{"id":1164,"date":"2007-07-25T12:23:05","date_gmt":"2007-07-25T12:23:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/07\/more-pain.html"},"modified":"2007-07-25T12:23:05","modified_gmt":"2007-07-25T12:23:05","slug":"more-pain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/07\/more-pain.html","title":{"rendered":"More pain"},"content":{"rendered":"

…lest anyone persist in the fantasy that Church Problems = Catholic Problems, take a look at this piece from Christianity Today, a companion piece, almost to William Lobdell’s LATimes piece.<\/a><\/p>\n

Beginning with a small, "casual, hippy-era" (her phrase) church, moving through various pastors there, onto a mega-church, then to an Anglican parish…it never ends.<\/p>\n

But she does <\/em>end with St. Francis de Sales. <\/p>\n

The nugget I took away from her piece was something I have often told others struggling with this – and myself. The only respite she finds from the horrors of church politics and the damage of corruption in church leadership is in direct ministry to the homeless. I told someone struggling with these issues once to decrease his internet time, spent reading about and talking about scandal, and go to daily Mass, then hang out with the old guys who’d been in attendance, and were probably going for coffee right before they went to the St. Vincent de Paul center to do some corporal works of mercy. <\/p>\n

Again, it’s not a call to quiescence or ignoring problems. Lord knows, I’m not into that. But in the end, Jesus’ <\/em>call to us to love, spread the Good News,  and pour out ourselves in service to the poor. Over and over we see and hear it, and have to answer the question…what did the saints do? <\/em>They did many things, in all areas of life, at all levels of human activity, but in the end, the focus of the saints was Paul’s – to let Christ live in them.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Despite the turmoil and our dysfunctional church experiences, my family moved to California so that my husband, Jeff, could study for the pastorate. The goings-on at the megachurch where he was a student and then an assistant pastor made everything that came before seem like Sunday school games. During Jeff’s tenure on staff, both we and others were victimized by abuse of power. We also witnessed sexual misconduct and abuse, dishonesty, cruelty and cowardice, and a contentious church culture that fed on gossip. I have never seen anything like it, inside or outside the church.<\/p>\n

This experience cured me of both naivet\u00e9 and certain kinds of ambition. It also exhausted our resources. We are just now beginning to recover, 18 months later.<\/p>\n

An early step in our path toward wholeness was one-on-one ministry to Orange County, California’s homeless population. Jeff and I took jobs at a homeless ministry in the high desert. Our directors had been missionaries in Asia during the ten years that we were traversing the landscape of American evangelicalism. The differences between them and us were startling. Jeff and I were not jaded, but we were marked by grief. We limped\u2014in part because our children were<\/em> jaded. And we saw disaster lurking behind every craggy rock. Our coworkers walked with a skip in their step, and danger didn’t concern them much. This was both liberating and disconcerting.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…lest anyone persist in the fantasy that Church Problems = Catholic Problems, take a look at this piece from Christianity Today, a companion piece, almost to William Lobdell’s LATimes piece. Beginning with a small, "casual, hippy-era" (her phrase) church, moving through various pastors there, onto a mega-church, then to an Anglican parish…it never ends. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. 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