During Israel's history prior to the coming of Jesus, the nation was reckoned by its adherence to these two fundamental precepts: love God, love neighbor. When Israel strayed from these precepts either through idolatry in replacing God with another deity or none at all, or when they committed acts of injustice against their neighbors both individually and collectively, God would send prophets to Israel in order to bring the nation to conversion. In short, God provided many opportunities for self-correction within the nation through the ministry of the prophets.
When the prophets were ignored, very often it would take invasion and occupation by foreign powers to bring Israel back to its senses. The inhabitants of Israel would be subject to violence, loss of property, and exile in a foreign land because they followed the faithless leaders into idolatry and injustice in spite of the fact that they knew better. They had the law and the prophets, as Jesus said. Why should they believe if someone were to be raised from the dead?
Indeed.
The Church regards herself as the new Israel, the inheritor of the promise of faith given to her by Jesus the Lord. This faith has been entrusted to her and the new nation of the Church still has the same fundamental obligation as that of the old Israel: love God, love your neighbor. What is more, we have been given the means of grace through the example of Jesus and the sacramental celebrations that continually remind us of the love to which we are called in the death and resurrection of Jesus. And yet, as the Second Vatican Council reminded us, very often we fail to measure up to the holiness to which we are called and others who have fewer means available to them are often shining examples of virtue since they use effectively the tools available to them better than us.
And much like the history of Israel, the Church finds herself in times of corruption and in need of reform. The high middle ages were filled with corruption in the Church, leading to the rupture within Western Christendom known as the Reformation. Prior to that time there were prophets sent to the Church as a warning, as a voice calling her back to her groom Jesus the Lord - and those voices were not heard. Instead, centuries of religious wars, polemic, and gradual abandonment of faith due to the scandal of it all finally led the Church to reform itself at the core. It is both a sad commentary and yet a hopeful one when Richard John Neuhaus was received into the Catholic Church and ordained a priest in the 1980's he announced, "The Reformation is over, and it was a success."
In the past few decades we have witnessed with horror the sexual abuse scandal throughout the Church, first in the United States, and then in other nations: Ireland, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Poland, and many other places. In the U.S. we thought that after Boston and Dallas that the scandal was behind us and the reforms that were set in place were working - and in many places they have been working very well. Then came Philadelphia and other places. The nightmare has returned.
The Church has had the opportunity to reform itself in this area, and again in many places she has - but in other places she has not. Like Israel, perhaps it will take invasion and occupation by foreign powers to bring us to the wholesale conversion we so desperately need in order to protect children effectively. No one wishes this fate upon the Church; no one except cynics cheer when such does indeed takes place.
It is a great irony of Scripture that a man as vicious as Cyrus, king of Persia, would be regarded as a hero by the Hebrew Scriptures for delivering Israel from foreign occupation. It is only now that we recognize the valid insights of the Reformers after vilifying them for so many years. Perhaps we will one day see the hand of God in our own times - God calling us to a deep renewal and greater responsibility through unlikely and undesirable means.
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