This week has been such a difficult week for the church, I
have cried a lot sometimes I wonder if I am taking things too personally, but I
love Pope Francis so much that I hurt thinking he might be involved in a
cover-up. What will it mean to me as a
Catholic if a man that I have placed in such a high pedestal, a man I’ve
admired and gotten to know as my Spiritual Father is guilty of the accusations
that so many without concrete evidence are desiring to see him pay. I feel like it’s the Salem Witch Trials again
and some without requiring a full investigation are ready to burn him at the
stake. This quick to judge mentality is
what makes me most sad, I feel a great division in our church and it’s scary
because I have always naively thought of the church as a utopian society that
leads us to God. This week, I have seen the
imperfect humanity that makes up the church and I wonder if both God and
imperfection can coexist? Can we have a future together?
Per Thomas Traherne:
“Love can forbear, love can forgive… but Love can never be
reconciled to an unlovely object… He can never therefore be reconciled to sin,
because sin itself is incapable of being altered; but He may be reconciled to
your person, because that may be restored.”
From the moment we were created we have been courted by sin,
all of us at times falling to its entrapment. I think that’s why the narrative of Jesus
drawing a line on the ground and saying, “he that is without sin among you, let
him first cast a stone,” resonates as deeply as it did two-thousand years
ago. We are all sinners, Pope Francis
has continuously admitted that even a man of his position is still not without
the stains of sin and in need of God’s mercy.
It is these genuine declarations that have attracted me to him and to think
that he was living a double life, one where he didn’t practice what he preached
seems to me like a grave and terrible contradiction -even betrayal. I am a truth seeker and want to find the
truth behind Archbishop Vigano’s accusations, but in doing so I don’t believe
we prematurely need Pope Francis’ head on a platter. He has the right to due process.
I have this weakness, sometimes I see God in people and make
them into little gods. Through my
admiration, I have done this with Pope Francis.
He has become my face of God, the tangible presence of my Savior because
I can be a materialist needing physicality to see God. I still hope that he will speak and share his
side of the story, because we truly need to hear it. However, God has reminded me that He is
bigger than the pope, bigger than sin.
God restores when things fall apart and while the Church seems to be
hitting rock bottom, when one is at the bottom there’s only UP to go.
I have been praying for my pope and I hope the truth will
come to light but I won’t unjustly condemn him, after all who am I to judge?