Another lashing by a priest. That’s what I received this week when I asked for an appointment with a priest with the congregation of the church I was seriously considering joining after visiting a few months. I suppose I was too quick to jump now that I know how controlling he is. Nevertheless, since when do priests get off with the notion that they have the right to dish out character assassinations of their congregants or perspective congregants if an opposing view is offered?

The reason for the lashing out was due to my omission of instantaneous and automatic trust of the authority of this priest. It seems that when the priest takes his office as head of the church, he expects all parishioners to instantaneously look up to him as supreme authority, and to never ask questions. There is a field of arrogance that goes with this office. Expectations of full acceptance by the commanded and governed, the so called ‘pastored,’ with no thought to the build up of relationships for those governed (‘pastored’) can lead to false judgments toward the people governed (‘pastored’). In so much, they become ‘the governed’ rather than actual people with lives of various tendencies and patterns. In this recent scenario, I had become just one of the governed with no actual presence of mind by the priest for realities in my life. And so, he blasted my character when I did not instantly trust him with my every fiber.

A bit of background is necessary. Following my dramatic Christian conversion by members of the Baptist church when I was eighteen, I chose to retain membership in my liturgical church. My Christian life flourished due to my Christian friends, personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and the devotions to Bible study that I disciplined myself with daily. Among the first priests within that same liturgical church of my youth that I encountered, I was gradually seduced while in the church visiting him. The married man would……. It pains me to think about it, and so I will not describe it. But it defied his marriage, it defied me, it defied his vows as a priest. And this was at the beginning of my adult understanding of the priesthood in liturgical, non-Catholic, priesthood. Thank God, I had the wits about me to get away from him. Yet my trust for the priesthood was broken.

Somehow, my love for that liturgical church remained, and especially for the charismatic flare in some of its branches. I found myself over the course of the next few years involved with another priest’s parish that seemed quite attractive despite the ‘absolute authority’ rendered to the priest by all present. I was young and naïve, given to following the words of authority, easily trusting despite my one bad previous encounter. No words can describe the pain involved a few months later when the parish found out that the priest, himself, was bed hopping with another parishioner outside of his wife. It is impossible to describe the violation of trust after fully giving one’s self over as one of the flock.

For months I did nothing, but could not be satisfied without a church due to my love for Jesus. I chose to get up out of my slump and carry on. The parish I chose, similar to the first, included a worldwide acclaimed charismatic priest, highly revered, and hardly approachable, who ruled his parish with an iron fist. In retrospect, I wonder now why I didn’t see the signs, but I was much more naïve at that time in my life. I was a member of that parish for over twenty years as I raised a family there. Yet in the long run, that revered man was found to have been hiding homosexual relationships on the side as well as pilfering monies from the church. The church, of course, was devastated by these accounts, and I can only wonder why I am wanting to be a part of any church after such a diatribe.

There is only one reason. I long to hear the message of Jesus Christ, and to be in company with other believers who share this desire. But I simply cannot instantaneously shell out trust to any authority just because that person is the head of that particular church. I can wisen up due to my past allegiances, and I can forgive the weakness of mankind and the weakness of the men who have gone before doling out painful situations. However, whenever some authority sits before me demanding automatic trust in his supreme office, I will know, just as I did earlier this week, that it is time to rise and get out of that person’s sight and power.

It is only the full stature and the love of Jesus Christ Himself that I totally love and am dependent upon. I know, with no doubt nor question, that I can rest on Him alone. Jesus will never fail me. The church will. Jesus will not. That is the only thing that keeps me moving forward.

November 2008