TO STAY OR TO LEAVE?
Ruddy, Deborah Wallace
Deborah Wallace Ruddy Too many good people have left the Catholic Church in these painful times. Some bishops have repeatedly concealed horrific evils and inflicted dangerous priests on trusting...
...Some bishops have repeatedly concealed horrific evils and inflicted dangerous priests on trusting parishioners...
...The church is my home...
...Where is Christ's servant leadership, for instance, when so many Catholics, women especially, feel unheard in their own church...
...Finally, though, I am not led to despair or to seek another church...
...This "subsistence" is due not to the moral probity of its leaders or to the quality of its articulation of the faith, but to God's unmerited grace...
...Dorothy Day has been a constant companion to me in my adult faith, and I cannot imagine my life apart from the Mass...
...Why am I encouraging them to be active members of the church...
...I believe in Christ's promise not to abandon it, even though the Twelve abandoned him in his time of greatest need...
...Too often I anticipate what they are going to say, and so offer pat answers that don't touch the heart of their concerns...
...In trying to understand the confusion and hurt in the American church surrounding issues of ministry and sexuality, I think of my own experience as a teacher...
...I stay, then, because Christ has stayed faithful to his church...
...As a new mother, I have tried to imagine how parents handled news that a trusted priest violated their child...
...Most important, I work with thoughtful young Catholics, men and women, who want toserve the church with integrity...
...The worst thing for any parent is being unable to prevent or to undo a child's suffering...
...I am paralyzed with anger when I think about children who were victimized while their parents were left in the dark about the danger...
...But where does one begin when your child has been fondled, even raped...
...I have talked to seminarians who are aware of their need for community and accountability...
...In brief, I have been angry about my church's failure to protect the innocent and to own up to its terrible truths...
...This nourishment is the life of the church...
...Frankly, I thank God that my membership in the church does not depend on the range of emotions that I can feel about Catholicism on any given day...
...Even-especially-when I am floored by the arrogance and coldness that fed the sexual-abuse scandal, I hear the words of the apostle Peter ringing in my head, "Lord, to whom shall we go...
...In forming men and women for leadership in the church, I hope to instill in them habits of attentiveness and hospitality, to help them acknowledge their own weaknesses and remember that they are part of a truly catholic body...
...I have seen my pastor weep during a homily because of his church's failure...
...Let me explain why...
...My relationship with Christ is inextricably bound up with Catholic people and Catholic things...
...Though these roots run deep, my choice to remain Catholic goes beyond culture or familiarity...
...In the end, though, my commitment goes beyond me and what I can or cannot tolerate...
...Above all, in the Eucharist Christ is present among sinners...
...Children have been irrevocably damaged...
...If anything, this scandal cries out for a "listening church," renewed in the very humility of Christ...
...Convert and cradle Catholics alike have found it impossible to stay in a church responsible for such abuse and deception...
...Then, some day, my son Peter, I hope, will reap the fruits of a chastened, forgiven church...
...I hope to work for a more collaborative church with accountability in its governance and trust in its relationships...
...Deborah Wallace Ruddy teaches in the Catholic studies program at Saint Thomas University in Saint Paul, Minnesota...
...There will always be Catholics who think that they own the truth, but, in the last year, I have seen new evidence of a pilgrim church coming to the fore...
...I know how hard it can be to really listen to students...
...Money and reputations came before children...
...I was raised in the post-Vatican II church, attended Catholic schools for twenty-six years, and have worked in church-sponsored institutions all my adult life...
...We are all undeserving of this intimate and concrete expression of love...
...And, as a teacher at a Catholic university, I wonder what kind of church my students are being formed in...
...I think that this scandal has chipped away at the triumphalism that always tempts a church entrusted with such a grand inheritance...
...Right now, I can put a Band-Aid on my son's cuts and sweep Peter up in my arms when he falls down...
...How will Peter experience God in this church and how will his generation reshape the church that has been my home for thirty-six years...
...I can understand their outrage...
...My hope in the future of the church rests fundamentally in this celebration...
...I believe in what the church claims itself to be, a community willed by Christ and founded on the Apostles, with Peter as their head...
...I have lost a certain level of trust and perhaps even naivete...
...This renewal needs his grace, which will empower us to be a church unafraid to face the humiliation of having failed to live up to the truth that we proclaim...
...I take seriously the words of Vatican II, "The church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church...
...Such a divine gift, though, calls forth human response...
...Christ's body is broken, and his broken community receives this body throughout the world...
...I see signs of hope...
...It gives hope that some Catholic universities are recommiting themselves to preparing a generation of laity to lead at this crucial time...
...I respond without understanding...
...His self-offering does not depend on the purity of the one who consecrates or the one who receives...
...Receiving the Eucharist every Sunday is an experience of Christ's constant promise in the midst of failure...
...It is simply a gift that persists, despite great sin...
Vol. 130 • September 2003 • No. 15
