Is it NORMAL for a lay Catholic to burden the bishop to whom he is listening?
This situation, which, despite great differences, unites the entire Amarillo diocesan family, challenges the bishop’s ability to accompany individuals and parishes to reread experiences of mourning and suffering that have unmasked many false certainties, and to cultivate hope and faith in the goodness of the Creator and his creation by crying out, “If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand?“.
Words in italics indicate passages pulled from the Preparatory Document for the Synod 2021-2023.
““It is precisely this path of synodality which God expects of the Church of the third millennium.”
FRANCIS, Address for the ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the institution of the
Synod of Bishops (17 October 2015)
This week begins the countdown to the 2021-2023 Synod entitled “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, and Mission” There are 4 days until the solemn opening on the 9th – 10th of October 2021 in Rome and 12 days until the Diocese of Amarillo is expected to celebrate the local ceremony on the 17th of October; unless God’s expectation becomes too much of a burden for Bishop Zurek to bear.
My back is broad but it’s a-hurting
All I want for you to make love to me
I’ll never be your beast of burden
I’ve walked for miles, my feet are hurting
All I want for you to make love to me“
How long will this announcement of our need to repent stand before Bishop Zurek proclaims a fast and we put on sackcloth?
However, Bishop Zurek cannot hide from the fact that the Diocese herself must face the lack of faith and the corruption even within herself. In particular, we cannot forget the “serious mistake” that resulted in suffering experienced by minors and vulnerable people “due to sexual abuse, the abuse of power and the abuse of conscience perpetrated by a significant number of clerics and consecrated persons.”
“Inasmuch as there could be serious legal implications for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles if we do fully disclose to you our concern regarding the Reverend John Salazar, Sch.P., by this letter I am informing you that the Reverend John Salazar, Sch.P. would never be allowed to minister as a priest in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in any way whatsoever given the circumstances of his case.”
From a 1991 letter from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to the Diocese of Amarillo prior to Bishop’s Matthiessen’s bringing of John Salazar to the Diocese of Amarillo. Bishop Matthiesen ignored this warning. Later he defended the “serious mistake” by stating that he never conducted his own checks of the priests – which included the Rev. John Salazar-Jimenez, and that it wasn’t until 10 years later that he learned some priests were not the first-time sex offenders that they purported to be when he agreed to hire.
We are continually challenged “as the People of God to take on the pain of our brothers and sisters wounded in their flesh and in their spirit.” For too long the cry of the victims has been a cry that the Church has not been able to hear sufficiently. These are deep wounds that are difficult to heal, for which forgiveness can never be asked for enough and which constitute obstacles, sometimes imposing ones, to advancing in the direction of “journeying together.”
” The Diocese of Amarillo is called to deal with the weight of a culture imbued with clericalism that she inherits from the “serious mistake“, and with those forms of exercising authority on which the different types of abuse (power, economic, conscience, sexual) are grafted. It is impossible to think of “a conversion of our activity as a Church that does not include the active participation of all the members of God’s People who hear his word and observe it:” together let us ask the Lord for “the grace of conversion and the interior anointing needed to express before these crimes of abuse our compunction and our resolve courageously to combat them.”
“In memory of the death of innocence of the victims of clergy sexual abuse. When innocence dies…a life stops. It is essential that we never forget.”
