NEW JERSEY
The Star-Ledger
Published: Sunday, September 30, 2012
By Tom Moran/ The Star-Ledger
I was born into a devout Catholic family, the fifth of nine children. And one of my earliest memories is learning the catechism from my father, a sales executive who was in the habit of going to church every day before work.
He read me stories about the adventures of a boy who was nicknamed “Raggie” because his family was too poor to buy new clothes. Each story had the same basic lesson — good Catholics look after those in need, just as Jesus did. And there is no shame in being poor.
Sign me up. I memorized the prayers, received the sacraments and felt ecstatically cleansed after monthly confessions. I was all in.
In the decades since, I have fled a million miles from the church, and have never found a new religious home. I am a spiritual refugee.
One in three American adults was raised in a Catholic family, but fewer than one in four identify as Catholic today. No other church has shed so many followers, according to surveys by the Pew Charitable Trusts. …
But my mother had no hesitation. Nor did she feel she was sinning by using birth control when she was knocked low by migraine headaches after bearing the nine of us. When she saw same-sex couples raising AIDS babies, she saw no threat to the moral order; she saw Christ’s love at work. She supported same-sex marriage before the New York Times did.
Her obedience to the church hierarchy was not blind, especially after it was exposed as complicit in the sexual abuse of so many children. She trusted her own compass, and in that way, she was a typical Catholic.
Most Catholics, like her, will never leave the church. They will sidestep the land mines and hope for change. They see the altar girls today and hope for female priests tomorrow.
In the meantime, though, men like Myers will drive millions more onto the refugee highway. He had his own small share of complicity in the sex abuse scandal, transferring a priest who had confessed to abuse to St. Michael’s Hospital in Newark without telling the staff. He refuses to release the names of priests who have been credibly accused, as some New Jersey dioceses do.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.