My friend says I can still talk to you, even if I don\u2019t believe anymore. And after this week, I really don\u2019t think I can believe anymore. But, like the prisoner-priest speaking to Edmond, she said it\u2019s okay. Because you believe in me. And she believes in you. And well, I believe her.<\/span> Content advisory: child molestation, domestic violence.<\/span> But now I feel like I can\u2019t trust my memory anymore, which is so tied to my sanity.<\/span><\/p>\n So that\u2019s exciting. Madwoman in the attic and all that.<\/span> And before that, it was the sick feeling I got reading about the <\/span>married Catholic priest who assaulted his wife in a church<\/span><\/a>. My father wanted to move us to the Ukraine once so that he could become a married Catholic priest. Reading that article, I was just glad it wasn\u2019t my own mother I was reading about. Because it could have been.<\/span> And all this was before the <\/span>Grand Jury report<\/span><\/a> about the horrific abuses that so many Catholic priests committed against the Catholic children of Pennsylvania. But see, the knowledge of rampant priest abuse isn\u2019t new to me. All through my childhood, my father was one of the men who worked to expose the <\/span>priest sexual abuses in my home diocese of Altoona-Johnstown<\/span><\/a>. He blamed all of it on homosexual priests. Because that way he could <\/span>other <\/span><\/i>these abusers. If these evil priests were <\/span>gay<\/span><\/i>, then they were <\/span>nothing <\/span><\/i>like him. They were not Fine Upstanding Catholic Men.<\/span><\/p>\n I feel odd. The priest abuse Grand Jury report has shaken me, and I didn\u2019t expect that. It was easier to accept when it was just Boston and my own diocese, Altoona-Johnstown. That was simpler. Then it could just be blamed on two corrupt, horrible dioceses. The rest were safe.<\/span><\/p>\n Psych.<\/span><\/p>\n So now I\u2019m standing on the outside of my identity, looking in curiously, not sure what to make of that person I once was, the person I am no longer. And I\u2019m a bit unfamiliar with this person I now am.<\/span><\/p>\n Because I can\u2019t trust my faith anymore, either. Not my memory and not my faith, once an integral part of my identity\u2014faith in this Catholic Church that has protected aggressors and abusers for millennia at the cost of their victims, of the vulnerable, of the ones that Christ supposedly came to protect, to serve, to love. The ones his church was supposed to be supporting all along.<\/span> Lord, I\u2019d like to believe. Help my unbelief.<\/span><\/i>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>So I guess it\u2019ll come out in the wash.<\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>You know, I\u2019ve been warning you this was coming\u2014the disintegration of my faith. I told you I\u2019m drifting. And maybe you\u2019re not there at all, so it\u2019s silly to ask you to listen.<\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>I asked you to reweave the lifelines between us. Did you? I don\u2019t see them. It\u2019s more like they\u2019ve melted away, this illusion I was drowned to believe.<\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/615\/2018\/08\/lamb-sheep-farm-animal-47078.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>So what prompted my unbelief? Well, <\/span>I learned a few weeks ago that I was molested as a child by my pediatrician<\/span><\/a>. The memory wasn\u2019t new, but the context was: reading the <\/span>news article about the 70 other counts of child abuse and molestation against Dr. Barto<\/span><\/a> forced me to recognize that his clammy doctor\u2019s fingers weren\u2019t actually supposed to be touching my six- or seven-year-old genitals 17 years ago.<\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>And you know what? He was a Fine Upstanding Catholic Father. I\u2019m not shocked, really. After my life, I can\u2019t be.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>Then, last weekend, I read an article about a <\/span>woman who was raped ritualistically during Mass by a priest<\/span><\/a>. He was one of her closest friends and her spiritual director. Another Fine Upstanding Catholic Man. Another aggressor.<\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>But these things aren\u2019t new. 6 months ago, it was <\/span>this Christendom college survivor\u2019s story<\/span><\/a> that made me break down and ugly cry as my roommates tried to figure out what to do with me.<\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>A month before that, it was reading <\/span>Maria Mochow\u2019s account of her father\u2019s abuse and the way Fine Upstanding Catholic Men gaslit her about it.<\/span><\/a> Her story made me finally sit down and write my own, revealing the <\/span>depths of abuse my mother, brothers, and I suffered at the hands of my own Fine Upstanding Catholic father<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>At this point, I\u2019m really sick of learning about abuse cases against Fine Upstanding Catholic Men. It makes it fucking hard to be Catholic these days. Makes it hard to believe in this Catholic God of love. Or maybe that\u2019s just me.<\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>Maybe I\u2019m just weak. Just bitter. I know someone reading this is typing a comment right now, informing me that\u2019s the case.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>But you know, the thing is, I\u2019d still like to believe in you, God-person. Even now. If I did, I\u2019d like to believe you were Christ, or at least that you were like him. Compassionate. Giving. Loving. Dying each day beside the victims of Fine Upstanding Catholic Men.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>But after this week, after these last few years, after learning that my childhood was one of Catholic domestic violence\u2014it\u2019s just really hard to believe in you. It\u2019s hard to pray to you.<\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>So maybe my atheist friends are right. Maybe I should give in and give up. It\u2019s getting harder to believe they\u2019re wrong\u2014to believe you exist at all. Or to believe that you\u2019re not just some sadistic being out in the cosmos, trying to guilt us and make us miserable for your own entertainment.<\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>Because the more I live and the older I get, the more of this painful world I see. And the harder it gets to believe you\u2019re not the spiteful-old-bastard-god of my father. Or else that you\u2019re just not there, period.<\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>Lord, I want to believe. Help my unbelief.<\/span><\/i>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>So now I lie in my bed, writing through my phone\u2019s voice-to-text because it\u2019s after 1:00 a.m. and I should be asleep.<\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>And I\u2019m trying to decide if I can still claim to be sane when I\u2019m praying to a God I don\u2019t think I believe in anymore.<\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>Lord, I wish I could believe. Help my unbelief.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n