The Church is battered but it's not broken

Firstly, I apologise to any Christian readers not of the Catholic faith. I can only write from experience and hope that the issues outlined over the past weeks find resonance and resolution in their own spiritual journeys. We are all cut from the same cloth and are recommended the same remedies, so I continue.

Over the past decades, the Catholic Church has found itself mired in scandal, sin and defection. A seemingly endless crop of Judas figures stand accused of betraying their vows by abusing the innocent entrusted to their care. And an ever-restive jury beats out a drumroll for the Church's destruction, eager to wash their hands of this institution's seemingly endless litany of transgression.

To the secular mind, it all appears as a pathetic charade playing out its dreary final act. Why would any reasoned person wish to remain part of such a debased and seemingly morally bankrupt edifice? And yet, for those who have remained in the fold amidst bewildered disbelief, the patterns hold a more profound resonance.

Beneath the tawdry headlines and cries for disbanding, we recognise the familiar drama replaying. This is no fresh outrage but a reenactment as antique as the spilt blood staining Golgotha's rocks. As that anguished sky wept darkness upon the mutilated, thorn-pierced Christ, betrayal and abandonment unfolded with His agony.

The litany of present-day abusers didn't just steal innocence. In many cases, they likely stole the very ability to believe, to have confidence in spiritual authority, or to ever fully approach the Church without associations of psychological terror. For the developing souls of children and vulnerable adults, such atrocities utterly extinguished the inner capacity to resonate with the sacred. A gift as fragile as faith, so utterly contingent on trust, safety, and inviolable ethical conduct from its custodians, can quickly be decimated by such unconscionable violations. The agonising inner chaos inflicted by such egregious abuses represents one of the most spiritually damaging desecrations to the human soul.

So, while the parade of reprobates compels our disgust, they again reprise the terrifying opening act. A Judas figure must first trade spiritual treasures for base appetites to set the unwinding betrayal in motion.

The next bitter pang manifests as those in authority cower in the shadows, denying culpability while desperately preserving their small sepulchres of ego and vanity. Whether shamed clergy or a hierarchy abdicating under scandal's shadow, their faint hearts echo the abandonment of that vigil where all but one fled Christ's final hours.

Only a John figure, the faithful disciple, stood witness amid such harrowing devastation. When today's disciples embrace betrayal or believers defect into cynicism's wastes, the forsaken leader still perceives faithful members as remaining loyal amidst the horrors. All those who fled had witnessed miracles, the miraculous healings, the winds and waves stilled under an outstretched hand, and even the already decaying rise from the dead. Yet they all vanished at the first sign of tribulation. Similarly today, many excellent and dedicated clergy suffer under the weight of their confrere's betrayals, weeping bitter tears in solitude.

Hovering over the exposed awfulness is the ever-scornful crowd -those furious at the church's shameful shortchanging, the spiritually inert, the lost sleepwalking through distraction, and the restless, disenchanted venting judgments. All these psyches found embodiment in the voluble assembly trading insults while Christ's lifeblood seeped away. In them, we glimpse our separated selves crying for fresh blood to appease our fury.

Yet the outstretched and pierced hands sought to redeem without exception, and it is to this wasteland of rejection that Christ transcended to retrieve our famished spirits.

So, while Rome burns amidst clericalism's dry rot, the truth resounds through every shock for those persevering. We behold clerical miscreants vacating sacred vows, and as a result, whole legions lose the essential grit to uphold a faithful witness. Zealous reformers cry for upheaval to sever links to damning human iniquity planted firmly amidst the sacred.

Yet it all traces back to that primal hilltop's convulsive beginnings. Our age's impulses mirror those initiating that midnight court in Jerusalem that made a mockery of true justice - the lust for scapegoats and the refusal to bear existential frailty with any hint of stoicism.

All such animosity ultimately part before that same unbearable expression of evil erupting from under that hill. But Christ remains the changeless fulcrum as all the ills of humanity are piled on His shoulders, outraged not by a humiliating death but only by our refusals to return to his embrace.

I've walked those badlands where exiles ape the mob's angry chants, found nothing but mirages of fleeting distraction until making my own journey, turning back from that void to the precinct where unearned graces still tend the sacred remedies for our regeneration.

Yes, the Church remains steeped in its ritualised and self-inflicted betrayal and abandonment. But that lonely tree stands vigil unchanging amid the desolation, the truth blazing on undimmed despite our fashioning of betrayals. We may cycle endlessly through personal failures, lapsing into fear and fragility like apostles fleeing as their leader hung crucified. But that first hill casts its fires upon any soul willing to acknowledge the ultimate tragedy – disregarding the divine and wallowing in our nature's disfigurements.

So when we discern Judas archetypes feigning piety while enabling destruction, it is that desecrating prototype of Gethsemene playing out anew. When shepherd figures abandon their flocks, it is that familiar crisis of spiritual valour withering before the demands of witnessing in an unfolding crisis.

When cynics agitate for the Church's dissolution, we behold a restless humanity poring scorn upon its own salvation while again crying for the guiltless Lamb's immolation. Every persecution and inward dissolution repeats the wrenching violence in which the central figure of Christ Himself seemed extinguished under the weight of human betrayals.

The Church stands as that vessel torn from the ignominy of that cross. Any rites, liturgical pomp or buildings fashioned by human artistry serve merely as symbolic expressions gesturing back towards that seismic event. We may rage at each revelation of spiritual treason while rendering ourselves blind to the profound constancy relived in the changeless clash of spiritual realities. The Church forever renews itself by undergoing that original self-emptying that birthed its existence.

The scandals seemingly disrupting her body must crucify her anew to that searing humiliation of Golgotha. For those witnessing the betrayals from within its walls, every inward lapse exposes the indelible truth that the Church subsists within the disfigured form despite betrayals.

So, while society's disillusioned defect and whole swathes indulge fantasies of the Church's impending irrelevance, a remnant attends chastened but determined within that unfolding reality. The battered Church enacts its mission anew amidst the chaos, as when Christ rose before those terrified apostles bearing the wounds inflicted under their gaze.

The gravest heresies of the past decades compel the deepest draughts from that inexhaustible font to regenerate the remaining believers. These violations are a catalyst necessitating stripping and emptying so that a smaller, more spiritualised Church may embrace a renewed poverty remade in its humiliation.

No human dereliction can undo the mysteries within her, even amid tribulations and defections. Her ministers may blaspheme, her sanctuaries desecrated, yet that Divine presence remains unchanged for those with eyes to see. The true Church's supernatural destiny ever beckons, even over the clamouring din of its betrayals, still arousing a fidelity that can never be fully extinguished in a long passion play of sin and redemption, fall and resurrection, suffering and hoped-for glory.

The journey is far from over, and I suspect it's only beginning.