Scott Ross & Sexual Sin in the Sanctuary

The recent sex scandal involving the molestation of young boys in the Catholic Church has caused me to reflect on my own youth.

As a ten-year-old boy, my family and I moved to the U.S.A. from Scotland.   My Dad was a co-pastor of a small church, and to help subsidize his meager salary, he found additional work in a food-packing plant near the church where he was pastoring. As new immigrants we temporarily stayed with a family who attended the church as there was no rent to pay.
Although raised in a Christian home, the thing happened which made me wonder if God saw anything at all. I remember that I had my own room in those people's house, the nicest room I ever had. The man who owned the house said, if I was a good boy, he was going to give me a bicycle.

One afternoon I was lying on the bed reading, when this man walked in and shut the door. He said something about being tired and laid down beside me. After a while he began talking about my clothes—how they were too tight and he’d loosen them for me. I didn’t know what was happening. For a while I was too frightened and confused to move. Then I bolted off the bed and ran down to the cellar and hid.

I was too ashamed to tell my father about it. But when it happened again and then a third time, I finally did. I don't know what happened between Dad and the man. I only know I came home from school one day to find Mum crying as she put our things in a suitcase. We left that same evening and nobody even came to say goodbye.

The kicker was, the man who molested me was the co-pastor of the church with my Dad.

Three or four years later this episode was repeated again with a pastor of another church in another town. I told no one.
Neither of these pastors were Catholic priests. Sin knows no denominational boundaries.

These episodes left their mark on my life for many years, resulting in my anger at God, my bitterness at the church in general, and a period of what I call my “prodigal years,” before coming back home to Jesus in my late twenties.

I had to learn that God was not to blame. Tragically, these men who violated me were wolves in the midst of Christ’s flock. I learned to finally forgive and not allow these sexual episodes to consume or control my life. My walk with the Lord, my wife of forty-three years, four children and eight grandchildren all attest to the fact that, although I haven’t arrived, I am not chained to my past.

In regard to the Church, Catholic as a denomination and catholic universal, the Scripture states that “everything will be shaken” but that the Church will stand, because it is founded “upon the rock” who is Jesus Christ, and He said, “I will build My church.”

It’s a good thing He is building it; otherwise it would be a “sand castle.”

Scott Ross