UNITED STATES
The American Conservative
By ROD DREHER • September 23, 2014
If you haven’t read yesterday’s thread in which people shared their stories about losing their religion, I highly recommend that you do. It’s so moving. Here is the thread for commenting critically on those stories. Today I invite readers who found religion to tell their stories. I will also start a side thread for the critical discussion of these stories. As with yesterday’s posts, please do not place critical commentary in the story thread. It’s only for stories.
I can add something to this. I’m not sure I have ever told this story.
It was 2005, and I was deeply mired in the slough of despond over my Catholic faith, because of the scandal. Discovering that a priest we were getting to know and like was in fact a manipulative liar who was not supposed to be in ministry until the sexual abuse accusations against him had been cleared up, and that the pastor of the parish we had begun attending knew all this and put him into informal ministry anyway — and hid it from most parishioners and his bishop! — was the final straw. My anger, fear, and utter lack of trust in the institutional Catholic Church was working like acid on me. I couldn’t go to mass without having to walk out half the time because I was so angry.
I prayed intensely, desperately for relief and direction. As a Catholic, theologically I believed that the only possible option was Orthodoxy. I read book after book, trying to compare the competing arguments for each church. They only confused me more. I had enough self-awareness to know that it was impossible for me to read these books lucidly. The cloud of darkness around me was like stinging flies. What I recall learning from all that was that the Catholic case for Roman primacy was not nearly as airtight as I had believed. I had only seriously considered the Roman claim versus Protestant claims. Orthodoxy was a new thing. The Orthodox arguments were making some headway with me, but they were far from a slam-dunk, at least with me. What they did was loosen my confidence in the solidity of the Catholic claim. Yet I was highly aware that my own mental and emotional state was inflamed by anger and distrust, such that I was not sure to what extent my deliberations could be trusted.
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