Priests

I've struggled with writing this post, so much so that I think I've written and deleted about three different versions. I wanted to say something very meaningful regarding the most recent revelation of abuses by priests in Ireland, but nothing sounds right. I mean, I'm Catholic and I do attend mass at least once a week. My children go to Catholic school. So did I. So did my mom and her many siblings. I think you get the idea. I'm Catholic.

I don't know everything there is to know about Catholic teachings. I'm at a loss trying to adequately describe what Orders are, what the difference is between a monk and a brother, or precisely what to do in Confessional (beyond the obvious list of sins). Yet, the Church is important to me. For me, the rituals the Catholic church provides connect me to God in a way I cannot describe.

Few people in my family feel the same way about the Church as I do. My brother is most likely an atheist, although he hasn't come right out and said it. My divorced mother harbors much resentment toward the church, some of it quite understandable and some of it resulting from her antiquated pre-Vatican II snapshot of the Church from her childhood. My father-in-law (who was my mother's classmate throughout the majority of their Catholic education) thinks Jesus Christ is not so much a person; but, rather an exclamation or even an adjective (i.e., when he hits his thumb with a hammer: "JC!" or when expressing frustration with inflation: "That J. effing C. gas bill is ridiculous!"). Most of my in laws eye us suspiciously when we opt to attend Mass on Christmas Eve while they go to an uncle's bar and drink all night. We hear things like, "J.C., why do you have to make those kids go to Mass? It's Christmas for crying out loud!" At one point in our marriage, my in laws inferred that my husband and I were destined to create our own Ruby Ridge. Because we're just that fanatical. After all, we go to mass.

After undergrad, I completed a Master's of Science in Mental Health Counseling. I mainly worked with sex offenders, more specifically adolescent male sexual perpetrators. Listening to their stories of both being a victim and a perpetrator, left me with night terrors and initially a desire to help them. Without going into detail, my desire to help eventually transformed into a desire to lock them up, keeping them isolated from children and women. That's the short version of 'how-I-saw-the-light-and-became-a-lawyer.'

I detest rapists, with or without a collar. The fact that a blind eye has been turned again and again in cases of abuses by priests, not only concerns me as a Catholic, but it sickens me. That is not why I am Catholic. That is not why I attend mass. That is not what I see when I kneel at the altar.

But.

I know that an inordinate number of people have been hurt by priests. I do not deny that. I wish and I pray that the Church I hold so dear wasn't a source of pain for so many innocent people. But it is.

I support victims. I support lawsuits. I support the ex-communication of priests, deacons, bishops, and all those who were and are in collusion with perpetrators. I support locking rapist priests up, away from children. Away from the Church.