Learning from Fr. Williams Mistakes

No one is perfect. But it seems that some people are held to higher standards when it comes to their behavior.

As they should, quite honestly. When you speak for an institution which calls us, as it says right in Scripture, to 'be perfect', then you ought to expect to be held to a higher standard. That is why it is always disappointing to have a case such as that of Catholic priest and Michigan native Fr. Thomas Williams. He was a leader in the Legion of Christ, a conservative Catholic group itself rocked by other scandals, and a teacher at the organization's school in Rome. He has stepped down from the group and is taking a year off from instruction in light of the admission that he fathered a child several years back.

The atheists and anti-Catholics will have a field day with it. Boiled down to the basic criticism, they will say with snickers and knowing grins, 'So they're no different than the rest of us, those Catholics and other holier than thous'. You can't really blame them. Such scandals are made to order for the skeptics and doubters.

They still fail to see the big picture nonetheless. Conservatives and Catholics, indeed any of the seriously religious, if they take their faith rightly (no pun intended) know they are flawed. They know they are human and will fail to live up the expectations of their faith. Sometimes those failures are spectacular and in the full view of the public. They may even be more wrong precisely because those people speak for institutions or creeds which rightly condemns the actions they have done. Yet such does not and cannot condemn the institution or creed. Fr. Williams, if he was any decent kind of priest at all, would never have taught that he was perfect, but only that the teachings of his Church were perfect and true.

And that is precisely what is neglected by the naysayers who have and will roundly criticize the Church, conservatives, and their friends and allies, not only in this but in other scandals as well. They condemn traditions and institutions due to human weakness. Yet we are called, again, to be perfect. That means we must always strive for that. Yet neither should we expect it. Preaching to that calling yet failing to live up to it ourselves cannot deny the call. It can only mean that we're human. Nothing more.

We will fail to always and everywhere do the right thing, even those of us not seriously religious. Yet that does not grant license to go ahead and do the wrong thing either. When we err, whether in small things or large, all we can do is start again to try to get things right the next time. We do that because we are (or at least ought to be) trying to be perfect. We're trying to do the right thing, to get it right the next time. After all, the next time is all we've got. And one day, maybe, we'll get just a bit closer to the perfection to which we're called. And even closer the time after that.

That is the essence of Catholic and conservative morals. Aim the highest and work towards it. And never take your eyes from the prize even as you fail. You'll be better of for it in the end.