By EmmaLee Italia | Contributing Editor
“What the Church needs today is courageous unrest … It needs the courage to seek what is great, and so to become worthy of it … What we need most as a Church today is the virtue of hope.”
Photo Gallery: Lenten Spirituality Day for Priests
Bishop David M. O’Connell, C.M., and priests of the Diocese gathered March 7 in St. John the Baptist Church, Allentown, for their annual Lenten Spirituality Day and Luncheon, during which they listened to these and other reassuring words from Father Herbert Sperger, a priest of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, who currently serves on the faculty of St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood, Pa.
In his topic, “The Priest as Messenger of Hope in Troubled Times,” Father Sperger recalled how he felt when the Church was gearing up to celebrate the Jubilee 2000.
“Things were going too well, there was too much happiness [and] positivity… Can you remember what a great time it was [then] to be a Catholic and a priest? … How far the Church has fallen since,” he said, referring to the clergy sexual abuse scandal and its impact on the Church over the years.
Father Sperger noted that priests and people in the pews are stuggling.
“It’s important to be talking about it, trying to comprehend and work through it,” he acknowledged. “We have to stop and say, ‘How will I deal with this in a way that might be helpful?’”
Freelance photographer Craig Pittelli contributed to this story.