WARSAW, Poland – A Filipina nurse who just moved to the US said her faith in the church is badly shaken following the recent scandal that Catholic priests are facing.
Jasmine Co, 56 years old from the Philippines said she has stopped confessing her sins to priests, and is turning to God directly.
Numerous other Catholics around the globe share the same sentiments. With new exposure of clerical abuses in Germany and US many Roman Catholics find their relationship to the church painfully tested.
However, Linda Faust of Greendale, Wisconsin said, “At this point of my life I wouldn’t leave the church for somebody else’s sin.” Faust comes from the same state where late Rev. Lawrence Murphy was accused of molesting some 200 boys at a school for the deaf.
Experts say the church is facing a crisis of historic proportion. "This is the type of problem that arises really once in a century, I think, and it might even be more significant," said Paul Collins, an Australian church historian and former priest.
It is feared that the church scandals could be the final blow on the laity whose commitment are already wavering. A growing number of the faithful demands the church to be transparent, fight against pedophiles and reconsider the rule of priestly celibacy.
While the faithful fill the churches this Holy Week, anxiety is heard in many places as people struggle to draw the line between the crimes of some priests and their own deep attachment to communities and the beliefs that they uphold. (AP/Ian Joplin Virrey /UP Mass Comm Intern/Sunnex)