The spiritual perils of religion writing

Rod, thank you for posting this, and the Lobdell article, which I had not seen before. After reading your interview, I have a much better understanding of why you left the Catholic Church. I can't say that I blame you, although, as a Catholic, I am extremely sad that you left. I am very familiar with the perils of religious journalism for the religious person. I used to write for an orthodox Catholic newspaper back in the 1980s. I stopped in large part because of experiences like the ones you and Lobdell describe. On one occasion, I was covering a conference on "homosexuality and the Church". The conference attendees included the vocation and formation directors of quite a few of the major religious orders. At one point, I found myself having lunch at a table at which an Augustinian said to the rest of us, "whenever I go to conferences like this, the issue is whether we just go out to dinner, or we go to a gay bar." At another point, I listed to a nun -- very senior in her order -- say that she and others in her order had decided that their vows precluded heterosexual sex, but not "other genital sexual activity." I came out believing that thousands of devout Catholics were being taken for suckers by a bunch of people who wanted to live off the Church, while ignoring the vows that were part of the deal. I also concluded that a lot of very mixed up people had found their way into the religious orders, and that the free-for-all that ensued after Vatican II had left them without any kind of spiritual guidance whatsoever. The result was conferences like the one I had to cover.
The pedophilia scandal is much, much worse than anything I had to deal with when I was writing about the Catholic Church. It is hard enough to keep one's faith when one is just reading about it in the newspapers. I think that having to cover it myself would make my ill.

CatherineNY: I came out believing that thousands of devout Catholics were being taken for suckers by a bunch of people who wanted to live off the Church...

Allow me to congratulate you on your astute sense of discernment.