If you follow the news at all – or read a little bit of Church history – you know that there is no shortage of serious sins within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. We are all sinners, of course, but it can be especially difficult to be confronted by the sins of our spiritual leaders. Despite the disheartening misdeeds of the leaders (and former leaders) of the Church, I remain quite hope-filled for the future of the Catholic Church. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains:

Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ's promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit. (CCC 1817)

Supernatural hope is not a rosy optimism that overlooks real problems around us, but a confidence that God and his permissive will are always, always good, in spite of profound evil in the world. The theological virtue of hope raises our eyes beyond the ugliness of sin in this earthly life to realize that God in his providence is guiding all things to a truly beautiful conclusion in eternity. Hope gives us confidence that the Catholic Church founded by Jesus Christ will remain the indefectible source of grace and truth, even though her leaders will never be beyond reproach. Hope is not a trust in our own strength to reform ourselves, but a humble assurance that God will save us, despite our serious human weaknesses.

Don't we discover this, after all, in the death and Resurrection of Jesus? Even after years of formation, the Apostles that Jesus had chosen were profoundly weak. Judas betrayed Jesus to the Jewish authorities, Peter denied that he knew Jesus to avoid arrest, and all but the Apostle John abandoned Jesus as he died on the Cross. On the third day, however, Jesus was brought forth from the tomb not by any human power, but by the divine power of his own Holy Spirit. The ascended Lord then poured out this same Spirit upon the Church, enabling the weak Apostles and other disciples to live lives of holiness that they would never have been able to live on their own.

Should we be surprised when we witness the sins and weakness of the successors of the Apostles, our bishops? They are given a unique charism to teach, sanctify, and govern the Church, to be sure, but they are engaged in the same hard battle for holiness that we all are. They, too, experience the struggle between the “flesh” – our own fallen inclination to sin – and the “Spirit” – God's divine power to make us holy.

Contemplating the faithfulness of God to his Church in the face of overwhelming sin gives me an even greater appreciation of both his justice and mercy. In his justice, God punishes the sins of humanity – When confronted with serious sin, we realize that a failure to punish it would be grave negligence. In his mercy, the Lord does not simply overlook sins (this is the tragic error among some in the hierarchy that has caused so much scandal in the Church) but he takes away our sins. By an infusion of his grace, he turns our hearts in repentance away from sin, he turns our hearts in faith toward holiness, and restores us to his friendship. In bringing about his kingdom, the Lord does not simply neglect evil, but corrects it.

When confronted with the sins of our own leaders – or former leaders, as the case may be – it seems to me that the best course of action is to redouble our own efforts to be great saints, by God's grace, and to fervently pray that others might do the same. Future news of grave clerical crimes will, without doubt, arise within the life of the Church, but the faithfulness of the Lord amid those scandals will always remain the same.