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Church Crisis: Endurance, Forgiveness and Justice
By Mike Bayham
May 23, 2002

Due to a chance happening, I ended up going to church at St. Louis Cathedral this past Sunday. Though I was tardy for the first two readings, I had the pleasure of listening to what is possibly the best homily (sermon) I have heard in all of my time of attending Mass. The person delivering the homily was retired Archbishop Philip Hannan, who is still active in the Church despite the fact that he stepped down as head of the New Orleans Catholic Archdiocese over a decade ago. His homily was about the endurance of the Church and forgiveness.

Hannan is no stranger to history or making public statements on current affairs. During the nineties, Hannan publicly discouraged Catholics from voting for then State Representative David Duke for the US Senate and later advised members of the Church to not cast their ballots for Duke in the governor's race.

The statements raised the ire of some Catholics who believed that the Church should not take positions in partisan politics. Because Hannan was only one voice in a chorus of media and public figures making statements against Duke, his pronouncements did not cause too great of a stir.

However when he made an election eve recommendation that Catholics should not vote for Democratic US Senate candidate Mary Landrieu, who was a longtime friend of the archbishop, because of her views on abortion, the encouragement he once received for his Duke statements vanished. The media and other liberals, who heaped praise upon the retired archbishop in the past when he was condemning the former Grand Wizard, now were saying that he should not be mixing church and state. Though he caught some flak, Hannan's public positions showed that he was not concerned about partisanship and that he was not afraid to go against the grain when he felt he had to.

For his homily, the archbishop pulled from his wealth of knowledge of history. Hannan was not just a student of history, he engaged in it. Prior to becoming a leader of the Church in America, Hannan served in the US Army during World War II as a paratrooper and chaplain for the 82nd Airborne. Before moving on to lead the New Orleans archdiocese, Hannan served in the nation's capital during the early sixties and was a friend of President John F. Kennedy. Hannan concluded his relationship with the assassinated president by saying the funeral mass for Kennedy.

In his homily on Sunday afternoon Hannan cited previous tribulations the Church has experienced over the past two hundred years. The first crisis that challenged the Church was the French Revolution. Prior to the fall of Louis XVI, France was the mightiest Catholic nation in Europe. When the revolutionaries took over France Church property was confiscated, religious were terrorized and Notre Dame Cathedral was defiled. The revolutionaries demonstrated through their actions that they hated the Church (and any organized religion) as much as they loathed the monarchy.

After the end of the Reign of Terror, the reign of Napoleon began. Napoleon was as acrimonious towards the Church as the Robespierres. Most people know how Napoleon disrespected the pope he had summoned to crown him Emperor of France by snatching the crown from the pope's hands. Only a few students of history are aware of Napoleon's long-term goal of eradicating the Church throughout Europe and that he had Pope Pius VII kidnapped and made a prisoner. In the end Napoleon was driven into permanent exile and the Church was saved ironically in part by the military force of Protestant nations.

Later in the nineteenth century when Italian unification reduced papal political authority to a small part of Rome, the Church met the change by shifting gears and becoming more focused in their work. Roman Catholicism was also under siege in the New World with Catholics regularly being discriminated against in America or persecuted by nativists or by the reborn Ku Klux Klan.

The twentieth century brought with it new obstacles and opposition for the Church. Prior to World War II, the Spanish Civil War threatened the existence of the Church in Iberia with the so called "Republicans" taking a page out of the playbook of the French Revolutionaries from the eighteenth century. The Church was also harassed by the Nazis in Germany and throughout Europe with the expansion of the Third Reich. Priests and religious leaders who would not play ball with the Nazis were executed or exterminated in the death camps.

Nazi oppression was replaced in Eastern Europe by the forced atheism of Communism. Persecution of Catholics still takes place in Indonesia, by militant Islamists, and in China by the Marxist government.

Despite the problems that have faced the Church around the world over the past two centuries, it not only successfully endured the challenges but came out stronger. Archbishop Hannan compared the molestation crisis currently plaguing the Church in America to the previous problems that shook the foundation of Roman Catholicism. Hannan stated his confidence that the Church and its members will meet this latest challenge and expressed his appreciation to Catholics for not abandoning the faith during its time of need.

Hannan also asked for prayers of forgiveness for the clergymen who betrayed their vows and committed acts against children and for Church leaders who did not do enough to prevent the problem from recurring. In his closing statements, Hannan shared a story from his days in Germany immediately after the fall of the Nazis.

While accompanying the 82nd Airborne in Germany, a German officer asked the chaplain to celebrate mass, administer communion, and offer absolution for his soldiers who were in one of many POW camps in the fallen German capital of Berlin. Because Germany is roughly half Catholic and half Protestant, meeting the German officer's request would take a great deal of effort, but because it was the Pentecost (an important Christian day when the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus' disciples), the officer was extremely persistent.

Hannan reluctantly agreed to pull double duty for the American forces and the captured German ones and offered absolution and communion for the repentant German POW's. After finishing with the last POW, the German officer came back and asked if he had also offered communion and absolution to the captured SS soldiers.

The SS (Schutzstaffel) were not ordinary German soldiers but were Hitler's most fervent underlings. Their responsibilities within the Reich varied with some serving as front-line soldiers and others as security personnel. The most nefarious duty assigned to some of the SS was the implementation of the "Final Solution", the total eradication of the Jews. And though the Church did not suffer to the degree the Jews did under Hitler, thousands of its members perished during the religious and political persecutions by the Nazis.

Hannan was shocked to hear that any members of the SS, who were the most zealous of the Nazis and had taken an oath to personally serve and die for the Fuhrer, would desire to take part in any sacrament of a church that Hitler detested and opposed. However, the exhausted Hannan carried out his eucharistic and religious duties to the Catholic members of the SS who sought forgiveness and to return to the Church. That is not to say those who committed atrocities were absolved from a criminal trial for their crimes during and before the war, but it did serve as a start for sincere repentants in rectifying themselves in the eyes of God.

Hannan concluded that since the Church had offered absolution and prayers for repentant members of an outfit thatmurdered Catholics and others who belonged to the "wrong" race or religion, Catholics should also offer prayers for the priests and deacons who committed terrible acts against innocent youths.

I don't disagree with Hannan's belief in the Church's ability to weather the abuse scandal nor do I disagree with his request for the offering of prayers. However Church leaders must also embrace the concept that justice is as important as forgiveness.

Just like how the Nazis who committed crimes against humanity were tried, the clergymen who broke their vows and the law should also stand trial and receive a fair punishment for their crimes on earth. The leadership of the Church is right to ask Catholics to pray for the salvation of the fallen souls since forgiveness is a cornerstone of Christian teaching.

The Church is obligated to live up to its commitment to properly address the child and teen abuse problem and to cooperate with legal authorities in the pursuit of justice for the abused and penance behind bars for the abusers.