Stony Hearts

Thus says the LORD: I will prove the holiness of my great name, profaned among the nations, in whose midst you have profaned it.  Thus the nations shall know that I am the LORD, says the Lord GOD, when in their sight I prove my holiness through you.  For I will take you away from among the nations, gather you from all the foreign lands, and bring you back to your own land.  I will sprinkle clean water upon you to cleanse you from all your impurities, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.

I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you natural hearts.  I will put my spirit within you and make you live by my statutes, careful to observe my decrees. You shall live in the land I gave your ancestors; you shall be my people, and I will be your God.

Now, that’s encouragement!  Talk about another chance to turn things around – to get new hearts and a new spirit! 

Our Church needs to turn things around, but admittedly, every time we think we’ve turned the corner on sex abuse, another obstacle appears before us – another revelation.  I speak of the Boston Globe article of August 15 and above the fold on the front page: “Church covered up sex abuse, jury says: 300 Catholic priests in Pennsylvania accused of victimizing at least 1,000 children over decades.”   According to the article, “The investigation [18 months covering 6 of the state’s dioceses], the broadest inquiry into church sex abuse in US history identified 1,000 children who were victims but added that there probably are thousands more.”

Stony hearts against the Catholic Church are expected with this sort of infamy.   It will take more than clean water to cleanse the Church of this evil despite all efforts to deal with abuse.  The article concluded with: “Pennsylvania is believed to have conducted more investigations of institutional child sex abuse than any other state.  But there is full accounting of abuse in the Catholic Church in the United States…Imagine if they did what was done in Pennsylvania, but nationwide.”

Past abuse continues to haunt our Church.  We know our priests live by God’s statutes and decrees.  However, there is an unsettling number of unfaithful and criminal men who have besmirched in a very egregious way the reputation of the very many good men who serve with new and warm hearts the Lord and all of us. 

Deacon David Pierce