Church Sends You On Tangents

A very frank and honest statement by a Catholic clergymen. You pour your heart out, and sometimes expected to do so for things that, in your view, don't matter. But the congregation dictates the rules of the game. Do it, or loose your job, eventually.

There are things that thrill me about ministry, and others that kill my soul. The things that kill my soul, I've never met anyone who cares that they do. It's just how it is, so suck it up, is the attitude, not that I have ever said much about what kills my soul to a leadership. Again, its ALWAYS you, not anything about the system. Few really want to think of better ways, as it's easy and comfortable to stick with the usual, the automatic, the rote memory.
Having written all this, Richard Rohr suggests it's good in some way. The truth sets us free, but not before making us miserable.

"Church membership requirements, church doctrine, and church morality force almost all issues to an inner boiling point, where you are forced to face important issues at a much deeper level to survive as a Catholic or a Christian, or even as a human. I think this is probably true of any religious community, if it is doing its job. Before the truth "sets you free," it tends to make you miserable. The Christian truth, and Jesus as its spokesman, is the worldview that got me started, that formed me and thrilled me, even though the very tangent that it sent me on made me often critical of much of organized Christianity. In some ways, that is totally as it should be, because I was able to criticize organized religion from; Scriptures, saints, and sources, and not by merely cultural, unbelieving, or rational criteria.
That is probably the only way you can fruitfully criticize anything, it seems to me. "
(Richard Rohr. Falling Upward)