Church sins

While the holidays are generally known for being family-oriented, research has concluded that there seems to be an apparent spike in suicide rates during this time. We pity them, the people without families to share the holidays with. Or at least families they want to see and who want to see them. Well, as we all sat down for the holiday with our families - marveling at the genius that flowed from the kitchen, or simply enjoying being with our families, many of whom we don't get to see outside of the holiday season - Patricia Halbach was kneeling at the bed of her son Nathan as he lay still and silent in his coma. A coma he had fallen into the day before Thanksgiving. Nathan had been battling brain cancer for some months now, and the doctors didn't give him long to live. When the turkey was sliced and the thanks made, Nathan took his last breath. Nathan Halbach died one month before his 23rd birthday, peacefully in his home, in his bed.

Let's turn back the clock a few weeks, to a time before we knew who Nathan Halbach was, when this story first broke into the national news scene. Patricia Halbach, married at the time, had an affair with a Franciscan priest. Who would have thought that priests had sexual urges like the rest of us? However, priests take vows of celibacy and we trust them to follow through on those vows. Father Henry Willenborg had an affair with Patricia for five years while she lived a few doors away from the church where he pastored and she worshipped.

The church, being the moral compass, didn't reprimand the wayward priest. He was allowed to remain at his post and he even baptized the son he denied as his own. Instead of holding up the moral standards they hold the rest of the world accountable to - by forcing this priest to take responsibility, to stand up and be the father he should have been - the church struck a deal with the mother. They agreed to pay all the expenses of the child in exchange for her vow of silence about the true lineage of Nathan. The sacred place of worship, the holy pew that we kneel at to quietly reflect on God and to feel his awesome presence, now seemed tainted with the stench of a back alley deal worthy of a hostage takeover.

Over the course of young Nathan's life, the church gave over $200,000 to keep the woman and her child silent. No guidance, only money and silence. Silence, such a simple thing coming from any other place, but what seems to be such a funny request from a church. The church, who shouts at us from our television screens and from our street corners the virtues of the righteous. The church, always vocal about abortion, liberal women trying to break into a man's world, the war in Iraq and anything else the church feels it needs to speak out against bought the silence of a fatherless child and his wayward mother. Instead of making the priest do what was right according to the Bible, which the church is always shoving down our throats; they bought the silence of the mother and allowed the father to roam free.

Where was the fire, hell and brimstone many churches call down upon those who step out of line? I didn't see the eternal damnation they shout from the top of their lungs when a gay couple wants the civil right to marry. Nothing came from the church but a wall of silence. How dare the church not hold one of their own to the same moral yardstick they hold the rest of us to? Where have the morals of the church gone? Has the church just become a den of iniquity like our city streets? We are supposed to be following their example? It seems the church is grabbing more and more of the headlines these days; the kind you would expect from a Jerry Springer guest. Are we still expected to follow their lead when they are allowing fathers to be deadbeat dads? As these church escapades continue to gain national attention, is it any wonder why church attendance continues to decline?