It was an accident of birth. I could have been born a Muslim in Saudi Arabia or a Jew in Israel, a Shinto in Japan or a Mormon in Utah and grown up with an entirely different set of absolute religious values, a different “one true religion.” But I was born in Ireland and grew up Roman Catholic, in an era when that church dominated life there. My identity as Irish and Catholic were inextricably intertwined. I was both by birth. I didn’t think I could or should ever change either one. I moved from pious Catholic in Ireland to a broader view of Christianity developed at Louvain University, Belgium, during Vatican II in the 1960s. Then in five years as a priest in Oklahoma I came---for the first time---to have significant interaction with Protestants. This broadened my views and was the reason I finally went to work on a doctorate in theology for a closer examination of the fundamentals of Christianity. While doing so at Germany’s Tubingen University, my contact with students from non-Western cultures left me with serious questions about traditional Catholicism, especially the issue of the "one true church," and the impact of culture on religion. From African and Asian students there I learned about the positive aspects of other cultures and other religious systems. In those discussions I came to realize that in every society, in every religious system, individuals build their lives on the basis of what they believe to be true and accurate. For me, it was confirmation that people and their cultures everywhere are essentially equal, and that being "right" does not mean others are wrong, just different. As my research continued, my doubts about Christianity and its claims grew apace. I came to realize that it was absolutist and arrogant, somewhat similar to the old European view that white people were better than people of color, that Western culture was superior to others. This created genuine issues of belief for me. Intellectually I was ready to resign from the Catholic Church long before I was actually able to do so. I found it difficult to resign for a variety of reasons. It is difficult to change your life when your whole identify is tied up with what you have become. It is difficult to change when you have spent your entire adult life working towards what you are, making significant sacrifices along the way to do so successfully. It is difficult to change when your ability to make a living is tied into what you are, when changing will leave you unemployed, with limited skills for finding work in the world of business and commerce. It is difficult to implement change when doing so means disagreeing with just about everyone whose judgment you have come to respect. Finally, it is particularly difficult to change when it is tied in with the expectations of those near and dear to you, especially your family, when that family has made enormous sacrifices, financial and otherwise, to help you achieve the life you now want to abandon. I did just about everything possible not to resign as a priest, did everything I could to convince myself that I was wrong. For several years I suffered through hell trying to avoid making that decision. Many people contributed to my change of views, often without realizing it. Many helped me in significant ways. However, four friends provided critical support during these difficult years. They made it possible for me to break out intellectually from the confines of Western thought and religion. They eased my transition, providing emotional support as I struggled to implement my decision, but they never pressed me to make any specific decision. They saved my sanity, and perhaps my life, and for four decades I have been profoundly grateful to them. At the other extreme, two Catholic bishops taught me the same lesson thousands of victims of pedophile priests have learned painfully: Catholic Church managers are no different to managers of any secular business or corporation. They pay little heed to their “corporate principles,” the beliefs and values they loudly proclaim, as they circle the wagons to protect the church’s finances. My classmates from the American College at Louvain University came together in February 2011 for a reunion. About half of them are still priests, the other half married. Almost all are believing Catholics, some liberal, some conservative. Two of us no longer belong to any church. A frank discussion and several pointed questions about my views prompted me to put down on paper why I resigned as a priest, why I resigned from the Catholic Church. Resigning as a priest reset my life on an entirely different track where god and religion, and more importantly the Catholic Church and its hierarchy, played no role. For most of three decades I worked for the United States government. After I retired from it my two Nigerian friends invited me to join them in Nigeria. Subsequently my friend from Cameroon invited me to visit his native village, where he is now retired. A refugee in Gabon at the time, my friend from Rwanda invited me to visit as well. These visits gave me the opportunity to learn firsthand about their cultures, gave me the opportunity to take a second look at the values they lived by as well as how they saw these values today, decades later. They also affirmed the friendships of a lifetime I have attempted to explain how I came to the views I have, views that are starkly different from the ones I grew up with, how I opted out of a system I found oppressive, not because it was all wrong, but that an organization that claims to be based on inspired writings and guided by a leader who claims to be infallible has been wrong far too often.
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