A Call to "Rebuild My Church"
This week the monarch butterflies have returned to Mercy by the Sea, the result of a remarkable feat of nature, a complete transformation of one being into another totally new being. I marvel at the creativity and diversity of God as manifested in the various life forms on this sacred Mercy by the Sea property.
Also this week the need for another kind of transformation came to light with the release of the 900-page Pennsylvania Grand Jury report. Repeatedly I have been asked about this and how I deal with it. I think people expect me to say that my faith has been shaken or that I can’t go to church anymore or something like that. We all know that the abuse of a child is a serious, immoral and illegal act. What is most troubling to me is not the individual act, disturbing as that is. Rather it is the systemic nature of the problem that is most unsettling: That this act, on the most vulnerable among us, was apparently widespread — and at times accepted or at least tolerated — a secret culture of sex and sin by those who made moral declarations for others. The call that Saint Francis of Assisi heard hundreds of years ago to “rebuild my church” nags at me.