If I am to believe most of the respondents to one Washington Post editorial on the sins of Cardinal Roger Mahony (whose decades-old cover-ups
have absolutely broken my heart), I am, at best, weak and sheep-like and at worst,
sick, evil, and depraved because I am still a Catholic – remaining part of an
institution led by a global cabal of pedophiles and pedophile protectors. Any
time I tithe to the church or to a church-affiliated group, many claim, my
money somehow shoots straight into a huge Vatican treasury that supports organized
pedophilia. I am not just complicit; I am part of the cover-up and part of the system
that sanctions child sexual abuse and soul-murder:
--“Whenever a
Catholic gives money to the church, it helps cover up sex crimes against
children. I wonder how such a person lives with himself.”
--“I could never
associate myself with an institution as corrupt, misogynistic and perverted as
the Catholic church.”
--“The Catholic
Church has degenerated into an international cabal perpetrating or abetting
child molestation… How can any well-meaning, thoughtful individual remain
associated with such an organization?”
--“I love how
Catholics are so concerned for the unborn but clearly could care less about the
children who were molested.”
--“For the absolute life of me, I cannot fathom how any
practicing Roman Catholic could have put so much as a thin dime into a weekly
collection plate these past 10 years for all that these proven moral reprobates
have done. They are not to be trusted with either money or children.”
--“Can there be any doubt that the sheep-minded Catholic
faithful are the fundamental co-enablers of those princely pedophile
co-enablers whom the faithful look bovinely up to as their shepherds? Primeval
and disgusting.”
And on and on . . . (There are also a lot of “gays are
pedophiles” posts, but I won’t get into those. I do recognize that a lot of
people enjoy being mean on public forums, and that they don’t speak for
everyone.)
A couple of kinder responses emerged too, which many a
Catholic could have written. Here’s one:
“No one in the Church
denies that there are grave problems to address, and no one supports protecting
pedophiles. We love the Church, and are heartsick over these awful crimes. The
Church is far more than a few deviant priests and bishops, I wish that Catholic
bashers could see that. Most priests are good, decent and devout men. I know a
lot of them and respect them. I've never known a single priest to do anything
like this. It's only a small fraction of priests that have committed these
atrocious acts, but unfortunately, it only takes a small number of people to do
a lot of damage in any institution. I would not expect Muslims to leave their
faith simply because a small number of Muslims (and their leaders) are
terrorists or support terrorism. They love their faith and remain true to it.
It's the same with Catholics. We love our Church, consider it a Holy gift, and
hope to purge it of those who would cause it damage. If you knew some Catholics
and actually met a few priests and talked to them honestly, you might change
your view just a little. There's no question that terrible things have happened
in the Church, we understand that. We hope that critics of the Church
understand that we are all not wicked and evil people blindly ignoring the
situation.”
I have not gone on to read all 595 responses, but you get
the picture.
First, let me say something about churchgoers’ complicity
and culpability. I’m going to offer an imperfect analogy that might be a little
overused and obvious: that of living and paying taxes in a country headed by a
government that has frequently made horrible, murderous choices. In the year
2000, the U.S. Supreme Court – just five out of nine people – decided that
George W. Bush would be the president despite major electoral shenanigans and Al
Gore winning the popular vote. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S.,
Bush’s response was to invade Afghanistan and Iraq – a disastrous turn of
events, in my opinion. My husband and I never supported these wars. Instead, we
protested them by participating in dozens of anti-war demonstrations in our
city and region and by contributing funds to groups advocating for peaceful
solutions and international dialogue. My husband became a long-term volunteer
with GI Rights, an organization offering alternatives for troops who questioned
these wars, including those who sought conscientious objector status and others
who sought honorable discharges after suffering injuries and post-traumatic
stress disorder.
During all of this, we still remained United States
citizens, and we still paid taxes. Why? Because this is our home, and we love
our country. Even during that sickening wave of rabid nationalism and anti-Arab
/ anti-Muslim hysteria in the wake of 9/11, when it seemed we were the only
ones on our street who did not sport huge American flags and “United We Stand”
bumperstickers, the U.S. was still our home, and we loved it. (There was a
point, however, after Bush’s second inauguration, when we considered leaving.
One of our friends actually did leave and now lives in an ex-pat community in
Mexico, although she still retains her U.S. citizenship). But the fact is:
there is still a lot of good in this country and in the people here. U.S.
history is both beautiful and horrible, but what makes it beautiful is what
makes it worth staying here and fighting the good fight. For every Dick Cheney
and Karl Rove, we’ve got a Martin Luther King Jr. or an Elizabeth Warren. We’ve
got the Klan and Birchers and White Citizens’ councils, but the abolitionists
and desegregationists and civil rights activists ultimately held sway – even
though things on that front were looking really bad in, say, 1890 or so…
I can only imagine how “Americans” must have appeared to
Europeans or Egyptians or New Zealanders or Argentinians after Bush/Cheney et
al’s invasion of Iraq. We must have looked really whack. So this is something
to keep in mind: If you’re looking at a country -- or an institution or any
large system – from the outside, its regular folks start to seem whack
when their leaders commit crimes or act deplorably. And of course, at least some
of the people ARE whack! But the whack ones are not necessarily representative.
And what you are able to see from a distance reveals just a sliver of the story.
Let’s say my husband and I had chosen to leave the U.S.
back in 2003, like our friend did. What if we had left? Or stopped paying
taxes? Or renounced our citizenship? A decent argument could be made for those
alternatives. It might have been a deeply commendable and admirable choice, to
stop lending ourselves in any way to a system responsible for more than 173,000
deaths (according to Iraq Body Count Project), including at least 67,000
civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan (according to Wikileaks) and 4500 U.S.
troop deaths. (Not to mention the tortured and the hundreds of thousands still
living with deep physical, mental, and spiritual wounds…) But had we left, I suspect that we would still
think of the U.S. as home. I suspect that our country, our homeland, would
remain embedded in our hearts, coloring our outlook and choices for the rest of
our lives. Certainly the culture of our new residence would eventually take
root too. But I don’t think home would ever completely leave us.
I have wandered a bit from my main point, so let me get
to it: Ordinary Catholics are not complicit in the church hierarchy’s
protection of pedophiles any more (or less) than a regular U.S. citizen is
complicit in the dangerously misguided choices some of its leaders make.
When our hearts are broken, when we struggle with doubt, when we lovingly dissent, when we challenge the powers-that-be, when we pray and work for justice, when we do
not turn away from the wounded, and when we walk with Christ, we are not complying
with criminal decisions and high-level cover-ups.
One more thing, for those who question tithing: There many
different ways to tithe to the Catholic church (or any denomination).
Folks can contribute to church-affiliated (and non-proselytizing) organizations
that work with and for the poor (Catholic Relief Services and Mercy Volunteer Corps are
two examples), to reform-minded groups such as SNAP (Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests), Call to Action, Dignity
(supporting LGBT Catholics), NETWORK (a Catholic social justice lobby), Pax Christi (a Catholic peace and justice organization) or Women’s Ordination Conference,
just to name a few (and, yes, revealing some of my preferences). People can
also tithe in non-monetary ways by offering their time, energy, and love to
soup kitchens, homeless shelters, safe houses for those escaping domestic
violence or human trafficking, hospices, prisons, groups like ICWJ (Interfaith
Committee for Worker Justice), Just Faith, and the like. There is even “protest tithing”:
when parishioners send a penny (or a wooden nickel) to their local diocese’s
annual appeal for funds, along with a note of explanation.
Okay. Thank you for hearing me vent, if you have read
this far. And let me say: this is mostly a rebuttal to the Catholic-bashing I
saw in the responses to the Washington Post’s editorial – but it’s also a reply
to friends who wonder why I stay in the church. It’s an incomplete reply,
because my reasons for staying involve rich complexities that cannot be conveyed
in a few paragraphs. For now, I’m just inviting people to step back from the
hyperbole and wild presumptions being tossed about. I am not trying to make any
apologies or excuses for the crushingly sad choices the hierarchy and some of
the clergy have made. Those choices are devastating and will reverberate far beyond
this troubling moment. Yet today’s hierarchy – though powerful -- is a small
part of a wide and diverse Christian body. This church is comprised mostly of
ordinary folks seeking to live the Gospel and Christ’s call to loving
engagement in day-to-day life. We are everyday people, we care about children,
and we are hurt and deeply distressed by our leaders’ abuses and cover-ups.
I get that the Catholic church is not everyone's cup of tea (and I do understand that
some people have had terrible experiences with pathological manifestations of
Catholicism and that their best, sanest choice is to leave the church); nor is
Christianity the one and only true sacred path. (Thank God.) Yet at its deeper and truer levels it can be an authentic path – a path of heart, community,
self-emptying surrender, and Mystery. And, in more ways than one, Catholicism (in its healthier expression) brought me into the world. It is my
spiritual home, my wide and numinous country. Even within these terrible times, I still love it.
