain the blindness in which the institutional Church has become stuck.
Will it be possible one day to move beyond the feeling of betrayal to a form of gratitude towards those who, within the episcopate, carry out this painful work of opening our eyes? For many of the faithful, that’s still too much to ask. There is a time for everything. The time is ripe for anger and consternation. And the time for reconstruction will come. But for that the bishops will have no choice but to rely on the faithful who have gone through this ordeal with them.
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