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William Grimm, a native of New York City, is a missioner and presbyter who since 1973 has served in Japan, Hong Kong and Cambodia.
The church is a locus, not the focus of faith
Published: December 24, 2018 03:12 AM
The church is a locus, not the focus of faith

A file image of bishops and cardinals attending a holy Mass at St Peter's Square in Vatican. (Photo by Vincenzo Pinto/AFP)

The never-ending exposures that bishops up to and including a canonized pope have abetted and sometimes even perpetrated the sexual abuse of children, women and young priests and seminarians under their control has produced, at least in the English-speaking world, a new genre of literature, the "Why I'm leaving the Catholic Church" essay.

Of course, many people do not bother to write, especially young people fed up with clueless episcopal obsessions with issues related to evolving understandings of gender while ignoring or covering up crimes. They just stay away and when they have children, the next generation, they will keep them away.

Especially among those who write, the disaffected have not been merely nominal Catholics. They have been involved in their parishes and dioceses. They have taught catechism. They have served in soup kitchens. They have been liturgical ministers. They have joined campaigns for human rights and peace. They have contributed financially. They have struggled to raise their children as Catholics in the face of young people's disaffection not just with Catholicism, but with all forms of Christianity or any religion.

But now those people have finally given up. Their stories starkly illustrate the saying that one should never push a loyal person to the point where he or she no longer cares.

The reasons those writers give for walking away make sense. A person can put up with only so much betrayal before having to make the choice between being a dupe and taking a principled stand. And let there be no mistake about it: people who still give credence to or who are at least willing to put up with bishops' ever-repeated assurances that this time they get it and will fix the problem are dupes.

So, people's decision to walk away in disgust or sadness from the church that has been so important a part of their lives is not just understandable. On its own terms, it is laudable. Joining them is tempting as their example provokes the question, "Why stay?"

However, in reading "Why I'm leaving" articles or when involved in such conversations, I am struck by an unusual absence. In a surprising number of cases, one could change the words "Catholic Church" to the name of a political party or a fraternal organization without having to make any further editorial revisions.

Authors talk about the Catholic Church, about their past loyalty, about abuse, about cover-ups, about betrayal, but not often about Jesus Christ. For the most part, they do not say they are leaving the Catholic Church in order to remove obstacles to knowing and growing closer to Christ.

There seems to be something lacking in their view of what leaving or staying offers them. And that lack is, or should be, the most basic element in faith, a relationship with the Lord. It appears possible that one can be an active Catholic and yet never be led to Christ.

Why is that? It is easy to blame those people, but I suspect that the fault is not with them. In fact, they may be showing us a problem with the church that we have not sufficiently noticed before and which may be even worse than the abuse crisis because it may be one of the underlying causes of the current mess.

The problem is illustrated by the opposition to Pope Francis. Much of that opposition arises from the fact that rather than enforce the rules and traditions that the church has stressed, he tries to discern how Jesus might respond to people.

Of course, even a cursory familiarity with the Gospels shows that Jesus was not a stickler for rules or even the commandments. However, the Catholic Church has often seemed to stress rules (many of which find no warrant in the actions and teaching of Christ) as the measure of one's faithfulness.

A result is that many people see the church as the primary focus of faith. That seems to be the case with many of those who leave. But the church is a locus, not a focus. It must act as Christ rather than as an enforcement agency.

Of course, institutions are a normal part of any human endeavor, including the church. It is among those who strive with varying degrees of success and failure to be Christ for the world today that we encounter the Word of God, experience a community of believers and share the sacrament and the vocation of the Body of Christ.

So, though I am disgusted by and alienated from the Catholic Church's management (it does not deserve the title "leadership"), I have not joined the leavers. The church is not an ideal or even generally effective means of meeting the Lord. However, I cannot find another.

I hope that those who have not found him through the church might meet him as they leave, as I hope to meet him as I stay.

Father William Grimm, MM, is the publisher of ucanews.com and is based in Tokyo.

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