Many people are rationalizing that because the Church has been rocked in the past decade by the priest sex abuse scandal and other singular abuses, that the Church somehow does not have the authority to command obedience to morality in the name of Jesus Christ. Truth does not change merely because some of those who have proclaimed it in the past have fallen into sin. It does not change even if the whole of those who have proclaimed it give themselves over to sin and the wiles of the devil. If such faulty theological logic had any merit, the Church would never have survived the first week after Our Lord was crucified. After all, with the exception of the Apostle St. John, all of the original 12 abandoned Jesus, one even openly denied him and did so three times. Yet it was the weak one who denied Christ three times who was chosen to lead the Church after Our Lord ascended to the Father. One of the remaining Eleven after our Lord rose again even refused to believe, yet Christ allowed that one to see as well as believe, he didn't reject him or tell him that he had no authority. Christ instead breathed the Holy Spirit on these imperfect men and told them to go forth and proclaim the Good News. Christ promised that the gates of Hell would not prevail against the Church, but He certainly never promised that the Church would be composed of perfect people or that some of its leaders would not ever fall into serious sin or scandal themselves.
Catholic readers will recall, I am sure, the case of Father John Corapi, who stood accused of having an affair with a woman who worked with him, and was even accused (not, apparently, without some cause) of having multiple affairs with multiple women. Corapi left the priesthood, at first saying that without doing so, he would be unable to prove his innocence in a legitimate fashion. His religious community said that he was not fit for public ministry, but they didn't ever say "Father Corapi isn't welcome to return." Indeed, he was invited to come live in community with the rest of priests and brothers of his religious order, the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity (SOLT). It was when he openly refused to obey this order which was given in accordance with his religious vow to obey those placed in religious authority over him that SOLT said that Father Corapi was "unfit for public ministry" as a priest.
Many good Catholics were and remain rightly scandalized by the case of Father Corapi. This is because so many people were brought into a deeper relationship with Christ and with Our Blessed Mother through Father Corapi's powerful witness, teaching, and preaching, and two of those people included Nicole and myself. We didn't just watch Father Corapi's programs on EWTN, in 2005, we attended a day of reflection with Father Corapi in Kentucky. I was deeply moved by his powerful witness of fidelity to the Church and his own conversion story. He was keenly aware of his own past, however-he returned to the Faith from a world of drug addiction, worldliness, pleasure, and, to hear his own description, the worst forms of sin and vice imaginable in our modern secularist culture, and he said "if you ever pick up a newspaper and read that Father John Corapi was found dead in a crack house somewhere, it might very well be the truth, because the devil is always at work, and don't you think the devil doesn't know my addictions and weaknesses." I remembered Father Corapi saying this, but it didn't make his decision to leave the priesthood sting any less. His disobedience to and disregard for the authority of the very Church which he had preached for 20 years
that the rest of us should obey spoke volumes about the unfortunate path that he seemed to have chosen.
Since that time, Corapi seems to have fallen off the face of the earth. Indeed, many people who used to follow the work of his former ministry now have no idea what has happened to him. Like some of them, I too pray that he has come to obedience and that he has repented, returning to his religious community. Wherever he is, if he has not repented, I pray that he does so.
However, Corapi's apparent lack of repentance and his scandalous behavior do not negate the work of the Holy Spirit or lessen the power of the truths he was previously teaching, for we all have concupiscence. The decision by many folks to declare the entire Church corrupt based on the public actions of some smacks as much of a desire to find an excuse not to obey the Church as it does of any genuine personal scandal someone might feel about the actions of many priests and others in the Church who, like Father Corapi, fell into serious sin and shame. The reality is that we live in a culture that does not like obedience, especially if the power commanding our obedience is ultimately of Divine origin, which the Church is. The reality is that many Catholics want to call themselves Catholic but not bear the mark-and sometimes bear the cross-of obedience to the authority of the Church upon earth.
As an Aspirant who feels called to the deaconate, I have willingly placed myself within the Church's Divine authority in a very direct way. Those who are in formation for a vocation to the deaconate, the priesthood, or the religious life do this knowing that none of us are perfect, and that even our bishop is not perfect, but that, through the authority of the Church, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, he may tell us when and where, or even whether ever we may minister to others in the Church's name. My willingness to obey the Church is reflected not only in my developing call to the deaconate, but in an understanding that while the Church, including her leaders, are imperfect human beings, her authority comes from Christ, who gave her all power in Heaven and on Earth. All of us who are Catholics, whether laypeople or ordained, are called to accept the Church's teaching authority on faith and morals-she is mater et magister.
Those who know to do so and refuse to remind me of of the famous verse of scripture describing the errant children of Israel who refuse to accept Divine authority in Judges 21:25:
In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.
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