The local area is once again faced with headline news of a priest arrested for allegedly having child pornography on his computer. (The accused man is not from the Winona diocese.)
The pain that this evokes in all of us is difficult to describe. The confusion it creates in the body of the faithful is significant. Already today, someone has approached me with the question, “Why, Deacon Bob, do they do this? I don’t understand.”
I have no real answer but to say, “It is so difficult to understand.”
Some will attribute this kind of behavior to the over-sexualization of our culture. Some to celibacy. Some to psychological illness. Some to earlier trauma and the inability to tolerate and moderate uncomfortable affects. Some to power structures gone awry. Some to criminality. Some to secrecy and lack of transparency.
Perhaps it is all of that, or none of it. What I do know is that it exists and cannot be denied or minimized.
I am firmly convinced that it surfaces in the context of inner emptiness and a paucity of outer connections, healthy relationships and accountability. Because of this, I find myself whenever possible trying to convince others of the imperative nature of healthy communities within the church….. we clerics cannot minister in isolation….. we need be accountable for each other…… we need to be genuinely concerned for ourselves and our brother deacons, priests and bishops….. and we have to always be thinking and directing ourselves toward the common good of the flock of Christ.
Let us pray for forgiveness and wisdom.
I have attended many a mass celebrated by Father Pat. I always held him in high regard and though others may have trouble with me saying this, I still do. He is not evil but suffers from the effects of our pornographic culture on our marred nature. He will be torn apart by the media who will use this tragic scandal to strike at the Church.
Let us humbly recite the phrase, “There but for the grace of God, go I.” And pray, pray for Father Pat and our culture so plagued by unchecked exposure to pornography and lust of every sort. We are all affected.
The presence of pornography in our culture, and its easy access, is having a heyday in tearing apart families, destroying men and women, and serving as a portal for Satan into the soul of the Church. It is almost incredible. No one of us can say we are immune from its influences, as Deacon Joe remind us.
Without minimizing the power of pornography, the question remains for me whether it explains the reality of some men using child pornography and their attraction to, and/or sexual abuse of, children. The Church may well be the one institution that will eventually come to an understanding of all this. She alone embraces the entire human person.