The church we deserve: in accepting the U.S. Catholic Award for Furthering the Cause of Women in the Church last October, Justice Anne M. Burke looks to the rich history of U.S. Catholicism for a vision of the church of the future.

Our common heritage as U.S. Catholics has never been more important or more threatened. We live in precarious times, not just because of terrorism, global warming, and urban street crime, but because of a steady loss of confidence in the direction of our church, the truthfulness of its leadership, the role of the laity, and the persistent inability of the church to recognize our "Catholic place" in the modern world.

This inability has wrought growing frustration for many, suspicions for others, and wide embarrassment for us all. As a well-educated Catholic and a professional woman, I am perplexed and dismayed. I am old enough to remember the bright promise that filled the air in the glory days of the Second Vatican Council. Little did I suspect then, as a young woman with her whole life ahead of her, that 40 years later I would find myself so dismayed, disappointed, and agitated.

"The joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the men of our time, especially those who are poor or afflicted in any way, are the joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the followers of Christ as well. Nothing that is genuinely human fails to find an echo in their hearts."

Those words, crafted on the wings of the Holy Spirit in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World 40 years ago electrified the church and a generation of believers. Gaudium et Spes was an explosion of hope in the future and the vehicle through which the church sought to recalibrate its self-understanding.

It offered a natural excitement to U.S. Catholics because so much of that document's substance flowed from our American Catholic experience. It was the age of John Courtney Murray, Xavier Rynne, and other American thinkers who brightened the interior of St. Peter's with their ideas during that tumultuous time.

Back at home decades of enlightened social leadership, particularly in places like the Archdiocese of Chicago, with priest-leaders like Msgrs. Dan Cantwell and Jack Egan, and the legions of clergy trained under the great Msgr. Reynold Hillenbrand, connected the laity to experiences of faith like Catholic Action, the Cana Conference, the Catholic Worker Movement, and Young Christian Students. The wisdom of this enlightenment touched people across the archdiocese and around the nation.

Today, five years into the 21st century, I fear that the understanding of the church in the modern world presented by the Second Vatican Council in Gaudium et Spes is under fire. I say that after my experience on the National Review Board of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. I say that after looking under the tent. I say that after experiencing a loss of trust and a sad realization that only the worst crisis in the American church could bring the hierarchy to ask for direction and help from the laity.

I do not for a minute believe that the bishops would have adopted either the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People and the norms for dealing with the abuse crisis or permitted the unprecedented freedom that our original board enjoyed in getting to the bottom of the crisis had they not had their backs to the walls. Nor do I believe that without continuous scrutiny by the laity will the bishops refrain from tinkering with the burdens of justice and accountability placed on them by the charter.

I have always seen the mission of our board and the difficult data that we uncovered as being a real work of the Holy Spirit. But I would be less than honest if I did not acknowledge how often many bishops fought us every inch of the way. Accountability continues to be a one-way street for many.

Throughout the process I feared that once bishops found some breathing room from public outrage, largely because of what our board members were putting into place, some would think the coast was clear to roll back the clock. I was right. But power plays to sabotage accountability never worked, I'm happy to say. Many bishops of real courage and reason prevented that from happening.

AS I try to understand what this experience means in my life, it has taken me a while to see the larger issues. Often in our work I thought of something that Father Donald Senior of Catholic Theological Union shared with me while we were butting heads with some of the bishops. He wisely said, "You know, Anne, it isn't their church or our church. It is Christ's church." I cannot begin to tell you how often that ecclesiological truth saved me not just from imprudent words but even more importantly from my own despair.

It is that understanding that helps sustain me when I see the concentrated effort from some in the church to retreat from the modern world. So traumatized has the institutional church been by the scandal of clerical sexual abuse and the ensuing confrontations in our nation, diocese by diocese, that I believe there are many in church leadership who want no part of the modern world.

It is in many ways not unlike the ecclesial consciousness that prevailed in many places before and after World War II. You may recall that world of moral absolutes and heavy hierarchical control. There was little interest in the role of the church in the modern world. Our vision was inward, not outward. Our relationship to other religious traditions carried little importance. A vast array of litmus tests--doctrinal, ecclesiastical, and educational-established the loyalty and trustworthiness of those entitled to steer the ship of Peter or even row the boat.

I fear that those who are incapable of reading the signs of the times will attempt to carry us back to that lost moment. So I believe that you and I must commit ourselves to read the signs of the times for ourselves and respond as best we can, as the Lord has taught us. We must act with justice, generosity, and love; with wisdom and sacrifice; with candor and truthfulness; with deep reason and with heart. Is this not something uniquely American? Is this not what it means to be a U.S. Catholic?

During our time of service on the National Review Board, we members traveled the length and breadth of America, from diocese to diocese, from one local church to another. This was an affirming and hope-filled experience. I came to a new and wider understanding of the life of the church here in our nation, particularly in the early days of the infant American Republic. It was a brilliant moment in our history.

During those early days under the leadership of Archbishop John Carroll of Baltimore, the Roman Catholic Church here was imbued with the inescapable wisdom of the Enlightenment. The church was unabashedly patriotic, boldly exuberant, courtly, thoughtful, scholarly, and an equal participant in this "great experiment in democracy." It was a rich moment in American Catholic identity and one of the few eras in which we had little to apologize for or envy from the larger, dominant non-Catholic American culture. We were viewed by some with suspicion, of course, but ultimately our honor, our commitment to the American cause of freedom, and our unbridled embrace of the new American identity let everyone know we had what it took to be real citizens of the Republic.

We are called to do great things in the world--feed the hungry, care for the sick, defend the vulnerable, shelter the homeless, and make peace real. There is, however, no mandate to hide the abusers or keep them near the defenseless. There is no mandate to jeopardize the resources of the church for the sake of the cover-up of crime.

Sadly we will live for the rest of our lives with the damage from this scandal. But we can also alter the terrain and widen the opportunities for redemption. We must make room for everyone at the table and listen to those for whom the light, not the darkness, is the goal of our journey. Is this not the goal of the pastoral mission spelled out by Vatican II?

I am grateful for the opportunity I had to serve the church over my two and a half years on the National Review Board. It was a spiritual endeavor for me. I am grateful for the opportunity that brought this about. Truth is always a virtue. And the church is always cleansed by such virtue and made strong again by our commitment to the truth.

More than 160 years ago, in the tragic aftermath of the American Civil War, Father Isaac Hecker, the founder of the Paulist Fathers, set out to transform the spirit of American Catholicism in a moment of national brokenness. The mission he set out to accomplish sought to heal and reconcile America. The impact he struggled to make was among the best and brightest of his generation of Americans. It was something that he had already experienced in his own life. He was a gift to lay Catholics, especially thinking Catholics.

"The Catholic Church is my star," he wrote, "which will lead me to my life, my destiny, my purpose." What more could any of us ask?

I believe that the Catholic Church can be a star for all of us. If I did not, I could not stand here tonight and look you in the eye. If I did not believe that, I could not have endured my two and a half years as a member of the National Review Board. If I did not believe that the Catholic Church was "my star," I am quite certain I would not have consented to get to the bottom of the most hurtful and disheartening crisis in the history of American Catholicism.

We have come a long way from debating the use of English in the Mass, or the appropriateness of guitars in church. Can you remember when these were big issues? Now, in the time we have been given, we are challenged to resolve harder issues and harder hearts. Somewhere in it all abides the Advocate, the very breath of God's Spirit. It is the Spirit who stirs up within us the resources we need to sustain one another. Remember, when things are at their worst, we are at our best.

It is vital that Catholic organizations, especially the Catholic media, insist on expanded roles of significant leadership for the laity within the church in our country. We are, after all, a people who believe in the ongoing mystery of grace, the life of God at work in human history. In spite of the long litany of horror that has befallen the Catholic Church, we believe that grace will transform the present not by magic but by our willingness to engage the truth. For ultimately, what the church has been engaged in these past 30-plus months since Dallas is the embrace of the truth--the often frightening reality of what humans are capable of creating for ourselves.

The work of embracing the truth is also affirming, enriching, and life-giving. I hope that despite the shame, shock, pain, and anger, you judge us--the past and present members of the National Review Board--by what we do and say. Only this can free all of us from being prisoners of the past, its paralysis and its failure. We can change things, once we are willing to know them--heartache and all. It is in that spirit that I gratefully accept this award.

JUSTICE ANNE M. BURKE is the former interim chair of the U.S. bishops review board on sex abuse. These are her comments from the award ceremony.