Domenico at Bettnet, along with the National Catholic Reporter, makes a good point:
While the matter of what chalices are made of or what pronouns to use are objectively important in their place, if we can’t stop priests from molesting kids and bishops from protecting those priests, why bother?
It’s a matter of perspective, says Domenico:
…arguing over those questions should take a back seat to the very real problem of the scandal of priestly and episcopal malfeasance. When measured against each other it can seem like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Good point. I haven’t commented very much on the abuse scandal, and I should probably try to — that is, when I have something to add to the conversation. Nonetheless, these words from the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:21) are trustworthy:
…His master said to him, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master’s joy.’
Context? The parable is found immediately after the parable of the ten virgins (five foolish, five wise — the foolish ones fail to prepare and get locked out of the wedding, the wise ones prepare and are welcomed) and immediately before what C. S. Lewis called "the frightening parable of the sheep and the goats" (in which one’s salvation depends entirely on corporal works of mercy). The message of this chapter moves from the self outward: Prepare yourself wisely. Serve your master faithfully. Serve the world generously.
The thing that bothers me about the chalices and other small matters is, precisely, their smallness.
Bishops looking the other way while priests abused children and adolescents: a big problem of disobedience, with a huge amount of inertia — it takes a big, big push for multiple bishops to turn around, submit to obedience, surely the first steps in solving the problem. (I do not mean holding committees to draft working documents of reconciliation. The first step that will really move us in the right direction is confession, repentance, penance, restitution: from the bishops themselves, every one who knowingly let this happen and every one who remained willfully ignorant. Maybe they’ve all, already, done so; I hope so.)
Bishops shuffling glass chalices around on the altar: a small matter of disobedience (and disobedience it is). But so easily turned around! So easy to return to obedience, quietly and without public comment. All it takes is to wake up one morning and say to oneself: By gum, I’m going to dust off the metal chalices in the back of the sacristy cupboard and use those when I say Mass today! Goodness, let’s not even worry just yet about, say, reminding the pastors of the parishes in the diocese that glass isn’t allowed, let alone enforcing it. I mean simply doing it yourself, when you say Mass. We old-fashioned types call that "setting an example."
Perspective — the very same perspective that Dom et al. ask for — demands that we note that becoming faithful in small matters is much more easily done than becoming faithful in large matters. The opportunity to repent of a small thing and to become faithful in a small thing is truly a great one, a generous gift of an opportunity, a chance to "take Heaven by a trick of love," to paraphrase Ste. Therese.
What a gift! If God gives us such an easy way to be faithful and we don’t take it and use it wisely, what will He say to us? The moral of the parable of the talents is For to everyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. Maybe it would be better to look to a related parable, the parable of the faithful steward (Luke 12:42-48): Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.
We have no guarantees that a person who is faithful in small matters will execute larger responsibilities well. (The logical corollary to this truth is called, ironically, the Peter Principle.) But it’s those persons who are entrusted with large matters, for the simple reason that the other people have proven themselves faithless in small matters, and why on earth would we want to keep on trusting them?
Small matters, matter.
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