Should We Leave the Catholic Church Because of Sex Scandals?

I understand all the human emotions; really, I do. I feel them myself. The sins involved here are despicable, unthinkable, and outrageous. There has been a momentous betrayal of trust and abominable failure among who knows how many bishops, covering up hideous sins and literally causing more innocent people to be abused and violated.

Nevertheless, our natural revulsion to all that is not a good reason to leave Holy Mother Church. There is always sin in the Church. This is extremely distressing (I have condemned it very loudly and called for an "ultra-zero tolerance" purge), but is nothing new (i.e., in terms of sinners in the Church). The Church has always gone through peaks and valleys. Chesterton said that "the Church has gone to the dogs five times, and in each case the dog died."

It was the same in Bible and apostolic times, with the Corinthians and Galatians, and most of the churches mentioned in Revelation. If sin was a disproof of Catholicism, we all should have left long ago. Why wait? Such things can't be decided on mere emotions and disappointment and outrage. We have to choose what religious group and worldview to follow based on which is true: as best can be ascertained, by God's grace. If we expect to find human perfection, however, we'll never find it. That quest is doomed to failure.

Jesus Himself said, even about the Pharisees:

Matthew 23:2-3, 13 (RSV) The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat; [3] so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice. . . . [13] But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither enter yourselves, nor allow those who would enter to go in.

I'm Catholic (received into the Church in February 1991 by Servant of God Fr. John A. Hardon, S. J.) because I came to believe that the Catholic Church taught the fullness of Catholic truth, in a way unlike any other Christian communion. I didn't do it based on a conclusion that Catholic believers were the finest, most "on-fire" Christian disciples in the world. I still felt that evangelical Protestants "won" that contest hands-down.

We don't or shouldn't decide these things based on feelings and emotions. I think that's the beauty of truth and facts. They are what they are, and are not dependent on emotions, which are subjective and variable, and not dependent on how badly fallen human beings live up to the sublimity of the official teachings involved. I'm not running down emotions and feelings (not at all)! That's part of life, too, but when it comes to deciding religious truth, I think they are of minimal importance.

We either believe in the indefectibility of the Church (itself a dogma of the faith) or not. There is no indication that the Catholic Church is gonna change its view on the grave sin of sodomy. Indeed, that is the root of our biggest problem right now: people giving into that sin and folks in authority winking at it and enabling it. The Church has remained true to apostolic morality for 2000 years (i.e., in teaching about what is wrong and immoral: that has remained the same for almost 2000 years).

If someone thinks there is no sexual sin in other Christian groups where it may appear at present that "the grass is greener," they're bound to be sorely disillusioned. There surely is, because, sadly, it's everywhere in society. I already documented that it was also in Protestantism and Orthodoxy and Judaism, back in 2007 in one of my articles.

I'm very disturbed about all the scandals coming out, like any other Catholic is, or should be. But such terrible scandals never fundamentally alter the joy and peace I feel in the Lord, and the faith that He is in control, even during the worst cycles of the Church. It has all happened many times before, and revival eventually always followed. The worst centuries in Church history were inevitably followed by the best ones (as my mentor Fr. Hardon liked to point out).

This looks to be a time of purging in the Church. The devil is mightily active, and is taking out practicing Catholics through horrible sexual sin. He has infiltrated the Church through such particularly egregious sinners: knowing that the consequences would be catastrophic. But as always, Satan's ultimate opponent is God, not us. If this is the way to drive out wolves in sheep's clothing from the Church, then so be it. We need to come totally clean on all of this filth and cleanse the Church of it as much as humanly possible. As I wrote in my previous post on this topic, we'll take a huge hit, but it's the only way to go, better in the long run, and the Church will survive, as she always has, and be better than ever, as a result.