I'll never forget the time that I was treated so badly when...

[The following are excerpts from six conversations with people who are trying to find their way home; people who in the past had sought support from their church and felt they were treated badly.]

1. In the 1970's a women was ostracized by the church because her husband decided that his family wasn’t enough for him anymore (or maybe they were too much)?  They told her she could no longer receive communion? Why? He left her, she didn’t leave him.
    
2. A person chooses to encourage the doctors to follow through on a family member's wishes when she learns that the family member would likely never breathe on her own or regain consciousness again.  Did this decision really make her a bad person?
    
3. The church's position on homosexuality is a painful one for many - love the person hate the behavior? A person doesn't wake up one day and say, "gee I think I'll be gay when I grow up." Weren't we all made in God's image? - or just some of us?
    
4. Shall we throw stones at this woman? Her parents' best friend enjoyed her company when she was six or seven.  Her best friend attempted suicide while they were in their teens. She played around a bit on both sides of the coin in her twenties. She had an affair with a married man that she thought she was hopelessly in love with in her thirties. She drank too much in her forties. Jesus didn't condemn the accused adulterer instead he said go and sin no more and asked the accusers who among them were without blame. She promised the Lord celibacy for life in her fifties.
    
5. We are supposed to sit back and accept that a woman cannot become a priest AND accept that the conversation is closed to further discussion.
    
6. Dorothy Day had an abortion; yet she is a saint (at least in our mind).

[The following was written in an effort to respond in general to all six stories and the hundreds of others not listed.]
When things go wrong in our lives and the church you depend on (religious or laity) treats you badly it hurts deeply.  As a church and as individuals, we need to be compassionate and careful not to judge others, for better or worse.  We all have our own pain, our own and guilt, and our own struggle to forgive ourselves even when God already has.

The journey home for many including myself is, and perhaps always will be, a rocky one and moving beyond the hurt is a real challenge.  Jesus never promised it would be easy to pick up the cross and follow him so I continue to advocate for change from within; consult the rule of St Benedict when I need guidance; listen closely and try to hear what God is telling me; fall down, get up and start over again each day. Father Frascadore speaks of a woman who started her day by praying "help me, help me" and ended her day be praying "thank you, thank you". These are both wise people worth listening to.

I hope you will give us a chance to show you that the "rotten apples" have not spoiled the entire harvest; the church can be a wonderful source of support.