The media have given a bit of coverage to this week being Holy Week.

Associated Press online headline yesterday: “Pope opens solemn Holy Week amid sex abuse crisis”.

It didn’t take them long to turn the occasion into an opportunity to bash the Church with the nearest weapon at hand.

This blog has said before that the child-abuse scandal in the Church is bad. The Church must repent of past failures and determine that the future will be different. Those found guilty must be punished.

Having said that, let’s consider what Holy Week is about.

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The opening prayer (Introit) in the traditional Catholic Mass for today, Holy Tuesday, says, in Latin: “Nos autem gloriari oportet in cruce Domini nostri Jesu Christi, in quo est salus . . . Deus misereatur nostri et benedicat nobis . . . .”

In English: It is proper that we glory in the cross of Christ in whom is our salvation . . . God have mercy on us and bless us . . . .

It’s a fact. All of us, in the Church and outside, have failed God and need his mercy — one of our worst efforts being failure to guard the innocence of children. Here, of course, the media have been no help in the past — and show no signs of being any different in the future.

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The media are pushers for fewer restrictions on their own pornographic and violent output — and they undermine traditional marriage and the importance of fatherhood and of keeping mothers in the home to nurture their children physically and spiritually.

Yes, the media must rightly remind the Church of its need to reform.

It must also reform itself. Drastically.

At present they are, arguably, children’s worst enemies.

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In today’s Mass, the final prayer says, “May our vices be cured, O almighty God, by Thy holy Mysteries . . . . may Thy mercy, O God, cleanse us from the deceits of our old nature, and enable us to be formed anew unto holiness. Through Our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who lives and reigns with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.”