The story of the Carmelite Monks is chilling
It sounds like good will come from bringing this into the light.
Yeah, it is. It’s a huge part of why I left it. I have a really hard time believing in something when we’re not given certain pieces of information. The least they can do is give us every book of The Bible and let us make up our own minds. And no offense, but nowadays, there’s just way too much disinformation out there that, you’d be lucky to find anything close to true without bias, prejudice, discrimination, etc… being in the information you’re looking at.
Hiding information (or willful omittance) is very dishonest. And when the Catholic Church claims to be the true religion of Jesus Christ, then why are we hiding things? God I think would want us to know as much as we could. I can’t support the omittance of information. It’s no different than me taking a puzzle piece to a puzzle someone was working on and throw it into the woods. You can’t make a puzzle complete without all the pieces fitting together.
Sorry for the bluntness, but nowadays, being blunt is a rarity, cause too many people trust too many people.
I too am fed up with the secrecy. What I personally experienced was more than 20 years ago, but I don’t trust the clergy or hierarchy to tell us the truth. The first incident was somewhat trivial: the bishop said we could have meat on St. Patrick’s Day, which fell on a Friday that year, but our pastor didn’t tell us that (maybe he thought it was for our own good to not know). Same parish: a different pastor was here today, gone tomorrow, with no explanation to us parishioners. We read in the newspaper that he quit after being accused of having pornographic videos. The newspaper mentioned that the diocese tried to get the accusations put under a court order to seal them from public view. Are things better now? I think so. Are things still being hidden? I would bet my last dime that they are.
I should add that there are some clergy and hierarchy that I trust personally. I trust our parochial administrator, I trusted the three pastors I had before that and some other priests and deacons, and I trust Bishop Burbidge, who was Bishop of Arlington (Va.) the last few years I lived in that diocese. There are other good men and women too.
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I would never consider abandoning Christs’ Church because of “secrecy”, scandal, or conspiracy theories. To do so would ultimately be an EXCUSE to leave the Church or decent from its’ teachings, Sacraments, and Way. If I’m open to abandoning the Church, such an act would only be the means of truth that I was never really was a Catholic Christian to begin with. Thus I would be guilty of hypocrisy and/or apostacy.
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I do believe the Roman Catholic Church is the only institution on Earth that has/could/would survive the sex abuse scandals it has had, comparatively speaking. I can’t think of any other institution that people would continue to be a part of or continue to contribute to if the scope was the same (e.g. systemic cover up from the topmost hierarchy on down for likely a century or longer, the pervasiveness, the scope, etc). The Boy Scouts would be a good example. There has been sex abuse scandal in that organization, but if the level, length and scope had been to the same degree, I can’t envision anyone continuing to be loyal to it as an organization and I would presume it’s demise.
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Wisely said. Jesus founded His Church on earth on sinners: the twelve apostles, and their successors are sinners, as are believers. For anyone to expect His Church—composed of fallen human beings—to have a spotless historical record is to set themselves up for disillusionment. The sins of Christians, even grave ones, do not disprove the Church’s divine origin; they prove why Christ established a visible Church with sacraments, authority, and discipline in the first place.
To abandon the Church because of secrecy, scandal, or the sins of its members is to confuse the failings of men with the faithfulness of Christ. If I am willing to walk away from the Church on those grounds, the problem is not the Church’s holiness but my own understanding of what the Church is. Christ never promised sinless leaders or believers; He promised that His Church would not fail. Scandal calls for repentance and reform—not apostasy.
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