Church must be forgiven for errors, Bishop DiMarzio says in Brooklyn

Published: 2003-10-06

BROOKLYN, N.Y. (CNS) -- Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio, delivering the homily at his installation as bishop of Brooklyn, said the church is a mother who is to be loved despite disagreements with her and who is to be forgiven for her "human errors." As in the case of human mothers, who "sometimes make mistakes," those errors "deserve ready forgiveness, yet not without efforts to improve the church," he said. "History and the fathers of the church have taught us that the church must always be reformed," he said in apparent allusion to current sex abuse scandals. "We are never a finished product; we are a people on pilgrimage." A pilgrimage is sometimes a disorganized affair, and "you will see that the leaders are often in the center, sometimes in the lead and other times at the rear of the people," the bishop said. But "somehow everybody gets there," he added. Bishop DiMarzio, head of the Diocese of Camden, N.J., since 1999, was installed in his new post Oct. 3 at a Mass he celebrated at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica.

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