After the sex-abuse scandal: What lies ahead? Sidney Callahan.

The unknown future induces hope and fear. But one event is certain: John Paul II will eventually pass from the scene. Even his iron will and sense of mission cannot keep him going forever. The next pope to be elected will affect the course of Catholicism well into the millennium. Yet the main problems in our present church stem from the recent past.

The church has never fully assimilated the teachings of Vatican II. At the council, the clarion call for reform was sounded: Christ's body, the church, must be true to the gospel good news and live as an ever-reforming collegial church. In a Christian communion of love and service to the world, all the baptized must participate in mission and ministry. In response to the council, liturgical reforms were soon instituted, but resistance to change quickly emerged in the structures of governance (with the exception of many religious orders). After all, no functioning system--whether family, political party, or church--easily accepts a challenge to the status quo. Why risk novelty with all its discomfort and danger? Those in authority rarely give up power.

Despite many good intentions, it was all too easy, following the council, to slide back into an authoritarian clerical culture, operating secretly and with little accountability. Most bishops maintained their unilateral powers of making decisions without consultation or participation from their priests or from the laity. Efforts to protect the institution's power and reputation maintained the familiar defenses of denial, stonewalling, and indifference to the concerns of the laity. This arrogance flourished in many dioceses in the United States and helped contribute to the horrors of the sex-abuse crisis. But as the old saying goes, "the mills of the gods grind slowly but they grind exceedingly fine." Or as Jesus said, "Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed, and nothing hidden that will not become known" (Mt 10:25)--with the help of the Boston Globe and the New York Times.

So here come the critical challenges: Will church authorities learn from these dreadful failures, and will they change? Will the laity finally rise up and demand that church governance be consistent with its theological proclamations of equality and participation? Words and deeds have become scandalously inconsistent. The pope and bishops preach social justice and champion human rights--except in their own house.

The worst fear of those seeking church reform--including many priests, theologians, and bishops--is that nothing much will change. Superficial reform will be limited to preventing further sex abuse, and whereas new rhetoric may appear, it will be a cosmetic overlay to business as usual. Perhaps there really is a giant, hidden machine that churns out the "bishopspeak" of church pronouncements. If, as is all too likely, the next pope is a confirmed conservative, he too will see the church's problems in terms of infidelity and disobedience to church teachings. Then as now, the enemy will be recognized not as "we" but as those dissenters who are soft on birth control, homosexuality, divorce, women's ordination, and so on. The media, modernity, Americanism, and a permissive "therapeutic" culture can be ritually scapegoated. Attention will be deflected from our real problems. Once again the great encompassing Catholic Church will slide back toward the sectarian sterility of the nineteenth-century Modernist crisis: back to more loyalty oaths, witch hunts, inquisitions, and excommunications in the name of orthodox purity. God forbid, but the American Catholic bishops could become even more subservient to Rome.

Mediocre leaders pronouncing anathemas could drive young Catholics into silence, exile, cunning--or worse, complete--indifference. People like me would survive because we already belong to communities of believers devoted to supporting the faith and intellectual life. But goodbye to the generation that should be replacing us. In my worst moments, I meditate on the challenge of living out my remaining years amid downhearted decline. All of those novels come to mind in which the last Romans abandon Britain and Gaul, or the Greenlander settlers succumb to starvation as the climate grows ever colder and the ice encroaches. As a Southern child of the Confederacy, I was familiar with the appeal of the lost cause; no wonder I am drawn to the Anglo-Irish literature of a fading ascendancy.

But enough! It is an immoral indulgence to wallow in romantic pessimism or warmed-over Stoicism. As a Christian and an American I should pull up my socks and return to the wellsprings of optimism and hope. I can keep in mind God's surprising moves in the election of John XXIII and the calling of the council. While young, I saw the vindication of all the great persecuted theologians of the twentieth century. Perhaps I will live to see a real shakedown cruise of Peter's bark with new applications of our theological teachings. The election of Cardinal Walter Kasper as pope would be a great start, since he is dedicated to ecumenism, pluralism, and more synods for church decision making.

Perhaps, too, the U.S. bishops will follow through on their reforms and an aroused laity will persevere in its efforts to gain a voice for the faithful. To make any difference the reforming spirit must be embodied in institutional changes at every level of church life. All the principles that allow democratic institutions to flourish can be incorporated in the church. Always and everywhere, justice and fairness require accountability, representation, separation of powers, transparency, guaranteed individual rights, and those other procedures that help check the abuse of power.

Once the faithful can participate in deliberations and decisions, then other changes will come. Eventually in response to the lived experience of local churches, the Roman church will return to a married priesthood and still uphold the ideal of vowed religious celibacy. When priesthood and ministry are seen primarily as loving service rather than the prerogatives of a separate clerical caste, then the ordination of married men, dedicated women, and faithful homosexuals should present no problem. Developing a fully Christian sexual ethic and theology of the body must be high on the agenda of future reforms. The church's crucial witness to a culture of life would then become all the more powerful.

Can we really hope so extravagantly? Why not? Remember Thomas the Apostle, whose doubts about the excessiveness of the good news were overcome dramatically. Even more wonderfully reassuring for those of us tempted to dark forebodings is the fact that Jesus came and stood in the disciples' midst, "although the doors were locked." So all will yet be well? Yes, finally. And in the meantime, you can bet your life on it.

Sidney Callahan is a Commonweal columnist.