Tidsskriftet First Things publiserte under bispesynodene i 2015 og i 2018 mange artikler skrevet av den anonyme forfatteren «Xavier Rynne II», og de fortsetter med denne praksisen under bispekonferansen som begynner i morgen. Første artikkel (fra i går) begynner slik:
The whole course of Christianity from the first … is but one series of troubles and disorders. Every century is like every other, and to those who live in it seems worse than all times before it. The Church is ever ailing … Religion seems ever expiring, schisms dominant, the light of truth dim, its adherents scattered. The cause of Christ is ever in its last agony.
-Blessed John Henry Newman, Via Media (1834)
John Henry Newman’s tart view of the ongoing mess that is the history of the Church was written when he was still an Anglican, but it seems unlikely that his sense of things changed materially after he entered the Catholic Church—indeed, it probably intensified. Nonetheless, Newman’s panoramic, if mordant, overview of Christian history can be consoling whenever Catholicism finds itself in crisis, as it surely does now. Things have undoubtedly been worse than they are today. And for all the muck, pain, and anger of today’s Catholic crisis of sexually abusive clergy and failed ecclesiastical leadership, the Church has not been abandoned by its Lord or by the Holy Spirit. Many good and life-giving things happen throughout the world Church every day: the sacraments are celebrated and grace is bestowed; sins are forgiven and wounded souls healed; those with nowhere to go find a home. And in its social doctrine the Church continues to bear a message that an increasingly incoherent postmodern world badly needs to hear. …
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Dagens artikkel (nr. 2) kan leses her.
Vatikanet har egne nettsider for denne konferansen for å samtale om overgrep og beskyttelse av barn (fra torsdag 21/2 til søndag 24/2).