Hello everyone!
I know it has been a while since I posted on here but life has been hectic and I've been trying to piece together my own opinion on everything going on in the Church.
Ever since I can remember my youth ministers have told me that living a Christian faith is not easy. Never has, never will be. Also the media will always look for ways to hate any religion, but for some reason especially a Christian one. As a grown woman (don't really feel able to say "grown" without laughing at myself), this hatred has only become worse, but I think I know the reason now. The reason is we stand for something other than ourselves. We try, and yes, we often fail to follow a certain set of rules and let our lives be governed by them. As Catholics especially, we live a life of celibacy before marriage; we believe abortion is killing a human life; we believe marriage is between a man and a woman; we believe Sunday is a day for reflection and growth with God. We believe we should not be forced to pay taxes to help others receive treatments and medications that are against our beliefs. Today's society is a society of "yeah do whatever makes you happy and if someone or something tells you that it's bad then they're wrong." I believe that was the beginning of the end. As soon as we started to stop caring about what is actually right or wrong, good or evil, we stopped caring about each other and our world.
On to what I'm sure all of you are expecting me to talk about: the scandalous summer that has berated the Church.
When I heard about what happened, I didn't want to believe it. Any of it. I listened to several podcasts to try and get a full grasp of the situation and what I came away with was this: the Pennsylvania priests need to be taken to trial and stripped of all duties. I do not believe anything less will show the world we are taking this seriously. I think when someone has the courage to come forward and say a sexual assault happened, or anything heinous, there needs to be a police officer and a lay person present not affiliated with the priest or the accuser when they report the assault. I think there needs to be a full investigation with medical notes and testimonies. We need to stop protecting, and we need to start acting. Yes, there also needs to be a way to weed out those who just want to watch the Church burn and accuse priests who are completely innocent. The way I would address that is to say to everyone involved that no one is allowed to talk about this to ANYONE until we know for sure wether or not everything pans out. Yes, the victim may take offense to this, and that is why it must be put more delicately, but I am not a delicate person. We need to stop smearing people before we know the full truth of any matter. We are not the judge nor jury. Keep the initial process confidential so the victim can comes to terms with what's happened without a spotlight and so we can make sure there is at least the beginnings of a case against the accused.
Now the reason that this is a 2 parter is because I know it's hard to read a long blog but I see this and the way I see the Church reacting to all of this as very related and very important to address.
God Bless,
Clara
I know it has been a while since I posted on here but life has been hectic and I've been trying to piece together my own opinion on everything going on in the Church.
Ever since I can remember my youth ministers have told me that living a Christian faith is not easy. Never has, never will be. Also the media will always look for ways to hate any religion, but for some reason especially a Christian one. As a grown woman (don't really feel able to say "grown" without laughing at myself), this hatred has only become worse, but I think I know the reason now. The reason is we stand for something other than ourselves. We try, and yes, we often fail to follow a certain set of rules and let our lives be governed by them. As Catholics especially, we live a life of celibacy before marriage; we believe abortion is killing a human life; we believe marriage is between a man and a woman; we believe Sunday is a day for reflection and growth with God. We believe we should not be forced to pay taxes to help others receive treatments and medications that are against our beliefs. Today's society is a society of "yeah do whatever makes you happy and if someone or something tells you that it's bad then they're wrong." I believe that was the beginning of the end. As soon as we started to stop caring about what is actually right or wrong, good or evil, we stopped caring about each other and our world.
I realize this may make some of you angry, but if you are truly honest with yourself you would see the irony in that. The fact you are angry because I am saying we need to get back to the basics of good and evil, right and wrong proves my point that we shut down immediately when someone says anything we don't like. When we stoped listening, we stopped evolving.
Now these dilemmas can be solved without religion if that is your problem with how they were originally created. Granted it is much more difficult, and you can always pull up some obscure reference to say something to the contrary of whatever someone says. But here's the thing, if you look at REAL evidence and multiple sources, you end up with a very coherent world view from a scientific view point. What I mean is that when it comes down to it we all want a world of love and peace, but you have to know the black and whites of the world in order to achieve it.
When I heard about what happened, I didn't want to believe it. Any of it. I listened to several podcasts to try and get a full grasp of the situation and what I came away with was this: the Pennsylvania priests need to be taken to trial and stripped of all duties. I do not believe anything less will show the world we are taking this seriously. I think when someone has the courage to come forward and say a sexual assault happened, or anything heinous, there needs to be a police officer and a lay person present not affiliated with the priest or the accuser when they report the assault. I think there needs to be a full investigation with medical notes and testimonies. We need to stop protecting, and we need to start acting. Yes, there also needs to be a way to weed out those who just want to watch the Church burn and accuse priests who are completely innocent. The way I would address that is to say to everyone involved that no one is allowed to talk about this to ANYONE until we know for sure wether or not everything pans out. Yes, the victim may take offense to this, and that is why it must be put more delicately, but I am not a delicate person. We need to stop smearing people before we know the full truth of any matter. We are not the judge nor jury. Keep the initial process confidential so the victim can comes to terms with what's happened without a spotlight and so we can make sure there is at least the beginnings of a case against the accused.
Now the reason that this is a 2 parter is because I know it's hard to read a long blog but I see this and the way I see the Church reacting to all of this as very related and very important to address.
God Bless,
Clara
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