Church’s money is not bishops’ money

Those who know me will never believe that I could ever take up pen to defend priests’ failures, particularly in the domain of sexual morality. I have had various occasions in life when I was responsible for safeguarding discipline in a community: as vice rector of a seminary, as headmaster of a group of six government, post-secondary schools with a student population of 1,100, finally as assistant director of education, first for all government schools in Malta and Gozo and then for all government schools in Gozo.

Those who came into contact with me know how I was always keen on discipline. I say this not by way of blowing trumpets but merely to make it clear that, for no imaginable reason, will I ever dream of defending the Church’s dependants’ failures in the sphere of sexual morality. But the Church itself I fail not to defend!

Mother Church is facing very bad times owing to condemnable behaviour of some of her ministers in the matter of abuses of sexual morality. We have been hearing of such calamities in the US and Ireland for several years. Because of abuses, several bishops have paid millions of euros in compensation to “victims”!

I consider this as a most unjust way of society dealing with justice in the matter. Why? Because no society should be condemned to pay for the private misbehaviour of particular members. The Church is not those material edifices we erect for use as places of worship. Nor is the Church the group of bishops and priests. These are merely an infinitesimal part of the Church. The Church is all the people of God put together, even if under the direction of bishops and priests.

This means that whatever the Church has, by way of edifices and money, belongs to the people of God. Bishops and priests are merely “administrators” of all that patrimony. It is most unfair and unjust to pay with this same patrimony in order to satisfy demands made by victims of sexual or other abuses.

Apart from all this, it is good that the same people of God come to know to what extremities human diabolical behaviour could bring the Church. It was in our time when, in the US, a society hostile to the Church decided to put on the way to the priesthood in the Church’s seminaries 1,000 of its children. This with the intent of eventually rocking the Church from within. Those pupils would, after a few years, become priests; later on many of them also bishops and perhaps cardinals. Imagine then the rest of the story with these people at the helm of the Church! Without referring to the private life of these priests, I fail not to note how that anti-Church society saw the fruit of its satanic project!

I will never defend shortcomings of priests, particularly grave sins in the sphere of known sexual abuses. Perpetrators of such crimes are, yes, condemnable when really found guilty of those abominable crimes – obviously after dealing with their cases in a most just way, giving them the opportunity to defend themselves and giving importance to their defence!

I remember when, three years ago, in a restaurant at Xlendi, American friends of mine on a visit to Gozo, one of them editor of a Catholic bimonthly, drew my attention to the fact that several Americans of very doubtful private life enriched themselves as a result of the American Church forking out millions of dollars for priests’ “sexual abuses”!

If I remember rightly, only once did Christ make His Apostles pay money. That was when he ordered Peter to “go to the sea and cast in a hook” and take the stater he was to find in the fish’s mouth in order to pay the “tribute” to Caesar! (Matthew 17, 24-26). Pounds, shillings and pence did, indeed, come again in Christ’s life. But that was when He took up a rope against the merchants in the temple!

Abominable sexual abuses connected with homosexuality have always existed. Sacred Scripture itself testifies to this and even before Sodomite times! But never are we told that money came in as compensation! Nor have we ever been told of such factors as psychological and psychiatric effects brought into the scene as “reasons” for compensation! I am sure I am being understood even if I intentionally refrain from being too clear. Those hundreds of “priests” in America and elsewhere, bishops themselves and the very “victims” of priestly misbehaviour, those for some reason or other antagonistic to the Church, indeed all of us, would not go amiss if we were to keep in mind God’s judgement! No, I shall never defend failures, whether of the man in the-street or of highly located figures. But the Church, yes, I should and shall defend, sometimes also against the part taken by some Church people themselves upholding monetary claims demanded by so-called “victims”.

The Church here and elsewhere needs defence these days! But, most unfortunately, at times, even her children do not appear ready to understand this! In our islands we are seeing this with our own eyes. I like to meditate on those words of Christ “Everyone, therefore, that shall confess me before men, I will also confess him before my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 10, 32) and “Whoever shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of Man also confess before the angels of God” (Luke 12, 8).

I was indeed happy to see people like my friend Lino Spiteri (September 12) defending the Church in this same matter!