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Canadian Mennonite Vol. 17 No. 185Wikimedia Commons photoSt. Peter’s Basilica pictured in the early morning.through the Vatican without picking upthe first whip in sight, I owe Catholicisma great debt. By some holy irony, manyof the most loving, grounded people Ihave met are Catholic monks, nuns andpriests. I read more Catholic writers thanMennonite. I take my deepest questionsto a Catholic mentor more often than to aMennonite.All I knew about Catholics growing upwere the predictable Mennonite suspicionsabout Mary-worship, papal infallibility,prayers for the dead and prayers tosaints, and all the motions those papistsgo through.But in my early 20s, I found my way—Idon’t recall just how—to the writings ofHenry Nouwen and Thomas Merton,two prominent Catholics. They wroteabout silence, darkness, stillness, theinterior life and intimate connection toGod, although of a different sort than theevangelical striving I had also encountered.I felt drawn by something I hadnot found in my own tradition. Visits tomonasteries and retreat centres followed.Along the way, I discovered thework of Jean Vanier, Caryll Houselander,Oscar Romero, Carlo Carretto and otherCatholic writers, who all changed my life.Such is my appreciation forCatholicism that I marked my 40thbirthday last winter by spending a fewdays at the Trappist monastery nearHolland, Man., a place of tranquility andhospitality.But the blessings are jumbled up withall manner of other things. For instance,when those Trappists, like all Catholics,come to the heart of their religious practice,the eucharist, I become a secondclass Christian. I am not baptized in theCatholic Church, so I do not qualify topartake of the body of Christ.I find that stricture petty. But I manageto stomach it, barely. After all, as popularwisdom would have it, in this life youhave to take the good with the bad.Catholics, it seems, are masters at justthat. They are able to take an astoundingamount of bad mixed in with their blessings.At the risk of pointing out a log insomeone else’s ecclesiastical eye, let metake a closer look at what Catholics areable to withstand.I am not baptized in the Catholic Church,so I do not qualify to partake of the bodyof Christ. I find that stricture petty.Crimes of ordinationI’ll skip the Crusades, Inquisition andinitial wave of colonialism, the latterof which is an ironic contributorthe church’s current size, and jump toCanada’s Indian Residential Schools. Fordecades, Catholic leaders, who operatedabout 60 percent of the residentialschools in Canada, willingly removedtens of thousands of aboriginal childrenfrom their parents and communities.Many of the church’s most devoted andtrained members then abused these childrenphysically, emotionally and sexually.Untold numbers died unnecessarily. Thishappened on a systemic basis over a longperiod of time.I heard a Cree counsellor say that survivorssometimes recount the words ofabusers who told them: “If you love Jesus,you’ll let me do this.”How could Christianity, whatever the