As another church scandal hits the news, another almost 300 priests are named in sexual abuse cases in Texas, how can this religion, NOT be smeared?
How can its validity still stand strong?
Seriously, I am asking how its content can still be a container of hope, love etc?
How can good people stay?
Or maybe, what will it take for you to go?
I sincerely can't understand how you can keep the faith separated from the sexual abuse that is so prevalent within it.
I had a conversation with a woman from another church, (not catholic) who was abused say 50 years ago, and she was telling me about how it has gotten so much worse.
And, I asked her, "how can you stay in a church knowing that so much abuse is going on?" And, she said, it isn't the church.
I asked her to tell me how she can hold them both, but in two separated containers.
How can you have this undying faith and belief in a system that YOU KNOW has not stepped in and stopped abuse.
She herself knows that the leaders have been abusers. And, yet she has faith in it.
Faith in what?
How can the system whose leaders abuse, still be something to be faithful to?
How can you separate it into two cans, the abuse and the faith?
Seriously asking?
I truly do not get it.
I am mind blown when talking with folks who still remain so fervently faithful AFTER knowing about the abuse inside their faith.
How can catholics hold the system, the faith, separated from the abuse.
How can it NOT touch the faith, when the leaders are doing the abusing?
And, the old adage, we are all sinners, is not an answer.
Just as someone told me, no sin is too big to forgive, when talking about my father sexually abusing little girls.
Seriously.
IF that is what your faith teaches, do you not see it as a problem or perhaps a benefit to those abusing inside of your faith?
What I am losing faith for, or hope in, is the non- abusing to leave.
When will it be enough?
How many children will it take to make you seriously look upon the faith you are holding dear?
And further more, how can that same faith not hold the trauma of all the children that have suffered in the name of God, in the hope of you going to heaven one day.
I just don't get it.
It makes sense to me that pedophiles abuse children, that is what they do.
What doesn't make sense is good hearted women (and men) staying.
I just don't get it.
Certainly the God you believe in, would want you to at some point take a stand.
At some point walk away from systems who repeatedly abuse and cover up, who continue to make a new victim over and over again.
How can you not be mixed in the mixture of abuse, coverup and knowing?
You are playing a part in the whole culture of sexual abuse.
In each abuse scandal that happens, the very large and focal ones we all see, the similar refrain that weaves itself through, is how many knew.
How many knew and did not report.
Or, how many knew and forgave them.
The victims stand, abused again, when they discover that good people knew and did nothing.
Meaning, they did not exit the church.
They did not give names to the police.
They did not show some sign of being anguished by the fact that abuse was going on.
If only, the good hearted would leave.
If they would lead the way out of the abuse.
If they would show the victims, that their lives mattered enough to go.
I sat across from the woman whose whole life was led by the church she believes in, whose whole life she tried to be as good as she can be, whose whole life was littered by the acts of forgiveness, her intentions, faithful.
And, yet.
She wasn't able to take a stand.
Against what is soiling her religion.
Instead, she remains faithful.
Obedient.
Compliant.
Steadfast.
A member of a church that continues to not make it their business to look into matters of abuse.
Now tell me what is she a member of?
She doesn't see her forgiveness as being an instrument that keeps the pedophiles washed white as snow.
She doesn't see her ability to hold their sins in one container and the ideal of the faith in another.
Isn't that like holding on to the highest potential, even when there is little evidence to hold it.
Like loving what some one could be, not what some one is.
What is the real picture of these churches?
What is the real content?
While you are holding on to the picture of wholeness, of good, of hope, of love, you are not seeing the abused children.
Perhaps these are not your children, not in your circle, not this or not that, but the fact remains, the system you have faith in, which guides your life, IS also a smoothly operating system that systematically has for decades and decades, kept in the dark the facts they have known.
Sexual abuse is prevalent inside.
It isn't like the leaders are shocked.
They have helped keep the darkness, by covering up the abuse.
And, I can't but help see you as co-conspirators, for you too know and do not leave.
In all my years of trying to figure out the landscape of abuse, the part that stumbles me the most, is those who are unable to move.
Unable to change their minds.
Unable to see that there is only one container.
One reality.
I find that the most faithful, the most diehard believers are the most frustrating.
Their believing minds will not accept another thought that contradicts what they were taught to believe.
As the quote says, "A mind convinced against its will is of the same opinion still."
There is a mind blockage that keeps them from moving differently than they have all these years.
Something inside of them refuses to give up on their religion, refuses to see that IF it can knowingly coverup sexual abuse against children, IT has very little value.
How can it maintain value after decades of coverup?
How?
So, in the wake of another headline, what will leave me most confounded, is the lack of movement from the faithful.
