Call Moeney: How can my faith survive if religion is so distorted and offensive?

By Shereen Bhan On Jul 5, 2025

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Dear bell,

I never thought I would write to an advisory column, but there is no one else with whom I can talk about this.

I am 44 and went to Ampleforth College in the 1990s. I went on board there and in general I remember lovingly.

The friendships, the routine, the strange serenity of Benedictine’s life – everything formed me and until recently I felt a real sense of gratitude for that experience.

But a few months ago I heard that my former caretaker – someone I knew and was respected – convicted of indecent and sexual attack, including a minor in the time I was in school.

I was never damaged, or at least not that I can do that to remind. There are no oppressed memories or unspoken traumas popping up, only a terrible realization that someone who was supposed to take care of and protect us did the opposite behind closed doors.

Although I have long fallen into my Catholic faith, this has startled me to the core. It forced me to think about the broader role of religion – not only Catholicism, but all organized religions. How much pain has been inflicted, how many people have suffered, in the name of God?

What was once a personal disillusion is slightly more pressed: I now notice that I believe that organized religion, in many traditions, is the root of an extraordinary amount of pain in the world.

It is not only the institutional cover-ups or the abuse self-it is the hypocrisy, control, debt imposed on children and the repeated failures to protect the vulnerable.

I always thought that religion was a power that was distorted by poor people. Now I’m not sure. Perhaps the distortion is built in.

I don’t feel traumatized, but I feel shocked – morally and spiritual.

Part of me wonders if I respond exaggerated; After all, I was not damaged. But I cannot shake the bitterness that came in, or the feeling of betrayal – not only by individuals, but by a system that I once trusted.

Call, is it possible to stick to any form of faith after something like that? Or is the running away from the only honest path?

Robert

This is one of the most interesting letters I have ever received and I am grateful to you that I have brought a problem close to my heart.

This column is necessarily concerned with relationships – even though I admit that I am getting tired of reading about sex elsewhere. Yet you also write about a relationship – and it is an important one. You struggle with thoughts about the Christian God who (like or not) are embedded in your DNA.

A Catholic raised, you started to question that belief before the man you knew was convicted of these crimes. Yet you write because of an acute feeling of disillusion caused by his conviction.

Your leading question: “How much pain has been inflicted, how many people have suffered in the name of God?” Certainly is reflected by millions of, while they look at the newest atrocities around the world and mourn the history of humanity from biblical times, even before the crusaders shed so much blood. The eternal question why a God would allow innocent children to suffer is asked by all religious hives.

I also had trouble. I found the methodism as a receptive 15-year-old, rejected when all the religion when I came to CND at the age of 17 and brought sleepless nights to worry about the bomb. How did God have invented it?

Statements about ‘free will’ have not convinced me at all. For years I called myself an agnostic, because I could not completely embrace atheism. Now I embrace Christianity, not because I have overcome doubts, but because of my pride of the great Christian culture of the West that has given us such sublime glory of art, literature and music, as well as ethical teachings that embody everything that is best in human nature.

To be honest, I doubt that you will ever ‘walk away’. Wait.

You could sympathize with Clement Attlee (Labor Premier when I was born) who believed in ‘the ethics of Christianity’ but not to ‘Mumbo Jumbo’. So just read the sermon on the mountain (Matthew, chapters 5-7) and there you meet the best ethical education in the world.

That is what you have to concentrate on, rather than on human wickedness. After all, you would not reject all art after you looked at the horrible burdock of a disturbed person, right? You would not say that all books are harmful because of the existence of Mein Kampf.

That teacher who respected you who fell so spectacularly from Grace … He no longer represents Christianity than the leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, represents Islam. A whole faith cannot be assessed by the weakest – or most cruel – practitioners. Always think about the core of goodness, not angry. The essential principle of empathy is not only taught by Jesus of Nazareth. It is the golden rule of civilization – which can be summarized as: “If you don’t like it yourself, don’t do it to someone else.”

This appears in different permutations in Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Jainism, the Baha’i belief and Islam.

Of course it will always be betrayed by zealers, fanatics, small spirits and crazy people. But that doesn’t make the principle wrong. It only proves that the old struggle between good and evil is still being fed every day.

The most well -meaning doctrines are traded by the deadly sins within human nature. After all, avid socialists can be as greedy and corrupt as everyone.

A person (like your former teacher) could betray the teachings he seemed to embody, but that does not mean that those teachings have betrayed you.

So I just hope that you will continue to think, ask and ask you until you die.

My friend’s husband is still cheating

Dear bell,

For a long time I am suspicious that my friend’s husband leads a double life.

Long ago he left my friend for another woman for a short time and then went back to marriage. But I think he has been going on with the relationship since then.

The apologies that my friend gives for the constant absence of her husband are as works of fiction, and I often wonder if she knows the truth, but not only wants to face life alone (they are in the mid -60s).

The other day someone I know saw this man with the other woman. I am now confronted with knowing for sure that the husband is unfaithful and it weighs heavily.

My friend never told me that her husband left her behind (he was he who trusted), but if we ever have unfaithfulness, she will say defensively: “Everyone has the right to one mistake.”

I fear seeing her husband now and even feel uncomfortable about seeing my friend.

In the recent past I have seen him unpleasant for her and he never shows her any affection. I don’t know what to do.

Helena

This is one of those times in life that you have to accept that you cannot do anything.

What are the alternatives? You could tell your friend that her husband is cheating on her and probably never stopped; You could tell her husband that you know what he is planning and unless he stops, you will blow the whistle; Or you could say the word around mutual friends and suggest that they cut him to him to let him know the collective moral disapproval of his affair and exploitation of his long -suffering woman.

What will probably happen in each of those cases? You tell her, but she knew you as the wearer of news she doesn’t want to hear – so that’s the end of the friendship.

You protest with him and he denies it flat and makes you worse for your own affairs. You inform the friends and they shake their heads and turn off – simply because they agree that it is outside their power to achieve everything.

Do you see? It is understandable that you feel morally offended, but I just can’t see how translating in any form of action would do well.

Your point about the woman who works together in her husband’s unfaithfulness is a good one. Many years ago I knew a few with the same pattern: he had endless things, once with the Nanny family almost under the nose of the woman, and she said nothing. She had the status – and although her annoying husband got sex from the babysitter, it stopped him from bothering her. If I make that cynical, it is probably because I am.

As I say so often, none of us can ever know for sure what is going on in the marriage of another pair. If it upset you to be with this pair, all you can do is a step back and avoid them where possible.

But what would happen if your friend would turn to you one day and asked why you were so unfriendly? That would bring you to the scene – and I can see that it would be terrible to tell a lie. So in that case you should mutter evasions or tell the truth.

But don’t forget that ‘Shoot the Messenger’ is a sentence that refers to the fault or the wearer of bad news blame or punishing, even though they are not responsible for the bad news themselves.

It emphasizes a common human tendency to focus frustration and anger on the person who provides negative information, instead of tackling the cause of the problem. So be careful.

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