Why in God's name do I stay in this Church?

This photo is a picture of one of the Good Guys!

A friend who follows my Blog expressed concern regarding my current relationship with the Roman Catholic Church.  It has helped me to examine more closely my current feelings regarding my church.  I guess the fact that I still refer to the RC church as “my” church is the first clue to my feelings.  I was born into this church and was baptized at St. Michael the Archangel on Jerome Street in Brooklyn, NY over 65 years ago and I hope to die as a member of this church.   My connections to the Catholic Church are deep and complex and, like anything this cavernous are not easily understood or explained.    

As I have expressed in some previous blogs, I had a number of significantly negative experiences when I was switched from PS 76 to St. Michael’s Elementary School in the 5^th grade.      I was a bright and inquisitive little girl and I remember my first 5 years in public school as happy and relaxed.   When I started in Sister Christiana’s 5^th grade class at St. Michael’s, this all changed dramatically.   The treatment I received that year was destructive and downright disrespectful and damaging.    By the time I graduated from 8^th grade I had suffered some rather harmful experiences which left profound emotional scars that never completely healed.  I am still trying to heal the broken child within me.      Catholic High School wasn’t the best choice for me either.     I have always needed to seek and find the truth but this inquisitive searching was limited and not truly accepted in an all girl’s Catholic Academy in the late 50’s – early 60’s.   

This brings me to one aspect of my mixed feelings about the Catholic Church.     I am still a seeker after truth and this type of open seeking of truth is still frowned upon by the Vatican and the Church Hierarchy.    For example, recently, the Leadership Conference of Woman Religious (LCWR with a membership 57,000 women religious) were reprimanded by the Pope and the Conference of Christian Document (previously these were the guys who ran the Inquisition) for expressing their truth as they have prayerfully come to discern it.     I believe this Vatican reprimand is wrong.   “Blind obedience” when our God-given brain is telling us otherwise is a slap in the face of God.   This makes me very angry with my church.   But the Pope and the Hierarchy in Rome are not the church.  We are the Church.   So I stay.

I am also furious about how the sexual abuse of minors by ordained Catholic priests has been handled by the hierarchy both in Rome and in the US.   Sexual abuse of a minor is a major criminal offense and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law even if- and especially if - the criminal offender is wearing a Roman Collar.   For the life of me I cannot understand why a priest is not persecuted and punished for something that the average Joe on the Street would have the book thrown at him.    No one has ever been able to answer this question for me.   I can’t understand it and I don’t accept it.   Nonetheless, I have known and still know some very saintly men who have dedicated their lives to the service of Christ.     I respect these men not because they wear a Roman collar because they are truly filled with the Spirit of God.    I witness their example and appreciate their willingness to lead lives of sanctity in spite of all the turmoil going on around them in the church today.

There are many wonderful, good people in our church.   Churches, families and people- even church-going people- are certainly far from perfect.   But I believe that a lot of the human beings I meet at my church are trying to do God’s will; they seem to want to do their best to love God and love their neighbor.   So for the most part, I get support and encouragement from them on my own life journey.  What more can I expect?

But mostly I stay in “my” church because I believe that Christ, Himself, is present in the Eucharist and I need this nourishment in order to survive. But then again, Christ, is present universally and as my Baltimore Catechism stated and I memorized verbatim, " God is Everywhere".