UNITED STATES
The Good Men Project
As a Catholic Mom of four boys, and in light of recent convictions of priests in the Catholic church of male child molestation, I’ve found myself questioning my own beliefs, the church, and indeed the people around me. I’m here to tell you that I now know five – count them, FIVE – convicted male sex offenders, and I’m sad to say that one of those was a priest.
The priest I knew who was recently convicted was, at the time I knew him, a confidante, a sympathetic ear, and a friend to me when I felt very alone and was going through a very difficult time in my life. The news of his conviction of sex offenses against boys made me call into question my involvement with the Catholic Church, but my faith in God and Jesus’ teachings haven’t changed; only my attitude toward the Catholic church as an institution, and the selective teachings that have been embedded into the Catholic faith. The Church’s ongoing insistence that only single men can preside over the mass; the Catholic Church being run primarily by a patriarchy of the elderly; the fact that priests are not entitled to have families of their own; the preaching that we are not to take communion unless we are in a state of ‘grace.’ No divorcees, no gays, no sinners welcome. These are not the teachings I want to bestow upon my sons, and these are not part of my faith, nor my relationship with God.
There is an underworld to everything that many of us aren’t even aware of, and one of the deepest underworlds is most certainly that of the Catholic church. The pedophilic Catholic priests are definitely the dark part of this underworld, but what about those priests who have secret lovers, not-so-secret relationships with other men or women, and those who have even married, and had families of their own? I wonder how many people are aware of that ‘underworld’, and how they integrate that into their own personal faith. Growing up, I watched a priest keep a divorced woman as his lover, while denying communion to the divorced of his congregation. I watched a priest get kicked out of the Church after a member of the congregation secretly complained that he was gay, and in a relationship. To be honest with you, the latter was definitely the best priest I’ve ever had the honor of listening to, knowing, and learning from.
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