UNITED STATES
Washington Times
By Renee Garfinkel – – Monday, January 4, 2016
When I hear about the latest bone-chilling crime committed by a member of a group, I ask, “Is this the action of a few very bad apples, or is there something rotten about the barrel?”
The question becomes more poignant when the “barrel” in question is a religious community. If you’re fortunate enough to belong to a religious community, you know its many benefits — fellowship, mutual aid, spiritual connection and worship, to name a few. Perhaps the greatest spiritual gift is the opportunity for self-examination that supports moral change and personal growth. Every religion I know of includes the possibility for individual repair, repentance and renewal.
But what happens when the community itself is in need of repair? What if problems in the community implicate a “bad barrel?”
Too often, a religious community will resist facing the possibility of its own culpability in the moral failures of its members. The current movie “Spotlight” brings to the screen the real-life situation of pedophile priests in the Catholic Church. The church and the larger Boston community colluded in denial and cover-ups for many years.
Those who tried to expose the crimes found themselves sidelined, maligned and intimidated. It took an outsider with investigative resources and the power of the press, a new, non-Bostonian editor of the Boston Globe, to see that the problem was systemic. It led up through the highest levels.
Boston was indeed a bad barrel. Only when that truth was faced could the institution begin to change, its victims begin to heal.
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