A relic in the form of a bone from St. Jude's arm has been touring the United States for the past couple of months and was set to come to my diocese. Katie and I were planning on going to a special Mass planned for it when suddenly, we received the following e-mail from our Diocese:

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the visitation of the relic of Saint Jude scheduled to take place at [Parish] in [City] on [Date], has been canceled.

'Well, that is suspiciously vague,' I thought. A quick investigation on the internet revealed the story broke by The Pillar. The lead in to the story was less vague.

A St. Jude relic traversing the United States came to a stop this week, while the priest organizing the tour faces an Illinois police investigation over alleged inappropriate conduct involving children.

The story doesn't get into much more detail than that, except to say that it was reported by the Parish Priest in Joliet, IL and the Bishop kicked him out of the diocese. Like literally 99.99% of the rest of the population of the world who reads that, I thought, "Another pedophile priest." I shared the story with Katie and she thought the same thing, saying, "You know, it seems like the tour stops at mostly parishes with schools."

As I thought about it that night, I wondered to myself, "What else could have happened?" For instance, if one or two teenagers thought they would somehow damage or threaten or disrespect the precious relic and Father Carlos Martins jumped in and manhandled the "children" to defend the relic, it would violate the "Safe Environment" rules in place and likely trigger the same kind of reaction out of an overabundance of caution.

I've been following the story, but everyone has just been reporting assumptions or some variation on what was reported by the Pillar. However, Catholicism.org's Brother André Marie recently shared a blog post from Rod Dreher claiming they have more information and Father Carlos Martins' reputation is being butchered. There isn't any definitive information in there, but if Rod Dreher is to be believed, the accusations against Father Carlos Martins are NOT the conclusion we all jumped to.

Ultimately, the Catholic Church and the USCCB needs to figure out a better way of defending the reputations of priests with accusations made against them, particularly if they're accused of literally anything other than sexually abusing children because, after two decades of these cases being dragged out into the light, the faithful and secular society are going to just assume that it's child sex abuse.

Even if it's as simple as "a non-sexual incident involving students" or something along those lines. I think the Church and the Bishops in large are trying to protect the priests by not sharing any information, but if a priest is named, his reputation is going to be dragged through the mud unless the Bishops provide at least a little more context about what this is not.

Furthermore, if Father Martins is exonerated of any wrong doing at the level on which he is being accused, as Catholics, we need to scream from the rooftops on whatever platforms we have that he was innocent in an effort to rebuild his reputation.

I sincerely hope Father Carlos Martins is innocent; and I will assume he is. I pray that if he's innocent, his ministry can continue with his reputation fully restored.