"Woman Who Left Church..."

An oldie but goodie, (last spring,) from Maureen Martin at catholicnews.org:

Actually Just Wanted to Sleep In
Neighbors are becoming disenchanted with Sandy Shaw's activism against the Catholic Church.

BOISE, IDAHO – Neighbors who hailed an area woman for leaving the Catholic Church over the sex abuse scandal are coming to grips with the fact that she just wanted more time to sleep and run errands.

Sandy Shaw, a data entry technician for Global Technologies, Inc. in Boise, impressed her friends and neighbors when she announced last year that she had “had enough of the sex abuse scandal” and was “leaving the Catholic Church” as a result.

“She was indignant,” said Marla Davies, her next door neighbor. “She said she had had enough of the Church and didn’t want to bring her children up in it. I was proud of her and invited her to my church. She seemed excited at first, but every Sunday morning when I would walk over to see if she, her husband, and the girls wanted to go to church, one of the girls would answer the door, saying her mom was asleep,” said Davies.

“The last Sunday I approached her, she just waved me off, saying she had to get her nails done,” said Davies. “That’s when I lost all respect for her. She’s no activist. She’s just tired and vain.”

Other neighbors said they were also impressed with Shaw’s stand at first. “It was kind of like a David and Goliath story, except, you know, with a woman,” said Phillip Turner, who lives across the street from Shaw. “Here was this mother of two, taking on the Vatican of all places, by deciding she wasn’t going to church anymore. She was going to show them that she wasn’t going to stand for the abuse.”

“I thought it was all really cool, until I started seeing her out in her robe, watering her gardenias on Sunday morning,” said Turner. “What she was doing didn’t seem any more heroic than me drinking beer on my porch for hours, which is what I do every Sunday. I guess I was kind of hoping for a neighborhood Erin Brockovich, but what I got were some old reruns of that show Alice. It sort of shattered the whole activist image for me.”

Cassie Donovan said she really felt for Shaw and the hurt she had experienced over the Church sex abuse scandal. “She said she was so upset about the scandal that it played a part in her getting her tubes tied. Sandy said she didn’t know of any priest personally who was implicated or involved in the scandal, but it really made her angry."

"She didn’t want to bring any more kids into the world and risk having them abused -- she said that, and that the two kids she had were about to drive her mental and she didn’t want anymore,” said Donovan. “Not long after that, she quit the Church.”

“At the time, I really admired her strength,” said Donovan. “It was like she was thumbing her nose at the Church and everything it stood for. But then after awhile, I realized she was just thumbing her nose at the Church and everything it stood for.”

It's always nice to have a principle to stand behind, (or recline on,) as an excuse for something ya just wanted ta do, anyway....