{"id":1200,"date":"2010-04-08T10:28:41","date_gmt":"2010-04-08T10:28:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/theirbadmother\/2010\/04\/the-church-of-the-confused-mind.html"},"modified":"2010-04-08T10:28:41","modified_gmt":"2010-04-08T10:28:41","slug":"the-church-of-the-confused-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/2010\/04\/the-church-of-the-confused-mind.html","title":{"rendered":"The Church Of The Confused Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"

I posted yesterday, at my other site<\/a>, about the child abuse scandal afflicting the Catholic Church. I said that the Church’s seeming unwillingness to accept full responsibility, not only for the abuse but for the covering up of the abuse and for protecting the priests that perpetrated the abuse, was rattling my faith in the the Church. Granted, that faith has been somewhat shaky for a very long time, but still: I have always identified as Catholic and have, in some corner of my soul, always assumed, however quietly, that once I had satisfied my own need for spiritual exploration, I would find my way back to the Church. And then full extent of the scandal was revealed – including the particularly disheartening allegations that Church, and even the future Pope, had covered up the extent of the abuse and protected the priests that were involved – and my faith in the Church fell, and if it didn’t shatter, it certainly cracked, badly.<\/p>\n

So I wrote about it<\/a>. I wrote about how under these circumstances, I simply couldn’t imagine going back to the Church. A day and a half later, I still feel that way. Mostly.<\/p>\n

Some of the comments from faithful Catholics – Catholics who weren’t put off their faith by the scandal – moved me. The Church isn’t ‘The Church’<\/i>, some of them said, it’s the people. You can have faith in that. Why not have faith in that?<\/i><\/p>\n

That, I thought, was a very good question. As one of my fellow BlogHer contributing editors put it<\/a>, the Catholic Church is something more than just a church or religious organization. It’s a community, and a culture, and one that is very, very old – much older than the United States or Canada. Being Catholic is, I’d say, more comparable to being Jewish than it is to being Episcopalian or Methodist. Catholics are part of a cultural community that is defined by more than just faith – there’s a culture and traditions and a sense of identity that extends far beyond attending Mass or participating in the Sacraments. So it is that I can have set aside the practices of the Catholic faith for so many years and still describe myself as Catholic. My parents are Catholic. The traditions and rituals of my family life were Catholic. I feel Catholic; even as my faith in the organization and hierarchy of the Church has weakened, I feel<\/i> Catholic.<\/p>\n

So how do I reconcile this with my spiritual discomfort? Is it possible to do so; is it necessary<\/i> to do so? How does one hold onto to being Catholic while being critical – seriously, pointedly critical – of its leaders?<\/p>\n

Or is it really the best option to just cut one’s losses – cultural, spiritual, and otherwise – and find another path to travel?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I posted yesterday, at my other site, about the child abuse scandal afflicting the Catholic Church. I said that the Church’s seeming unwillingness to accept full responsibility, not only for the abuse but for the covering up of the abuse and for protecting the priests that perpetrated the abuse, was rattling my faith in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":179,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","category-my-year-of-believing-dangerously"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Church Of The Confused Mind - Their Bad Mother<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/2010\/04\/the-church-of-the-confused-mind.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Church Of The Confused Mind - Their Bad Mother\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I posted yesterday, at my other site, about the child abuse scandal afflicting the Catholic Church. I said that the Church’s seeming unwillingness to accept full responsibility, not only for the abuse but for the covering up of the abuse and for protecting the priests that perpetrated the abuse, was rattling my faith in the…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/2010\/04\/the-church-of-the-confused-mind.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Their Bad Mother\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-04-08T10:28:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Catherine Connors\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Church Of The Confused Mind - Their Bad Mother","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/2010\/04\/the-church-of-the-confused-mind.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Church Of The Confused Mind - Their Bad Mother","og_description":"I posted yesterday, at my other site, about the child abuse scandal afflicting the Catholic Church. I said that the Church’s seeming unwillingness to accept full responsibility, not only for the abuse but for the covering up of the abuse and for protecting the priests that perpetrated the abuse, was rattling my faith in the…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/2010\/04\/the-church-of-the-confused-mind.html","og_site_name":"Their Bad Mother","article_published_time":"2010-04-08T10:28:41+00:00","author":"Catherine Connors","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/2010\/04\/the-church-of-the-confused-mind.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/2010\/04\/the-church-of-the-confused-mind.html","name":"The Church Of The Confused Mind - Their Bad Mother","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-04-08T10:28:41+00:00","dateModified":"2010-04-08T10:28:41+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/#\/schema\/person\/e5cb41c7478a8741b1ca837d0ad3eace"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/2010\/04\/the-church-of-the-confused-mind.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/2010\/04\/the-church-of-the-confused-mind.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/2010\/04\/the-church-of-the-confused-mind.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Church Of The Confused Mind"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/","name":"Their Bad Mother","description":"Amy Julia Becker on Faith, Family, and Disability","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/#\/schema\/person\/e5cb41c7478a8741b1ca837d0ad3eace","name":"Catherine Connors","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/48c\/48c0936a787715d590be21174b52d353x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/48c\/48c0936a787715d590be21174b52d353x96.jpg","caption":"Catherine Connors"},"description":"Catherine Connors is a mother, writer and recovering academic who traded the lecture hall for the playroom and discovered that university students and preschoolers have much the same attention span. She still dips her toes into academic waters by writing the occasional scholarly article about the place of motherhood in Western philosophy, but mostly now she changes diapers and wipes noses and indulges in long reflections on whether Yo Gabba Gabba is a harbinger of the decline of western civilization. Oh, and she blogs: in addition to Bad Mother blogging at BeliefNet, she is, among other things, the author of HerBadMother.com, the moderator of Her Bad Mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Basement, the co-founder and co-editor of WeCovet, a contributing writer\/editor at MamaPop and BlogHer, and most recently (deep breath) founder of and contributor to Canada Moms Blog. And in her spare time\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 oh, wait. She doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have spare time. But she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s okay with that.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/author\/cconnors"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/179"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theirbadmother\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}