I wonder as I wander ...

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Bump for Tara

 

June I don't usually post on the Religion and Spiritual Corner but you have made me feel welcome so I am going to give it a try. I am not looking to get bashed so anyone reading this please bear that in mind.

I was raised in the Catholic faith and attended Catholic school as well. I'm sure everyone knows what has been going on the past few years with the priest scandal. The priest that taught me to play the guitar was involved in the sexual abuse scandal. He was always a little too hands on with me to be considered appropriate for a priest but he never sexually abused me. I found out many years later that one of the girls I took guitar lessons with was being sexually abused by him. It has shaken my faith in my church and I have not been to mass in a couple of years because of it. I still pray every day and have a deep faith in God, but I feel betrayed by my own religion.

It makes me very sad that I feel this way. I just don't know how to get past this disheartening feeling I have towards my church.

 

Lulu,
I'm not Catholic so I have watched the priest scandal as an outsider. I haven't felt any particular emotion about it but I know Catholic friends who are deeply concerned. I think it was obviously a terrible thing but it does not affect my spiritual beliefs. I never equated the clergy of the Catholic Church or any church with God. In my church, ministers had no spiritual power greater than any other person. The church was just us coming together as Christians. It was bottom up. The Catholic Church and some others are top down implying or perhaps saying outright that the clergy ARE at all times the representatives of Christ always infallible. Is that what has caused the crisis of faith for many Catholics? That they had complete trust in the clergy and now find they were completely betrayed? If that was the case, then a person could only draw one of two conclusions. Either the clergy never were the embodiment of Christ - blowing away one belief - or God is not benevolent blowing away another. But if a person believes the Church is just the best effort of people to understand and serve Christ, then it just shows that during a certain period the leaders were doing a really poor job of it. We can find some stunning examples of this throughout history. The Inquisition for one example. Taken that way, I would think of it as a time to roll up sleeves and get to work rebuilding the Church in a way that is more Christ-like. That's the way I would look at it. I would not think of it as reflecting on God or the message of Jesus in any way so the heart of my faith is not affected when people act poorly in the name of religion. In fact people who want to take advantage of other people often gravitate towards positions of trust to give them an advantage.

I don't know if my take is incompatible with what you believe or not. Perhaps another Catholic can give you a better answer. I want to add that the foibles of this institution are in no way confined to the Catholic Church. We see this kind of behavior where the powerful take advantage of the weak over and over again in all kinds of institutions in which we place our trust. Humans are aggressive animals and we have to be aware that we can find that behavior any place any time and look at everyone with a skeptical eye no matter how much they tell us they are on our side. Probably especially when they tell us they are on our side or speaking for God. I don't know the % of priests who were involved one way or another in this scandal. I am sure it was a minority and looks like more because the sins of many years all came to light at once. But it was enough to show a pattern so I think the reaction people have is justified.

A little bit of an aside just on matters of who to trust. I remember reading that when they train soldiers for urban combat, they train them not to look at how someone is dressed - after all anyone could be dressed as an old woman - but to watch their actions ignoring entirely their 'costume'. They watch their hands and eyes and see what they are doing - not who they pretend to be.

 

Thank you June and Sarita. I think if I had not known one of the priests involved in the scandal, it might not have affected me as much as it has. I'm sure one day I will be able to see my way back to going to mass again but I am just not quite there yet.

 

I know it's different when its not academic.

 

I grew up and was raised Catholic and also attended Catholic school briefly and was an altar boy for 6 years, but I have never had a problem with that faith or church except for it's waaay too repetitive for my tastes and I also hated the kneeling part with my bad knees(lol). But later on in life I got re-baptised into a non-denominational church and was attending church again there for about 8 years; then a scandal broke out there where the Pastor was fooling around with a 19 year old Sunday school teacher and she got pregnant, and then it was all covered up and made to look like she had an affair with an old boyfriend and needed to repent. Then there was a money scandal where they kept taking extra donations to put in a new fire and sprinkler system, and after about $18,000 in donations it still was never put in after about two years of collecting. All the while the Pastor and his wife showed up in a brand new Lincoln Continental that he got her for Christmas, and they both had matching fur coats they wore around but yet there was still.............no sign of any sprinkler system. So needless to say that once word started getting around and the heat got turned way up with people asking questions & wanting answers, they announced that they were moving the church to Nashville, TN because that's where "God was leading them to go to". So this all really pissed me off and it took me about 6 months to get over it before finding another church, and then once I found what I thought was a good one a year later a very similar scandal breaks out there too in 2004, and that's when I decided I am DONE with churches period and would walk with the Lord on my own(and I've never gone back).

 

Chris, this wasn't Jim and Tammy Bakker by any chance was it?

 

I look at churches the same way I look at investment houses. They are both run by people. I can't just take them on their own say so that they are good people doing right. That kind of blind trust is an ideal environment for evil people to sneak in and take advantage of the unsuspecting. Like Ronald Regan said
"Trust but verify". I don't think there is any way around this responsibility on our part. We feel like we should be able to trust leaders of these institutions and take them on face value but in reality, they are people and they have all the issues that people in other walks of life have. It's a lot of work and sometimes I wish I could have the trust I did as a child but I'm not a child anymore so I can't. For me this all has nothing to do with my spiritual beliefs. God and nature haven't changed. I just see the world through grown up eyes now.

We had a scandal (embezzlement) here involving a volunteer fire department. I wouldn't give up having fire departments, I would just watch them more closely in the future.

It used to be people accepted more authoritarian structures in institutions and just expected to be taken care of. A lot of times they were getting taken advantage of but they didn't know it. Now we have access to much more information than our grandparents did and we know we have to keep our eyes open all the time. I don't think it has changed much, we just have news 24 hours a day and we hear of every scandal everywhere.

 

No, it was Jim and Debbie Higgins who are the scoundrels I speak of.

 

lulu, I know it doesn't help but I feel the same way about Doctors...I hope you can resolve your issue. I switched to female Doctors for all my private needs.