Reacting To Abuse

In my religion inquiry, I stumbled across a frightening case that just recently occurred right here in Chicago. I'm referring to the court case regarding the sexual abuse allegations on priest Daniel McCormick. The anonymous victim, or John Doe, was abused from eighth grade until he was junior in high school, or from 2001-2005. For the ten claims made by Doe, there was a 3.15 million dollar settlement made after five years of deliberation. In my opinion, money can't make up for the emotional trauma that would ensue from a trusted mentor, priest, and teacher preying on you and violating your rights and trust. 

Unfortunately, this was not some rare, isolated event. In fact, in January of this year a group of lawyers released about 6,000 pages of reports of sexual abuse involving 30 other priests. In fact, in a personal interview with Bradley Malkovsky, religion professor at Notre Dame, he pointed to these sexual scandals as a cause for the loss of following. This seems like a very realistic allegation considering no parent would want to put his or her child in the dangerous and harmful position that John Doe was stuck in for many of his teenage years. 

Rise in Suppport, Decline in Practice

            For my Junior Theme, I am exploring the decline in religion among the millennial generation. One answer to this question I have learned about is that the millennial generation supports gay and lesbian rights more than any other generation that has come before it. According to a study from the Public Religion Research Institute, thanks to the millennials, 2011 is the first time in history that supporting gay marriage was not a minority position. This group is also the most unaffiliated group religiously for their age, at 25 percent unaffiliated (Pew Research Center).

            This connection between religion and gay rights is a pressing one in today’s news. Mississippi just passed a “religious freedom” law, which allows business owners to use their religion as a legal defense in a court of law if sued by a costumer. This means that if a customer was refused service or harshly treated for their sexual orientation, that said business owner could defend himself in saying it was because their religion doesn’t support gay rights.

            I believe that this type of disdain towards gay rights that is often connected to religion has caused there to be a decline in practice of religion with this younger generation. This is because if people now accept those around them the way they are, they don’t want their religious institutions to say that it’s not okay to be the that way. Obviously this is not a direct connection because not all religious institutions are against gay rights, but the fact that the support for gay rights rises as the practice in religion declines, I think it’s safe to say that there is a correlation.

What's to Come

For those of you who have read my blog before, you know that there's not exactly a theme for what I blog about. It's pretty much just whatever's on my mind or some random current event I stumble upon. Well, I'm just posting to tell you all that things are about to change.

My American Studies class just started a paper called junior theme (basically just a big research paper with a fancy name at New Trier). Our assignment was to ask a why question about a current issue in the world and then write an inquiry about it. So, with that being said, my why question is why is there a decline in the practice of religion among the millennial generation?

In my next several blog posts I will be exploring possible answers to this question. These topics include the increase in support for the gay community, scientific advancements, being scared off by religious extreme groups, and for varying opinions on social issues such as abortion. This is not every answer to this question that I will be looking in to, just a few I've stumbled upon thus far. So if any of you have any possible answers you would like me to explore, leave me a comment!