Daughters of St Paul Scandal

Sad story in the Pillar Catholic site of an experience of sisters in a religious community being groomed by a spiritual director. The conclusions one of them came to - that the world and the Church is a dangerous place - is one we’ve all sort of woken up to in light of the evil of our once seemingly “dependable” institutions like our judicial and medical systems. 


The money quotes: 

“I think we don’t realize the ways in which modernism has become a part of the Church’s infrastructure. It can come in traditional forms, traditional clothing, but it’s very modern to hold this idea that we can be sanitized from sin — and that prevents us from confronting the real truth, of sin, and evil.”

“When you’ve been wounded, it gives you eyes to see and ears to hear, where the danger is. And when you choose to remain in the Church, you realize it’s sometimes a dangerous place, but you choose to be there, and Christ is there.”

“The real danger is to walk around like it’s not a dangerous place ... as if, as human beings we don’t always have the power to build up and destroy. We do. Everybody does,” she added. 

“I believe that bishops, and anybody involved in these decisions, will be judged. And, look, I’ll be judged too. But I don’t want to stand next to them when they’re being judged, because God is going to be very angry,” she said.

“What I discovered in all of this is that when we hit ground zero, or the devastation of having all of the framework of life be decimated, and then when we discover that actually God is there — not in some kind of fluffy way, not in a platitudinous way like a pious platitude — but when we discover that God is there with us, I think we discover how fierce his love is, and that's God's humility. That's the Blessed Mother's humility.”

“The Blessed Mother was so present to me that she was willing to be hidden. She sustained me and she heard my prayers — desperate prayers, where I would be praying and sobbing … those prayers of desperation just trying to survive.”

“God is more real to me now…. Fr. Dave was so smart, he could quote Scripture, and quote the saints … But God is bigger than he was. He’s more faithful.”

“And even if a sociopathic man waits for five years to prey upon somebody …God's patience is greater and more tenacious. That's why the Church is going to endure it. It's not because seriously misguided and evil people are in charge of things … But it's the people in the pews, the ones who feel like they're hanging on by the tips of their fingernails, but those are the people who are holy.”