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	Shaking My Faith By Peter L. Whittle Polemic & Paradox July 5, 2009 http://www.polemicandparadox.com/2009/07/shaking-my-faith.html Empty pews, buckets to collect water from a leaky roof, poor financial support from the community. This is the legacy wrought by the sexual abuse scandal that rocked the devout Roman Catholic community of St. Bernard’s in the 1980’s. Many in the hierarchy of the church in this province feel that they have moved beyond the scandals, that we are in a post abuse era. I beg you to come to St. Bernard’s and attend mass, where the number of buckets to collect rain drops nearly equals the number of those attending mass, and look me straight in the face and tell me that we have moved on, that the church has not failed those in greatest need of spiritual awakening and renewal. The little outport of St. Bernard’s, population of 700 finds itself nearly abandoned by a church that was forced by the courts to pay-out millions of dollars in compensation for the crimes of one man who served the parish from 1967-1982. Unwitting parents delivered their children to a pedophile wearing a collar, empowered by god and protected by the church. Nowhere is the decline of the church more pronounced than in St. Bernard’s, where wishful thinking and little sincere outreach has devastated a once rich and vibrant catholic community. The church is in decline across Newfoundland and Canada. Fewer and fewer men are taking the vows, more are abandoning their vows for marriage, and attendance at mass has slowed to a trickle. The Church finds itself barely able to meet the financial obligations of maintaining its structures, paying insurances and a few salaries. Parishes are being combined in an exercise called clustering, priests are asked to do more. Our geography makes the task even more complicated. The trends are not good for the church. The Roman Catholic Church in Newfoundland and Labrador is slowly marching towards extinction as the secular realities of finance and the poor recruitment of new priests leaves those impacted by the collateral damage of the scandals nearly abandoned. Like freshly caught fish, gasping for life, these pockets of faithful are taking their last breaths of air. The ideal solution would be to assist these tight knit communities, whose faith in the good works of the church as their steadfast moral compass was cast upon the rocks by the evil of wicked men and the paralysis of the church hierarchy. It is too easy for those in authority to say that little parishes like Sacred Heart are no different than the hundreds of other towns and communities that have seen their populations decline and their ability to sustain churches go with it. That the low attendance, the low financial support for the church is part of a much wider trend across most of the Western Hemisphere. To me the physical building that is the Church in St. Bernard’s is a symbol of the failure of the church, which is such a vital part of my being, to respond to the need of a flock in crisis. The leaking roof, the water filled buckets, the empty pews, the absence of young families, the ceilings - water stained and scarred from years of neglect - personify the church's failure to accept responsibility for not rising to the challenge of repairing the damage done. This morning the local parish priest, a young man charged with saying mass and offering services to over a dozen communities in Placentia and Fortune Bay while spending half of his time in St. John’s, admitted that pleas for assistance to reshingle and repair the roof have failed. He admitted that the costs demanded by private companies were insurmountable. He fell back on stewardship, begging the local community to take on the challenge itself. He urged the community to do as it had in the past, and come together for the common good. Many hands make light work. Of the 52 people in attendance, 70% of those were women, and the majority of men huddled along their cherished positions in the last two pews in the back of the church were retired, in their late 60’s and early 70’s. Those capable of honoring the plea do not attend mass. They are the lost souls. It is a vicious circle that the church, and the church alone must break by finally offering peace to this catholic community. Yes, the church is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, but would the cost of a symbolic offering to a community of Catholics in St. Bernard’s not be worth the financial risk? I think so.
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