Putting on the 'friend-ly' face

As we all know (and sometimes like to jeer at), the Catholic Church is still being plagued by the abuse scandals, and more and more priests are being defrocked and thrown in prison for their ... let's just leave it at "sins."\nBut for all of this, my faith in the Church is no weaker; in fact, it has even strangely grown as I read the stories behind the convictions.\nOne such case made national headlines last week. Paul Shanley, a defrocked priest, was sentenced in Boston to 12 to 15 years for the sexual abuse of several young boys, one as young as six years old.\nIt's sad that nothing seemed extraordinary on the surface. What did catch my eye, however, was what the Boston Globe reported about Shanley -- that he was "once known for being a hip 'street priest,' who reached out to troubled children and homosexuals."\nIt's no surprise that a once-"hip" priest was the one committing the abuse, especially one who catered to a crowd that was tailored to his ... let's call them "preferences."\nIt's priests like these, the ones who are "cool," friendly and very easily approachable, who are not surprisingly the source of much of the abuse. Their easy and open manner that makes them seem more like friends than priests is what draws the ingenuous children, unable to see a predator behind the friendly face.\nI then turned my thoughts to a priest at the parish in which I was raised and where I attended school right up through eighth grade. I don't have too many fond memories of him. In fact, you couldn't get any child of any age to voluntarily go within 10 feet of him. And it's for that reason that I'd never suspect him in the least of child molestation.\nI'm not saying that he's a bad person -- just a little aloof and not comfortable to approach. However, even he is a teddy bear when compared with the austere, statuesque monsignor in horn-rimmed glasses who my dad always mentions back from the pre-Vatican II days. Now there was a priest who seemed barely human, who seemed to almost fit into the atmosphere of solemnity that characterizes the Catholic Church.\nIt is in men such as these, where the line between the sacred and the worldly is so clearly drawn that crossing it seems almost sacrilegious, that I think the priestly ideal is captured. The attempt to bring the Church from a separate, higher, sacred level to one that is more "down-to-earth" sadly results in many cases like Shanley, the hip priest, who used his friendly face to betray the trust of innocent children.\nThe horrors of child molestation are only the worst results of the Church's attempt to put on a more human face. The awe, the pomp and the solemnity of the ancient rite of the Mass were all weakened a little when the Church began to show that it, too, could be hip and modern. It's saddening to think about the lost splendor.\nNot all has been lost, however. The second Vatican council did give the Church a more universal aim and ensured its survival in a world of mass-production that only values the newest, most popular trends. Yet it still has managed to preserve its ancient rites and still has much the grandeur and ceremony of the past.\nThis is the Church to which I proudly belong, and every molestation case only reminds me that it has endured so much worse -- persecution, the Reformation, nationalism -- and has still survived, intact and strong as ever. It's in good, honest priests like the ones I know in Bloomington that I see a hopeful future for the Church.