Trusting the Church ‘in Crisis’

You are witnesses of these things. And, behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. (Luke 24:48-49)

Last week we began talking about how we can understand ourselves in such a way as to help us give the world the New Evangelization. We began to meditate on the question, “In order to ‘have’ the Gospel, who do you have to trust?” And the first part of the answer is: We trust the great we, the great us, that is the Catholic Church, united and governed by the Pope.

–Great, Father. We, the Church. But how can I trust the Church as an institution when, according to MSNBC, it has so many deep-seated problems? “Crisis-plagued?”

This is the honest question of an honest person seeking to find the path of righteousness and truth. We—the big we which we are talking about—we are nothing at all if we are not first and foremost an association of honest people humbly seeking the path of uprightness and truth.

Right? So we have to deal with this particular honest question: How do we trust the institutional Church after the sex-abuse crisis? Even if “the sex-abuse crisis” has been 85% manufactured by the media and only 15% real. That 15% still makes this question an honest one. How do I trust the Church after living through this?