As much as I abhor the thought of child abuse of any kind, sexual and other, I also believe that we have to be very careful to keep our vision broad. I remember that when our Holy Father Francis founded our order in 1209, there was child abuse of all kinds (sexual and other). There were heresies. Kings and popes were strange bedfellows. Diocesan priests were notorious for having mistresses. The laity did not know the faith and was not interested either. There were wars.
What made him so attractive and what reformed the Church was his broad vision. He saw the sin around him and preached conversion. But he never pointed the finger at anyone in particular. His method was to preach and if the shoe fit, wear it. He also taught the people of his time that the Church was bigger than sin, politics, power, money and heresies. He focused on teaching the necessity of Holy Orders, the role of popes, bishops and priests and the love and obedience that the faithful should feel toward the clergy, even if they were the most corrupt and the most sinful human beings that you ever met. His focus was on the Eucharist. No one, but a priest could consecrated. Francis taught the faithful that without the priests, sinful or saints, they would never be able to see Christ incarnate in this world. What happened was that priests gradually began to rethink their role in the life of the faithful and the faithful began to rethink the importance of the Eucharist in their lives.
Francis also confronted heresy in a very creative way. He taught his brothers and sisters to live according to the Gospel. But he did not stop by writing a rule for the friars and another for the nuns. He wrote a rule for secular men and women and gathered them into an order of their own. This was the first time that the Church had ever heard of a Secular Order. The Lateran (there was no Vatican yet), did not know what to do with this new form of life. Finally, in 1223, Pope Honorius declared that the secular man and woman, whether he was ordained or married, could live a life according to a rule, in fraternity, and bring into the secular world the life of prayer, penance, charity and the apostolic works that were previously the realm of the male religious. Gradually, the Secular Franciscan Order grew so large that the number of heretic decreased, the wars decreased, the fidelity to the sacraments, prayer and works of charity increased exponentially. But the change came when the laity realized that they could adopt elements of the religious life and incorporate them into their daily lives, such as: Liturgy of the Hours, daily mass, silence, penance, corporal works of mercy, devotion to the Blessed Mother and to the Eucharist, obedience, chastity and poverty.
All of these things are still possible today. If we are to heal from the injuries of the past 60 years, we must begin to take the broad view of the Church, just as Francis did. We can’t limit our attention and focus to the pedophilia, the sexual scandal, the abuse in the liturgy, the wacko priest or religious who does or says something idiotic. We have to extend ourselves to embrace everything that the Church is and that being a Catholic means.
This does not require that one bury their head in the sand. That’s not what Francis did. He simply avoided the conflicts, because he did not accuse anyone of doing anything wrong. He left that to people in authority. He showed everyone how to do it right and he founded a way of life that still works today, 800 years later. We need to focus on teaching the world how to do it right. It’s the only way that you can change the world for the better, by showing people how to do it. Francis said that the best and easiest way to teach people was through evangelical example, not words. That’s why you find very few preachers in the Franciscan tradition. We conquer sin through our presence, not our preaching. Most of us are lousy preachers, LOL.
I should add that another lesson that he taught the people of his time was to look at their sins too. Francis was aware of how easy it is to get so distracted and upset with the sins of another that we ignore our own sinfulness. The one thing that he recognized was the reality of sin. But he also recognized the presence of God in the world. That’s why he wrote the Canticle of Brother Sun. It’s a theological statement about God’s presence in the world, despite sin. It was a message of hope. He was a man who lived and died trusting the Church, because he trusted Christ.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
That’s a link to someones blog 
