The Judas Factor
Jesus Himself, true God and true Man, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the light of the world that cannot be overcome by darkness, chose twelve apostles. All of them abandoned Him when he was arrested,[1] and one was directly responsible for handing him over to His murderers.
Jesus has been betrayed in every age by people who have been chosen to represent Him to the world.
The infallibility of the Church and consequently that of the pope is due to the infallible power of God to protect what He has revealed. The doctrine that God will not permit the Church or the pope to officially teach what is false is a doctrine about the goodness and power of God, not about the goodness or power of the members of the Church or of the papacy.
The Catholic Church does not now teach and never has taught that popes, bishops, priests or deacons are sinless (impeccable) or wise (prudent). There are, unfortunately, all too many proofs from the past and the present that the sacrament of Holy Orders does not make men holy or smart automatically. Ordained men have committed every form of sin imaginable, including apostasy,[2] heresy,[3] adultery, rape, incest, pedophilia, pederasty, sodomy, murder, theft, lying, blasphemy, and the construction of Churchill Tower at Canisius College in Buffalo, N.Y.
The sins of ordained men have not obscured the teachings of Jesus. Anyone who can condemn the sins of priests affirms that they know the difference between right and wrong and show that they can tell the difference between fidelity to Jesus and infidelity. Those who condemn the sins of the ordained as contrary to the mind and heart of Jesus prove that they have received the gospel message through the unbroken Tradition of the Church.
The sins of the ordained discredit the sinners, not the Church. Not one teaching of the Church is changed by the sad fact that Jesus has been betrayed by His disciples. What the sins of priests do prove is that priests can and do sin. The freedom of popes, bishops, priests, and deacons to sin is perfectly consistent with the dogmas of the Church. God does not turn His sons and daughters into marionettes or robots through the life of the sacraments. We all have to "work out [our] salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil 2:12).
Priests sin. They shouldn't, but they do.
Baptized Catholics sin. They shouldn't, but they do.
Married Catholics sin. They shouldn't, but they do.
- The bottom line: Don't leave Jesus because of Judas!
The Resilience of Tradition
Tradition is fault-tolerant. I don't mean that we should tolerate sin in our own lives or in the lives of the ordained. But neither Judas nor the multitudes who have committed the sin of Judas have destroyed the power of the remainder to transmit the knowledge of salvation fully and faithfully.
If Tradition were like a chain, breaking one single link would break the whole chain. But it is much more like a rope, in which thousands of strands are woven together; though a few strands may snap, the rest are able to take up the the load. The message of Jesus' saving death and resurrection is carried now by millions of messengers; great harm can be done locally by the sins of messengers who betray the message--great harm to the sinners, their victims, and their neighbors--but the truth of the gospel is still carried to the ends of the earth by those who have not betrayed Jesus or who, like Peter, have repented and been forgiven for denying Him.
- If we are sure that popes, bishops, priests and deacons have sinned, we affirm in that very act of condemnation that we know what God has revealed through the Church.
The Liturgy teaches us that priests sin
The sins of the ordained should come as no surprise to people who know the text of the Mass. In addition to praying with the whole congregation for the forgiveness of sins, there are prayers said quietly by the priest alone, reminding him of his need for repentance and forgiveness:
| Before the Gospel | "Lord, cleanse my heart and my lips that I may worthily proclaim Your holy gospel." |
| After the Gospel | "By the words of this holy gospel may my sins be blotted out." |
| After the Offertory (while washing his hands) | "Lord, wash away my sins and cleanse me of my iniquities." |
| After the Lamb of God | "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, by the will of the Father and the work of the Holy Spirit your death brought life to the world. By your holy body and blood free me from all my sins and from every evil. Keep me faithful to your teaching and never let me be parted from you."
-- or --
"Lord Jesus Christ, with faith in your love and mercy I eat your body and drink your blood. Let it not bring me condemnation but health in mind and body." |
| At Communion | "May the Body of Christ bring me to everlasting life. ... May the Blood of Christ bring me to everlasting life." |
| After Communion (while purifying the chalice and paten) | "Lord, may I receive these gifts in purity of heart. May they bring me healing and strength, now and forever." |
Distorted perceptions of Judas
Many people in our culture have a strange affection for Judas. They portray his act of betrayal as noble and worthy of praise, as if his treachery toward Jesus is the cause of our salvation instead of Jesus' willingness to lay down his life to save us.
God is eternal--outside of time. He gives us choices and sees what we choose when we choose it. God saw Judas freely choosing to betray Jesus and accepted Judas' God-given freedom to sin, just as God sees all of our sins and accepts all of the consequences of having decided to give us free will. If Judas had remained faithful to Jesus, those who hated Jesus would have found some other way to have Him arrested and executed. There was no necessity for Judas to do what he did, and no virtue or merit in his decision.
Judas clearly miscalculated what he was doing--otherwise he would not have committed suicide but would have lived on, happy and proud of what he had accomplished. That Jesus allowed Judas to make bad choices is not an indication that Judas did what Jesus wanted him to do. God's knowledge of the choices we make does not diminish our freedom in making those choices. So, too, with Judas. God, in His mercy, can bring good out of evil; that does not mean that evil is good or that good is evil.
Don't leave Jesus because of Judas! Judas sinned in handing Jesus over to His enemies and sinned even more horribly by killing himself. He is not a hero worthy of our admiration; he is a sinner, like us, who stands in need of God's mercy and purification.
Notes
- ↑ There are some discrepancies in the gospels here. At the Last Supper in the synoptics, Jesus said "all of you will deny me," but the gospel of John records that the Beloved Disciple was present at the Cross. We can harmonize the two accounts if we suppose that John fled with the other apostles when Jesus was arrested in the garden, but returned to be with Him in his suffering. John's presence at the Cross also suggests to me that he was a young man not perceived as a threat by the Roman soldiers.
- ↑ Apostasy: abandoning the faith entirely.
- ↑ Heresy: keeping part of the tradition and rejecting the rest.