Hard questions and hurts, honestly

01Before anything else

If you were harmed

Some people drift away. Others were hurt: by a priest, by a parish, by family, or by the news. If that is you, your pain is real. You do not have to pretend otherwise here.

Back in the courtyard, Peter has just met the eyes of the friend he denied.

02The look

Peter failed too

“And the Lord turning looked on Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, as he had said: Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And Peter going out, wept bitterly.”

The Catechism describes that moment as “Jesus’ look of infinite mercy,” which drew tears of repentance from Peter.⁷

The man who would lead the Church started out by failing in the worst possible way, at the worst possible moment.

Which raises the hardest question of all. If people in the Church can fail that badly, how can anyone call it holy?

03The honest answer

A holy Church with sinners in it

The Church does not hide this. It teaches: “All members of the Church, including her ministers, must acknowledge that they are sinners.” It calls itself “at once holy and always in need of purification.”¹

The Catechism is frank that priests are not preserved from “human weaknesses, the spirit of domination, error, even sin.” In many of their actions they leave human traces that are not always signs of fidelity to the Gospel.⁸

And it says what a priest should be: one who, like Christ, made himself “the least and the servant of all.”⁹

Even so, it is Christ who acts in the sacraments, so a priest’s unworthiness does not stop Christ from acting.²

Some people did not leave over a person. They left over a question nobody answered.

04The questions

“Will you also go away?”

Those questions deserve a real conversation, not a slogan. The Catechism is the place to read what the Church actually teaches, and a priest is the person to talk it through with. If your hurt involves a particular priest or parish, you are free to talk to a different one.

Once, after a hard teaching, many of Jesus’ followers “went back and walked no more with him.”¹⁰ He asked the Twelve if they wanted to leave too.¹¹

“And Simon Peter answered him: Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.”

Peter said that before he failed. What happened after he failed is the end of the story.

05The ending

A second fire

After the Resurrection, the disciples come ashore from a night of fishing and find “hot coals lying, and a fish laid thereon, and bread.”¹³ Jesus says: “Come and dine.”¹⁴

Another charcoal fire. He feeds Peter before he asks him anything.

“He said to him the third time: Simon, son of John, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because he had said to him the third time: Lovest thou me? And he said to him: Lord, thou knowest all things: thou knowest that I love thee. He said to him: Feed my sheep.”

Three denials, then three questions.¹⁵ The Catechism calls Peter’s answer “a threefold affirmation of love.”⁷

Peter was not asked to pretend nothing had happened. He was asked one question. It is still being asked.