Louisiana Catholic Lawyer Loses His Faith Defending The Church

There is an impressive , yet painful , article in the Lafayette Advertiser today dealing with a Louisiana Catholic Lawyer that lost his faith after defending the Diocese of Lafayette Louisiana in their sex abuse case against a rather infamous priest. See Former Lafayette lawyer rises from the ashes of the Gilbert Gauthe case .

I think the article is well done though it is not clear if the reporter t asked various parties from the family of Federal Judge Legend Judge Politz , to the Diocese, to the Louisiana Department of Corrections to respond. Again there are many angles to this story.

The Catholic sexual abuse scandal never shook my Catholic Faith though it tore me apart in other ways. I had seen this before . When I converted to Catholicism the Diocese of Lafayette sex abuse scandal was all out in the open in vivid color in my State.  The Lafayette Diocese was the canary in the coal mine of what was to come . So my eyes were quite wide open .

After my conversion I became very involved in State wide Catholic campus ministry. That put me in contact with many ordinary Catholics lay and cleric  from the Lafayette area that had to deal with this. I suppose it is that experience and the fact that the Diocese has come back in my opinion as a very healthy Church that I knew the American Church would come back too.

Further there was the whole ethos of how we dealt and discussed  sexual abuse. I was one of those guys in college that for whatever reason my friends felt safe enough opening up too. Some of that involved sexual abuse by family members

One of those was a friend  from Baton Rouge whose mother I had met and who was very devout . She had sexually abused him for a long period . I was shocked. I never comprehended that a mother could do that to her son. But to see her you would never have a clue. In short I  came to realized that sexual abuse  was a complex and very very dark place. SO the Catholic Church became the whipping boy of society and those o of us perhaps on a very personal level that in the words of the prayers of the Catholic liturgy " that left " things done and things left undone,
. Our guilt became rage . Needless to say as to my College Friend in Baton Rouge he sent out cries for health that perhaps too many just chose to ignore.
Still there were countless victims. From the children and their parents to the lawyers on both sides perhaps that had to deal with this encounter with evil. Those scars remain.

In your prayers keep mind of Lawyer Ray Mouton. He was a part of the collateral damage.