He spoke with an honesty I had never experienced in the Church. This was not just ceremony; there was substance here. And I had been on the hunt for substance, for truth, for a long time.

I watched a very humbled man walk down the aisle, head low, to the front of the parish where he delivered a tearful apology with the same honesty and sense of humanity I have grown to love. A man who walks the narrow path of serving others, in a world which seems to have forgotten grace.  

And I think to myself… how can our human nature stray this far? How can we have reached a point of having such little discernment? And mostly, how can our public institutions, our democracy and the tools on which it depends — a well-functioning media— have reached a point of having such little public trust? To expose a man’s personal struggles with no evidence of a public offence is just plain wrong. To paint a man so narrowly — a man who has given so much — is just so very, very, wrong. Have we lost our sense of compassion? Our ethics?

I do know this — truth is not packaged to sell. It doesn’t conform to constructed notions of right and wrong, good and bad. But we have a built‐in barometer for truth that silently informs as we make our way and experience this world.

Now just to be clear: I’m not making a claim about which of its aspects might be true or untrue. What I am saying is when we have lost the ability to see the whole person, when we have decidedly narrowed our vision only to that which makes the headlines, when we take actions to publicly humiliate on this basis, well, then we must question our intentions, we must reflect on the state of our nature. And we must ask ourselves difficult questions around whether we have served the greater good by these choices. This is the truth I am referring to. For when the dust settles and with it the media hype, it is this truth that lives on.

Our prayers are with you Fr. Joe.

(Casagrande is a parishioner at Ottawa’s Blessed Sacrament parish.)

{iarelatednews articleid="5421"}