"Fear is useless; what is needed is trust."

Jesus speaks these words, in St. Mark's Gospel, when he is told that the daughter of Jarius, whom He had gone to heal, has died.  He dismisses the crowds and only allows Sts. Peter, James and John, along with the girl's parents, to accompany Him as He goes into the world to restore the girl to life.

Just as the Wikileaks saga continues to hound the United States and others, the Wikispooks drama revolving around the purported leaks of the Roman Missal continue to swirl around the Catholic blogosphere.

The problem is that these faceless, nameless individuals continue to post purported documents with the notion that these are legitimate.  However, there is no way to verify the identity of the folks who posted these items, let alone, the authenticity of these documents.  For all we know, these could be doctored texts.  In this day and age, if anyone can falsify liability insurance cards, college transcripts, bank statements and other important documents, it would not be such a stretch to do some heavy copying, pasting and other wholesale editing to a text and then post it on a website and claim that it's legitimate.

Sadly, these "leaks" have managed to convince folks that there is some deep, dark conspiracy engulfing the Holy See.  It makes me wonder if anyone has actually tried to contact the parties involved to see what is really happening.  I made this challenge to the folks posting on another blog.  The way I see it, if you are going to postulate some sort of claim, you better have the facts on you.

I decided to look at the matter myself.  I placed several phone calls to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (CDWDS), the Internatinonal Commission on the English Language (ICEL) and the Bishops Committee on Worship (USCCB).  While, for obvious reasons, the CDWDS could not "officially" comment on the matter, suffice to say that they are aware of the drama online.   I was assured that there is no real cause for concern and that things are on schedule for the United States.  ICEL also gave me the same assurance.  The USCCB took it a step further.  The officials there were concerned with the leaks and the commentary on the blogosphere about them.  The official text is with the USCCB.  Everything that needs to be in there is and, in its proper form.  However, the Holy See has asked that it not be released until its proper time. 

The problem is that we live in a day and age where we want to know something and we want it yesterday.  Had any of this transpired some 25 years ago, when the internet was something that sounded more like a futuristic Star Trek innovation, none of this would have happened.  We would have let the process take its natural course.  However, we are creatures of this age.  We expect that if we type in certain key words on Yahoo or Google, something will come out in less than 3 seconds and we will have the information readily at hand.  We expect that the Church should operate that way.  But, we forget something very important:  the wheels of Rome grind slowly, but, they grind finely (as my spiritual director once told me).  

We need to trust in the process.  We also need to trust the Holy Spirit.  When Jesus gave St. Peter the keys to the kingdom of Heaven, He told his Vicar that whatever he would bind and loosen on earth would be bound and loosened in Heaven.  Jesus also promised that the gates of Hell would never prevail against the Church. 

Of course, Jesus never said that binding and loosening would be an easy process.  But, we need to trust Him at his word.  Fear is useless; what is needed is trust.  It matters not to me what the rest of the blogosphere writes regarding the purported Wikispooks leaks.  I will trust the Church because her guarantor is no less than Jesus, Himself.  That is the attitude that we must take.