Sheep without shepherds

In the gospel today, Jesus has compassion upon the crowds because they were as sheep without a shepherd (Mk 6:34). And in the first reading Jeremiah tirades against bad shepherds saying, “Woe to you. You have scattered my sheep and driven them away. You have not cared for them. Now I will appoint shepherds who will lead them, and my people will no longer fear or tremble” (Jer 23:1-6).

A newly appointed shepherd

On July 1, 2003 Pope John Paul II appointed Bishop O'Malley to be the next shepherd of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. He succeeds Cardinal Bernard Law who resigned last December amid a scandal of clergy sex abuse which has plagued that archdiocese for 18 months nonstop. O’Malley will be installed on July 30, 2003, 11 A.M. at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston. It will be an installation like none that city has ever seen. For Bishop O’ Malley is a friar of the Order of St. Francis of Assisi and still decks himself out with nothing more pretentious than the hooded robe of the sons of St. Francis.

Bishop O’Malley is not only a Franciscan; he is also a Capuchin, a particular brand of Franciscans. The Capuchins get their name from their long hood which, in Italian, is “cappuccio.” When the village people would see a friar coming down the road they would call out, “Here comes a cappuccino.” “Here comes one of those little hooded guys.” The coffee that has come to be called “cappuccino” was so called because of the coffee-brown color of those hooded ones called “cappuccinos.” The new Archbishop of Boston not only drinks cappuccino, he is one! And the new Archbishop of Boston is not an elegant figure bedecked in royal robes but is, instead, one of those hooded sons of St. Francis. This, indeed, is going to be an installation like none that city has ever seen.

Francis’ call to repair the church

Francis was born in 1182 of a well-to-do family in the little mountainside village of Assisi, Italy, looking out onto the Umbrian valley—a spot of exquisite natural beauty. He died in 1224, the 42^nd year of his life. One day in the 23^rd year of his life, he was praying before a crucifix in a rickety little old church of San Damiano in Assisi. The crucifix is an icon of Christ in glory. Many years before the birth of Francis, the icon was painted on canvas and then applied to a walnut wooden cross. It is the work of an unknown artist of the Umbrian School.

Because of what happened before that crucifix, it has become the most cherished possession and icon of the entire Franciscan family. To this very day, it is carefully preserved and safeguarded in the Basilica of St. Clare in Assisi and is considered to be the most renowned and most re-produced crucifix in the entire world.

One day as Francis was praying before that crucifix, wondering where his life was going, he asked, “Lord, what is it that you want me to do?” He thought he heard a voice coming from the crucifix saying, “Repair my church.” Literal man that he was, Francis thought the voice was speaking about the dilapidated chapel of San Damiano. So he set out to repair it with mortar and brick. In fact, as destiny was to prove, the voice was calling him to repair the Universal Church of Peter.

O’Malley’s call to repair the church

On July 1 Bishop Sean Patrick O'Malley spent a whirlwind day in Boston, meeting with the victims of clergy sex abuse, with bishops, chancery employees and patients at Caritas St. Elizabeth Medical Center, and yes, with the media. Standing there in his coffee-brown habit and sandaled feet before a sea of reporters and television cameras, he said, “I address you, my fellow Catholics of Boston, with those words that inspired Saint Francis when the crucified Lord said to him, `Francis, repair my church.’” Then departing from the prepared text he begged the crowd saying, “I ask you and plead with you: Repair my church.”

Saturation coverage

Repair what in the Church of Boston? Repair what in the Universal Church? Repair clergy sex abuse? Is that the total and adequate description of the problem to be fixed? Cardinal Oscar Rodriquez Maradiaga of Honduras doesn’t think so. In an interview with a respected Italian magazine, 30 Giorni, the Cardinal complained of the media’s persecution of the Catholic Church in the United States. In fiery language, he compared the media’s treatment of the church to the persecution of Christians under the emperors Nero and Diocletian, and under the dictators Hitler and Stalin. Some people got angry and cried out, “There go the church leaders again--in denial. There they go again blaming the messenger for the church’s problem. Even Fr. Andrew Greely, that sassy Irish priest from Chicago, labeled the Cardinal as “clueless.”

Now the Cardinal isn’t a crusty foreign prelate out of touch with the American scene. He is a dynamic 60-year-old young man, whose perfect English reflects years of studying, lecturing and traveling in the United States. Neither is he one of those ecclesiastical paranoids who see enemies of the church under every rock.

In an interview on July 7, 2003, when asked about his remarks and the reaction to it, he responded saying, “I don’t repent. Maybe I was a little strong, but sometimes it is necessary to shake things up.” Then he hastened to make it clear that he did not for a moment question the sufferings of sex abuse victims, or deny the failures of some shepherds to intervene when they should have known better. But what he wanted to raise, he said, was a question of emphasis. Sex abuse is, indeed, a legitimate story, but is it, he asked, the story to be told? Sex abuse is, indeed, a legitimate repair for the Church of Boston. But is it the repair to be made?

Then the Cardinal proceeded to tell what is the story to be told, and what is the repair to be made. In a world of massive poverty, racism and environmental disaster, in a world where drug trafficking is choking off democracy in Latin America, in a world where AIDS is killing off a whole generation of Africans, in a world where 1.2 billion people don’t have safe water to drink, in a world where the total amount of money that you pay 12,000 workers for a whole year’s work in a Nike factory in Indonesia doesn’t add up to what you pay one American basketball player for wearing Nike, --in such a world, the Cardinal asks, does the sexual abuse of minors by perhaps 2 percent of priests really merit such saturation coverage? Is that the story to be told? Is that the repair to be made? At this very moment, as we speak, it is the saturated coverage of Kobe Bryant’s alleged rape of a nineteen-year-old that makes it the story. Is it the story?

The Cardinal has denounced the Colombian drug cartels that work through Honduras. In February, the doorman from the chancery in Tegucigalpa was kidnapped, manhandled, and told to tell his boss that the cartel was coming. No wonder Cardinal Rodriquez Maradiaga has a different view of what the story to be told is all about and a different view of what the repair to be made is all about.

Repair what?

Sex abuse is, indeed, a legitimate repair for the Church of Boston. But is it the repair? Or is the repair needed in the Church of Boston and in the Church of Chicago and in the Church of Milwaukee something far more fundamental and far more profound?

On June 13, 2002, the American bishops met in Dallas to address the crisis of priests’ abuse of minors. On that occasion a Senior Fellow at the University of Notre Dame rose to tell the bishops that all their apologies were for nothing until they were ready to “name the protection of abusive priests for what it is—a sin born out of the arrogance of power.” It is the church’s arrogance, pride and power that need repair. It is the church’s lack of transparency and simple speech that need repair. It is the church’s trappings (those frills we wrap ourselves up in when gospel substance is lacking) that need repair. When there’s gospel substance, you don’t need much more than a coffee-brown habit and sandals. When Bishop O’Malley addressed the cameras and reporters on July 1^st and quoted the crucifix of San Damiano, “Repair my church,” he was saying what other institutional people before him were not clearly saying: that even before sex abuse, it is the very church that needs repairing.

Repair how?

And O’Malley is, indeed, the man to spearhead the repair, for he has an impressive track record. In 1984 he was appointed Bishop of St. Thomas of the Virgin Islands. In 1992 Bishop of Fall River, Mass. In 2002 Bishop of Palm Beach, Fla. But that’s not his really impressive track record.

In the 70’s when he was director of the Spanish Catholic Center in Washington D. C., to show his solidarity with Hispanics, he moved into their dilapidated and rodent infested housing project and there engineered the rehabilitation of the building and its purchase by the tenants. That’s his impressive track record. When he became Bishop of Palm Beach, Fla., he didn’t move into the bishop’s residence. Instead he chose a modest house in Palm Beach Gardens. That’s his impressive track record. At the July 1^st interview before a sea of cameras and reporters, he was asked, “Are you going to move into the cardinal’s mansion on Commonwealth Avenue?” He told them that he was going to choose something simpler. That’s his impressive track record.

O’Malley bedecks himself with the coffee-brown robe of St. Francis and walks around in sandals. That’s his impressive track record. When he was Bishop of Fall River, Mass., he frequently urged the Catholic hospital there, St. Anne’s, to intensify programs to serve the uninsured and others in need. That’s his impressive record. The Capuchin superior of the church of St. John the Baptist in Upper Manhattan, right across the street from Madison Square Garden, says of O’Malley, “When he passes through New York he always stays here in a little monastic cell with a sink in it. A Capuchin bishop can stay anywhere he wants, even in a nice hotel if he so chooses, but Sean O’Malley is a regular guy,” he says. “He hangs out in the recreation room, watches TV and eats popcorn with us. He is also very gentle and loving.” That’s his impressive track record. Washington Catholics close to O’Malley recall his activism, yes, but the first word that comes to their mind when asked about him is humble. Ramon Dominiquez who worked with O‘Malley says, “The most significant thing about him is that he is a very humble person, dedicated to serve the people.” That, above all, is his impressive track record.

About ourselves

It’s easy to point a finger at the church as an institution and tell it to shape up. The work is never done, and, in fact, hasn’t even begun until we have first pointed a finger at ourselves. For we, indeed, are the church. The people of Boston and of Chicago and of Milwaukee are the church, and we all have a spiritual problem with arrogance, pride and power. We all have a problem with straight talk and transparency. And we all have a problem with trappings—those frills we employ when substance is lacking.

And we are all guilty of making clergy sex abuse the story, when the story is really the massive poverty consuming millions; the drug trafficking choking off democracy in Latin America; the AIDS pandemic killing off a whole generation of Africans; the 1.2 billion people drinking polluted water; the 12,000 workers, all together in one year, not making what one star basketball player makes on an endorsement. We are all guilty of allowing the media to make clergy sex abuse the story, the repair job to be done in Boston, Chicago and Milwaukee. We are all guilty of such media saturation because the media gives us what we want. We are all guilty of allowing the media to make the Kolbe Bryant story the story.

For sure, O’Malley is going to take care of the sex abuse in Boston. But he’s going to take care of much more than that. And he’s not going to do it alone. He’s not the church. The people of Boston are the church. What the story will be depends on them. Just as the people of Chicago and Milwaukee are the church, and what the story will be depends on us.

Conclusion

A model

All the cities, towns, and villages of Italy have bars everywhere. A bar in Italy is not a place where you cry in your beer or get stoned or can’t see the guy beside you because of the smoke and dimmed lights. In Italy a bar is where you order an espresso or a cafe latte or a cappuccino. Those bars have huge coffee-making machines that shoot out streams of thick rich coffee into demitasses and top it off with foamy milk. For me, the Italian cappuccino is the nectar of the gods. I go to Italy just to drink my cappuccino, and after that, to see my loved ones.

There are very few places around here where you can buy an honest-to-God cappuccino. The Church of Boston is getting an honest-to-God Cappuccino. May that Church, weighted down with so much ill-repute for more than 18 months, now become a model for the Church of Chicago and the Church of Milwaukee and, indeed, for the entire Universal Church and every single one of us--a model of what to repair and how to go about repairing it.