The Standard Still Stands
I stopped treating the episodes as separate after a while. The blame arrived the same way each time: I had done the thing the standard required, and the organization treated that as the problem. Most of those times the setting carried a teaching about higher responsibility. In the office the teaching was the oath — to the people of the Commonwealth and to the law, not to any administration or to silence. In the Church the teaching was that the body is the people under Christ, not a protected brotherhood. Both places already had the words written down. People who worked in enforcement, or in ministry, were told who they answered to. When they chose the group instead, the failure sat with them.
The call itself came clear enough. After the annulments and the return to the sacraments, I spent hours alone in church asking to be used. What came back was not a dramatic exit. It was “Stay and be the example.” Stay in the place where the blue code was already the working rule, and live the oath instead of the code. I told Him I was not that smart and would need help. The assurance was the same: “I will be there.” For roughly twenty-five of the twenty-nine years I reported what I saw — openly, in writing, face to face. Not as a hidden whistleblower. The way the office was supposed to work. Proposals went up the chain aimed at dismantling the code of silence and realigning loyalty with the public. They were never acknowledged. Never discussed. Silence was the answer. One framework I called “Misdirected Loyalty” laid out a four-question test any agent or administrator could use: Who do you serve? Are the actions legal, moral, ethical? Anything less was the cycle. It went up. Nothing came back.
Get “What Happened To US” H Johnson,Sr’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
The same motion showed up outside the office. During formation I raised what I believed were doctrinal problems. A Benedictine monk who was my advisor told me I was correct, called me an academic martyr, and warned that if I kept speaking they would strip what I had built. Around 2011 I left formation. The ministries followed — lector, EMHC, MC, altar server — quietly removed. Parishes that had welcomed us grew cold. Years later, still on the job, I asked for a meeting with the bishop as a parishioner only, seeking information about how allegations were being handled. I was clear I was not there in any official capacity. What I met was a defensive room: several priests present against one concerned member of the flock. Honest questions were treated as a threat. The monk’s warning had been accurate. The parallel was not subtle. Systems protect themselves first, whether the blue wall or the clerical one.
People with the title or the room treat the demand as already settled. They expect compliance, a softened version of the truth, or silence dressed up as professionalism. Silence is how a bad thing becomes policy. Once you have said the honest no in a room that wanted the lie, the look on the other face is shock. Not because the facts are exotic. Because you said no without an apology attached to it. A lot of them folded when it was their turn and then decided folding was the mature option. When someone who has already paid the cost shows up, they do not know what to do with him. They call it arrogance. What it usually is, is memory. You can show them the record, the statute, the obvious fact. They double down. Conceding would mean they were the ones in the wrong, and that is the outcome they will not accept. The first time your hands shake. By the tenth time you already know the script: the sudden moral language, the attempt to make your refusal the problem, the search for an audience that will punish you for not playing along.
I do not care which side of the argument anyone prefers. I would rather do the right thing and hold the others to the standard they were given than rewrite the standard so they can stay comfortable. They can be told what the right thing is and still throw it aside. That choice belongs to them. Mine has stayed simpler. I am still going to be me, because if I cannot be me, who can I be? The version of the job, or of the ministry, that trims away the reports, the refusals, and the record is no longer the thing I took up. I have already seen what that trimmed version protects. It is not the public, and it is not the faith. I will not be used. I will say so in the proper context, without decorating it. If they want to call that hate, they can. I call it the job I was given a long time ago: tell the truth, protect what is right, and do not confuse peace with surrender.
The most recent incident sits outside the religious frame, and that only makes the earlier pattern clearer. The pressure to manage the person who keeps the record does not require a pulpit or an oath. Any group that claims a public purpose can run the same logic. Either way the line has not moved. Do the thing that matches the duty you accepted, and let the accountability fall where it belongs. Parkinson’s has taken some of the ease out of the typing and the speech. It has not taken the obligation. Disabled is not the same as unable. The compass is still the one I was given. I will keep walking.
