Many of you may not know that Erin Manning has her own blog. On it, Erin — who, as you know, is a faithful Catholic active in her parish — blasts the Catholic Archdiocese of Minneapolis-St. Paul for its horrifying permissiveness with regard to a molester priest. After publishing a jaw-dropping list Kevin O’Brien compiled of all the things the Archdiocese ignored or failed to do in this case (e.g., the archbishop overruling his canonical affairs chief and making this man a pastor), an outraged Erin — who, again, is a lay volunteer in her Texas parish — writes:

Any of his known “irregularities” would have been enough to put him on administrative leave and bar him from working in a parish–if he had been a lay Church employee or volunteer–by the Archdiocese’s own Code of Conduct which all church employees and volunteers in the Archdiocese of Minneapolis/St. Paul are required to sign!

I hope that the laity of this archdiocese will make their unhappiness with this situation known.  I’d be protesting at the chancery, at the very least.  This is a clear double-standard, with lay people being held to one standard and ordained priests a totally different one.  And it stinks to high Heaven.

Ah, clericalism. Nothing like coming to realize that the archbishop keeps a different set of books for priests than he does for the laity, especially in the matter of sexual assault and perversion, to eviscerate the trust of parents under his authority.

Around town yesterday, I ran into an older gentleman who reads this blog. He brought up the Archdiocese of Minneapolis-St. Paul postings from earlier this week. The man is not a Catholic, and, he tells me, not much of a churchgoer. He knows that I am, and he respects that, but he says he doesn’t see much point. He brought up the case of his two aunts, now deceased. One went to church faithfully, the other not at all. But when he told me about the testimony of their lives, the woman who never went to church lived a far more upright, compassionate, and righteous life, whereas the churchgoer was sneaky, vicious, and manipulative.

Now, I know the theologically correct Christian answer to this point, but didn’t go into it with the old gentleman. In the short time we had, I did use the Evelyn Waugh point, saying, “Well, just think about how much worse your bad aunt would have been if she hadn’t gone to church.”

He laughed at that, and agreed. Still, from a common-sense point of view, his position was hard to gainsay. The goodness of his unobservant Christian aunt compared to the rottenness of his observant Christian aunt made an impression on this man about the uselessness of church so vivid it remained with him long after they had both died.

I thought about that story last night when I read Erin’s entry. There are people who look at us churchgoers and judge us by the testimony of our deeds, not our words. And they’re not wrong to, either. It is true that the church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints. And it is true that the theological claims of a church — Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant — do not depend, strictly speaking, on the behavior of the clergy or the congregation to be valid. For example, the Eucharist is the Eucharist even if the priest is a child molester, and even if everyone in the congregation is in the Mafia. And thank God for it!

But these are abstract arguments. For ordinary people, like the old country gentleman I ran into yesterday, the bad behavior of church people tells a story about the integrity of the church as an institution, the church as a community, and church as a concept. The testimony of deeds is more powerful than the testimony of words. If that doesn’t humble you, and even frighten you, as a Christian believer, then you aren’t taking your spiritual life seriously enough. The old man’s words, and Erin’s post, make me wonder whether the life I live is an invitation to come to church, or a warning not to waste one’s time with it. The answer does not make me feel good.

The fact is, our deeds are a greater indication of what we believe than are our words and our intentions — and, as Erin points out, our official Codes of Conduct. About 10 years ago, when the abuse scandal was raging, I asked a parish priest friend why the bishops were so indifferent to the suffering and pain their decisions inflicted on Catholic children and their families. He thought about it for a moment, then said, “Because they don’t believe in God. That’s the only thing I can figure.”

I’m sure every one of the bishops would have been shocked to have heard a parish priest say such a thing. But this priest was reading the testimony of their deeds, and this was his conclusion. I have come across more sophisticated explanations than this priest’s, but never a better one.