Losing My Religion

By William Lobdell / illustration by Benjamen Purvis



Web Exclusive: Orange Coast book critic Marylin Hudson’s review of “Losing My Religion” at www.orangecoastmagazine.com/lobdell



Chapter XI

A Gentle Whisper Silenced

After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.—1 Kings 19:12

On the first weekend in March 2002, I received two great story tips. The first one: Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles had quietly dismissed somewhere between six and 12 priests with credible allegations of sexual abuse in their past. Included in the dismissals were two convicted child molesters still in ministry and another priest who had admitted to the cardinal some years earlier that he had molested two boys—and had gone on to abuse others.

The second: Bishop Tod D. Brown, of the Diocese of Orange, had ordered an admitted pedophile removed from ministry, and that priest, Michael Pecharich, would be announcing his resignation at Sunday services at San Francisco Solano Church in Rancho Santa Margarita. Diocesan officials told me that, in the spirit of openness, I was welcome to attend a service and the “healing session” afterward with parishioners.

I had wrongly assumed that the dioceses of Los Angeles and Orange had no priests left in ministry who had sexually abused children. Cardinal Mahony and Bishop Brown had agreed to get rid of them more than six months earlier as part of the $5.2 million Ryan DiMaria settlement. My assumption was naïve. It was more than curious that the prelates had gotten around to dumping the molesting priests just as the national sex scandal arrived at the doorsteps of their dioceses. With more victims coming forward each day, the dioceses felt forced to clear out their rosters of any pedophiles before a survivor or journalist exposed them for violating the terms of their settlement by keeping a molester in ministry.

I should have been more skeptical, something I’d unfortunately have to learn many times covering religion.

On March 3, 2002, a warm and sunny Southern California day, I drove to South Orange County to the elegant Spanish mission–style church in Rancho Santa Margarita to see how the Diocese of Orange would rid itself of Father Michael Pecharich.

In a packed sanctuary that held hundreds, Father Mike, as he was known, stood before the congregation he had led for a dozen years. Reading from a statement, he told them that 19 years ago he had “transgressed the personal boundaries of an adolescent.” (Only later would it emerge that the diocese knew he, in fact, had been accused of sexual misconduct with several other children.) With the diocese’s zero-tolerance policy now in place, he said he was being forced to step down. The tone of his statement made him sound like a martyr—someone who had been kicked out of ministry for a single mistake, a simple boundary violation nearly two decades ago. As he read his short statement, the parishioners sat in stunned silence. Some women fished in their purses for tissues to wipe away their tears. As Father Mike walked out of the church, the congregation rose and gave him a standing ovation.

It took me awhile to understand that these people had been victimized, too. Father Mike was their spiritual leader, someone who had presided over their confirmations, marriages, baptisms, and funerals. He had counseled them and heard their confessions. They had invited him into their homes. And now, they couldn’t process the disconnect between the Father Mike they knew and the admitted child molester.

When the applause started, my first reaction was disbelief. A standing ovation? Though the language softened the act, I had just heard this priest admit that he had molested a minor. Diocesan officials had kept the information secret from the parishioners of San Francisco Solano, who until now would never have thought twice about leaving their children in the pastor’s charge. As a parent, my response was outrage and disgust. Imagine that a beloved schoolteacher who had taught your children had admitted to once sexually molesting a child, but the school district never called the police, kicked him out, or bothered to tell the parents. Would you rally around the teacher? Or would you be angry that a predator was left in a position of great trust with easy access to children—without your knowledge? I’d guess that the school superintendent would be forced to resign under pressure from parents—and face criminal charges for aiding and abetting a criminal.

After the service, I walked with church members to a newly completed parish hall, where diocesan officials were to answer questions and allow people to vent. I took a seat in the back. Some parishioners trembled with rage as they peppered the church officials with questions that centered around why their pastor was being penalized now for something he did 19 years ago and that church officials had known about since 1996. Their rage was aimed at his removal, not his sin. Some demanded to know how church officials even knew the sex crime had happened. The response: Father Mike had admitted it.

Soon, the conversation turned to finding a way to honor Father Mike. Someone hit upon the idea of naming the new parish hall after him. Others seconded the proposal. I scanned the room to see whether anyone besides me thought this was crazy. My eyes locked on a man who stood near a side door. He had the muscular build and close-cropped haircut of a military man or a police officer. With his jaw tightened, he glared at the parishioners who were lobbying to christen the building the Father Michael Pecharich Parish Hall. I could see the veins start to stick out of his neck. He finally yelled, “Don’t put this man on a pedestal!”

With the parishioners silenced, he explained in a biting tone that he worked as a sheriff ’s deputy and handled many child molestation cases. These molesters, he said, almost never have just one victim. And why, he continued, wasn’t anyone else angry that they hadn’t been told about Father Mike’s past before now? He had left his children at church many times, unaware that a child molester was in charge. How dare the parents not be told! He ended his speech by asking why no one had said anything in support of the victim. Why all this compassion for the perpetrator of a crime? With that, he abruptly walked out.

I wanted to see whether he’d agree to be quoted for the newspaper, so I stuffed my notebook in my back pocket and started to rise. That’s when a woman in the front row stood up and bellowed, “There’s an even more important question here.” I thought, “Oh, boy, this just keeps getting better.” I stood waiting for it. But then she turned around and pointed at me. “What’s an L.A. Times reporter doing in our midst?”

I had no idea how she knew I was there, but the entire angry mob of parishioners—with nowhere else to vent their feelings—turned on me, pointing fingers and snarling. I spoke quickly, saying that I’d be glad to tell them why I was here and who invited me, but first I needed to talk to the gentleman who’d just spoken. After that, I’d come back.

I walked briskly out the door and caught up with the deputy in the courtyard. He politely explained that he couldn’t talk to me because of his job. When I turned to go back inside the hall, I found my path blocked by a half-circle of fuming Catholics. They started screaming at me. I had no business being there, they spat. I told them the bishop had invited me. They yelled that this wasn’t a news story; I answered that this Catholic parish, with more than 4,000 families, was probably the largest and most influential organization in town, and Father Mike was one of the most recognized figures in Rancho Santa Margarita—it was news by any definition. They shouted that I would ruin Father Mike’s life if the story were published; I told them that Father Mike had ruined his own life when he molested a boy. They argued that they were positive that he had molested only once and he had lived an exemplary life for the past two decades.

“I believe that’s what makes us so passionate about the departure of Father Mike, the fact that the crime he is guilty of took place 19 years ago,” one parishioner told me. “In my eyes, he has done a noteworthy job of changing his life and becoming someone we could feel safe to have our children around.”

I said that I hoped she was right, but in my experience, molesters didn’t abuse just one child and I’d bet anyone that my phone would ring tomorrow after the story ran with another victim coming forward. That’s what usually occurs, I said. Indeed, it happened the next day.

We talked until everyone was talked out. By the time we were done, sadness—not anger—was the primary emotion. And I drove back to the office with a huge headache and many questions. How was the church ever going to reform if parishioners instinctively threw their allegiance behind molesting priests and not their victims?

San Francisco Solano’s reaction was typical. I’ve talked with victims of clergy sexual abuse whose parents blamed them for “seducing” the priest. I’ve watched Catholics yell at and even spit on victims who picketed outside a parish. I’ve seen congregants offer molesting priests jobs and even raise their bail. I’ve read letters from parishioners and priests who wrote glowing testimonies to bishops and judges about a convicted priest sex offender, pleading for leniency.

A colleague of one priest convicted on 46 counts of sexual abuse wrote to a judge that “our work brings us into intimate contact with people’s lives. In a time when the exchange of simple affection within the most intimate of circles has become a rare commodity, our associations with others run the grave risk of being misunderstood by all parties, including perhaps the priest himself.” Jaime Soto, the priest who penned the letter of support, is now bishop of Sacramento and a rising star in the Catholic Church.

The parishioners’ responses in these situations underscore how desperately we all crave spiritual leadership. We want to invest our trust in good men (and women, in most faiths) whom we can look up to—and even idolize. It is comforting to believe that there are people who are holier than ourselves, who we know and can follow. God is just the most extreme example. But viewed in the light of the scandal, this devotion appears sick.

With little more than a week before Easter, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I had invested a year into becoming a Catholic. I was brimming with knowledge and love for the church. But could I join this church at this moment? After all the revelations?

I probably should have discussed my doubts with Father Vincent Gilmore [Lobdell’s teacher and leader of the Rite of Christian Initiation program at Our Lady Queen of Angels in Newport Beach] or my sponsor, but I worried about disappointing them—and also casting a pall over what was the holiest week of the Christian year. Everyone in our class was gearing up for Easter vigil, when Catholics traditionally renew their vows of faith and welcome adults to be baptized. I didn’t want to throw a shadow over the group.

Besides, I could predict their response—I was confusing man’s sinfulness with God’s church—and I had reached the point where that answer didn’t suffice. I just didn’t want to join an organization that was run by leaders so out of touch with the modern world that they never picked up the phone to turn in child rapists—something most of us would do automatically, even if the perpetrator were a member of our own family.

For counsel, I turned to a veteran reporter with the National Catholic Reporter, a weekly newspaper. I had admired his work as a journalist, and through his writings, I knew him to be a devout Catholic and gentle soul. I had exchanged some e-mails with him since I landed on the religion beat. With nowhere else to turn, I imposed on our fledgling friendship. I sent him an e-mail describing my feelings and thoughts while standing at the precipice of Catholicism amidst the buffeting winds of the scandal. I told him I didn’t know what to do and asked for his advice. The next day, he wrote back:

I’m sorry your heart was heavy.
Sometimes I wonder why the heck I bother with it all. . . . .All churches, but certainly this one, are magnets for good people who deserve protection from institutional corruptions—the standard corruptions that exist in every institution.
And if they are not being corrupted, then the people who [make up] the institution we call church, and who together form church, radiate little bits of good through themselves and their actions that somehow are anchored in what Jesus came from and God wants of us.
In pressing for reform, I occasionally liken us all in these generations to those generations of Quakers who fought against slavery and lived and died in the fight never knowing whether slavery would be abolished or not. It was sufficient to fight for it.
And I suppose that’s my basic tenet.
Christians aren’t asked to succeed. They’re only asked to “do.” The sin is not “doing.” Success is up to God. . . .
I realize that’s all terribly simplistic. But then I have a peasant’s faith rather than an intellectual’s!
Meanwhile, don’t worry about not doing anything at Easter, or future Easters. The things of your soul are sufficient to the day. And to God.
The rest is the joyous part of formality, and communion. And that will happen as and when it should.

His counsel put me at ease. I still had about a week to decide, and I would do what my heart told me was right. Whatever happened, there would be other Easters. On Good Friday, I decided I couldn’t go through with the conversion. Converting to Catholicism during the height of a horrific scandal felt like an endorsement of the establishment. Worse, it felt like at least symbolically that I was turning against horribly wounded people who said, to the person, that the church’s betrayal was worse than what their priest did to them.

I had always imagined the rite of initiation to be a serious but joyous ceremony—like a wedding, which it basically was. If I was going to be married to the Catholic Church, I wanted to enter the relationship with no doubts or misgivings.

I told my wife. She said she understood. I called my sponsor and broke the news. He sounded disappointed but said he understood, too. I was a big admirer of his and hoped he didn’t feel as though he had somehow failed in bringing me into the church.

I don’t think he did. I told him—and I really believed—that I would be back. I said that as soon as I felt excited again about the church, I’d become a member. Maybe during next year’s Easter vigil. But now, the timing was wrong, and my heart said no.

It was the first of many agonizing choices on my journey away from God. I didn’t realize it at the time, but not becoming a Catholic was the first tangible sign that I was losing my faith. But the thought was so scary, so unwanted, and so profound, that it would be a long time before I actually admitted it, even to myself.

A few days later, I spent Easter at home for the first time in a dozen years.

Several months later, I stopped attending church on a regular basis. At first, I told myself it was because of my busy work and family schedules. But that wasn’t it. Before, attending church had been the No. 1 priority of my week. Now it was something I did if nothing else came up. Most weeks I just couldn’t muster the motivation to go. I needed my weekends to escape from the subject I was reporting on for 40-plus hours during the week.

The kids didn’t mind having their Saturday nights or Sunday mornings free, though my teenagers still attended popular weeknight youth programs at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church (I suspected mostly because of the large number of girls present). My wife was struggling to reconcile the idealized vision of the Catholic Church of her youth with the institution portrayed in my stories. She welcomed the weeks off, too.

Soon, I found myself not going at all. In truth, I had sunk into a depression. My long honeymoon with Christianity had ended, and I wondered what was next. I still prayed and read the Bible each day, but I had to force myself. I started to go to therapy twice a week. Religion wasn’t the only problem in my life at the time. At the 14-year mark, my marriage had hit a particularly rough patch. Part of my motivation for going into the Catholic Church was so Greer and I could be married “in God’s eyes.” Now, Greer said she didn’t want to marry me again, even if I became Catholic. In fact, she wanted a divorce. She couldn’t repress any longer the unresolved issues of our relationship, especially its rocky beginning. We were learning the same lesson that the Catholic Church was: You can’t hide the truth forever. Eventually, it will come out. Greer and I informally separated, but because neither of us would leave the children we both stayed in the house, occupying separate bedrooms. Without kids, we would have been finished.

But neither of us could face a life without living full-time with our boys. We decided to do whatever it took to save our relationship. Christianity can be a form of self-help, but now we started to see that we could also help ourselves. It took months and much of our savings to pay for counseling, but the marital seas began to calm, thanks especially to a wonderful psychotherapist.

My faith was another story. As soon as I’d beat back one doubt, two more would pop up. I felt angry with God for making faith such a guessing game. It started to bother me greatly that God’s institutions—ones he was supposed to be guiding—were often more corrupt than their secular counterparts. If these churches were infused and guided by the Holy Spirit, shouldn’t it follow that they would function in a morally superior fashion than a corporation or government entity? In general, I was finding this wasn’t the case. I started to see that religious institutions are more susceptible to corruption than their secular counterparts because of their reliance on God, and not human checks and balances, for governance.

The Roman Catholic Church’s College of Cardinals, after intense prayer and guided by the Holy Spirit, has selected popes for nearly a millennium. Some Holy Fathers have turned out to be saints; others became murderers (Pope John XII), torturers (Pope Urban VI) and adulterers (too many to name). Less reliance on faith and more on a democratized search for a pope might have kept the more notorious ones from office. And certainly a more practical belief that God had not ordained every pope to lead the church would have led to the quick firing of the most corrupt ones.

In the Protestant world, corruption often seeps into institutions under the cover of God’s will—or the belief by the congregation or the board of elders that pastors have a special connection to God. Only a relatively few churches decide God’s guidance is not enough and have put into place strict but common-sense rules to cut down on the potential for scandal.

Until now, I had, as a Christian, been able to quickly repel doubts about my faith, whether by study or prayer, or simply by ignoring them. Now, doubts were hitting me from all angles and sticking to me like Velcro. I couldn’t free myself of them.

 

Adapted from the book “Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America—and Found Unexpected Peace,” by William Lobdell. Copyright 2009 by William Lobdell. To be published Feb. 24 by Collins, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. 

William Lobdell

Experience
A 25-year journalist, he has won state and national awards, writing in a range of Southern California publications from the Daily Pilot to the Los Angeles Times.

Expertise
Covered religion as a columnist and beat reporter at the Times for eight years, became a metro editor in 2006, and left the paper in 2008.

Current Interests
Blogger, speaker, and a visiting faculty member at UC Irvine for 12 years, lecturing on subjects such as “Religion and the Media,” and “The Internet, Blogs, and Politics.”

Personal
Now 48, Lobdell lives in Costa Mesa, and is married to Greer Wylder, founder of www.greersoc.com, an O.C. shopping and dining Web site. They have four boys.

Meet the Author
Lobdell will sign copies of his book at 2 p.m. Feb. 28 at Borders Books, 1890 Newport Blvd., Costa Mesa.