Why I'm A Lapsed Catholic
Too many Church positions trouble me, as does the awful legacy of sexual abuse
I was raised Catholic and attended church well into my twenties until I began to lose interest in the ritual and repetition. Still, I did my master’s thesis on American Catholic responses to evolution, polygenism, and geology in the 19th century, a version of which was published when I was in my early thirties. To this day, I continue to read the New Testament and am still inspired by the teachings of Jesus Christ. As a popular ad campaign puts it, He (Jesus Christ) gets us. Or at least he gets me, or I get him.
Yet I am seriously out of step with today’s Catholic church. I believe priests should be able to marry if they so choose. I believe women who have a calling should be ordained as priests. I believe the Church’s position on abortion is absolutist and wrong. More than anything, I believe the Church is too concerned with itself and its own survival and therefore is alienated from the true spirit of Christ, a spirit of compassion and love.
Scandals involving the Church contributed to my loss of commitment to the Church and especially its patriarchal hierarchy, which was so intimately involved in the coverups of crimes committed against innocents. The betrayal struck close to home. In my hometown, the Church assigned a known predatory priest. His name was Robert F. Daly. He abused minors and was eventually defrocked by the Church, but far too late and more than thirty years after his abusive behavior.
Fortunately, I was never abused. I had a scheduled meeting with him, alone, when I was about fifteen, but fortunately it was cancelled at the last minute. So many other children and teens were not so fortunate. To be blunt, I remain thoroughly disgusted by the moral cowardice exhibited by the Church in confronting fully its painful legacy of failing to protect vulnerable children against predatory priests. Shame on the Church.
The Bible says that all sins may be forgiven except those against the Holy Spirit. This is supposed to refer to a stubborn form of blasphemy. Yet I truly can’t think of a worse sin committed by the Church than to allow innocent children to suffer at the hands of predators disguised as “fathers.”
I have written to the Church and have heard from prominent leaders that the Church takes these crimes seriously and can now police itself in the matter of predatory priests. I’m sure these officials are sincere, but the idea of a self-policing church is a self-serving one.
As I wrote to one Catholic bishop, who assured me the Church now “gets it”:
Skeptics would reply that it took a huge scandal with major financial implications to force the Church to do the right thing.
For too long, the Church tolerated these crimes. The Church is hardly unique here. Think of sexual assaults within the military (notably during basic training), or think of the Sandusky scandal at Penn State, where Joe Paterno clearly knew of (some) of Sandusky's abuse yet chose not to take adequate action. (I was at Penn College when that scandal broke.)
The challenge, as you know, is that the Church is supposed to be a role model, an exemplar of virtue. Priests hold a special place of trust within communities and are therefore held in especially high regard.
As my brother-in-law, who's now 76, explained to me, if a young boy or girl accused a priest of assault in the 1950s or 1960s, few if any people would have believed them. Indeed, the youngster was likely to be slapped by a parent for defaming a priest. That moral authority, that respect, was earned by so many priests who had done the right thing, set the right example. It was ruined by a minority of priests who became predators and a Church hierarchy that largely looked the other way, swept it under the rug, or otherwise failed to act quickly and decisively.
As you say, the Church has learned. It is now better at policing itself. The shame of it all is that it took so much suffering by innocents, and the revelations of the same and the moral outrage that followed, to get the Church to change.
I’m encouraged by the example set by Pope Francis and especially his commitment to peace, but I don’t believe I will ever be a practicing Catholic again. Too many church policies still trouble me, as does the awful legacy of the sexual abuse scandal.
I was raised Catholic, attended Catholic schools thru high school and went through all the religious rites and ceremonies required to stay in good standing. I had my qualms about the church-most notably the covering up of child sex scandals-and stopped attending church as an adult. I too was lucky to have never been abused by a priest.
When our two children were young my wife, (raised in a family that did not a have strong religious beliefs and were not church members) thought we should start going to our nearby Catholic church for the sake of the children. We started going and I sat quietly troubled by some of the things I heard from the pulpit both during services and in meetings inside the church for my wife who was ready to become “officially Catholic”.
She was previously married and the annulment process required of her was invasive, draconian and frankly pretty ridiculous for a religion claiming to welcome everyone with open arms. I remained steadfastly supportive of her though and helped as much as I could.
After getting the Papal stamp of approval on her annulment and attending instructional classes for several weeks, she and a dozen other converts were to be officially welcomed into the flock during a Sunday mass. She was so pleased and looking forward to it.
That Sunday she went with the others to an area behind the altar out of sight where they would later be brought forward and introduced to the congregation. A short time later before mass started she came back to our pew visibly upset. I asked what was wrong and she said that she was told...at the last minute...there was some additional requirement not yet met and she would be excluded for now. I was incensed. We quietly left and have never set foot there again.
Needless to say the entire experience was extremely upsetting to my wife. I had a frank discussion with her that day about religiousness, the sordid history of religion and that belonging to a church was not a requirement to being spiritual and moral. I shared my misgivings having been fully immersed in it for many years. That experience and the news of a well loved and respected teacher at my high school being fired several years ago after being outed as gay was the final straw for me. If those aren’t examples of blatant hypocrisy of a religion that asks, “What would Jesus do?” then I don’t know what to say. They are strong arguments for not being involved with the organized church structure or their “administration” of religious judgment and punishment.
It’s most definitely not for everyone.
It's interesting that so many of us here have that common touchstone of being raised Catholic.
Perhaps the roots of my dissatisfaction with the organized church began in Catholic elementary school where without fully understanding it in the early 1960s, that something was wrong for the priests to each have their own cars and living in air-conditioned rooms in the rectory, while the nuns shared one vehicle and lived without air conditioning on the top floor of a flat roofed school in hot and humid St. Louis.
I was even an altar boy - having to learn the Latin mass (before the move to the supposedly improved mass in English). Then there was the guitar phase. But none of the sermons and teachings seemed relevant to a changing world - torn apart by war and racial strife.
Over time, as I grew older, it seemed form became more important than substance. And I drifted away from the organized aspects through my college years.
I suppose that even with that it's impossible to forget the moral teachings by sincere women and men who pledged their lives to religious service. I hold many of them in deep respect - and perhaps the faith in something bigger than oneself and sense of community they taught is what endures.