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Dear Friend,
Thanks for the questions.
First, God is not holding anyone responsible for Adam and Eve's sin. They alone are responsible for their sin. What they lost, however, was an inheritance, so they didn't have that to hand on.
- Can you see the difference?
If I lost something, like I were to go bankrupt, my kids lose out. I no longer have the goods to pass on. That is what happened. The gift of sanctifying grace was lost to the first parents, so they didn't have it to hand on to us but as God is not simply a banker or lawyer, but a Father, He found a way to circumvent the gap and restored what was lost through the Death and Resurrection of His Only Son, Jesus. He offers the inheritance to all who accept Him. So if you want to be in God's family, He gives you that for free. He doesn't want anyone to suffer for the sins of their parents, so He supplies what you otherwise couldn't get. (Think this through until it makes sense; it may take a bit.)
As far the historical examples you brought up, that is only a smattering of scandals. There are many others. So long as there have been people on the Earth, there have been corrupt, nasty, evil-doing men who do things that, often, people will blame God for happening.
Keep in mind, you need to know the truth about history and not accept all the conventional narratives about certain events in order to get the whole story. For example, in the Crusades certainly some Catholics did bad things, but that is like saying some G. I.'s in World War II did some bad things to the Japanese or Germans they captured.
- This kind of specific evil happened on both sides, but what was the war all about and why were they in the war to begin with?
- Does their bad behavior mean that the war against the Nazi's was simply a vicious or unjust evil retribution against some innocents?
If you would agree with me and say that the bad actions of some does not negate the whole history of World War II, then to be consistent, you need to study and learn the truth about the Crusades and discover how it was a defensive war fought against brutal tyrants who slaughtered Christians by the thousands in the most egregious manner. Consider how Pope Urban, after several hundred years of Islamic expansion and brutality, finally consented to resist the Muslims and defend the pilgrims to the Holy Land. These Muslim tyrants would sometimes take their captive Christian men and cut open their guts, tie their entrails to a post and make them walk around it in circles until they had pulled out all their own intestines. This is only one of the many horrors that were reported. It was tolerated for far too long. The sad thing about war is that it can unleash the most vicious parts of some men, even when they are enlisted in a just cause but, thankfully, that is not true of all men.
The inquisition also has a complex history, but one that is more tied to political dictates of kings than prelates. There is not ample room here to disabuse all the notions that have skewed these histories, but consider the analogy above with World War II before you take broad assumptions.
Lastly, the reported findings in Canada have sparked anti-Catholic rhetoric and conspiracy theories, not to mention misinformation.
The Catholic orphanages in question were set up and commissioned by the Canadian government to handle the problem the Government could not manage. There is now evidence to suggest the mass graves were not the result of a genocide, as some have reported, but rather from a disease and health crisis that spread among the children. As in the cases above, you are likely to find some good and some bad reporting but the institutions were started in an attempt to stave off an even greater problem. Check out this story below:
If there were evil persons doing evil things in the context of this system, they will be punished eternally by God for their crimes. Their crimes are not in accord with:
- the universal policy of the Church
- Catholic teaching
- nor are they associable with Catholics at large, who universally condemn all of the alleged actions of the potentially evil persons involved.
It is like the clergy sexual abuse scandal: most Catholics want these evil wolf-in-sheep's-clothing prelates driven out of the Church and tried for their crimes. There are still prelates trying to cover for these scoundrels and I think that eventually, God will allow circumstances in the world to unfold in such a way that the bad, who do not repent, will be exposed to their eternal shame. Justice always prevails in the end.
The darkness that is covering the Earth right now has many people despairing, confused and not knowing where to turn for truth.
Your concerns are not uncommon, and the answers are not always easy to find. You must trust that God is still God, and there are both good and bad men, and He is calling us to be the men who side with the good. We are scandalized when some of those evil men are in the Church, and especially when they hold positions of power.
- Why doesn't He intervene and just make the evil stop?
Jesus said let the wheat and the weeds grow together, because if you pull up the weeds you may take some of the wheat with it. (Matthew 13:24-30)
I know this to be true of myself. There was a time in my life that if the Lord came I would be plucked out like a weed, but thank goodness He didn't come, because I am choosing to live as the wheat. When the harvest comes, I hope to be ready.
Keep the faith and be ready. Offer your trials, your doubts, your prayers, your joys, everything, for the good of yourself and your family, friends and loved ones. We live in evil times and if we don't rise to the occasion, we will be like a sleeper while Hitler rolls his tank through our village.
Peace,
Bob Kirby
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