Shepherds and millstones

"To execute is inadmissible!" 

The shepherds cry perched on corrupted thrones.

Their declaration's oddly risible

as angry flocks are searching for millstones.

Our Catholic bishops have had nearly 20 years to clean out the rats nests that have grown up in the chancery offices of the various American dioceses. They have failed, and failed miserably.

Indeed, to characterize the nonfeasance (and in some cases, blatant malfeasance) of the American bishops as merely failure seems an understatement. Sixteen years have now passed since the bishops' conference in Dallas during which the problem of homosexual abuse in the parishes, schools, and seminaries was directly addressed. But the bishops have fixed nothing. Instead, some of them have taken a somewhat different tack in recent years, mounting a public relations campaign to help normalize and welcome those who actively engage in homosexual practices which were, are, and always will be acts of "grave depravity" which can never be approved.

Worse, it is now revealed that a Prince of the Church, Theodore Cardinal McCarrick—a man who played a key role in drafting the weak and ineffective Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People in Dallas in 2002—is himself an abuser of young men. In this light, it is perhaps not surprising that the bishops exempted themselves from the above guidelines.

Now that McCarrick is formally and publicly disgraced, his brothers in the episcopacy have piously disowned him, claiming that they didn't know of his taste for young men. For some of them, at least, this claim is simply not credible. It seems evident that some or even many of our shepherds may entertain tastes similar to "Uncle Ted." The laity can be forgiven for harboring such thoughts as our bishops have done little by their words and actions to dispel the idea.

Our Lord was very explicit about the fate that awaits those who lead young people to sin and destruction:

"It is impossible that scandals should not come: but woe to him through whom they come. It were better for him, that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should scandalize one of these little ones." [source: Luke 17:2]

I am certainly not the only one who sees irony in the fact that the Vatican saw fit to release with fanfare this very week an unprecedented change to the Catechism which declared the death penalty "inadmissible". That this change contradicts millennia of Church teaching is, depressingly, unsurprising. The motto of our present age seems to be: "Tota confunditur Jerusalem." [source: Acts 21:31]

As the corrupt bishops have shown little taste for reform, and no inclination to resign—even when clearly engaged in activities which are sinful and destructive of the Catholic faith—it falls to the laity to act. Will enough answer the call to do battle? The first step, I think, is prayer, lest our actions end up being more destructive than salubrious:

Let the devout cry out to God for justice. May our Lord Jesus Christ, the Just Judge, purge His Church of the abominable corruption that has infected it. May He lance the boil of perversion, heal the wounds of the injured, and drive out the legions of satan who have entrenched themselves in our sacristies. Save your flock, O Christ, from the wolves in shepherd's clothing.