{"id":32673,"date":"2018-09-25T08:04:30","date_gmt":"2018-09-25T14:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/publiccatholic\/?p=32673"},"modified":"2024-11-18T04:15:23","modified_gmt":"2024-11-18T11:15:23","slug":"i-will-not-leave-the-catholic-church-this-is-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/publiccatholic\/2018\/09\/i-will-not-leave-the-catholic-church-this-is-why\/","title":{"rendered":"I Will Not Leave the Catholic Church. This is Why."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>
Photo Source: Flickr Creative Commons by Robert Cheaib https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/theologhia\/<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

I\u2019ve been asked several times why I stay Catholic in the face of 20 years of dark scandal involved deep failures on the part of the priesthood, the bishops, and as has recently come to light, the papacy going back at least to Pope Paul VI.<\/p>\n

This column, which I wrote for the National Catholic Register<\/a>, is answer.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been treading water ever since the Church sex abuse scandal started touching the Throne of Peter.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t go into all the charges and countercharges of this clerical he said\/he said. I\u2019m certainly not going to try to untangle the spider\u2019s web of what-did-the-pope-know and when-did-he-know-it and which-pope-knew-first.<\/p>\n

I cannot do those things, either for you or for myself. Odd as this sounds, the answers to those questions aren\u2019t the most important part of this, at least not for me and for you, as we try to learn how to walk by faith across this glacier of distrust and scandal which has shrouded our Church like a tomb.<\/p>\n

A longtime reader of mine asked me how and why I bother to stay Catholic, given all that has happened. I told her I would write about it, but I haven\u2019t. The reason I haven\u2019t is that the clerical sewage just keeps pouring down on our heads. There\u2019s no stopping point in this cacophony of tragedy to get my bearings and think through the what-nows of that question.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t even feel it all. I have to keep it at an emotional distance in order to comprehend it. There is no space in this to digest things emotionally. Without that, I\u2019m stuck at several steps away from thinking it through and arriving at a personal road map forward.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re being battered by unfolding scandals involving the unthinkable. The certainties of our faith are falsely portrayed, by some clergymen, as less certain than they really are.<\/p>\n

Despite all this, I have a clear answer for my reader who asked me why I bother to stay Catholic, given what has been called the \u201ccataclysmic moral failing\u201d of the Church. It\u2019s simple enough that it sounds childlike. But it\u2019s strong enough that I am certain that I will wander and wobble across this glacier of lies and corruption without falling into a crevasse or sliding over the edge and down to my destruction.<\/p>\n

I will stay Catholic because I am Catholic, and I am Catholic because the Holy Eucharist is real. Jesus is really and truly present, under the appearances of bread and wine, and I can touch him. I can go in the middle of the night and sit with him. The Holy Eucharist, which is a part of the enduring scandal of the cross, of following an incarnate God who was an executed criminal who died a tortuous, ignoble death at the hands of corrupt priests and a cowardly politician, is the real presence of that same incarnate God in the now.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

\u00a0Far too many of our religious leaders act as if they serve the Church, but not Christ; that the laity must be protected from the truth; and thus that it is a moral good to lie, obfuscate and hide evil, even at the cost of enabling that evil to flourish and spread. They seem convinced that if the Church hierarchy\u2019s sins are revealed the Church will fail, and that if the Church fails, God Himself fails.Far too many of our religious leaders have used this bogus reasoning to back themselves into a liar\u2019s corner. But Jesus Christ does not need their lies and depredations in the name of defending the Church. He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords because that\u2019s who he is, not because the Church says so.<\/p>\n

I will stay in the Church because Christ in the Holy Eucharist called me here. I will stay because He is really, truly and substantially present in the Holy Eucharist.<\/p>\n

But I will not defend monstrous behavior. I will not deify men in collars. These bishops, cardinals and popes whose guilt we are so assiduously trying to understand, are, a good many of them, deeply corrupt. That is obvious. The priests, from whose hands we receive Holy Communion and to whom we confess our sins, are also, many of them, corrupt.<\/p>\n

Read the rest here<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been asked several times why I stay Catholic in the face of 20 years of dark scandal involved deep failures on the part of the priesthood, the bishops, and as has recently come to light, the papacy going back at least to Pope Paul VI. This column, which I wrote for the National Catholic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1155,"featured_media":29357,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[726,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-following-christ","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nI Will Not Leave the Catholic Church. 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