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Commentary

By Liz Quirin

Taking a Closer Look at the 'Good Old Days'

Ah, the good old days. Life seemed simpler, right and wrong seemed like clear choices: choose right, not wrong. We went to Catholic schools, Mass on Sunday and didn’t know much about the world. I heard stories from my father’s boyhood on a farm, about walking across fence posts to school because the snow was so deep you couldn’t find the ground and of the family piling into a wagon to go to church.

It seemed like great fun to me until my mother talked about breaking the ice in the pitcher to pour into a bowl to wash her face in the morning or how cold it was if you had to avail yourself of outdoor facilities on cold winter days.
Those more or less carefree days when the parish priest was more or less distant and always right no matter what the topic are long gone. If we listen at all to church leaders on the local, national or international level, we don’t usually accept with blind obedience what they say. After all the abuse scandals in the church, and more surely to come from places near and far, we gasp at the unfolding, and immensely painful stories. We are shocked and angered that things like that could happen to children in our church, even when allegations date back many years.

However, we generally fail to remember the times in which we lived, when people didn’t question their parents very much — even teenagers — and rarely questioned the authority figures of the church. That certainly doesn’t excuse any of the men who took advantage of children nor does it in any way make it acceptable. Even when protests were raised in many different ways, people just didn’t respond the way they would today.

What frightens me is the possibility that this continues in so many different places today — in families, in schools, in doctors’ offices and other places as well. Somehow, we have failed to find a way to unequivocally and absolutely protect our most vulnerable people — our children.

And yet, in spite of all of the bad news about what has happened in the church over the decades and centuries, people continue to join the church, to find a home here. As we continue to celebrate the Easter season, we see our newly welcomed brothers and sisters express an excitement, a happiness of a longing fulfilled as they listen to the readings, hear the word of God proclaimed and receive Communion.

Cradle Catholics don’t always understand this kind of enthusiasm for an institution that can bring pain as well as healing, sadness as well as joy. Maybe if we remember that we must put our faith in Jesus Christ, in his teachings and his example, we can find some of that peace and joy instead of accepting with complete and unquestioning faith and trust the very human representatives of Christ on earth. Most are good and well intentioned folks, but Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.