I preface my statement by saying that every bishop and priest accused of these horrible crimes or of covering them up must be subjected to criminal trials by both civil and canonical authorities and, if found guilty, punished in the civil and canonical spheres in manners commensurate to their crimes.
That said, Ms. Zito and every Catholic who has drawn this wretched and false distinction, that they can be good Catholics and abandon the Catholic Church, are allowing themselves to fall straight into the pits of Hell.
To have the Catholic Faith is to be part of the visible and institutional Church. To be in Communion with the Catholic Church is to hold the Catholic Faith. The two are inseparable. To suggest otherwise is heresy, to abandon the Church is apostasy, and to organize others to do the same is schism. I do not accuse Ms. Zito of any of the three... but her dangerous distinction, if not abandoned, leads her down that path.
What if they’re guilty but found innocent? What if they are falsely accused? Only a victim would know the truth but even then some are pathological liars.
“The two are inseparable. To suggest otherwise is heresy, to abandon the Church is apostasy, and to organize others to do the same is schism.”
The Church of my youth is utterly and irrevocably corrupt. It is no more “of God” than Charles Manson.
Not long after Confirmation a Priest tried to rub my butt. That’s when I left and that was 50 years ago.
I encourage all those who believe the bible to leave today, in spite of your hollow admonition that I’m going to hell. Sir, you are already IN hell.
So if the Church is falling in the pits of hell we are just supposed follow it? That doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. I doubt that what Jesus would do. As I recall he got a bit violent in synagogue once over crooked clergy. What the Church has been doing institutionally is way worse than selling things in synagogue. I don’t recall being taught to follow those who are being wicked. It seems as though a good percentage of the ruling hierarchy of the Church are sickos. It very frustrating. You want to be paying for pedophiles.
I think you’re being a bit disingenuous towards the non-Catholics on here.
The Vatican is essentially a DICTATORSHIP. As Lay Catholics you and I have absolutely NO POWER to force the POPE nor ANY Bishop from his job.
Frankly I think few if any will leave. On the contrary they appear to be digging in.
Your “Holy Mother Church, Always and Forever, Come What May” attitude actually empowers these people because you are telegraphing the fact that you are unwilling to leave for ANY reason.
Reminds me of the story about Huey Long who got 51% of the Louisiana State Legislature to sign a letter stating that they would not vote to impeach him for ANY reason. That gave him carte blanche to do whatever the hell he wanted.
IMO if you are unwilling to walk away when others cross your uncrossable lines, then you really have no principles.
As an outside observer, I’d say the Church brand has been tarnished, if not ruined, by the prevalence of homosexuality and pedophilia in its ranks.
But, what I’m curious about, is how prevalent is it? 1%? 10%? 50%? Can anyone closer to the Church than I give their guesstimates?
It’s the power and deceit of the Institutional Church that has led to this debacle. The truths of God and Catholicism are not neatly contained in some book of Canon Law, or in what some Pope said. It’s not embodied in whether or not you eat meat on Fridays during lent, or say the Rosary every day. These truths are much deeper than any Church traditions, and if you only have the traditions, you have nothing.
If we fail in protecting innocence (and children ARE innocent - irrespective of any Church teaching of original sin) then we have failed God. It’s that simple.
The history of the Church is littered with too many bad characters. This has to stop.
Blaming the victim is one of your sacraments. It is required for the organization to perpetuate itself. I've seen this over and over. Once people make the logical connection that abuse is part of the system then the spell is broken and they are free.
It seems my comment earlier today has offended quite a few other FReepers. I took a hard line in defense of the Catholic Church, and I don’t apologize for that. I do see that what I posted was thoroughly misunderstood. I don’t intend to respond to any who have pinged me directly! as I feel it won’t do any good... but I will respond collectively.
I don’t think most people here can understand how angry, disgusted, and saddened I am as a Catholic who works closely with my parish and diocese. I won’t give details, but people that I love have been harmed by these sins of sex abuse by priests. This is a medium that does not allow me to convey how disgusted and infuriated I truly am. Nothing can justify the evil done by the priests and bishops who have committed and enabled this abuse. Nothing destroys individual lives and souls than the sins of a priest, and nothing destroys the Church more and prevents the spread of the Gospel. Countless innocent souls have been harmed in countless ways, directly and indirectly.
I hate the idea that these priests and bishops have gone untried and unpunished. I hate that the ones that are innocent have not had a chance to have the truth aired and their innocence proclaimed. Far more than that, I hate and am disgusted by the fact that the guilty ones (and I believe that far more of the accused are guilty than are innocent!) have not been forced to face their accusers and answer for their crimes. I am disgusted by the ones that have died without facing justice in this life. I am disgusted by the ones that have been permitted to retire or be laicized and shrink into obscurity. I am disgusted by the fact that public crime demands public trial and public punishment, yet so often victims and the public have been deprived of it. I want to see the return of the Rite of Degradation of Clerics, so that the guilty bishops and priests can have all the honors of their state be publicly stripped from them as they have stripped away the faith and innocence of so many others... and then have them be relinquished to the civil authorities to receive the justice that civil society demands.
For Christians who have have been raised in and/or baptized into any other church, I don’t expect you to agree with me in standing by the Catholic Church in spite of all of this, and I can’t force you to. I can’t even convince you to. You carry the presuppositions and Scriptural interpretations of those churches, and this scandal, perhaps more than any other, confirms the bias that the to be Christian—to be a member of the Church—is only to be part of a merely spiritual community of believers where any visible structure is merely accidental.
As a Catholic, I reject that notion as contrary to Scripture and Tradition... it is not and was never part of the Catholic Faith. I believe that when Christ founded the Church, the one that continues today as the Catholic Church, He founded it as a spiritual community with a visible hierarchy and structure—the Successor of St. Peter as the Pope, the Vicar of Christ, and the Successors of the Apostles as bishops; the presbyters (“priests”) and deacons to assist them, and all of them to serve all the baptized as the People of God. I know some bad ones, but I also know many, many good ones. But I’m not Catholic because of them (bad or good)... sometimes I’m Catholic in spite of them. I’m Catholic because I love Christ and believe that my Catholic Faith is the one I received from Him.
Even when one (or many) choose by their actions to become Judases in their betrayal of Christ, it does not justify vilifying the entire structure, nor does it justify leaving. It is understandable why some do... that is what scandal does and why scandal is evil. But the Catholic Faith is an indivisible thing, and it was given by Christ and unpacked over centuries—and you either accept it all or you accept none of it—a Catholic cannot choose to accept some pieces and not others. Many Catholics do this badly; at times, I have done it badly. But because I love Christ, and I love His Church, my only response is to reform it from within... first by striving to be holy, then by encouraging others to do the same. That is not the response of one trapped in a “dictatorship”... that is the response of someone free in Christ Jesus.
Nobody—absolutely nobody—no matter how offended, scandalized, or even victimized, has the RIGHT to convince somebody to leave the Catholic Church—to abandon the Church that Jesus began. Nobody inside the visible Church, and certainly nobody outside. Of course, on Judgment Day, those inside will be more harshly judged, and those clergy who drove others to leave through the scandal of their sins most of all. The abuse was evil. The enabling heaped on an additional evil. The calls to leave heap on a further additional evil. My conscience won’t let me stand idly by, and I will denounce all of them as I am able. I don’t want to have to answer for my silence. My anger directed toward the ones inciting apostasy comes from my belief that the Catholics who leave are depriving themselves, urged into starvation by the sins of others. As they endanger the souls of others, they endanger their own as well.
Some of you here see me as calloused, blind, unprincipled, perpetuating the cycle of abuse, foolish, deluded, lacking in faith. Some of you have accused me of some of these things earlier in this thread. This is fine, because I know what is in my heart, and I am confident in my beliefs. Your alternate suggestions, palatable to some, are unacceptable to me—neither to accept myself, nor to concede as a viable option to others. Here I stand, and I cannot do otherwise.