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	Catholicism Is about Theology, Not Leaders By Bill O’Reilly New Haven Register April 3, 2010 http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2010/04/03/opinion/doc4bb6aa648867f683910443.txt UNITED STATES -- I have occasionally written about being a practicing Roman Catholic, which sometimes leads to incredulous statements such as, "You go to church?" Somehow, I don't take the question as a compliment. This is a tough Holy Week for Catholics, as the terrible specter of child molestation again is in the air. The church faces questions about whether Pope Benedict XVI ignored past abuse cases when he was a cardinal. The evidence is scant, but damning anyway, because of previous priests-and-pedophilia scandals. So, Catholics have left the church because of this, but not me. From Sister Claudia's first-grade class, I understood that the Catholic Church was about Jesus, not Father Flannery. I saw so many loons in my Catholic school days that I should be a Buddhist. It is the theology, not church leadership, that keeps me in the fold. I was a driving force in bringing down Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, a man who allowed child-molesting priests to run wild. When Law was forced to resign, I was happy. But, the late Pope John Paul II then gave him a cushy job in the Vatican, where he remains today. If it were up to me, he would be in prison. Though I respected Pope John Paul's holiness, I was deeply disappointed that he did not meet with molestation victims when he visited the United States in 1999. The pope should have done that simply to show devastated American Catholics, and the victims, that he cared and understood their pain. When I criticized him for avoiding the issue, the Catholic League scorched me. That's fine. It is entitled to an opinion. Through it all, I stayed with the church. If you cut through the bull, the doctrines of treating others as you want to be treated, forgiveness and redemption, and charity for all stand the test of time. Even if atheists are right and there is no God, the philosophy of Jesus is full-force positive. Live the way he lived, and the world will be a better place. The actions of others must be considered, of course. I like this analogy: We've had some pretty bad leaders in America. Do they make you want to renounce your citizenship? The United States is not the people who lead it, but all of us. It's the same with the Catholic Church. It's not corrupt priests or apathetic leaders, it's Jesus and his followers who sit in the pews on Sunday. That's good enough for me.
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