I am a 63-year-old Catholic living in Charlotte for the past seven years. Originally from New Orleans where everyone is Catholic, I come from a family of priests, nuns, brothers, nurses, etc. – I count one cousin as the mother superior of the order of sisters in Louisiana. For decades, I liked being Catholic.
I don’t know if I “grew up” and forgot to work at it, or if the Church just sort of went a way that I found less fulfilling, but Catholicism became nothing but the transport medium I chose to use to maintain my attachment to organized religion. My wife, on the other hand, needs active participation in the Catholic faith. I get angry when I hear priests refer to Catholicism as “the one true religion” – which I feel like is their way of looking down on others who have elected to worship God using a different medium – but my wife agrees with the priests. Probably like a lot of Catholics, I am holding on probably because I am too lazy to look elsewhere.
Imagine my shock, then, when my wife described her disgust at the Church’s leaders over the recent abuse scandals and hinted that it might be time to consider something else besides Catholicism. It would be so easy for me to leverage her feelings and begin my search for another church, but honestly, I don’t really want to find another church. I am holding on by my fingernails to my recollections of the Church I grew up in – when I was in parochial school, as an altar server, and in the children’s choir. I just really miss that. I imagine that I might get that Church back one day.
This crisis does make me contemplate what has to change – not only to calm the shocked faithful who remain, and to bring back Catholics who have left the Church or quit coming to Mass.
Every single scandal – whether involving one priest, one parish, one diocese, one state, one region – has been revealed because of the complaints of victims. Every one. When we hear things like the fact that the attorney general in Pennsylvania had to force dioceses to relinquish their “secret files” on abuse by priests, and consequently, the failure to act by Church leaders, it demonstrates to me that the Church leaders currently in place have no intention of cleaning things up.
It is impossible to believe the sincerity of Church leaders, that they will change their attitudes about such issues, when we have no evidence that Church leaders have taken proactive legal action against these predators. Pennsylvania was loud, but not nearly last – every state Attorney General in a tough election is going to be looking for “those secret files.”
Church members are not interested in the Church taking action within the Church. People want these criminals treated like the societal evil-doers they are. When Jesus offered to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to the Lord what is His, I don’t think He had just tithing on His mind, but maybe that’s just me.
Until Church leaders begin to take proactive legal action against predator priests and bishops, the exodus of the faithful will continue.
My Church has a real problem. My Church has allowed many of its leaders and pastors to victimize some by touching them in ways that never should have happened, and victimize others by effectively sucking the life out of our Church – our Church, not their Church. If it is going to continue to be our Church, something very dramatic is going to have to take place involving the current leadership.
Rick Wheelahan lives in Charlotte.