If you want to become a follower of mine, you need to deny yourself and take us your cross and follow me (Matthew 16:24).
In the gospel reading for the 22nd Sunday, Jesus confronted his apostles—’Who do you think I am?’ But he first asked them who did the people think he was. And one of the answers was that some thought that Jesus was the prophet Jeremiah came back to life. That is the same Jeremiah that we have in that day’s first reading.
Jeremiah is one of the four major prophets of the Old Testament. He was born about 646 BCE, and began prophesying about twenty years later. He lived through the tragic years preceding and succeeding the downfall of the kingdom of Judah in 587 BCE. Jerusalem was besieged and captured by the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, the Temple was destroyed, and the inhabitants of the city were deported.
Jeremiah lived throughout these catastrophic events, and his own inner conflicts were as dramatic as the events in which he took part. He was of an affectionate and gentle disposition, yet he was called upon ‘to tear up and knock down, to destroy and to overthrow’. Disaster was the keynote of his message. Inevitably he was persecuted and endured much suffering for his outspokenness. He was rejected by the people, and even when his prophecies were vindicated he was reviled and abused.
It is not surprising, then, that when the people were asked who Jesus was they should identify him with Jeremiah, Jesus was part of the same prophetic tradition, he was outspoken in criticising the religious leaders of his day, and in the end, like Jeremiah, he was rejected not only by these leaders but also by the people themselves. This occurred most definitively and dramatically when he stood before Pilate and the people chose Barabbas in preference to him and consigned him to the way of the cross.
So, when Jesus speaks to his apostles about taking up the cross and following him, it is no idle threat. Humiliation and suffering, unjustly incurred, are inevitable for anyone who embarks upon the following of Christ, the Christian vocation is, in the tradition of Jesus and Jeremiah, prophetic and outspoken, and the consequences are dire.
Once again, over recent times, it has become evident that the Catholic community has been betrayed and humiliated by the foul deeds of some of its clergy. As a result we have had to tread the way of the cross in the most abject humility. The sexual abuse by Catholic priests of children has multiple ramifications.
First and foremost, the intense and lifelong sufferings of the victims themselves. No amount of monetary compensation or rehabilitative counselling can ever suffice to remedy the suffering inflicted or the faith violated. If the cries and remonstrances of the victims of clerical sexual abuse continue to resound virtually endlessly through the Royal Commission, that is the way it must be. They must be heard, their innocence and faith have been violated by those they had most reason to trust. They have certainly endured the long march of the way of the cross.
Those of us in the clergy who connived to silence or to trivialise their cries now must also endure, quite rightly, the humiliation of public secular scrutiny and rebuke. More than apologies, more than counselling, more than compensation are certainly due, but none of these can weigh in the balance against the loss of innocence not only perpetrated in the first place but then, in many instances, compounded by the disbelief, defensiveness and insensitivity of church authorities.
Our current church leaders may have been defensive and insensitive in their interactions with victims, but, regrettably, they certainly have not been alone in responding in this way. In the early years at least, this has been the fault of virtually all religions superiors and church authorities in these matters. The initial response of many was to be defensive and to resort to legal strategies rather than to acknowledge the enormity of what had happened to victims and to respond with compassion and transparency.
And there is yet another group within the Catholic community who have had to bear the cross, the humiliation, that this sad business of clerical sexual abuse has brought upon the church. That group is the Catholic laity in general, the people who sit in the pews on a Sunday, who contribute to Catholic charities, who send their children to Catholic schools and are identifiably Catholic in so many ways. Like the original victims, like their spouses and families, they too have been victimised, humiliated by association, and, like Jesus and Jeremiah, through no fault of theirs.
As members of the priestly caste in the church, we, I, owe all of those in the pews an abject apology for the humiliation this sad chapter in the church’s history has brought upon them. It is difficult to tread the way of the cross when we suffer justly, through our own flaws and failings. But it is much more difficult when we suffer unjustly, through no fault of our own but by an association which is as repulsive to the sufferers as it is to the rest of the community.
If there is any word of consolation in this, it is to remember that Jesus, like Jeremiah, also suffered unjustly, that he was execrated, reviled and abused by his community even as Catholicism has been treated in the media over these times. The cross in Jesus’ day was not an object of reverence; it was the most painful and ignominious death the Romans could inflict.
If we are to follow Jesus, it is salutary to remember this ignominy visited upon him through no fault of his own. It is the way of the cross that Jesus promised to all who would follow him. What is sad is that it has been visited upon the Catholic community by their clergy and church authorities. For that the most abject of apologies is due.
