The Long Lent.

I think I am in agreement with David Morrison's post on the banality of a "simple solution" to the priest abuse problem. Just when I'm tempted to think that a "zero tolerance" approach solves all of our problems, I read something like this post from Secret Agent Man who offers the following insight:

I really don't care if my parish priest is a homosexual. I really don't care if, when he falls from grace, his mind turns to images of teenagers "bonking" in the Vatican gardens. Men need a Redeemer, and our Redeemer died on a Cross while we were yet sinners; we should expect men caught in sin to look grotesque and pathetic, their thoughts to be twisted and violently contorted. Didn't our Redeemer look that way when He died? Didn't He bear our stripes? No, none of that fundamentally bothers me. In fact it seems rather ordinary and shabby, made all the more pathetic by its appearance in public on the Bishop's pornographic little website. Anyone who would really be shocked to his foundation to hear of thoughts and desires like those flitting through the mind of a cleric hasn't spent much time examining his own conscience. Or spent much time in a lawyer's office, for that matter. Spend enough time with men "as they are" and you start realizing that the truly disgusting people are the ones who believe sin's ugliness only disfigures their neighbors.

Wow. To repeat a key passage:

"We should expect men caught in sin to look grotesque and pathetic, their thoughts to be twisted and violently contorted. Didn't our Redeemer look that way when He died?"

Alas, it appears that we have not been called for simple solutions.

On the other hand, I am with Mark Shea in my amazement at the Mystery of Secular Transubstantiation, whereby the scandal of male priests having sex with boys is transformed into a Catholic problem with is source in celibacy and chastity and not a human problem involving homosexuals choosing to sacrifice self-mastery to selfish pleasure.