Staying, Leaving?

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I used to feel like priests were so far above everyone else but now I feel like they’re nothing special, at best, and not to be trusted, at worst.
 
protestants have this same scandal. Its no different for any religion across the board.
 
yes, read the stats out of the Australian Royal Commission into child abuse.

And don’t forget , the stats that came out from the PA grand jury

ALSO INCLUDE LAITY. its not 300 Priests, its priests + laity.
 
I feel less alone seeing other’s views. It would be difficult for me to truly follow another church after believing I was in the One True Church founded by Christ himself.
 
CatholicDetroit said:
I feel less alone seeing other’s views. It would be difficult for me to truly follow another church after believing I was in the One True Church founded by Christ himself.
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I feel exactly the same way. There’s a CAF thread about what posters like about being a Catholic. There are so many things I do like about it, and last Saturday’s Mass I was giving thanks in prayer for all that the Catholic Church offers us. Then a few moments later, our pastor addressed the abuse scandal and I wasn’t so gung ho about my Church anymore, but it is the Church Jesus founded. We do have the Eucharist. We do have the intercession of the Saints. We do have all the Sacraments…
 
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For all those claiming the Protestant churches are somehow magically immune from child sex abuse, a simple google on “Protestant sex abuse in USA” brings up many articles.

They don’t get the media attention that attacks on the Catholic church do, because Protestant churches tend to be smaller, often more localized, and do not have a visible celebrity leader like the Pope or a visible hierarchical structure. But there are lots of Protestant clergy and lay staff who sexually abuse kids. Just like there are a lot of people in society in general who sexually abuse kids.

https://www.google.com/search?q=pro...rome..69i57.5490j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
 
njlisa said:
I am staying in the Church that Jesus founded.

Matthew 16:18
k And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church,* and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
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I would take this advice. God will prevail in the end.
 
This is a faith issue.

Our faith changes, as we mature, educate ourselves, learn about failings of others—clergy and laity, change jobs, our family waxes and wanes, and much more.

The faith I had ten years ago is a completely different one than I had now.

I’ve written it elsewhere but clericalism needs to die. People who put religious on pedestals need to not do that. Priests, bishops, cardinals and pope’s sin. Some in very disturbing and disgusting ways, where they should have never been admitted to the priesthood. Others have sex with willing adults. Again, they should have never been admitted to the priesthood.

My faith is at a point where I am close to Jesus and God, and three feet back from religious. I will help my fellow neighbour and brother and sister in Christ, but I may not be so happy to donate my time or money to other causes. I’m prudent.

The issue is, by being so unable to do the right thing for so long, people are reluctant to see things through rose coloured glasses. I’ve tried reading the over 1,000 page report. I nearly threw up multiple times. The same applies to the Magdalene laundries. I watched the movie The Magdalene Sisters when it came out in 2002, and left the cinema dismayed.

I think the then Father Joseph Ratzinger said it best in a 1969 German radio broadcast:
“Let us go a step farther. From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so it will lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. Undoubtedly it will discover new forms of ministry and will ordain to the priesthood approved Christians who pursue some profession. In many smaller congregations or in self-contained social groups, pastoral care will normally be provided in this fashion. Along-side this, the full-time ministry of the priesthood will be indispensable as formerly. But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer she will again recognize the sacraments as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholarship.
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When I am alone in the car driving someplace, I often pray out loud … talk to Jesus one on one out loud.

And I shake my head and simply say, “Lord, Dear Jesus, these bad guys belong to you. Seriously, you have got to fix this mess and bring in the good men who have backed away because of the bad behavior of these people who betrayed Your trust”.
 
Why would I leave? I am here for God not individual people. We are all flawed and broken. I cannot throw stones as I am not sinless. Of course horrified and the boat is rocked but we have to stay to help the victims through all this and stop there being others. Like Peter said, ‘LORD, to whom shall we go ? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.’ The Catholic church is the one true church and we have Jesus body and blood in the sacrament.
 
I slept on this and i’ll continue to stay because the Church has helped me grow in holiness. I need the intercession of the saints. I also know that there are souls that are depending on our prayers. On a local level I love the Church!
 
It is a human thing.

Secular organizations like schools and scouting and sports teams, every denomination or religion.

Seems one cannot go a few weeks without an account of a public school teacher and a student 😦
 
Hope1960 said:
If a priest was an abuser, do you think God still gives him the ability to turn the bread and wine into the Eucharist?
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The priest doesn’t turn the bread and wine into the Eucharist, Christ does, through the actions of the priest at Mass. The consecration of the Eucharist does not depend on the holiness of the individual priest.
 
This is the only place the true religion and saving sacraments can be found and where Christ is true head. This faith came before this corrupt generation of clergy and will be there after they have gone on to their rewards after having been judged by it. Even though the field is overrun with weeds and covered in filth, the treasure is still buried here for those who wish to seek it.

Also, to reiterate what someone else mentioned, the Church is more than its wicked and hireling clergy. It is all of us.
 
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I frankly don’t understand how a well catechized Catholic could ever leave.

I, a convert, once told my brother that he’d better stop trying to get me to leave the church because if I did I wasn’t joining a different one. The historical claims of the church are easily varifiable: If the RCC isn’t Christ’s church, He doesn’t have one. Simple as that.
 
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