They Are Old Enough to Notice

I’ve made a few jokes about the false pregnancy rumor that found its way into formal correspondence from the Archbishop of Indianapolis. But there’s a part of this that isn’t funny: our children are watching. My children are old enough to hear the conversations adults have, encounter rumors in their community, and notice when what a religious institution teaches doesn’t always seem to match what people experience. I’ve spent years trying to keep my complicated experiences with the institutional Church from becoming my children’s experience of God. But I’ve realized I can’t make that separation by myself. And this is bigger than my family. What are we teaching the next generation—not simply through what we tell them about faith, but through what we show them? An institution failing is not the same thing as God failing. Questioning hypocrisy doesn’t make someone faithless. And asking uncomfortable questions doesn’t become wrong simply because they make someone in authority uncomfortable. That tension is part of why I wrote Anathema and why I created Ninety-Six: a place to ask difficult questions about faith, institutional religion, accountability, and what happens when belief gets complicated. I can teach my children what the Church believes. But the Church also has to decide what it’s going to show them. Because someday, they’ll decide for themselves what all of it taught them about God. And they’re old enough to notice. http://ninetysix.press