OTTAWA, Ontario, May 2, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – With hearings beginning this month into the child pornography charges against Bishop Raymond J. Lahey, former Bishop of Antigonish, a prominent Canadian Catholic author and victim of abuse says the abuse crisis is an opportunity for renewal and purification within the Catholic Church.
“I hope that Catholics will keep in mind in the heart of their souls that the Church is the Bride of Christ,” said bestselling author and artist Michael O’Brien. “The Lord is purifying his household, he is purifying the Bride in preparation for meeting the Bridegroom. It is painful; it is humiliating; it is necessary,” he told Canadian Catholic News.
Following the seizure of his laptop and other electronics at the Ottawa airport in September 2009, Bishop Lahey was charged with possession and distribution of child pornography, after which he resigned his position.
Bishop Lahey’s resignation came only a month after he had reached an $18 million settlement with sexual abuse victims in the deeply affected diocese of Antigonish. Hearings in the case of Bishop Lahey will begin May 4.
“I am proud to say that I am a Roman Catholic,” said O’Brien, who recently testified to his own psychological abuse at a residential school in Inuvik, by a supervisor later accepted into the Catholic priesthood. “It is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful that we have a Saviour who dwells with us in this magnificent Church. This is our home. The Church is full of Judases, but it is overwhelmingly full of saints.”
Although he escaped sexual abuse, O’Brien has testified to the years of betrayal and cruelty, including psychological and physical violence, he and other students endured at the residential school under the supervision of Martin Houston. The supervisor was convicted of multiple accounts of sexual abuse, but released early from prison and later ordained as a Catholic priest for the Archdiocese of St. Boniface in Manitoba.
“None of us likes a scandal, none of us likes to see our Mother shamed in public, shamed by her own children; however, the violation of one child, a violation of one human soul, is not worth a public image,” O’Brien said.
“The Church is going to the Cross; all of scripture and tradition have told us that this must come. The glory and hope of the Church is to be found in her union with Jesus. Only in union with Jesus on the Cross will the Body of Christ come through to eternal life.”
O’Brien said the sexual abuse scandals result when men with “deep-seated homosexual attraction” are accepted into the seminary and priesthood in “ecclesial disobedience” of directives from the Vatican.
“This has been largely ignored by the particular Church in Canada for at least two generations and now we are reaping the harvest of this disobedience,” he said. “Horrendous spiritual and moral blindness has been justified by calling it enculturation.”
The “apostatizing, once-Christian culture” of the West is not “authentic enculturation,” but in fact “betrayal of the gospel,” continued O’Brien, citing legitimate enculturation as the communication of the gospel to races, cultures and tribes for their own understanding.
“Wherever sin and error are permitted within the flock of Christ, that portion of the flock will die unless there is repentance,” he said. “Our failure as lay people in the West has been to compromise with the spirit of the world,” he said. “We have turned away from the Gospel; we have ceased listening.”
“Do we lay people pray for our shepherds? Do we offer sacrifice? Do we fast? Have we loved the truth?” he asked. “Or have we betrayed the truth by gathering about ourselves pleasing theologians and teachers who help us make peace with sin and error.”
O’Brien expressed his hope that victims of clerical abuse will learn to seek Jesus’ love for healing and the grace to forgive their perpetrators.
“Forgiveness is not sweet feelings about one who has abused us,” he said. “Authentic forgiveness is about praying for the redemption of those who have harmed us.”
“If we would receive mercy, we must be willing to give mercy unconditionally,” he said. “That is forgiveness.