The Catholic Echo Chamber

I am praying for relief from the Catholic echo chamber. I first heard it at Donald McGuire‘s sentencing hearing. Although in a prison orange jumpsuit and wheelchair, he began speaking the Catholic tape in his head, and all the Catholic nods starting nodding. Chilling. His family was there. The victims were there whom I sat with. No Jesuits. Telling. I recently heard it on a Word on Fire podcast where the priest and the interviewer just kept nodding at each other. Chilling. I hear it from those who have been institutionalized all their lives, the capacity for independent thought outside the echo chamber is gone forever. Smell like the sheep. In order to smell like the sheep, you have to be one.

It is this echo chamber which allowed the continued abuse of children and it’s cover up. I think Catholics are more dismayed, angry, frustrated, now devoid of faith by the way the Church treated the victims more than the crime itself. The echo chamber is alive and well. Clericalism is not dead. All the old structures which lead to tragedy still exist as they did before. Leading us further into tragedy. The one thing the Catholic Church does NOT do is…Listen.

Love & reform,
Matthew