Picture the scene with me for a minute. A family is at home one day, and an uncle, who is visiting, attacks and physically harms the 14 year old son. How would you expect the father (who is the younger brother to the uncle) to respond? Ignoring it is not likely high on the list. Quietly speaking to the uncle and asking him to stop, is also not an expected behavior. What is the proper emotion in that circumstance? We would expect the father to be angry. Am I right?
In fact, if the father is not angry, we would assume that there is something wrong with him. Although we would not advocate anyone becoming unnecessarily physically violent, we should all understand the sense of anger that the father would feel and his compulsion to seek for justice. When any crime has occurred, most people believe that the perpetrator should be punished in some fashion. Now, having said that, I want you to think for a moment on how the father feels. He wants to protect his children, someone has intruded and caused harm, but it is a relative.
Now that you can feel that same sense of outrage, as well as the tension over the fact that it was caused by a relative, you can understand better our current situation. It is a simpler emotion when the perpetrator is a stranger; it is difficult when it is a family member. That same sense of anger is what I and many other Catholics (especially clergymen) feel about those who have either abused children, or seduced others into sodomy. They are "relatives" who have come into "our house" and harmed our "children". A feeling of anger about this is not automatically a sinful response. Yes, there is a sinful type of anger, but that is when someone lashes out in rage and merely seeks to cause harm to another person, with no sense of righteousness at all.
There is a holy and righteous anger, but what does it look like? It is completely self-controlled, and is a proper motivator to holy action. Righteous anger is a recognition of grave injustice that only comes from a heart that "hungers and thirsts for righteousness". People who experience this are said to be "blessed" because they more closely understand the heart of God. All that our Lord does is working towards righteousness because that is the only holy response in this fallen world.
Do you feel angry about what has been done by many of our own leaders? You should. In speaking with my Bishop, Stephen Lopes, about these things, he himself said that a righteous and self-controlled anger is good in this time. We should be angry at whoever has perpetrated these grave sins in our own Catholic dioceses. And anyone who covers it up is fully complicit in the sin; especially if he (or she) enables a sexual brute to continue his crimes. This is true whether it is one's own Bishop, or whether it is the Pope himself (and Vigano's testimony at this time appears to be credible).
Righteous anger makes us want to do something about what is wrong. Righteous anger is that very thing that was missing in whoever covered up the sins of those who committed these acts of sexual perversion. They were not angry and so they allowed these things to continue. It is comparable to Jesus entering the temple and saying, "sacrilege isn't really that bad, go ahead and disrupt the prayers". In that instance when Jesus cleansed the temple, the religious leaders of the day were also not angry, and that is why they allowed the liturgical abuse to continue.
We have spent so much effort trying to be tolerant (which is not always a virtue) and aiming at mercy (though true mercy does not exclude true justice) that we have forgotten that we are supposed to be angry about all forms of abuse; whether it is liturgical, moral, theological, or pastoral. We have spent so much time trying to defend the leaders of the Church, that we need to be reminded that all men sin (even Bishops and Popes), and sometimes the Lord does allow a Judas to enter our midst. He does not do this to hurt us, but it always is, in some way, for our good. At the very least it motivates us to work to clean up all the abuses that are still present in the Church.
Let me say it once more to be perfectly clear: it is a lack of righteous anger that got us into this situation, and a lack of righteous anger will not do anything but allow the sin to continue. Therefore, if you feel angry about these things, good. Feel that anger, and use it righteously. Allow it to motivate you to take a stand for holiness; in your life and the lives of others. Do not let that anger cause you to rant and rave; or to wring your hands in despair, thus becoming ineffective for God's Kingdom. Yes, be angry, but with the holiness that motivates us to be faithful, to protect one another (even from our own sins), and to work for the holiness of the Church of Jesus Christ.
