Hi Sarah!

I don’t know how much help I can give you, but I can certainly try to point out the more obvious flaws in the authors logic:

1) It seems his premise is that Catholics should leave the Catholic Church because 1% of the clergy have comitted sexual sin. That’s saying that we Americans should look for more perfect shores because some politicians are corrupt, or we should abandon capitalism because a handful of companies bilked their shareholders of billions. Sexual scandal is not exclusive to the Catholic Church, though. Every denomination has their share of shame in this department.

2)He assumes that Catholics stay with the Church because we have no will to leave a "broken Church." We are not Catholics because we belive the Church is perfect, we stay because we know that the Roman Catholic Church is the ONE TRUE CHURCH founded by Christ and that there is no hope for humanity outside of Christ, and the first best place to find Him is through the Catholic Church.

3) He’s quite correct that there are many people would would love to see the Catholic Church fall, precisely because of the world’s liberal agenda to legalize abortion and make hedonism the new national religion. Since he’s a journalist, it makes sense that he’s with the liberals on this.

4) God did not abandon us even when we were sinners. "While we were yet sinners He sent His only begotten Son so that whomsoever shall believe in Him shall have eternal life through His Name." Therefore, just because there is something wrong with the Church doesn’t mean that we abandon Her. She hasn’t abandoned we poor sinners, and God hasn’t abandoned Her, so why should we?

5) Take a look at who is criticising: a secular student newspaper that has "devil" as a domain name. What does that tell you? The devil hates the Catholic Church because he knows that he has no power against Her, so he attacks whomever he can to weaknen Her. But, Our Lord has said that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against Her, so there we are. So long as we stay with her, we have no fear of the devil.

I’m sure there are others on this forum who can give you more intellectual weaponry to fight with. I would suggest talking to your Priest and see if he can give you any more points to fire back with.

Peace and All Good in Jesus!