A lot of people these days see only the negative in religion. In my view this is a slightly lazy "all or nothing" position to take as it overlooks the fact that for many millions of people, religious belief, community and practise brings a light, hope and empowerment, to lives that may otherwise not have found it. Through this perspective, the recent scandals rocking the Catholic Church are all the more disappointing, indeed, abhorrent.
Children were abused by men who they and their families considered figures of trust and authority. Furthermore, the abuse and misuse of power did not stop at the perpetrators themselves but seems to have spread all the way up to the very top of the Catholic church to Bishops, Cardinals and even the Pope himself - all of whom appear guilty of failing to act with sufficient seriousness or judgement in dealing with the abusers or, indeed, supporting the abused.
The whole episode has unearthed a moral cancer within the Catholic church and the full extent of suffering it has caused can barely begin to be comprehended by those of us on the outside. Child abuse leads to massive trauma for often the entire lifetime of the abused and, because the injury is psychological, it remains invisible to all but those closest to the afflicted. I see it all the time myself as a psychiatrist and I have witnessed numerous devastated lives over my career. No verbal apology can ever make up for the tidal wave of suffering that the Catholic church is today responsible for. Yet, beyond words of apology, very little action seems to have taken place.
The one group within the Catholic church who spoke out about the abuse was the nuns and yet, as a body, they themselves are now under investigation by the church hierarchy for their supposed insubordination. The nuns have, in fact, been the light trying to break through from within the church itself, while all the while being closeted away as much as possible by the male hierarchy.
Yet it is within this very male hierarchy that the problem exists. For any organisation to be exclusively male in its leadership and management is wrong in any event. That is where the problem starts in the Catholic church. This is then further compounded by the celibacy order. The human sex drive is as natural as our appetite. In some people it is more and others it is less, but to ban it out of existence for an entire swathe of people can never be healthy.
It is in these two aspects that the seeds of the Catholic church's cancerous growth sit. They are in need of some spiritual self help of their own and unless they ultimately change both the make up of their clergy and the rules by which they are governed, problems of this nature will continue to rot the organisation from within.
We are no longer in an age where such things can remain in the darkness. The Church has a long way to go to open itself up but if it is to survive, then it must step into the light again.