We often seem eager to blame someone for the situation we’re in. Then we act as if we have no control over our response.
Words are undoubtedly important. And easily argued over. As humans, we spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get the words right.
So when a priest says “we” when the liturgical sources read “I”, they are making a decision that is a departure from the rules of the game.
And when the Roman Catholic Church makes a decision to invalidate all of the baptisms the priest has done, they too are making a decision.
People make decisions.
What we have, as we always have, are intersections of people making decisions.
What we don’t have is inevitable outcomes. All of these outcomes: the entirety of the fallout: is a product of decisions.
We are prone to recognize the priest’s decision in this. And we are just as prone to blame the fallout as his responsibility. We never outgrow the childish phrase He started it!
But we are less likely to recognize how many decisions the church is making. How many points of contact the church has along the way with people, theology, doctrine, and discipline.
The same holds true with so many of the things we take for granted. That they are out of our hands. The outcomes are inevitable. They just happen. By “someone”. The cosmos. God. The market. It just happens.
It’s so easy to blame other people.
And rely on other people. But when we’re sliding down the slippery slope, wondering how we got here, why nobody is saving us, worrying about where it will end up, do we have a shred of self-awareness at all?
Do we even recognize that we did this? And that at any time, we can stop sliding? And most importantly, the reason we’re here, right here, halfway down the mountain is not because someone else made us do it. We put ourselves here and refuse to take responsibility for it.