Red, White, and Blue in the Face!

The Church is beginning a process of purification and healing. The beginnings of  the purification are slowly but surely being seen in Europe and Ireland — Bishops who failed to protect their flocks have resigned, some I’m sure unwillingly, but the evidence has left them no choice. In the United States we’ve seen nothing to indicate the same has happened here but I am praying that before long we will see the resignations of clergy, be they Cardinal or Bishop, who failed to properly shepherd their flocks and, for whatever reason, allowed the wolves to have their way. Pray that anyone responsible for permitting the continued abuse of children who were in the trust or custody of the Church will, if appropriate, be dealt with in the justice system, at the least be made to resign if they do not do so willingly. I fail to find sympathy in the “we were told they could be cured” story. There were those who believed that but there were also those who knew better. Why were the voices of common sense ignored? Why were men allowed to prey and hurt time and time again without being punished, without being removed? I pray the purification will continue and will spread around the world because this is not simply isolated to the U.S., Germany, and Ireland – I am certain more will be revealed and will show that these people were everywhere. But only with a purification will we have healing. When one person wrongs another and the wrong is as serious as these abuses have been the response must be to say you are sorry and to make amends in any way possible. The only way the leadership of the Catholic Church in the United States is going to protect the credibility of the Church is to respond in a way they may well abhor — admit they did wrong and, if their culpability is great enough, resign their positions and retire. Only then will we begin to heal the many wounds the sexual abuse scandal has caused in the Body of Christ, His Church.

The irony in my title concerns an anniversary– the 50th anniversary of “The Pill”. Under normal circumstances I probably wouldn’t even have been aware of this “anniversary” but it happened that I saw an op-ed piece in today’s NY Times online (and for the life of me can’t remember why I was even looking at the NY Times in the first place) titled “Promises the Pill Could Never Keep”. The title intrigued me – could this actually be a piece proclaiming the truth about contraception and in the NY Times to boot? Nope, not a chance. Sadly, the woman who wrote the piece hasn’t a clue what “The Pill” has done, the damage it has wrought. Even more, she doesn’t understand that the damage its done and the promises it didn’t keep are merely symptoms of a larger problem. Ironically, the author of this piece celebrates “The Pill” because 

In spite of all the missed predictions, there were at least two people who understood the pill’s revolutionary potential from the beginning: Margaret Sanger, who had first imagined a contraceptive pill in 1912, and Katharine McCormick, a wealthy feminist — both elderly women who had been advocates for women’s rights since the early 20th century, and who teamed up in the 1950s to bring the pill project to fruition. Sanger and McCormick financed the research and found the scientists to conduct it. (emphasis mine)

The irony is that the author completely misses the connection between what’s happening now in the Church and in the world and the results of the release of the “The Pill” onto an unsuspecting world.

May God have mercy on us.