Of all bad
men, religious bad men are the worst. C.S.
Lewis
Raised
in an authoritarian home and church, I was shattered by the events of
Watergate. When Richard Nixon resigned I
was 27 year-old husband, father of two and an ordained religious professional. Even though my religion assured me I had
almost all the answers, a little more than four decades later I realized at the
age of 27 I knew diddly squat (next
to nothing),
For
the President of the United States to be guilty of corruption on a grand scale
– it was like the image evoked by the Netflix series House of Cards - the entire foundation of my training to never-question-authorities-about-anything
came crashing down.
When
Watergate happened, I was a true believer in the authority of my country and my
church. My mother raised me to believe
policemen were always here to help us. Until Watergate I thought that the
President of the United States was like a policeman.
Watergate shattered and exposed the lies
inherent within the ironic wise saying - “I’m from the government and I’m here
to help you.”
On
the other hand I had grown up being taught that the Catholic Church was a den
of thieves and robbers. As a youngster,
the few times I visited a Catholic Church the propaganda I was taught caused me
to get the heebie-jeebies – cathedrals seemed all dark and mysterious and the
stuff of nightmares. If a nun walked past me on the street I got the creepy crawlies. But I was taught to implicitly trust my church and its religious authorities. It only took a little more than a
decade following Watergate before I started to learn another one of those harsh
lessons that come from living in a glass house: s*** happens in religion as
well as within government.
With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil, but for good people to do evil – that takes religion. – Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize winning American physicist.
