A time for contrition...

In this morning's New York Times, yet another columnist - and a few articles, too - speak of the challenge confronting the Roman Church re: the sexual abuse of minors by ordained priests. Ross Douthat makes a number of important observations and I was particularly struck by this at the end of his article:

... It was a conservative hierarchy’s bunker mentality that prevented the Vatican from reckoning with the scandal. In a characteristic moment in 2002, a prominent cardinal told a Spanish audience that “I am personally convinced that the constant presence in the press of the sins of Catholic priests, especially in the United States, is a planned campaign ... to discredit the church.”

That cardinal was Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI. Since then, he’s come to grips with the crisis in ways that his predecessor did not: after years of drift and denial under John Paul II, the Vatican has taken vigorous steps to promote zero tolerance, expedite the dismissal of abusive priests and organize investigations that should have happened long ago. Because of Benedict’s recent efforts, and the efforts of clerics and laypeople dating back to the first wave of revelations in the 1980s, Catholics can reasonably hope that the crisis of abuse is a thing of the past.

But the crisis of authority endures. There has been some accountability for the abusers, but not nearly enough for the bishops who enabled them. And now the shadow of past sins threatens to engulf this papacy. Popes do not resign. But a pope can clean house. And a pope can show contrition, on his own behalf and on behalf of an entire generation of bishops, for what was done and left undone in one of Catholicism’s darkest eras.

This is Holy Week, when the first pope, Peter, broke faith with Christ and wept for shame. There is no better time for repentance.
www.nytimes.com/2010/03/29/opinion/29douthat.html?ref=todayspaper

In an odd twist of fate, while the stories have been coming fast and furious about the sexuality of Rome, I find myself reading a book (about addiction) by one of the Reformed tradition's finest thinkers re: contemporary sexuality: James Nelson. His work in the 1980s - particularly Body Theology, Embodiment: An Approach to Sexuality and his series of articles in The Christian Century - helped many bring a sense of biblical wisdom to the emerging sexual ethics of that generation.

A summary of his reflections in The Christian Century includes this insight:

There has been a shift from understanding sexuality as either incidental to or detrimental to the experience of God toward understanding sexuality as intrinsic to the divine-human experience. Sexual dualism has marked much of the Christian tradition. In this dualism, spirit is opposed to body, with spirit assumed to be higher and superior and the body lower and inferior. The companion of this dualism has been sexism or patriarchy: men identify themselves essentially with the spirit (mind), while men identify women with the body (matter), and assume that the higher needs to control the lower.

Implicit in sexual dualism has been the notion of divine impassivity—the apathy of God. If the body is marked by passion and if spirit is passionless, then bodily hunger (eros) has no connection with the divine. God is without hunger, and the human hungers (of which sexuality, with its drive to connection and intimacy, is one of the most basic) seem to have no connection with our experience of God....

Accompanying the attack on dualism has been the reclaiming of incarnational theology. This theology emphasizes that the most decisive experience of God is not in doctrine, creed or ideas but in the Word made flesh—and in the Word still becoming flesh. Here has been another opening to the possibility that sexuality is intrinsic to the experience of God. Such experience has been described by Nikos Kazantzakis: "Within me even the most metaphysical problem takes on a warm physical body which smells of sea, soil, and human sweat. The Word, in order to touch me, must become warm flesh. Only then do I understand—when I can smell, see, and touch." (The rest of the article is worth the time, too: www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=114)

Once, while hosting a conversation with gay/straight parents re: how we might explore a class on human sexuality and ethics for our teen program (Tucson), there was such tension and confusion in the two hour adult conversation, that we scrapped the idea until we could find a way to help the adults. Sadly, we never were able to go further given staffing and programming changes.

Yesterday, after my pastoral observation re: sexuality, safety and the love of God in Christ, most of the parents who spoke to me after worship were very supportive. Some were uncomfortable, but that is more a part of being an American: we are saturated in sexy images all day long and then taught it would be sinful to act on these images. We are a nation bathed in pornography AND a pseudo-Puritanical sexual ethic.

I suspect that one of the ways our faith community might become something more of God's light in the current darkness could come down to exploring what a sexual ethic for the 21st century might include for teens, young adults, seniors and everyone in-between. More on this after Easter...