I visited Elmhurst in Pennsylvania and Cape May in New Jersey during the past week. My trip was full of unexpected surprises and challenges this time as I divided my time between these two parts of the United States.

In Elmhurst, I was giving a Cross Mission. Msgr. Jordan, Pastor of the parish of St. Eulalia, asked me to address the wild and disturbing news about the Pennsylvania sex-abuse revelations, in my own way, during my homily. This topic was very much in the news, and was compounded by Pope Francis’s high profile visit to my native Ireland with further revelations of outrageous abuses by the Church’s Hierarchy over there.

The gospel, this past weekend, was about Christ’s gift of the Eucharist to us. Jesus wants to tabernacle Himself in us when we receive His spiritual nourishment so that we can be bearers of His love to others in a sinful world. This message struck me as the perfect antidote to the awful image of the Church that people were reading about and watching on television channels throughout the world.

The Church is not the institution with all its flaws. It is Christ within you. When St. Paul says: “I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me,” he is talking about the real Church, the experience of Christ within you. St. Augustine addressed this same topic in “The City of God,” when he distinguished between the Institutional and Spiritual Church. The Spiritual Church is Christ’s Kingdom which is not of this world. It is a kingdom based on Faith, Hope, and Love which unite us with Christ: The Way, The Truth, and The Life. Every faithful Christian knows this in his or her heart of hearts. The Institutional Church, St. Augustine pointed out, is a mixed bag because it consists of sinners as well as saints. It needs to be forever reformed and, God knows, today’s Church needs reform if it is going to survive this moral earthquake of sexual and institutional abuse.

In spite of the bad news about the institutional Church, I had a blessed and happy time with the good parishioners of St. Eulalia in Elmhurst, Pennsylvania. We were able to celebrate what was good about the Church, and pray for an end to the bad.

When I was leaving Elmhurst, PA for Cape May, NJ, I heard (after the last mass ) about the bombshell of a letter that Cardinal Viganò published, calling for regime change in the Vatican. I was able to read the letter in its entirety at my cousin, Kay’s, home in Cape May where I’m celebrating another family reunion.

We all want the Church to cleanse itself of abuse, whatever form it takes. But, how can this be done? Can it be done by attacking those you disagree with in the Institution, or by demanding that the Pope resign as if he is responsible for all the ugliness that’s happened in the Church?

There’s enough blame to go around, it appears to me. The method of bringing about reform in the Institutional Church has to carried out in a proper Christian manner without spite, vengeance, disinterested criticism, and self righteous acrimony. In other words, the end must be contained in the means. The end is reform, a good thing, but reform can only come about through Christian, not foul means.

The Church is Christ in you. Don’t forget that. You are the Church, the body of Christ. You can play your part in reforming the institution if you are willing to put on Christ, as St. Paul says. If you do that, you’ll witness to the truth by opposing corruption of any kind.

-Fr. Hugh Duffy