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Dr. Jai Maharaj posted:

Why I left the Catholic Church

By Tom Regan
The Christian Science Monitor
April 18, 2005

It didn't happen all at once.

It wasn't a sudden flash of anger, a hot moment when I
decided that it was time for me to move away from my
Roman Catholic roots. It happened over a much longer
period of time, starting when I was in my early 20s, and
climaxing in my mid-30s.

In my youth, I had been about as Catholic as you could
be. I had been both an altar boy for several years and a
lay reader at mass, sung in numerous church choirs,
attended religious summer camps and 'separate schools'
(as we called the Catholic-run schools them in those
days), and taught the Catholic equivalent of Sunday
school. For a short period, I had thought seriously about
becoming a priest.

And then, one day a few years ago, attending a mass in
Cambridge with my mother who was visiting from Nova
Scotia, I knew I wasn't a Catholic any more. Sitting in
that church pew, listening to the priest recite the
liturgy, I felt ... nothing. I was a stranger in a
setting where I had always felt at home. For me, that
empty feeling was the final push out the door.

Finally deciding to leave the Catholic Church wasn't
easy. It wasn't like walking away from a club that you
didn't want to belong to any more. It was like tearing
off a layer of skin -- painful, confusing, scary.

There were numerous issues that led to this decision, but
for the sake of brevity, I will only mention two: the
church's attitudes towards women, and the sexual abuse
scandals that have rocked the church in Canada and the US
over the last 17 years.

No matter how many ways I looked at it, tried to justify
it, sought to rationalize it, the church's attitude
towards women always disappointed me. In the Catholic
Church -- and in too many other religious denominations
and sects -- women are second-class citizens.

One need look no farther than this week's conclave in
Rome, a meeting to pick one of the most important leaders
on the planet -- chosen by a group of men, all over the
age of 60. And while the Second Vatican Council
http://www.seattleu.edu/lemlib/web_archives/vaticanII/vaticanII.htm
pushed for a greater role for women in the running of the
church, John Paul II pushed back even harder to make sure
that didn't happen in any 'important' areas.

When half of all Catholics see "No women need apply"
signs on the doors of churches all over the world, one
wonders why women remain members at all, and just don't
leave to find a denomination with a more welcoming
message for them.

Then there's Mount Cashel.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/clergy_sex3.htm

Americans familiar with the stories of abuse by American
priests in the past three years may not be familiar with
Mount Cashel. It was a Catholic orphanage in St. John's,
Newfoundland, on the East coast of Canada. I was born in
St. John's and have family in the part of the province
known as the Avalon Peninsula.

I have a very strong memory of four priests sitting
around the dining room table of my Aunt Marge's house in
Newfoundland, as she waited on them hand and foot. The
church was the 'power behind the throne' for decades in
Newfoundland, and priests were seldom questioned about
anything they did.

Then in late 1989, the local newspaper, the St. John's
Express, broke a story about sexual abuse by the
Christian Brothers,
http://www.iona.edu/about/CFC/Brotherhood.htm
the Roman Catholic order that ran the Mount Cashel
orphanage. The story opened a floodgate. More than 300
former pupils eventually alleged they suffered physical
and sexual abuse at the orphanage.

Worse, it turned out that local church and government
authorities had known about the abuse for years and had
ignored it or covered it up when it became too obvious to
ignore. Ultimately, as details of more abuse by the
Christian Brothers and local priests surfaced, the
archbishop of St. John's was forced to resign.
http://stjohns.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=nf-pope-nfld-0505

Over the next few years, many priests and Christian
Brothers were jailed for their actions, and millions of
dollars were paid to the victims.

(The Star-Phoenix of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan reported in
2000, however, that "senior leaders of the Christian
Brothers in Rome transferred ownership of some of the
teaching order's assets out of Canada in order to prevent
millions more dollars from being liquidated to pay
compensation to the victims.")

But you had to see what it did to the small communities
of Newfoundland at the time to understand the real
damage. The news about the sexual abuse broke at the same
time the fishery, the life and blood industry of
Newfoundland, was being decimated by declining stocks.
http://www.mi.mun.ca/mi-net/nf-fish/

Suddenly Newfoundlanders found that the two things they
could always count on in the past -- the sea and the
Church -- had betrayed them, each in their own way. It
was devastating.

And now I live in Boston, where I have just lived through
yet another priest sexual abuse scandal,
http://www.boston.com/globe/spotlight/abuse/
where, once again, church authorities knew of the problem
and covered it up, even after they had seen what had
happened in Canada.

It seems they may have been instructed to do so. The
Guardian Observer reported in August of 2003 that it had
obtained a "40 year old document"
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Observer/documents/2003/08/16/Criminales.pdf
that showed the Vatican had "instructed Catholic bishops
around the world to cover up cases
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1020400,00.html
of sexual abuse or risk being thrown out of the Church."

A church spokesman at the time said it was a document
that only dealt with priests who had been accused of
"using confession to solicit." But the Guardian article
also points to a letter the Vatican sent to bishops in
2001 saying the ban on reporting cases of abuse was still
in effect.

The letter is signed by Cardinal Ratzinger [now Pope
Benedict XVI], the most powerful man in Rome beside
the Pope and who heads the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith -- the office which ran the
Inquisition in the Middle Ages.

I no longer have any doubt that John Paul II -- the man
who made sure that in the Catholic Church of his reign,
all roads led to Rome -- knew of this abuse, and either
ignored it or permitted the coverup. For that reason,
while I will always respect John Paul II as a great force
for peace in the world, I will never, ever, consider him
a saint.

So here I am, all these years later. I still have strong
spiritual beliefs, which I practice in my own way. I
don't hate the Catholic Church because it still does much
good in the world. And the church is a strength to other
members of my family and I'm glad that they can still
experience Catholicism in that way.

But I will have no more of it. I do not want to
participate in a church where my contact with the Divine
is mediated by several layers of a clergy I no longer
trust, nor believe in.

I hope, however, that Pope Benedict XVI can find a way to
bring unity to the church without having to resort to a
message that basically says "My way or the highway." But
the former Cardinal Ratzinger is not known for his open-
minded approach to church matters.

For although I left, I know there are many others who are
hovering at the edge of the church, one foot already out
the door, while they look back over their shoulders
wondering what those white puffs of smoke from the
Sistine Chapel will mean for them.

More at:
http://blogs.csmonitor.com/my_american_experience/2005/04/index.html#a0004350639

Jai Maharaj
http://www.mantra.com/jai
Om Shanti

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http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate

The terrorist mission of Jesus stated in the Christian bible:

"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not so send
peace, but a sword.
"For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the
daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in
law.
"And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
- Matthew 10:34-36.

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Dr. Jai Maharaj posted:

Why I left the Catholic Church

By Tom Regan
The Christian Science Monitor
April 18, 2005

It didn't happen all at once.

So, Tom, I hope you were smart and decided to free yourself from the
shackles of theism altogether.