«I like the way your letter ends:” I will continue to be a priest and bishop of this Church and I will continue to commit myself pastorally when I consider it sensible and appropriate. I would like to dedicate the next few years of my service more intensely to pastoral care and commit myself to a spiritual renewal of the Church, as you tirelessly ask “. And this is my answer, dear brother.”
In a letter to Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Pope Francis rejects his resignation as Archbishop, replying: “Continue, as you propose, but as Archbishop of Munich and Freising. If you are tempted to think that by not accepting your resignation, this Bishop of Rome (your brother who loves you) does not understand you, think about what Peter felt before the Lord when, in his own way, he presented his resignation presenting himself as a sinner and heard the answer “Feed my sheep” “.
Cardinal Marx, one of Francis' closest aides, wrote to the pope on May 21 offering him his resignation as a “gesture of co-responsibility for the catastrophe of sexual abuse of minors perpetrated by representatives of the Church in recent decades,” stating that the Catholic Church “has stagnated” and mentioning an “institutional and systemic failure”.
In his response, Francis thanks Marx for his “Christian courage that is not afraid of the cross, that is not afraid of being humiliated before the terrible reality of sin”, admits that “the whole Church is in crisis because of the stories of abuse” and that ” The Church today cannot move forward without assuming this crisis “because” the ostrich policy leads nowhere. A crisis, which, he affirms, “must be assumed by our faith. Sociologisms and psychologisms are useless. (…) “assuming the crisis, personally and as a community, is the only fruitful path because you don't get out of a crisis alone, but in community”.
The significance of Francis' message is seen in the fact that he explains that he shares the cardinal's analysis: “I agree with you in describing the sad history of sexual abuse and how the Church has recently faced it in a catastrophic way.. Realizing this hypocrisy in the way we live out our faith is a first step we must take.. We need to take responsibility for history, both personally and as a community.. We cannot remain indifferent to this crime.”.
It is true that “historical situations must be interpreted with the hermeneutics of the time in which they occurred, but this does not exempt us from assuming them and assuming them as the history of the sin that besieges us”, adds Francisco. “That is why, in my opinion, every bishop of the Church must assume it and ask himself: What should I do in the face of this catastrophe?”
The Pope recalls that the Church has “pronounced the 'mea culpa' in the face of so many historical errors in the past more than once in many situations, even though we have not personally participated in that historical situation. And it is this same attitude that is asked of us today. We are being asked for a reform, which -in this case- does not consist of words but of attitudes that have the courage to face the crisis, to accept reality whatever the consequences.. And all reform begins with oneself. The reform in the Church was carried out by men and women who were not afraid to go into crisis and let themselves be reformed by the Lord.
This “is the only way”, points out the Pope, otherwise “we will be nothing more than ideologues of reform who do not risk their own flesh”, as Jesus did “with his life, with his history, with his flesh in the cross”. And this, Francis continues, “is the path, the path that you yourself, dear brother, have taken when presenting your resignation”, because “burying the past leads us nowhere: to silence, to omissions, to give too much weight to the institutions' prestige only leads to personal and historical failure”.
Thus, he concludes, it is “urgent” to allow “the Spirit to lead us to the desert of desolation, to the cross and to the resurrection: it is the path of the Spirit that we must follow, and the starting point is a humble confession: we were wrong we have sinned. Neither polls nor the power of institutions will save us. The prestige of our Church, which tends to hide its sins, will not save us; Neither the power of money nor the opinion of the media will save us (so many times we are too dependent on them).. We will save ourselves by confessing our nakedness: “I have sinned”, “we have sinned”…. and crying and stuttering as best we can that “get away from me, because I am a sinner”, legacy that the first Pope left to the Popes and Bishops of the Church”. Only then will we “feel that healing shame that opens the doors to the compassion and tenderness of the Lord who is always close to us.”
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