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Megan McCabe was born into a Catholic family. She attended Catholic high school and college and now teaches at a Catholic university. But the 32-year-old witness attended Mass only over a month after the Pennsylvania grand jury report was released in August, which documented more than 1,000 cases of clergy-reported sexual abuse. the state.
"I had a time when I felt that this institution had no good in it," Ms. McCabe said, choking as she spoke.
The sexual abuse scandals that rocked the church this year have led some of Canada's most dedicated Catholics to question how to reconcile their longstanding faith with the realities of the institution they rely on for channel it. For them, decisions that were once made – such as attending mass, sending their children to Catholic school or even baptizing their children – suddenly became scary.
There were 74.3 million Catholics in the United States in 2017, up from 81.6 million two years ago, according to the Center for Applied Research on the Apostolate, a nonprofit organization in the United States. Georgetown University. A poll of the Pew Research Center released this week revealed that 72% of them approved the performance of Pope Francis, the lowest of his pontificate and down 12 points since the beginning of the year. More than 60% of American Catholics think that he is doing a fair or poor job on the subject of sexual abuse.
"Our people still believe in God," said Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski last month. "But they do not believe in us."
Mrs. McCabe was at high school near Boston in 2002, when the vast extent of sexual abuse in the church was reported for the first time. Although polls show that church attendance has dropped sharply in the aftermath of the scandal, McCabe does not remember much talking about it at school or at home. "I did not understand how bad things were," she said.
Now, as a professor of religious studies at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, she faces the story of the Church's abuse as an adult.
"It hit me – the level of concealment," she said of her reaction to the Pennsylvania report. "That's what hurt me the most."
She is not the only fervent person in her family to struggle.
His mother-in-law, Marybeth Brown, has attended Catholic Mass since childhood, although she has trouble explaining why she continued despite recent scandals. "It's the only thing I know in my life," she said.
Aged 63, this 63-year-old woman remembers asking what she should do when the priest of her parish in Orange County, California, where she had her four children baptized, was fired in 2001, while he had relationships with adult women and had been abused. teenage girls.
It was "a huge kick in the belly," she said, but she stuck to the church.
Ms. Brown believed that after the 2002 crisis, church officials had solved the problem. Recently, however, it has been reported that members of the clergy who had helped to conceal the sexual abuse committed by priests in the past – or who had been accused of abuse themselves – remained in power.
"I'm really disgusted," Brown said. "It should not happen yet."
She tried to separate her faith in God from her disappointment with church leaders.
"Regarding my involvement and the feeling I had before?" She said. "No. Now it's more my sacrifice."
His priest, Father Brendan Mason, was a seminarian in Boston when the 2002 scandal erupted and he now heads the St. Edward the Confessor congregation in Dana Point, California. He said that this year is "different".
"Some people just want to move on, as usual," he said. "That's not what my parishioners think. They want responsibility. "
All Catholics do not experience a crisis of faith.
"The mediocre Catholics are the ones who fear the church," said Grace Ruiz, 46, after a recent service in Artesia, California, where a bishop spoke of the altar scandal. "All these things do not happen only for Catholics. They only showcase Catholics.
But many of the strongest reactions in the churches have been provoked by followers indignant at what they have learned about sexual abuse or by the reaction of their leaders.
On the first Sunday after the publication of the Pennsylvania report, Mary Bradford – another long-time Catholic whose husband had converted to Catholicism before their marriage – left her church in Annapolis, Maryland, angry because the Priest had asked the parishioners to pray for the church before mentioning the victims of sexual abuse.
The family continued to attend the meetings, but Ms. Bradford, 38, recently suggested to her husband to consider other denominations.
"The message I receive always seems to be," How can we make sure everyone stays in the church? "" She said. "Part of me, that's, uh, maybe the church needs to start all over again."
