Three years ago, I announced to my Catholic community that I was leaving the Catholic Church. I told them I was tired of feeling suffocated in an environment that did not seem to support anyone but Jesus Christ himself.
Like me, many religious people—whether they go to church every Sunday, sit in bible study, or pray five times a day—have come to the conclusion they do not agree with everything their institution teaches. As one woman once told me, “I can’t support a church that preaches love and won’t allow me to love who I want.”
When you think about that, how are people supposed to love one another when the entity that preaches acceptance won’t allow same-sex marriage and hides decades of sexual assault?
At one point, I was part of a religious organization that thought it, like many others, had all the facts and believed its god was “the one true god.” This is nothing new, considering most churches around the world claim their religion is the right one to follow. But I started to see the controlling nature, hypocrisy and bias in the stratified system of which I belonged.
The church began to remind me of a bible verse from Matthew 15:8 I grew up hearing, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”
The church I belonged to became so obsessed with traditions, abuse and self-regard that I, and many others, started to resent it.
“When my oldest son went to college, he came out as gay,” former church-goer Kathleen Lockhart said. “I was so scared for his safety, but also I felt so sad that he would be judged by the Catholic group by his same-sex attraction, rather than by his love for rescue animals, and his sweet interactions with the young and very old. I began to wonder if I could stay in this faith.”
It’s hardly surprising that people are leaving the church due to their treatment of people in the LGBTQ community. According to a recent survey done by Public Religion Research Institution, “Among Millennials who no longer identify with their childhood religion, nearly one-third say negative teachings about, or treatment of, gay and lesbian people was either a somewhat important (17 percent) or very important (14 percent) factor in their disaffiliation from religion.”
Not only are people leaving the church due to their treatment of LGBTQ members, but also because of the hypocrisy that has almost become synonymous with modern-day religion.
Christian institutions tell people they need to do a number of things to be “children of Christ.”
The members of the church stand up in front of a large group of people each week and tell them, “You must do the things we tell you to live a good life.” They say, “You must love your neighbor as Christ did, help those in need, and not commit adultery.”
But how are normal people supposed to live by these teaching if the men trained to teach them aren’t living the way the Bible tells us to?
“I went to catholic grade school and raised all 3 of my children catholic,” said Indiana resident Lisa Macdonald. “At 49, I stopped going to church… My heart wasn’t in it. I was so disheartened by the rigidness of the Catholic Church. Their antiquated views on birth control, their failure to listen to the needs of their followers and most upsetting, their continued sexual scandals involving children and the allegations of cover-ups finally drove me away.”
According to Newsweek, “A non-profit group that tracks allegations of abuse within the Catholic Church said… the church has paid out nearly $4 billion in lawsuits over allegations of clerical sexual abuse leading back to the 1980s.”
Bishop Accountability’s mission is to document the abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. According to their website, there are payouts involving over 8,000 cases of assault survivors abused by a single member of the clergy dating back to the 1950s.
In August, CNN published an article stating that the largest payout by the Catholic church occurred in Los Angeles in 2007. That payout of $660 million dollars was provided on behalf of 221 priests and 508 other church employees.
“For decades it has put the reputation of the church above protecting its parishioner, by allowing predatory behaviors to go unresolved and unreported,” said former Indianapolis Catholic churchgoer, Robert Sailing. “The sexual misconduct is unacceptable but the systemic cover up and lack of corrective action is appalling.”
According to Bishop Accountability, “We document settlements involving 5,679 persons who allege sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. These survivors are only one-third of the 15,235 allegations that the bishops say they have received through 2009, and they are only 5% of the 100,000 U.S. victims.”
Since 2009, the organization has continued to receive reports of sexual assault in the church.
In Pennsylvania in 2018 alone, a report was released that over the past seven decades more than 1,000 children were sexually abused by Pennsylvania priests.
As reported by The Washington Post in October 2018: “The 18-month investigation covered six of the state’s dioceses — Allentown, Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton — and follows other state grand jury reports that revealed abuse and cover-ups in two other dioceses.
The grand jury reviewed more than 2 million documents, including from the ‘secret archives’ — what church leaders referred to the reports of abuse they hid from public for decades.”
The church, including Pope Francis, is doing things to combat sexual abuse, but many people feel they are not doing enough. The Pope has been visiting abuse survivors as well as letting go of several priests who have been accused of abuse. But, for many, the damage is already done.
According to the Public Religion Research institution, “The largest decline among major religious groups” has occurred in the Catholic Church. “Nearly one-third (31.2%) of Americans report being raised in a Catholic household, but only about one in five (20.9%) Americans identify as Catholic currently.”
The Catholic church has lost a lot of members over the years. But with the recent allegations being released about decades of sexual assaults, as well as the general hypocrisy of the church people are leaving in record numbers.
I, being one of the people who have left, still see the value in organized religion, especially Christianity. However, how many differences and hypocrisies is one person supposed to ignore to stay in a group they no longer feel serves them?