I recommend reading the National Catholic Reporter article called: Hierarchy’s inability to mourn thwarts healing in church, May. 07, 2012 by Mary Gail Frawley-O’Dea. In it she cogently explains the difficulty the Catholic Church is in because of the inability of most of its hierarchy to face its true feelings of grief and loss, and thus to mourn. She writes:
When mourning is refused, however, we may deny that loss is permanent and instead maniacally try to restore that which is forever changed. Nostalgia, memory’s rose-colored cousin, rules the mind and soul. In some cases, we select someone or something defined now as “Other” onto whom we direct rage for “causing” our loss of power and control even if our own behaviors actually ushered in the loss. Mourning is submerged beneath rage and exclusivity — we are OK, they are not; the badness is out there while goodness and heroism is within….The failure to mourn power that is crumbling is rampant among the Catholic monarchy. A manic thrust to restore the past can be seen in a nostalgic return to cathedral length trains, cassocks, birettas, and a new/old missal in which words are more important than meaning.
Read the whole article at: http://ncronline.org/news/accountability/hierarchys-inability-mourn-thwarts-healing-church