A friend of many years standing (whom I will here name Paul) has shaken my inner world by revealing something of his own.

He is a person of strong character and sharp intelligence. In addition, he has devoted his life to community service in ways that continue to inspire me. At the same time, he cherishes his family and is an admirable husband and father.

Paul’s life is notable for continuity. He takes seriously the educational and governmental institutions that have helped to shape his character and his career.

So, too, with the church. From childhood on, Paul has been an active Catholic, well educated in the teachings of the church and committed to helping others in need. Now arrived in mid-life, he has continued his allegiance to this tradition, along with his wife and family.

Recently, however, in the midst of a conversation about the church, Paul surprised me by allowing that he now feels shaken in this allegiance. Recent events have upset his confidence in this institution that has been such a major influence on his life. Nowadays, he is so deeply troubled by much of what church authority does that he has doubts about his place in the church.

This disclosure of Paul’s problems with his church and mine has hit me hard. Coming from a person of such longstanding and solid attachment to the tradition that we share, this news persuades me that the current crisis in the church is more pervasive than I had thought. If Paul is scandalized enough to consider alternatives, then the number of other people who feel the same way must be legion.

I count myself among those who feel similarly troubled. Many actions taken by those in authority within the church bother me also. It grieves me to know that so many Catholics feel torn between authority and conscience

By reason of my now advanced years, I bring to this question a perspective not likely to be shared by the young. They did not directly experience the changes that the Catholic Church made in the 1960s, as I did. Those changes of both attitudes and practice, made by the Second Vatican Council─convened 43 years ago this month─excited many people of my generation and made us hope the Church would stay committed to reform.

However, even before that decade was out, the pope of the time, Paul VI, had forced on the church a decision about birth control that was to prove disastrous. And, in time, the failure of the church to implement the vision of Vatican II left us with disappointed dreams. Even the long reign of the late John Paul II, while productive of much good, maintained a model of one-man rule that clashes with the Gospel and serves the church badly.

The explosive revelation of sexual abuse by the clergy has come as a terrible blow to Catholics at large. For many laypeople, the worst part of it was the failure of the bishops to accept responsibility and take action. In the greater Boston area, people still feel outraged that the Vatican rewarded the deposed Cardinal Law with a plush position at Santa Maria Maggiore, one of Rome’s most prominent basilicas.

Catholics of my age have been long inured to corruption in the church. Many of us learned to live with it decades ago and considered it the price to be paid for the institution’s human fallibility. We even learned how to twist it into an argument for the church’s divine origins. Though Boccaccio’s Decameron, written in the 14th century, was never our bedside reading, we could have found support in its pages for this attitude.

The second of the Decameron’s 100 stories tells of a man in Paris who was considering converting to the Catholic Church. A friend was urging him on.

Before making a decision the fellow wanted to make a pilgrimage to Rome, the heart of the church. His friend urged him not togo, fearing that Roman corruption would surely prevent his conversion.

He ignored this advice, however, went to Rome, and came back home. Anxious to discover if, indeed, he had decided not to convert, his friend put the question to him. The man answered: “Certainly not. Any church that can continue to last through so much corruption must surely be divine.”

I remember hearing this argument, or variations on it, during my whole lifetime.

However, there is a difference between corruption in past centuries and those we experience in our own lifetime. When, for example, you are a parishioner at Our Lady, Help of Christians church in Newton, and see your pastor deposed for makeshift reasons that disguise the abuse of church authority, then it hits you hard.

Many Catholics have given up on the church. Despite my ongoing resentment toward the culture of church authority and my rejection of many values the clerical structure reveals, I cannot see myself ever leaving. It is my spiritual home; it belongs to me and not only to those who wield power.

Richard Griffin