Moses, in the person of Father Cozzens, on the evening of February 3rd, as noted in last week’s article, stood at the podium of the Dominican Priory in River Forest, Illinois, in an highly attractive suit, shirt and tie, yet no competition for the House of Armani.  Not to worry.  He wasn’t trying to become the most-turned out priest on Michigan Avenue.  He seemed to want to be one with his audience, at home.

Yet, I, who usually am indifferent to such matters, experienced a strange feeling of wishing he had chosen clerical attire for the evening, because that would have signified something special; Roman collars are not usually the article of choice for our priests these days.

But this was not an ordinary evening.  Cozzens was there to bring us home, to part the Red Sea of doubt and fear, alienation and near-despair, to bring us once again into the Promised Land, from which we have seemed to stray.

And he managed in those couple of hours to begin the journey with us, as he showed his courage in daring to speak truths never heard from pulpits throughout the land.

But where was his Aaron to hold him steady in the wilderness?  Where the Knights of Columbus, who never saw a procession they didn’t like; where the Knights of Malta, whose coffers are legendary; where the Curia, that body of bastion defenders of all that is truthful in the Faith; where the colorful Swiss Guards to protect the Church in danger?

Our Moses was alone, except for the members of the Body of Christ before him, the majority of whom had all but memorized the encyclical in their younger days, the letter harking back to Christ’s vines and branches, and St. Paul’s parts that make us one.

The evening was too short to do more than touch the surface of a few matters on Cozzens’ mind and in his books, particularly, his Sacred Silence: Denial and the Crisis in the Church.  It’s $19.95, a small price to pay for having your very own personal Moses on your bed stand night after night.

Not a bed time story book, however.  Might keep you awake.  Keep that in mind, especially when you reach p. 59, where Cozzens tell how, over tea and scones Medical Missionary of Mary Sr. Maura O’Donohue, a medical doctor, spoke softly of the terrible reality involving the sexual exploitation of religious sisters by priests and bishops.  She had learned about this from Sisters whom she met on her travels as the AIDS coordinator for the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development, based in England.

The Sisters told her that numerous priests and bishops, fearful of contracting the AIDS virus from women of the cities and villages, turned to religious sisters as safe outlets for their sexual desires, while, apparently, faithful to their vow of celibacy.

I often wonder with what mental and spiritual gymnastics such priests and bishops preach homilies, offer Mass, hear confessions, and collect their salaries, made possible by the sacrifices of little people throughout the entire world.  And I also wonder about the revulsion with which Sisters attend their Masses and listen to their homilies.  I cannot imagine their going to confession to the predators.

Nor can I understand why Mothers General don’t just yank their Sisters out of such dens of iniquity.  Bishops up here in the States could reach down in compassion and offer them safe places and comfort and healing. And why are we Catholic women silent?  We can unite to fight AIDS, march for funds for breast cancer, raise funds for safe shelters for battered women, but there are no envelopes in our pews, nor dates on our calendars for our sisters in Africa, who cannot speak for themselves.  Where are our voices? Of whom are we afraid?  Must our Moses speak alone?

As you know Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, has received a generally favorable response from the faithful.  Not from me.  I haven’t read it, and I will not until this matter of abused Sisters is addressed, which was placed on the then Cardinal Ratzinger’s desk at least ten years ago.

I find a front-page commentary in Germany’s Der Tagessplegel, quoted in an article by John L. Allen Jr., February 10th issue of the National Catholic Report, possibly harsh, but it speaks to the point of charity in fact, not only in word:

Allen states that, according to the German commentary, the pope wants to show he is an authority on love, although he “knows little of what it is and how you live it.”

Our Moses, in the 192 pages of Sacred Silence, leads us into places we need to go  for the sake of the Gospel.  Thomas Merton once told us that, “A man cannot be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there.”  Moses Cozzens has been to the desert; he can lead us back to our Promised Land, if we will but follow.

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