Letter to a Suffering Church

The Archdiocese of St Louis recently released the list of abusive priests.  I was surprised by the name of a former pastor who I had admired.  This makes 8 known pedophiles that I have personally had as pastor or associate pastor of parishes I have belonged to in my lifetime. Not all of these were in St Louis.  Not a good record.  Not for me personally and not for the Church.

While my divorce was my mistake at least in part because I went down the garden path and married a man I did not know, I was aided and encouraged in this mistake by one of those priests.  Then as I went through years and years of suffering through a non-marriage non-partnership, I never felt like there was a priest I could confide in and looking at the records of most of the pastors I had,  I was not wrong in my distrust of them.

I have kept the faith and have practiced it to the best of my ability, but I have been discouraged.  I have suffered.  Recently, my parish distributed the Letter to a Suffering Church by Bishop Robert Barron. I read it at my first opportunity.  While I still feel anger at the bishops who let this whole situation become what it did, and personally the priests who served me so poorly, the letter helped.  It put things in perspective for me.

There is much suffering in this life.  For me personally, marriage, infertility, loss during pregnancy, career disappointments, personal failures, divorce, and then all of this mess in the Church have been troubles.  I have prayed and trusted and cried and prayed.  But, I am finally reaching acceptance that Christ is here with me in these trials and He wins, every time. Love wins.

Thanks to Bishop Barron for putting it so well.