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Wednesday 10 September 2008

How far shall Christians suffer wrong silently?

Yesterday I stuck to Paul's teaching of not settling our disputes with outsiders. Furthermore, I admired his exhortation to suffer wrong (1 Corinthians 6:7). However, is there a limit to its application? Are there crimes so serious that even the Church cannot handle?
In the past few years, child abuse scandals plagued the Catholic Church all over the world. Some dioceses even went bankrupt in face of tides of compensation claims. In many cases, probably following the exhortation of St. Paul, the victims suffered silently for decades. On the other hand, the dioceses swept the problem under the carpet by transferring the offending priests elsewhere. Consequently, the priests were not reformed. Nor the victims underwent rehabilitation. The Catholic Church believes in God. The Church also claims herself to be a church of sinners. Yet, it is questionable if the parties involved benefit at all. Shall we let God take care of the victims as well as the abusive priests? But one thing is certain. It is an abuse of the trust of the parents who entrust their minors into our care. The Church is a champion of justice. Yet, allowing abusive priests to leave unpunished is not doing justice to the victims.
Of course, this is a very superficial discussion of a hot issue. Each case has a lot of information not revealed to the public. Therefore, the opinions above tend to be over-sweeping. But I cannot convince myself to let abusive priests go unpunished. Were St. Paul alive today, what would he advise the church to deal with them?
Chapter 7 of the first epistle to the Corinthians deals with marriage. Personally, I dislike some of St. Paul's ideas in this chapter. His attitude towards marriage was too negative (1 Corinthians 7:1-2). Maybe this is an early epistle and his ideas had been immature. In general, people find his ideas about marriage more palatable in Ephesians. That said, St. Paul's ideas remain a very illuminating guideline to Christian marriage.

My sweet Jesus, bless my marriage. May Erminia and me lead a loving married life to glorify Your love for the Church, especially for the fallen brethrens. Amen.

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