Thread by @DempseyTwo

Ok Catholic Church...let’s talk about sinning and choices.

Trigger Warning: Sex Abuse

I’ve never shared this story with anyone but my wife...
tldr: I’m lucky. 🧵👇🏻

When I was young, in an effort to create a relationship with his grandson, my grandfather decided I would go to church on Sundays. My parents agreed. I did not. I was maybe 6 or 7 years old.

Every Sunday, I had to get up early, wear uncomfortable clothes, get picked up by a man I did not really know and spend an hour being quiet.

I remember being in the car and listening to Irish music. I had never heard this kind of music before and it was sort of fun. It is the best part of this memory, but it was a short commute and the fun never lasted.

I was to do what my grandfather did and also be quiet. We walked up stairs to a building that didn’t look like any other building I had ever been to. He put his hand in a marble bowl of water, I put my hand in a marble bowl of water. I was told how expensive marble was.

I didn’t have money growing up. Like, no money. Each Sunday, I would be handed a dollar. I kept in my pocket and felt it. I loved the feel of the paper. So different. Certainly different from nothing.

My grandfather dried his hands on his forehead, chest and shoulders. I did the same. After drying our hands, my grandfather would place a dollar in the box in front of burning candles. Dry his hands again on his forehead, chest and shoulders, kneel down and light a candle.

He told me to take the dollar out of my pocket, put it in the box and pray for the poor. This was the first hypocrisy the Catholic Church would teach me. Even as a young boy, I thought to myself, why would a building like this with marble need my dollar?

I would come to learn the dollar was never for me it was for the poor...which was me. So I thought to myself, there must be even worse off people than me if they need my dollar so every week, I put a dollar in the box and prayed for the poor.

This went for some time. I began to recognize the people in the church. They treated the priest with respect. They revered him. Looked up to him. He was now in a position of authority in my life. Before mass began one day, I was introduced to one of the other men on the alter.

He was a deacon. He invited me to a ‘retreat’. Well, he asked my grandfather if I could go on a ‘retreat’ with him. I asked what is a ‘retreat’? Which was a violation of the be quiet rule. I was a bit rebellious. Not something the Catholic Church responds well to.

The deacon asked me back stage one day. To ‘take a tour’. He had ‘identified’ me as a potential alter boy. This was a great sign of respect and honor to my grandfather. He said, go ahead, it’ll be fun.

I did not want to go. I did though. Quietly. We walked past a banner one of the parishioners had made. It had a dove on it and the word ‘Love’.

We walked into a room I had never seen in the church before. It was all wood. Wood walls, wood counters. Expensive. I asked deacon what this place was, he said ‘This is where the alterboys get changed.’ Strikingly different from the wood, on the counter sat a Polaroid camera.

I got very nervous. I told him I did not want to be an alterboy, I would not go on any retreats and I was leaving. I did this with all the courage a kid with no money, no power, uncomfortable in his clothes and feeling a threat he didn’t yet understand could muster. I left.

I told my grandfather I never wanted to go to church again. We sat through mass, I returned home and told my mother the same. I was never going back. We eventually made a deal. I would get confirmed because that ‘is what we do’, but I’d never be alone with anyone in a robe.

This was in the 80s. That deacon came from somewhere. When he left, he went somewhere else. Because the Catholic Church chooses to move their clergy from one Parrish to another. To spread the word? Or the Sins?

I’m sure that room is where ‘alterboys changed’. I’m sure those retreats were changing little boys. I’m sure those retreats featured Polaroid cameras. I’m sure those dollars that I spent praying for the poor funded those retreats.

A hypocrisy beginning with marble water bowls and dollars for the poor, continues to this day. How many young boys walked past banners of ‘Love’ before having their picture taken while ‘changing’? How many were not as lucky as I was?

In a world where people who quote and praise the Bible for political gain, ignore the Church’s atrocities, and boil gender identity down to potatoes, can we agree on another hypocrisy? That men sexually abusing boys is a ‘same-sex’ crime? Yet, same-sex unions are somehow a sin?

Same-Sex unions are born of Love. Love is love. Human love. People loving people. Isn’t that what I was supposed to get from all those Sundays? That ‘Love’ banner with the dove on it was the only thing I focused on during mass so as to never make eye contact with a predator.

As for choices, this country was founded upon the rights for the individual to worship in their own way however they choose to and believe in whatever they choose. Your choice is yours alone as mine is mine.

But, as far as sins go, I doubt my story is dissimilar from many other boys of the 80s in a Catholic Church. There but for the grace of god go I and that, right? Nope. I was just lucky.
No one in a same-sex marriage, or union ever made me feel threatened the way a deacon did.

And as sure as hell, no person in a same-sex union ever sinned as much or as badly as to have a large searchable database created to mend holes in the lives of their victims.

But the Catholic Church did. 👇🏻

projects.propublica.org/credibly-accus…