Quote of the Day

“The Church tragically failed many of its children: it failed through abuse; it failed through not preventing abuse; it failed through covering up abuse.

Child protection measures need to be constantly updated; more participation of lay men and women is needed to avoid a false culture of clericalism. We need to develop a fresh idea of what childhood means; we need to develop a strong horror of what childhood-lost means.

The Church is called to renew itself in turning back more closely to her founder Jesus Christ. All of us need to learn more deeply how to think like Christ, how to teach like Christ and care as Christ did. We need to realize that the cold harshness of fundamentalism has nothing to do with the demanding starkness of personal and institutional integrity.

Our prayer this evening is that this period of renewal in the Church will be a moment of healing. A precondition of healing is recognition and rejection of the faults of the past, without becoming entrenched and immobilized in history.

The truth must come out; without the truth we will never be truly free.

We must face the truth of the past; repent it; make good the damage done. And yet we must move forward day by day along the painful path of renewal, knowing that it is only when our human misery encounters face-to-face the liberating mercy of God that our Church will be truly restored and enriched.”

--Most Reverend Diarmuid Martin
Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland
Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent
Release of Benedict XVI's Pastoral Letter to the Catholics of Ireland
20 March 2010

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