Thursday, March 10
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…
Twenty-five years ago, when I was in Catholic high school, I read about a study that said 50% of priests were sexually active. Being a snarky kid, I shared the study with my Mom, with a quip that perhaps the priesthood wasn’t as bad as it sounded.
I don’t recall exactly what my Mom’s response was, but it had something to do with little boys accounting for a big chunk of that sexual activity.
It was a tasteless joke. I laughed hard. I told my friends at school about it the next day and they laughed too – partly because we had a sick sense of humor, but mostly because we couldn’t believe my Mom said it.
Looking back, I don’t remember that as the time my Mom told a tasteless joke. I remember it as the time my Mom had the courage to speak a difficult truth.
Problem is, she didn’t follow that joke up with action – in fact, she probably felt bad that she said anything. I didn’t do anything either. To my knowledge, neither did any of my friends. None of us were blind to what was happening (few Catholics were), but all of us succumbed to the temptation not to speak out, the temptation not to rock the boat, the temptation to conform. So did millions of others. And so, it would be another decade before church leaders began to be called to account for their sins.
Most of us are not seriously tempted to perpetrate monstrous evils ourselves. Our participation in those evils is likely to be passive. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t participants. Pedophile priests couldn’t have molested thousands of children without the misplaced deference of countless rank-and-file Catholics. The Nazis couldn’t have carried out their crimes without the quiet acquiescence of millions of Germans. And so on – I’m sure each of you can name evils in the world today that you have silently tolerated. I know I can. Yet I succumb to the temptation not to rock the boat, even though I know that my inaction makes me complicit.
Jesus, grant us the courage not to succumb to the temptation to remain passive in the face of evil. Amen.
–Matt Aufman