As a cub reporter for the Catholic Standard in 1985, I was assigned to write a profile of Msgr. John Tracy Ellis, a professorial lecturer in Church history at The Catholic University of America, who as a writer and teacher, was regarded as the dean of American Catholic historians.

The 80-year-old priest was a straight talker, and he jokingly scoffed at that honorific of “dean,” saying people called him that “only because I’m so old.”

I sat in on a couple of his classes at Catholic University, where Msgr. Ellis had taught for nearly 50 years, and watched him weave stories using animated gestures and colorful descriptions. The sprightly, white haired priest did not pull any punches describing scoundrels in Church history, including some popes and emperors.

He hated tales of saints that had devolved into mythical hagiography. Historians, he said, should be storytellers, and they should tell the truth. “I tell it (history) as I know it to be, as the doctrines and facts dictated it happened, and I portray it as real as I can,” he said.

Msgr. Ellis wrote an authoritative biography of one of his heroes in Catholic history – Cardinal James Gibbons, the archbishop of Baltimore from 1877 to 1921 who was a close friend of several U.S. presidents. The priest historian said he admired that churchman’s combination of simplicity, honesty, personality and statesmanship.

Describing some of the rogues in Church history, Msgr. Ellis said, ‘The Renaissance popes, I think, were a deplorable lot, most of them.” The priest noted that Pope Leo X was preoccupied with hunting parties, and Pope Julius II spent much of his pontificate waging war against French invaders in Italy.

The Renaissance popes also sponsored immortal works of art that have inspired generations of people. The historian added, “…They (churchmen) are like the rest of us… they’re human beings. They have their strengths and weaknesses.”

During my interview with Msgr. Ellis, I asked him if during his studies of Church history, whether his faith had ever lessened after learning about Catholics, even Church leaders, who had sinned or had human failures or weaknesses.

Thirty-three years later, I remember his response clearly. Msgr. Ellis made a gesture with his hand, moving it in a horizontal, but steadily upward motion, saying that his historical research had actually deepened his Catholic faith, seeming to reveal to him the evolution of Christ’s message as it expands, experiences grave reverses, and then expands again. The priest said he could see the Holy Spirit working in the Church throughout its 2,000-year history, through both good and challenging times.

Msgr. Ellis died in 1992 at the age of 87, and I covered his Funeral Mass that was held in the Crypt Church of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, a short walk from the Catholic University classrooms where he held court for almost a half-century.

That teacher’s lessons have guided my work and strengthened my faith throughout my years as a reporter and then editor of the Catholic Standard, especially when facing the abuse crisis.

In February 1995, one month after being named the Catholic Standard’s editor, I was holding my baby son Joe in my arms when the phone rang. Msgr. William Lori, the archdiocese’s chancellor then who is now the archbishop of Baltimore, told me that four of our local priests had admitted to abusing an altar server in the 1970s, and people at parishes where the abuse occurred and where they had served in recent years would be told about it at Masses the next morning.

I remember how angry I would have felt if someone had hurt my son, and the next day I covered a Mass at the Shrine of St. Jude in Rockville, where the acting administrator of the parish, Father Lee Fangmeyer, told the people that their recent pastor, Father Edward Hartel, had been accused of abusing a minor years earlier at another parish.

Addressing St. Jude’s parishioners with that awful news, Father Fangmeyer said such abusive behavior was “reprehensible.”

Father Fangmeyer said he knows that in his own life, “I have to rely on Christ each day,” and he added that people can only be freed from sin and gain healing through God’s love and grace. “The only way we can overcome sin is to love… We have received Jesus’s love and forgiveness,” he said. “May we share that love with others.”

Parishioners’ emotions were raw, and some cried after Mass. Afterward, I wrote a column about covering this story and titled it, “My most difficult assignment.”

In 1995 after the alleged abuse was reported to the archdiocese, Father Hartel was removed from ministry. He was arrested that year, tried and acquitted. He died in 2013. In October 2018, the Archdiocese of Washington published a list of clergy credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors since 1948, and Father Hartel’s name was on the list.

This year, as the Church in the United States has again been rocked by the sexual abuse crisis, following the allegations against former Washington Archbishop Theodore McCarrick and the horrific revelations of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report, I have shared the sorrow, shame and anger felt by Catholics in the pews who want the Church and its leaders to be accountable and transparent about this sin and crime of abuse which has afflicted our faith community.

When the Archdiocese of Washington released a list of the names of 28 clergy of the archdiocese credibly accused of the sexual abuse of minors, I too found it heart-rending to read the names of several priests whom I had known and respected, and also felt sorrow for the innocent young people whom they had hurt.

In these difficult days, I’ve drawn strength from the words of Msgr. Ellis and Father Fangmeyer so long ago. I won’t let this scandal define or lessen my faith, because in my work covering the Catholic Church as a journalist, I see Christ’s love unfolding every day, the same story that inspired Msgr. Ellis in his research and Father Fangmeyer in his life as a parish priest.

As God’s providence would have it, Father Fangmeyer is now the pastor of my neighborhood parish, Mother Seton in Germantown, and this past Sunday in Advent, I went to Mass there with my wife Carol and our youngest son, Matt, 11, and heard him preach about the importance of opening our minds and hearts to Jesus, in this season and every day. As we prepare for Christmas, I know that Jesus is the gift that will sustain me, and sustains the Church, in good and challenging times.