I am, as you know, not afraid of controversy and so I’m taking a brief sabbatical from my usual introversion to address an issue that I find deeply troubling and to which I would like some honest answers. Before I start I would like to make it clear that I do not mock faith and I fully respect those who believe in God. One of my greatest and most supportive friends is a devout Christian who, knowing my story, respects the reasons why I class myself as a non believer. Now I am going to ask a question that may well offend, although I hope it challenges.
How can anyone who believes in the essential innocence of children possibly remain part of a church that has systematically connived in the concealment of the abuse of those most vulnerable of people?
I have said before, and I reiterate it now, that I lost my faith at the age of 10 when the God that I had been assured loved children ignored my desperate prayers for help when I was being abused. I did not, however stop reading the bible rather I read it more carefully because I was looking for the part that said it was acceptable for children to suffer this torment. You will not be surprised to learn that I did not find any such passage. What I did find was Matthew 18 and here I present that section from the Douay-Rheims Bible
1 At that hour the disciples came to Jesus, saying: Who thinkest thou is the greater in the kingdom of heaven?
2 And Jesus calling unto him a little child, set him in the midst of them,
3 And said: Amen I say to you, unless you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
4 Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, he is the greater in the kingdom of heaven.
5 And he that shall receive one such little child in my name, receiveth me.
6 But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea.
7 Woe to the world because of scandals. For it must needs be that scandals come: but nevertheless woe to that man by whom the scandal cometh.
8 And if thy hand, or thy foot scandalize thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee. It is better for thee to go into life maimed or lame, than having two hands or two feet, to be cast into everlasting fire.
9 And if thy eye scandalize thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee. It is better for thee having one eye to enter into life, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.
10 See that you despise not one of these little ones: for I say to you, that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.
I make no apologies for using this version to illustrate my point. Far too many translations water the message down and present a scenario that talks of complicity on the part of the child. This, to me, is a distortion and a wicked rationalisation of reality whereby the clergy who perpetrate these obscenities seek to mitigate their guilt using the argument that “the child was willing”.
I’d like to make an observation before opening this discussion. At 7 Jesus is not accepting the inevitability of these atrocities, rather he is lamenting the fundamental wickedness of men and at 10 he reminds us that the little ones have the countenance of God so woe betide the evil men who use them badly.
Your Turn Now
M new-found friend. Organized religion causes me much grief, some more than others. Praying to idols, giving reverence to the image of a deity (or his mom), prayer by repetition, denying basic human needs.
Some people, I believe are wired to need to be told what to believe. It makes life so much simpler; if you don’t know something you just ask a “learned man” and they will tell you what to think, you don’t need to look at your belief system, just trust.
And as far as the followers, they just say “not my church, its someone elses” or ” they are always picking on “us” its not as bad as the “unbelievers” make it.
We are human and have screwed up beliefs, talking foundational beliefs, not religious. Beliefs about sex, about children, about hurt, about pain, about entitlement. Generally we are excellent at lying to ourselves, and in cases of abuse Very good at de-humanizing the victim.
In many religions, the priest, etc.. is looked up to as All-knowing, sometimes that sort of power goes to your head and you begin to justify your behavior as “OK” . After all everyone else comes to you with issues, you must be perfect
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that is mt two-cents, at least
I think your point is the exact reason the numbers of followers in the church are dwindling. Some people are moving to other churches – some are giving up on the idea of organized religion.
My personal experience (not having been abused, but been targeted) – as well as seeing the true men behind the cloth – soured me on the idea of religion. Not that I was much of a believer in the first place. But it was enough to push me over the tipping point.
It does seem fairly hypocritical of the church to stand by idly while their priests are abusing people left and right – and then take a political stand against gay marriage. So a sexual relationship between two consenting adults in a monogamous relationship is wrong, but it’s okay when it happens between a 50 year old priest and 12 year old victim in a sacristy. Hmm.
How do people stay? I don’t know. I think some people’s sense of tradition runs very deep. My mother for example. Perhaps they don’t blame the church as a whole, only those involved. Which seems to be a lot of people – given the size of the cover up. But maybe they still are able to see some good in the establishment. Others I think have selective hearing – they bury their heads in the sand.
-nl
Short answer to your question; You can’t.
To me it doesn’t matter how you twist and turn the bible, or any script, it’s still inexcusable. As long as the church hasn’t seriously dealt with its own actions throughout the years, I’m out.
Love
Daniel
I was brought up in the Methodist Church in the USA following the examples set forth by Charles Wesley (and his family) of London. In 1979 on a visit to England, I even visited and worshipped at the City Road Chapel and toured his home. In the church I have a member of the administrative board, chairman of committees, sunday school teacher of kids and adults, and lay leader. The church was always central in my family and I have always loved the music (Bach, etc.) and art (Rembrandt, da Vinci, etc.). When even now I want to feel spiritual, I listen to the music and view the art. In other words, pretty well indoctrinated and taught to accept the unknown on FAITH.
But now I am older and I hope wiser. In the last ten years, I have been asking questions, of why. Why are the so-called right wing evangelical conservatives in the USA getting away with so much evil in politics? Why does God not protect people from natural disasters, such as floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, and volcanoes? Why does God and the Roman Catholic Church allow its clergy to abuse children? Why has the church taken the riches (gold, jewels, etc.) from the poor to beautify itself or add to its own wealth? Why do God’s people get life-threatening diseases such as cancer? And finally the question that really closes me down, is why are so many wars fought in the name of religion? Crusades? Protestant-Cathoic war in Ireland? Jewish-Muslim (Israel, Palestine, etc.)? Nepal-Chinese war over religion? I have mentioned only a few of the more notable ones in this list. The Vatican seems to beg for peace, but it has been the unfallible Popes that have institigated many of the wars of the last two millenia.
Christopher Hitchens has explained it best to me in his excellent book, “god is not Great”!
I still feel spiritual. Jesus may have set a good example as a historical figure, but is not divine. But so have others such as Gandhi. God is now some abstract force out there for me, whose purpose I am not sure of. I will never be a follow of any other faith either because I cannot have FAITH in something that is unknown and will never be proven. No longer do I plan on an afterlife, because I now know that it is the life that I am privileged to live right is the one that matters.
David
I’m going to add my own comment here as I didn’t want the original post to ramble on into a personal rant. I must make it clear that the abuse I suffered was not at the hands of the clergy, I was made the unfortunate target of a young predator in my home village.
I was brought up in the Church of England and was taught to believe in God and the Bible in a very literal way. All the Rectors who served at my home church were married men with children of their own and I can state quite categorically that at no point was any innapropriate attention paid to me despite the fact that as an exceptional singer I received individual training from the Rector from the age of 8 thus providing ample opportunity, that in itself would seem to support the argument that enforced celibacy is an utter nonsense that creates the liklihood of abuse.
By the time I faced my personal crisis of faith I had already begun to question the literal understandings that church and school were expecting and had already begun to argue with almost everything I was told by teachers and clergy. Having my first real, desperate and completely genuine plea for help thrown back in my face was the last straw and at the age of 10 I decided that the whole edifice of religion was a giant fraud. My parents managed to ignore almost all of my questions and objections and insisted that I was confirmed at 13, take communion every week and act as a Server as well as a Chorister which resulted in a tremendous row when I was 15 when I accused them of making me into a hypocrite. Unfortunately my father had a rather direct approach to arguments from me and things didn’t go well, not a very balanced theological discussion. In the end I remained an enforced churchgoer until I left home the day I finished my final S Level English Lit paper at the age of 18. WIth the exception of “duty” attendances I haven’t had anything to do with religion, organised or otherwise, since then.
Apart from my understandable anger at any abuse of children I think the thing that sickens me most is the false piety of these reprehensible men and their masters, I’m somewhat reminded of the Pharisees. From where I stand the hypocrisy and unabashed sinfulness of these “holy” men denies the very existence of the God they claim to serve. I’m not personally convinced that there is a solution to this deep rooted problem because even weeding out all those who have systematically abused those youngsters they’re charged to protect will not stop a new wave of abusers replacing them. There are times when I wish I did believe because then I would at least have the satisfaction of knowing that each and every one of these evil men would be doomed to an eternity in hell although even that seems a somewhat inadequate punishment sometimes.
For myself I will continue to do the best I can in the only life I believe I have.
Love
Malcolm
Great minds think alike, Mac, because I asked some of these same questions on my blog today, given all these new revelations about the Catholic church.
I understand faith, but I don’t understand BLIND faith, that makes you look away from criminal behavior simply because it’s the leaders of your church who are the criminals.
If I were Catholic, I’d still be Catholic, but I would no longer attend any church service that does not denou8nce in no uncertain terms the crimes upon children which have been committed, covered up, and ignored, by the Catholic church.
That faith is not only blind, but deaf and dumb as well.
Hi Mac, new profile pic. Cute! Here’s my thoughts in your struggle with your lost faith. First of all God doesn’t sin, man does. No man is perfect, not the pope, not Billy Graham, no man. The Bible makes that clear. And just because a man wears fancy robes and funny hats doesn’t change the fact that he’s still a man, a sinning man just like every other man is a sinning man. Yes the Catholic church is going through one hell of a mess right now. But this mess was brought on not as a means to correct wrongs of the past, but rather for the love of money! In the Bible in the book of Timothy it says that in the last days people will become “lovers of money” and as I look around me i see in the news all the lovers of money who are suing here and there and everywhere trying to make some easy money. My question is how does money change anything from the past? It doesn’t. It’s just greed, pure and simple. Money doesn’t change anything. It only spreads the greed in an ever widening circle. And so in conclusion regarding the catholic church or any sort of child abuse no matter where it comes from, we need to blame the man responsible for the abuse, not the faith itself.
There’s far more good people within various faiths than bad people. But the news media prefers seeking out the bad within our lives while turning a blind eye and completely ignoring the goodness that many of us possess.
I remain in the Catholic Church because what it gives is still there despite the crimes, sins, errors of judgment, and stupidity of some of its clergy.
Every act of sexual abuse was not only a crime under civil law, but also a crime under church law as well as a sin. In other words, it was never official church policy to condone or enable the abuse. But there were many who thought there were better ways of dealing with the abusers than the legal processes that were in place. I think that in most cases those who kept things quiet naively but honestly believed that they were doing the best for all concerned.
Fortunately, we have largely cleaned things up. In 2009 there were six possibly true accusations of sexual abuse committed that year by priests in the United States. Whereas in the early 1980′s in the Boston Archdiocese alone there were allegedly an average of 27 acts per year. This gives an indication of the extent to which the Church has cleaned itself up. And I think fair-minded people should applaud the progress we have made and encourage us to keep up the good work.
The stories that are getting people riled up today are from long ago, not what is happening now, and they tell is nothing we didn’t already know about how people behaved back then.
But I’m getting a bit afield. The Church proclaims the Gospel and ministers the sacraments. So I’m staying with it.
I remain in the Catholic Church because what it gives is still there despite the crimes, sins, errors of judgment, and stupidity of some of its clergy.
Every act of sexual abuse was not only a crime under civil law, but also a crime under church law as well as a sin. In other words, it was never official church policy to condone or enable the abuse. But there were many who thought there were better ways of dealing with the abusers than the legal processes that were in place. I think that in most cases those who kept things quiet and removed priests from the scene of the crime naively but honestly believed that they were doing the best for all concerned.
Fortunately, we have largely cleaned things up. In 2009 there were six possibly true accusations of sexual abuse committed that year by priests in the United States. Whereas in the early 1980′s in the Boston Archdiocese alone there were allegedly an average of 27 acts per year. This gives an indication of the extent to which the Church has cleaned itself up. And I think fair-minded people should applaud the progress we have made and encourage us to keep up the good work.
The stories that are getting people riled up today are from long ago, not what is happening now, and they tell us nothing we didn’t already know about how people behaved back then.
But I’m getting a bit afield. The Church proclaims the Gospel and ministers the sacraments. So I’m staying with it.
I remain in the Catholic Church because what it gives is still there despite the crimes, sins, errors of judgment, and stupidity of some of its clergy.
Every act of sexual abuse was not only a crime under civil law, but also a crime under church law as well as a sin. In other words, it was never official church policy to condone or enable the abuse. But there were many who thought there were better ways of dealing with the abusers than the legal processes that were in place. I think that in most cases those who kept things quiet and removed priests from the scene of the crime naively but honestly believed that they were doing the best for all concerned.
Fortunately, we have largely cleaned things up. In 2009 there were six possibly true accusations of sexual abuse committed that year by priests in the United States. Whereas in the early 1980′s in the Boston Archdiocese alone there were allegedly an average of 27 acts per year. This gives an indication of the extent to which the Church has cleaned itself up. And I think fair-minded people should applaud the progress we have made and encourage us to keep up the good work.
The stories that are getting people riled up today are from long ago, not what is happening now, and they tell us nothing we didn’t already know about how people behaved back then.
But I’m getting a bit afield. The Church proclaims the Gospel and ministers the sacraments. So I’m staying with it.
Sorry, have I missed something here?
Which deity (form of God) wrote the bible?
And which version of the bible did it write and how did we get hold of it?
I know who wrote the King James bible which I was brought up by my mother to believe in (my father didn’t believe in it) and it was written by a political committee appointed by a king.
I wonder why we are apparently basis our argument around a book with men wrote?
That surely is the very heart of this issue. A text written by men and yet ascribed to a god is given the force of divine authority and then casually tossed aside when the rules contained therein fail to suit those very men who insist that we live by that text.
I merely used the Bible (I too was brought up on the King James version) to illustrate the existence of a specific proscription as mentioned in Matthew 18 and I use the version I quoted because I believe that the word “scandalise” conveys the proper message.
Let’s not forget that these selectively pious men have enthusiatically berated homosexuals using the very shaky foundation of Leviticus. It would seem that hypocrisy is as hypocrisy does.
Malcolm
I think that down deep we are all children crying in the darkest part of the endless night for a light for our eyes to fasten to, our hearts of hang on that there will be a tomorrow, the sun will return. We want to believe if we follow a set of rules as perfectly as possible that we wont be left in the dark when we die but will sit with a loving father in the endless light.
The gnostics believe that the entire bible is a parable a way of learning how to know the love and the lessons God wants us to know.
As for what I believe? I am a agnostic. I never believe nor disbelieve. If there is indeed a God, how are we, weak feeble humans even grasp the smallest part of what he/she is? We can not. Our jobs are to be kind to each other, treat others with the same sort of kindness we would like to receive from others. The only thing I really ever got out of the bible that “spoke” to me was not to judge others. We can only see their lives from the outside, not what the truth of their lives is actually.
Organized religion is great for those that need that personal safety net, they need the extra comfort of not being alone in the night. As for me, i never seemed to get much in the way of love either from the bible or from the population held within the church. Great topic!
The Golden Rule is about the only thing that remains with me from the Christian Bible. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Sometimes, it is expressed negatively and as I understand it, all religions follow the golden rule however it is expressed. That is the one thing they have in common.
So few people in today’s “civilized” society” follow the golden rule including religious people. If everyone did, what else would would we need, because that would accomplish a perfect society.
I hope to NEVER hear another diatribe about SIN, what it is, where it came from, where we’re going, etc. Adam and Eve — who dreamed up that fiction. Same ilk that gave us the ficticious stories of the virgin birth, and earthly dead bodies coming back to life. And take it on FAITH, believe it is unbelievable and cannot be proven.
Folks, just follow the GOLDEN RULE, and let it go at that.
David