From: People For Peace
Colleagues Home & Abroad Regional News
BY FELIX KASOMO
NAIROBI-KENYA
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 6, 2012
The Vatican is going after one of the most serious threats to the Roman Catholic Church-there is a group that threatens to destabilize the very foundation of the faith and that has already alienated millions of former believers, the leaks of confidential Vatican documents, struggles for power, corruption, nepotism, sex scandals, money laundry just to mention a few.
[image] Pope Benedict xvi flanked by the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone Photo: EPA
According to Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s Secretary of State and the Pope’s right-hand man, the theft and leaking of compromising documents by unidentified whistle-blowers seemed to be part of a concerted campaign against the 85-year-old pontiff.
Many of the leaked documents appeared to be aimed at discrediting Cardinal Bertone himself, casting in a negative light his apparent attempts to block efforts to tackle corruption and nepotism within the administration of the city state.
Although according to Bertone attacks have always existed in the Vatican, this time it seems that the attacks are more targeted, sometimes also ferocious, biting and organized.
Even though no one knows exactly who is behind the theft of the papers and letters but there is widespread speculation in Rome that they are part of Machiavellian machinations at the very highest levels of the Catholic Church hierarchy.
Many Vatican analysts believe the leaking of the papers is a deliberate attempt to topple Cardinal Bertone, against a background of jockeying for power in anticipation of the Pope’s death and the election of a new pope.
So far only one person has been arrested in connection with the scandal – Paolo Gabriele, Benedict’s butler, who has been held for nearly two weeks in a “secure room” in the headquarters of the Vatican Gendarmerie, the Holy See’s 130-strong police force.
Accused of “aggravated theft”, he was due to be formally questioned by Vatican investigators on Tuesday.
Despite all these threats however, among several facts we have to know is the reality that the church is both Divine and human, holy and of sinners in the sense that she is of supernatural origin with Christ as her founder, and she is run by men, who are not angels but human beings, hence not perfect.
When our Lord out of his unconditional love established the Catholic Church as mother and teacher of all nations, so that all who in the course of time come to her loving embrace may find salvation as well as the fullness of a more excellent life.
According to the mind of the church; In his wisdom, Christ, the eternal shepherd and guardian of our souls, so as to make lasting the saving work of redemption, chose to establish his Holy church so that in it, as in the house of the living God, all of the faithful might be held together by the bond of one faith and one love.
However, this bond of one faith and one love has been wounded severally, throughout the history of the church, by the sons and daughters of the church over the centuries. Making this my focus, let me pitch a tent at the concept of how to approach and heal the past faults of the church throughout her life.
The church, embracing sinners in her bosom, is at the same time holy and always in need of purification and incessantly pursues the path of penance and renewal. On the other hand, she remains factual that she has made errors over the long history of her life. However, she too has succeeded in giving birth to several saints; men and women of great integrity.
I am not an apologist of the church but a growing son of the church who is obliged to explain her mother. With this in mind, first and foremost we must acknowledge the non-imputability to those now living of past faults committed by members of their religious communities.
For instance what was committed by our ancestors cannot be imputed either indiscriminately to all the rest then living or to the generations of our time.
In that line of thought, the sinner stands alone before God with his sin, repentance, and trust. No one can repent in his place or ask forgiveness in his name. Sin is therefore always personal, even though it wounds the entire church, which, represented by the priest as minister of penance.
The faults and errors of the past and present in the church were committed by individuals. Thus it is erroneous to blame the whole church, without acknowledging innocence of others who too were and are sons and daughters of the church.
Sacred Scripture is the soul of any Christian story, when we turn to it we note that, throughout, confessions and corresponding requesting for forgiveness can be found in the sacred scripture. This is clearly recorded in the narratives of the Old Testament as well as in the New Testament.
Sacred scripture offers a clear picture of who is confessing what and to whom? When put in this way, the question helps distinguish two principal categories of confession texts, each of which embraces different little groupings, these are: confession texts of sins of the entire people.
If you were to ask me, the simple point in this scriptural approach of faults of the church is; we need more forgiveness from God as a church than court processes, as witnessed in some parts of the world, which may be politically charged.
Accepting the responsibility for the sins committed by their fathers, the church asks forgiveness for the historical and current sins of her children. To me that is a right moral or social path. And that is exactly what Pope John Paul II did at the beginning of this millennium.
The greatest idea connected with guilt, and well present in the New Testament, is that of the absolute holiness of God. Christians are called to be holy, for God is holy. The Christian is called to love and to forgive to a degree that moves beyond every human standard of justice and produces reciprocity between human beings, reflective of the reciprocity between Christ and the father. Can you imagine the sort of society we can built if we were to borrow such a spirit even for a year?
He who is able to forgive his neighbor shows that he has understood his own need for forgiveness by God. In this spirit we can wisely conclude that the church is aware of sin or faults and how to deal with both when need be. However, the leaders of the church are human beings and sometimes deliverance of justice may not be as perfect as we may wish. In such cases the world has to be patient and attack the faults rather than the church or her leaders.
The church should become ever more fully conscious of the sinfulness of her children, recalling all those times in history when they departed from the spirit of Christ and his Gospel and, instead of offering to the world the witness of a life inspired by the values of faith, indulged in ways of thinking and acting which were truly forms of counter witness and scandal.
The church still on her journey on earth should not deceive herself by saying that she is without sin. To be a glorious church, with neither spot nor wrinkle, is the final end to which we are taken by the passion of Christ. Hence, this will be the case only in the heavenly homeland, not here on the way of pilgrimage, where if we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves.
In reality, though we are clothed with the baptismal garment, we do not cease to sin, to turn away from God. Hence it is the entire church that confesses her faith in God through the confession of her children’s sins and celebrates her infinite goodness and capacity for forgiveness.
We should therefore be ready to understand our brothers, who committed errors in their efforts to serve the holy mother church, forgive them and work for ongoing healing for those hurt by their acts as well as work for reconciliation with our separated brethren.
This is the best way forward if we have to exercise the love and unity Christ intended for his followers. Failure to follow this path, history, in the days to come will judge us harshly more than it has done so far.
Felix Kasomo writes on religious and social issues
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