“Most people assume that knowing how the sausage is ground is hazardous to your spiritual health, but in my case it’s had the opposite effect. I already knew there were politics and careerism and petty jealousies in the church before I started this gig, so there weren’t too many scales to fall from my eyes.”
“The surprise has been how much more I’ve discovered. … I’ve seen how the Catholic faith has inspired ordinary people to do mind-blowing things, such as serving the poor and healing divisions and fighting corruption and saving souls.”
“My experience has helped me to see beyond the normal preoccupation with scandals and division and heavy-handed exercises of authority, as important and unavoidable as those stories are, to how much more there is to Catholic life.”
“In the end, that’s deepened my faith rather than causing some existential crisis,” he said.