The headlines [have been] captured

of Boston have abused young people whom they were consecrated to serve.

It's a huge scandal, one that

many people who have long disliked the Church because of one of her moral

or doctrinal teachings are using as an issue to attack the Church as a

whole, trying to imply that they were right all along.

The first thing we need to

do is to understand it from the point of view of our faith in the Lord.

Before he chose his first disciples, Jesus went up the mountain all night

to pray. He had at the time many followers. He talked to his Father in

prayer about whom he would choose to be his 12 apostles, the 12 he would

himself form intimately, the 12 whom he would send out to preach the Good

News in His name.

He gave them power to cast

out demons. He gave them power to cure the sick. They watched him work

countless miracles. They themselves in His name worked countless others.

Yet, despite all of that, one of them was a traitor.

One who had followed the Lord,

who had had his feet washed by the Lord, who had seen him walk on water,

raise people from the dead, forgive sinners, betrayed the Lord.

The Gospel tells us that he

allowed Satan to enter into him and then he sold the Lord for 30 pieces

of silver, handing him over by faking a gesture of love. "Judas,"

Jesus said to him in the garden of Gethsemane, "Would you betray

the Son of Man with a kiss?"

Jesus didn't choose Judas to

betray him. He chose him to be like all the others. But Judas was always

free, and he used his freedom to allow Satan to enter into him, and by

his betrayal, ended up getting Jesus crucified and executed.

So right from the first 12

that Jesus himself chose, one was a terrible traitor. Sometimes God's

chosen ones betray Him. That's a fact that we have to confront. It's a

fact that the early Church confronted.

If the scandal caused by Judas

was all the members of the early Church focused on, the Church would have

been finished before it even started to grow. Instead, the Church recognized

that you don't judge something by those who don't live it, but by those

who do.

Instead of focusing on the

one who betrayed, they focused on the other 11, on account of whose work,

preaching, miracles, love for Christ, we are here today. It's on account

of the other 11, all of whom except St. John was martyred for Christ and

for the Gospel they were willing to give their lives to proclaim to us,

that we ever heard the saving word of God, that we ever received the sacraments

of eternal life.

It's the same way today. We

can focus on those who betrayed the Lord, those who abused rather than

loved those whom they were called to serve. Or we can focus, like the

early Church did, on the others, on those who have remained faithful,

those priests who are still offering their lives to serve Christ and to

serve you out of love. The media almost never focuses on the good "11,"

the ones whom Jesus has chosen who remain faithful, who live lives of

quiet holiness. But we, the Church, must keep the terrible scandal that

we've witnessed in its true and full perspective.

Scandal is unfortunately nothing

new for the Church. There have been many times in the history of the Church

when the Church was much worse off than it is now. The history of the

Church is like a cosine curve, with ups and downs throughout the centuries.

At each of the times when the Church hit its low point, God raised up

tremendous saints to bring the Church