Dear Editor: Congratulations to Ed Wilkinson on receiving the Al O’Hagan Community Service Award at this year’s Great Irish Fair!

Since I firmly believe that “the pen is mightier than the sword,” I laid awake last night mulling over the recent clergy scandals and their effect on our beloved Church and decided I had to write you today. I read this week’s Tablet, and was happy to see Cardinal Dolan’s appointment of Judge Barbara S. Jones giving her and her international law firm “unfettered access” to examine existing protocols and identify potential deficiencies or noncompliance, developing “a policy to respond to allegations of abuses of power and position.”

As I continued to read, I was gratified by our beloved bishop’s admitting that even his faith was shaken by “the evil some of my brothers have done,” noting that “We, as a Church, are in a state of moral vulnerability right now.”

In my 88 years, I have been blessed in knowing countless good, dedicated priests and hierarchy, and it is for them as well as for the victims that my heart cries out. I firmly believe it is a diabolical attempt to weaken our “one, holy, catholic, apostolic church,” and am grateful for the ability to recognize the difference between the institutional church and the spiritual one in my life.

To those of us who remain in the church, we need to “pray that God does not abandon His Church, but reform it as He pleases, and as He sees best for us, and more to His honor and glory” according to the words of St. Angela Merici.

PEGGY VIRGADAMO

Via email