Anthea Butler says that, given how the hierarchy has handled the abuse situation, she's happy to be called a catholic, but no longer a Catholic. And she puts an important question to Catholics who hang on and continue offering energy and support to the Catholic (as opposed to catholic) church:
I am fervently hoping for a conviction in this trial. While the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (UCCSB) continues to rail about “religious freedom,” it cannot face the hypocrisy in its management of sexual abuse cases. Once a fetus reaches term and is born and baptized into the Catholic Church, that child has no guarantee that the Church will protect his or her body or sexuality. Sadly, it would not surprise me if the UCCSB attempted to extend the religious freedom argument to the manner in which they protected and covered up for priests accused of molestation.
It is increasingly difficult for sober-minded, intelligent people of faith to continue to participate in the complicity of a church that in the American context has bishops, including Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia, ranting about religious freedom and birth control, while they don’t give a damn about the children who have been repeatedly raped and abused in their care.
I can no longer sit back and criticize the Church without asking a big question: For those of you who stay, how can you do it? How can you sit under such perfidy?
And I'm right there with her in her inability to continue playing the Catholic (as opposed to catholic) game until, as she says, "justice comes rolling down like waters, and drowns the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the rest of the complicit leadership of the Catholic Church, and the Church begins to repair and repent for the souls they have broken, then perhaps I can consider going back."
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