SANTA MONICA (CA)
Santa Monica Daily Press
August 6, 2020
By Sarah A. Spitz
Christian hypocrisy played a big part in Lori [Lansens’] life growing up in Canada. “I was a believer,” she explains. “I loved God, I loved religion, I was in the church choir, went to Catholic school, attended mass alone in the mornings before school with the old Italian and Portuguese women dressed in black, and I stood apart from my family, which was more ambivalent about religion.
“But my parish priest was a pedophile who ended up dying in prison after pleading guilty to 47 counts of child molestation. We knew it at the time, we talked about it, we excused it, and said, ‘Oh, don’t let him get too close,’ but maybe you wanted that so you’d feel favored. Dozens of girls kept the secret, who would believe them? But when the parish refused to baptize my bi-racial cousin, I felt completely betrayed by this hypocrisy that was like nothing I’d actually learned about the teachings of Jesus.”
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