Today’s LA Times has a good piece by the religion columnist on how he lost his faith over the course of his reporting. It’s moving and well-written, and parts of it remind me of my own experiences struggling with my faith. Other parts of it made me feel fortunate to not be bound to this institution anymore.
I couldn’t get the victims’ stories or the bishops’ lies — many of them right there on their own stationery — out of my head. I had been in journalism more than two decades and had dealt with murders, rapes, other violent crimes and tragedies. But this was different — the children were so innocent, their parents so faithful, the priests so sick and bishops so corrupt.
The lifeline Father Vincent had tried to give me began to slip from my hands.
I sought solace in another belief: that a church’s heart is in the pews, not the pulpits. Certainly the people who were reading my stories would recoil and, in the end, recapture God’s house. Instead, I saw parishioners reflexively support priests who had molested children by writing glowing letters to bishops and judges, offering them jobs or even raising their bail while cursing the victims, often to their faces.
The worst thing about religion, I think, is that it forces people to give up the idea of thinking for themselves. It’s more about deferring to the sanctioned, official positions on various topics — sometimes with a little personal embellishment in the reasons why, but with the same conclusion.
It should be clear by now that this is not a valid way to live.
