We all know what damage bad and corrupted leaders can cause generally – how they can ruin not just a community but also the work of that community. But today we can talk about corruption among leaders of a religious community, because the readings of the Sunday give us the opportunity. And this is not only about condemning the sin and corruption of our leaders, but also about the survival of that community – for a community with bad leaders must survive them and continue on its mission, continue with its work. The prophet Malachi was brilliant at giving the Hebrew priests in Jerusalem a bit of a rap on the knuckles. These men were not only to offer sacrifices for the people, they were also to teach and demonstrate a strong moral character. Not unlike our own Catholic priests. And they failed.
“‘It is for you, priests, to see that this Law of Mine is obeyed. Give Me neither heed nor hearing,’ says the Lord of hosts, ‘let My Name go unhonoured, and with sore distress I will visit you; falls My curse on all the blessings you enjoy, falls My curse …, to the punishing of your heedlessness. Arm of yours I will strike motionless, bury your faces in dung, ay, the dung of your own sacrifices, and to the dung-pit you shall go. So you shall learn your lesson; My Law I gave you,’ says the Lord of hosts, in token of My covenant with Levi’s family. Live they should and thrive, but the fear of Me I enjoined upon them; none but should fear, and hold My Name in reverence. Faithfully they handed on tradition, the lie never on their lips; safe and straight was the path they trod at My side, and kept many from wrong-doing. No utterance like a priest’s for learning; from no other lips men will expect true guidance; is he not a messenger to them from the Lord of hosts? That path you have forsaken; through your ill teaching, how many a foothold lost! Nay,’ says the Lord of hosts, ‘you have annulled My covenant with Levi altogether. What wonder if I have made you a laughing-stock, a thing contemptible in all men’s sight, priests that so ill kept my command, gave award so partially? Have we not all one Father, did not one God create us all? No room, then, for brother to despise brother, and unmake the covenant by which our fathers lived. Here is great wrong in Juda, here are foul deeds done by Israel and Jerusalem! Juda, that was once content to be set apart for the Lord, has profaned that holy estate, has taken wives that worship a god he knew not. Doer of such a deed, set he or followed the ill example, shall be lost to the dwelling-place of Jacob, for all his offerings made to the Lord of hosts.”
Prophecy of Malachi, 2: 1-12 [link]
The Holy One speaks through the prophet (here, in our first reading) to say that he is prepared to curse the Hebrew priesthood because of its waywardness and its corruption. And Malachi was a later prophet, living only a few hundred years before our Lord. There is something about religious leaders appointed by God that makes many of them prone to an abuse of their elevated social position, if not of their God-given moral authority. We can see from the Gospel reading that the religious leader of our Lord’s time – the Pharisees and scribes – experts in the moral law, of course – these men taught the Law as of old, but by their own lives had become a scandal before the Holy One, now walking as a man among them.
“Jesus addressed Himself to the multitudes, and to His disciples; ‘the scribes and Pharisees,’ He said, ‘have established themselves in the place from which Moses used to teach; do what they tell you, then, continue to observe what they tell you, but do not imitate their actions, for they tell you one thing and do another. They fasten up packs too heavy to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; they themselves will not stir a finger to lift them. They act, always, so as to be a mark for men’s eyes. Boldly written are the texts they carry, and deep is the hem of their garments; their heart is set on taking the chief places at table and the first seats in the synagogue, and having their hands kissed in the market-place, and being called Rabbi among their fellow men.”
Gospel of S. Matthew, 23: 1-7 [link]
Here He condemns them roundly for their hypocrisy, their selfishness, their self-seeking. Obey their teaching, Christ says, because they have the teaching authority of Moses, but do not copy the way they live. Do not call them Father, or Rabbi, or Teacher, because their authority is at an end; the authority of God Himself has arrived with Christ, so that there is now only one Father (in heaven) and one Teacher and Rabbi (Christ Himself). No other was at that moment worthy of these titles; the authority of the Church had not yet been established, the Holy Spirit had not yet descended upon the Apostles at Pentecost.
“‘You are not to claim the title of Rabbi; you have but one Master, and you are all brethren alike. Nor are you to call any man on earth your father; you have but one Father, and He is in heaven. Nor are you to be called teachers; you have one teacher, Christ. Among you, the greatest of all is to be the servant of all; the man who exalts himself will be humbled, and the man who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Gospel of S. Matthew, 23: 8-12 [link]
We have seen massive corruption in the Church in the last sixty years or so, when a relative handful of wretched men have committed such hideous sin as to grievously harm the people, and to forever damage the moral authority of the Church. And we still hear about other priests and bishops who despite everything have been and still are shielding the guilty and protecting them. And beyond this, the teaching office of the Church has almost dissolved, for we are often in many places not given the substance of the Faith as we were in the past. Catechesis, as many say, has suffered massively across at least two generations, so the younger among us often don’t know how to live the Christian life, if they even attend Sunday Mass. It seems that the warning of the prophet Malachi to priests is as much ours today, as it was Israel’s in the prophet’s own time, or Jerusalem’s in the time of our Lord. And now a quick word on survival. In our time, the moral authority of the Church is daily compromised in the eyes of society as a whole. I’ve just heard of a new report on sexual abuse of minors in the Spanish Church that is beyond belief. Why would anybody today want to trust the priests of the Church? Why believe what they say, when they are collectively tarnished by the deeds of a relative few?
Because there is an ideal that was established by the Holy One in His Apostles at the Last Supper, before His great sacrifice. His priests were to be like Him, being His face to the people, becoming moral fathers for them in His stead. And we know that what these wicked priests who have done so much to abuse so many people is not the ideal. And you will find the ideal of the Christian priesthood in a few words in the second reading today, from S. Paul, one of our first priests, a man who took the place of God for his people and so could be called (by the grace of God) Father, Teacher and Rabbi: he and his associates were like a mother feeding and caring for her children, willing to give their lives for them, hard workers, and evangelists. May Paul inspire new generations of priests and leaders to rebuild and revitalise the Church in our times.
“We have passed God’s scrutiny, and He has seen fit to entrust us with the work of preaching; when we speak, it is with this in view; we would earn God’s good opinion, not man’s, since it is God Who scrutinises our hearts. We never used the language of flattery, you will bear us out in that; nor was it, God knows, an excuse for enriching ourselves; we have never asked for human praise, yours or another’s, although, as apostles of Christ, we might have made heavy demands on you. No, you found us innocent as babes in your company; no nursing mother ever cherished her children more; in our great longing for you, we desired nothing better than to offer you our own lives, as well as God’s gospel, so greatly had we learned to love you.“
First letter of S. Paul to the Thessalonians, 2: 4-8 [link]
Catholic Louth and Mablethorpe 