Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Catholic
Politics and Religion
McCarrick and Rother: The Tares and the Wheat Co-Exist in this World

McCarrick and Rother: The Tares and the Wheat Co-Exist in this World

Last updated on: July 30, 2018 at 10:00 am by Rebecca Hamilton

2 Comments

McCarrick and Rother: The Tares and the Wheat Co-Exist in this World 2018-07-30T10:00:36-06:00 Rebecca Hamilton

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I had planned to write a rather scathing column today.

I’ve been on my last nerve regarding Christian clergy of every denomination ever since so many of them came out to attack the victims and back the child molester in last year’s election to replace Attorney General Sessions in the United States Senate. That repudiation of the Gospels on the part of so many religious leaders and their weak-headed followers sent me off in a crisis of faith that rivaled the one that set me on the anti-God phase of my life back when I was 18 years old.

The difference this time is that I have no doubt about Jesus and His love for the victims of these heinous crimes. I know that rape/sexual assault/child molesting victims are Christ crucified, standing right before these self-aggrandizing religious leaders, and that the religious leaders are, by their mistreatment of them, crucifying Him all over again.

That is what we are witnessing when our Catholic bishops fail so abysmally in their handling of clergy sexual abuse. We are watching them crucify Our Lord in the name of the Church. They are the Pharisees.

The Pharisees who murdered Our Lord did not need to know that they were murdering God in the flesh to understand that they were sinning. Their own laws, and the natural law that is written in every human heart, told them so.

It is the same with other religious leaders who can’t seem to figure out that rape, sexual assault and the sexual abuse of minors is wrong. They don’t need an enraged laity to force them to know that what they are doing is wrong. They have the teachings of the Gospels, the convicting power of the Holy Spirit and natural law to tell them. They know that what they are doing is wrong. They. Just. Don’t. Care.

Before I went to mass yesterday, I had every intention of using the facts I’ve just recited as a jumping-off point to write a column that’s been in my heart for months. I had formulated a good bit of the verbiage in my head and I was ready to write.

Then, as often happens, I went to mass and things inside me changed. Yesterday we honored Blessed Stanley Rother, an Oklahoma farm boy who became a martyr because he loved the flock that God had given him.

Our pastor knew Father Stanley Rother. He explained that “Stan” as he called him, fell in love with the Mayan people of Guatemala. Blessed Stanley Rother, who famously said, “the shepherd cannot run,” died for love of the people to whom he ministered.

Pastoral love is a powerful force for good in this world. It is a love that can heal broken people and lift them out of the confining misery of their lives and into the expanse of life abundant that Jesus came to give us.

The reason it matters so much that the bishops have betrayed Christ over and over and over and over and over and over and over again is that betrayal of the flock, setting wolves on the flock, is a repudiation of the pastoral love that is their only excuse for existing.

In that other column, the one I planned to write, I was going to say that the priesthood is a conduit of the grace of the sacraments, like an electric socket is a conduit of electricity. I believe that. But there is a bit more to the priesthood than that; or at least there should be.

Priests are not mindless conduits of grace via the sacraments. They aren’t — or they shouldn’t be — mere sacrament dispensers. If that is all they allow themselves to be, and all we chose to make of them, then we can take the sacraments from them and ignore them in the same way that we ignore a soft drink machine.

That is the peril inherent in this deadly game of I-won’t-change-and-you-can’t-make-me that bishops have played with the laity during the decades of the on-going sexual abuse crisis. A lot of good Catholics are close to giving up on the bishops. I don’t know if the bishops themselves realize this. They are, as a group, so self-referencing and insulated that they may not know it. The danger isn’t that a lot of people are going to get up and leave the Church, although there may be some of that. The danger is that people will start treating the Church as a sacrament dispenser and the priest and bishops as irrelevant to moral judgement.

They have failed to deal effectively with the sexual abuse of minors by clergy, or sexual predation on any level or of any type. They have failed to be honest. They have failed to address the issues of rape, sexual assault and child abuse in the larger culture. The past two years has been a historic, homeric fail in that regard.

This has gone way beyond the point where we can talk about mistakes. If there ever was such a point, it is done and done.

Pastoral love is the thread that runs through many of the stories of martyred priests. From St Damien of Molokai to Blessed Stanley Rother, the story of their martyrdom and their witness to Christ is the story of a deep love affair between them and the people God gave them to shepherd.

Pastoral love is the glue that holds parishes together and binds Catholics to Rome. It is the thing that allows God to reach through a priest and into a suffering parishioner and say the thing that person needs to hear to heal.

The priesthood without pastoral love is just a heartless sacrament dispenser, a mindless conduit of grace, like a soft drink dispenser. It becomes something people use and ignore. Without pastoral love, the Church fails.

What are pew-sitting Catholics supposed to do about bishops who do not love us? How are we supposed to convince our leaders to be followers of Christ? What can we do to make them stop preening and pick up their crosses and follow Him?

We can rage, withhold donations, stop listening to them when they speak. We can reduce the Church to a sacrament dispenser and go our own way while staying in place. Or we can get up and walk out and go elsewhere, to become our own little gods or to follow some other fallen clergy.

What we cannot do is make them change. That is all on them.

The truth is, that Jesus told us that the tares and the wheat had to co-exist in the same fields until He came again for the harvest. Bishops and clergy who ignore and disbelieve victims of sexual assault, rape, and child molesting co-exist in the world with the Stanley Rothers. They wear the same collar, but they are not disciples of the same God.

Our fate, whether we want to accept it or not, is to live in a world that is populated by monsters and saints; living, working, harming and loving side by side. We do not have the power to change any of them.

But we do get to choose for ourselves which of them we want to emulate. Love or hubris. We get to choose. We have to choose. We make that choice over and over as we live our lives, many times each day, and none of us makes the right choice every time we do it.

The tares and the wheat — the Stanley Rothers and the Theodore McCarricks — live together in this world. We will never get to the end of it so long as we live. There will always be monsters and monster-enablers. There will always be men and women of faith who are willing to die for love.

When Jesus comes again, He will separate the tares from the wheat and He will dispose of the tares. Heaven is coming.

But while we live in the now of this life, it is up to us to decide who we follow and what we do. The victims of rape, sexual assault and child molesting are Christ crucified, standing right in front of you. What will you — not the bishops, you — do about them?

Previous Post

July 27, 2018

Give Me a Minute. I'm Thinking.

Next Post

July 30, 2018 And There's More: Nuns Denounce Their Sexual Abuse by Priests

Recent Comments

2 Comments | Leave a Comment

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 10 Commandments 2012 Election 2016 Election 2020 Election 2022 Election 2024 Election Abortion Addiction Adult Day Care Advent Africa AI Alcoholism Alex Pretti Renee Good America American Citizenship American Fascism Announcement Anti Semitism Anti-Semitism Apologetics Archbishop Coakley Argentina Armenian Genocide Ash Wednesday Ballot Box Salvation Biden Big Beautiful Bill Bishop Black Mass Blasphemy Boko Haram Book Review Brainwashing Breast Cancer Bribery Calling Evil Good calling good evil Cancer Canonize Caregiving Catholic Catholic Vote Cause for Sainthood Chaos child abuse Child Labor Child Rearing Child Sacrifice Christian Bashers Christian Leadership Christian Persecution Christian Solidarity Christianity Christmas clergy Clergy Sex Abuse Scandal Climate Coakley Common Good Communion Communism Computers concentration camps Conclave Confession Consecration to Our Lady Conversion Coptic Christians Coronavirus Corporatism Corruption COVID Crisis Pregnancy Centers Culture D Day Death Death Penalty Dementia Democracy Designer Baby Destruction of the Family Dictator Dignity of Work Divine Mercy Novena Divine Mercy Sunday Divorce Doubt Drug Addiction easter Ebola Economics Education Egg Harvesting El Salvador Elderly Epiphany Epstein Eternal Life eternal life Eucharist Eugenics Euthanizing Children Euthansia evangelization Excommunicate Biden Extraterrestrial Life Failed Clergy Faith False Gods Family Fascism Fatherhood Feast of the Assumption First Amendment Flood the Zone Following Christ forced conversion Forgiveness Fortnight4Freedom fourth amendment Fr James Altman Fr Stanley Rother free press Freedom Freedom of Conscience freedom of religion Freedom of Speech Freedom of Worship vs Religious Freedom Geek Stuff Gender Theory Genocide God the Father Good Friday Gossip GQP Greenland Grief Gun Control Gun Violence Hate Blogs Health Health Care Heart Attack Heaven Hell Herod HHS Mandate History of the Crusades Holy Father Holy Father' Holy Father's Tweets Holy Matrimony Holy Saturday Holy Spirit Holy Thursday Holy Week Home Homeschooling homosexual Hospice Human Dignity Human Rights human trafficking Humor ICE Idolatry Immaculate Conception Immigration Incest Infertility Inspiration Iran War ISIS Islam Islamic Brotherhood Israel JD Vance Jesus Jobs Jordan Judas Judicial and Legislative Murder Judicial Murder July 4 Just War Justice Kavanaugh Ketanji Jackson Brown Laity Latin Mass Leadership Lent Less of Me Lying Lying for Trump Mad King MAGA Magnifica humanitas Mama Marriage Marriage Protection Amendment Martyr Media Bias Medicaid Men and Abortion Mercy Military Dictatorship Misogyny Motherhood Movie Review Murder Music National Catholic Register Nazi Clergy Neo Nazis New Category New Evangelism New Evangelization News Headlines Nigeria No Kings Novena for the Persecuted Church Nuns Obama Oklahoma Oscar Romero Our Lady Our National Embarrassment Pakistan Palm Sunday Papal Conclave Papal G8 Pedophile piano political priests Political Whore Clergy Politics Polygamy Pope Francis Pope Francis Visit United States Pope Leo XIV Pope's Prayer Intentions Pornography Post Christian West Poverty Prayer Prayers for the Persecuted Church Pro Life Prophecy Prostitution Purgatory Putin Quack Medicine Racism Rape Religious Freedom Renee Good Republican Republican priests Rerum Novarum Retirement Risen Lord Roe v Wade Rosary Sacrament Sacred Heart Sacrilege Saints Salvation Same Sex Marriage Sanctity of Human Life Satan Save Our Democracy scandal Scripture Shroud of Turin Sisters Slavery Social Justice Social Security Solidarity Cross St Michael the Archangel stations of the cross Stop Late Term Abortion Stroke Suicide Supreme Court Surrogacy Surveillance State Synod Syria Taliban Tariffs Taxes Technology Thanksgiving The Ascension The Cross The Locust Class The Political Heresy The Resurrection The Tomb The Transfiguration The Trinity The War on Girls Tornado Trauma Trump Trump Coup Trump Destroying America Trump's Coup Trump's War on the Rule of Law Trumpism Ukraine Uncategorized USAID USCCB Vatican Vatican Reform Violence Against Women Violence in America Vocation Voting Rights Wages Walk for Life War Weight Loss White House Why Aren't You a Feminist Too? Woke Women Leaders Women's Rights Worker's Rights World Hunger World War I World War III World Youth Day Worship Writing Year of Faith

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 March 2024 February 2024 November 2023 October 2023 August 2023 July 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 October 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 August 2016 May 2016 April 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 January 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which Christian denomination places great emphasis on "justification by faith alone"?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Catholics Orthodox Lutherans Methodists