Today is Good Friday and for the world’s more than 1.1 billion Catholics (of which I am one), we spend the day fasting and remembering how Jesus Christ was tortured, crucified, and murdered for his message of peace. While I am not the best Catholic on the planet, I do try to adhere to most of the restrictions and regulations put into place by the Catholic Church for holy days of obligation such as Good Friday. So… I won’t be eating today as it’s a day of fasting and abstinence in the Church.
Anyway, for some time I’ve wanted to put up an entry on this blog about the Catholic Church and its current scandals. However, I haven’t been able to find the right words to say that the scandals – while individually horrible – are not the proper way for the public to frame the Catholic Church. FOX News commentator Bill O’Reilly actually wrote a column on his personal website yesterday that perfectly addresses the way that I think most Catholics view the scandals in the Church. The column, in its entirety, is below.
Over the years, I have occasionally written about being a practicing Roman Catholic, a fact that sometimes leads to incredulous statements like “YOU go to church?” Somehow, I don’t believe the question is a compliment.
This is a tough Holy Week for Catholics, as once again the terrible specter of child molestation is in the air. Driven by a series of articles by the New York Times, the church now faces questions about whether Pope Benedict XVI ignored some past abuse cases when he was a cardinal. The evidence is scant, but damning anyway, because of the previous priest-pedophilia scandals.
A number of Catholics have left the church because of the priestly sins, but not me. From the beginning, in Sister Claudia’s first grade class, I understood that the Catholic Church was about Jesus, not Father Flannery. Believe me, I saw so many loons in my Catholic school days that I should be a Buddhist. But it is the theology, not church leadership, that keeps me in the fold.
You may remember that I was a driving force in bringing down the villainous Cardinal Law in Boston, a man who allowed child molesting priests to run wild. When Law was forced to resign, I was happy. But then the late Pope John Paul II gave him a cushy job in Rome, where he remains today. If it were up to me, the cardinal would be in prison.
Even though I respected Pope John Paul’s holiness, I was deeply disappointed that he did not meet with molestation victims when he visited the United States in 1999. The pope should have done that simply to show devastated American Catholics, and the victims themselves, that he cared and understood their pain. When I publicly criticized Pope John Paul for avoiding the issue, the Catholic League scorched me. And that’s fine. They are entitled to their opinion.
Throughout it all, however, I stayed with the church. If you cut through all the bull, the doctrines of treating others as you want to be treated, forgiveness and redemption, and charity for all stand the test of time. Even if the atheists are right and there is no God, the philosophy of Jesus is full-force positive. Live the way he lived, and the world will be a better place.
The actions of others must be considered, of course. But I like this analogy: We’ve had some pretty bad leaders in America, right? Do they make you want to renounce your citizenship? The United States is not the people who lead it. It is all of us.
Same thing with the Catholic Church. It’s not corrupt priests or apathetic leaders in Rome. It’s Jesus and his followers, the folks who sit in the pews on Sunday. And that’s good enough for me.
Again, I think that Mr. O’Reilly does an excellent job of capturing the describing how most Catholics feel about the Church.
Bill O’Reilly, I was thrilled with your reasoning why you remain a Catholic! Awesome!! As a recent convert to the Catholic faith, I am grateful that you state your opinion, even though it is not what those in authority in the Church want to hear!We need many more Catholics like you!!
great post joey, couldn’t agree more with Mr. O. and as for me, i cannot wait until that clock strikes midnight. i have to eat something before i go to bed cause my fat ass is absolutely starving, ha. hope you have a happy Easter buddy buddy.
Thank you for a well thought out and written article. My feelings exactly. But, it is so sad for those who don’t understand and do not have a strong faith, it could bring anyone down.
ML
Ruth – glad you enjoyed the article. Welcome to the Catholic faith!
Mike – fasting on Good Friday was a pain for me, too. Although I have to admit that I was sticking to the fasting rules from pre-Vatican II so once I realized that contemporary fasting actually allows for one meal, I had a big tuna fish sandwich to settle my stomach! Happy Easter to you, too, bud.
Mary – I agree that it is sad that so many people have a weak faith in the Church. Our Church doesn’t teach idolatry and yet some people think that having faith means worshiping the physical incarnations of the Church. Ridiculous! If the physical incarnation of the Church is marred in a person’s eyes, they shouldn’t leave their faith altogether. No. Instead, they should grow in their own personal faith in the Lord and seek to help others as Christ might have done. Thanks for the comment!
My Dad , who was baptized a Roman catholic, told me he stopped practicing in his early twenties (1920’s) when a boyhood friend of his who had become a priest told him of an affair he had with a mariied woman.
We kids were baptized Roman Catholics and went to Catholic schools all the way and still are happy to stick to the rules. Unfortunately our children and grandchildren are lukewarm, at best. I think our generation ,more ethnic leaning in schools attended and marriages made,had a lot to do with it because of the peer influence.
My mother was Rusian Orthodox Greek Catholic and a living saint. She was devout in her rite, but she always told us kids that it was more important to live as Jesus preached than what rite you were baptized into.
More people should read and watch Bill O’Reilly.
Bill, I realize you cannot say this as it is far too politically incorrect, but I’m quite sure that what you learned way-back- when in 1st grade was that the Catholic Church was the one and only True Church of Jesus Christ and that your salvation depended upon remaining a Catholic–a good and faithful practicing Catholic–for the remainder of your life. I’d like to recommend to you that you find a good traditional church or chapel of either the SSPX or the FSSP–and the sooner the better. There you will find the orthodox Catholic faith you were taught by the good sisters in your Catholic school. For your own sake and the sake of your children, you need to leave behind the modernized Mass and watered-down faith that has weakened so many, many Catholics these past 40 years. Nothing is worth the loss of one’s soul.
But Bill, why is it necessary to ‘belong to’ an organized religion?
Couldn’t one subsist upon faith alone without all the ceremony and the attendant hatreds?