Updated March 2019

Faith is designed to be hard, to make one stronger….I get that.

But when you experience, for example — the life of a refugee running from ethnic cleansing; preventable childhood diseases killing millions in abject poverty – or when an adult molests a child and then gets protected by their church — your faith stops, thinks for a moment…as if this is as far as its ever gone…

Washington DCs Archbishop recently released a list of 31 members of the clergy who had been “credibly accused” of abusing minors dating back 70 years. These accusations represent the highest mortal abuse: using innocent children for sexual purposes in Gods name. More hideous perhaps is that these issues are not new, don’t seem to be stopping. Originating from repressive church policy and protected by a 1700-year-old boys club, Rome delays and strings out the crisis making it far worse.

This particular crisis hit home being a DC resident. I’ve been spiritually stretched by it for the last time, I love my community and faith but can’t raise my children in a faith that lies to protect its sins.

Like many others, I feel strongly about what would solve this mess and I said as much in a church venting session recently.

What I said was: #1, if church reform doesn’t include women as full stakeholders, and unrepress the clergy, we’ll have the same institutional habits, the same abuses. #2, Covering up = allowing. #3, This looks like a problem the church doesn’t really want to solve. It’s choosing not to, which should insult us all, and, #4, Can I , or ask my children, to respect a faith that doesn’t fix its mess or treat women as equals as they are in the eyes of the Lord, even to save their own credibility?

Even in this progressive community, more than a few parishioners took my opinions as incendiary, saying they ‘promoted exodus’ from the faith.

Which faith? This isn’t about actual faith keep in mind. It’s about our faith in a man-made institution. Can you not see the difference?

Church leaders are more concerned with the state of their bureaucracy and friends at the top, then with rooting out horrific cardinal sins. Without dramatic reform, which includes breaking up the boys club, the church will take hit after hit even if accountability mechanisms are in place. Pittsburgh today, Massachusetts next month, apparently perverted men of God put out to pasture one by one while the credibility of the Cross – of Jesus – denigrates across Western culture as a religion of pedophiles run like a Mafia.

Church leaders should reinvent the future of the church or it will be reinvented for them.

The Catholic Church is losing followers due to relevance.

I urge his Holiness to do more to give women their rightful place as faith leaders.

Across religions, contexts and cultures, a common denominator is how off-to-the-side yet central women are when it comes to religious governance and power. Whether that’s how health services are delivered in Ecuador, female genital mutilation in Thailand or the stoning of an apparently adulterous wife in Syria; that women didn’t drive in Saudi Arabia is another side of the same coin as gang rape in India and the total void of female leaders in Christian parishes –particular cultural reflections of a lack of power and respect.

Overcoming dogma, including women, will not just solve this crisis but would inject compassion, tolerance right into our communities, while enabling the church to do better in the battle for global social justice.

/ / / KJStarace 2019