I think people who've bailed out on the church financially in the wake of the sex abuse scandals need to rethink their response and why it took the direction it did.

For some, tightening the purse strings was a way of saying, "I do not approve of what was done (the abuses and the handling of them) and I will not be a part of this."

Well, that's fine if your membership is in some sort of country club where you flex your financial muscles to bring pressure to bear on policies. But it is --- or should be, I am convinced --- a different matter when it comes to the church, which Catholics profess to be divinely instituted by Jesus Christ. Do they really believe this? Does the Lord have the freedom to uncover what is wrong so that healing within his body may take place as good works continue?

Consider the example of a father who becomes so outraged and ashamed that one of his sons sexually abused a classmate that he turns his back on his entire family and leaves town, abandoning another son about to graduate from college with honors, a wife in the early stages of Alzheimer's and a little daughter whose custom it was to look patiently through the living-room window each night for her dad's car to pull up into the driveway.

In short, the support the father withdrew from the beleaguered son was withdrawn simultaneously from those in his care who committed no heinous crime and who continued to need him very much.

But the bottom line is: That father is still responsible for both boys and the rest of his family. They belong to him! He may have to pay a great price for not paying closer attention to his sons' formation processes, but pay it he must. Duty and honor require this.

Quiet as it is kept, I suspect there is another reason some people hold back their financial support from the church at this dark hour: They don't like some victims' demands for financial compensation. After all, no one paid them when they suffered any kind of pain during their life. And if they could have afforded to go to court to obtain monetary compensation for the pain inflicted on them, most would have deemed it not worth the exposure in the long run.

In the end, far too many of us are recoiling from pain without considering why God permitted it in the first place.

A friend who is a religious educator told me recently that Catholics, of all people, should know the place of suffering; they behold it constantly within the context of the paschal mystery which acknowledges that new life comes out of death. Growth always occurs in the context of death, introspection and new life.

"We all have those Good-Friday days when we realize, 'Whoa, I've lost this; can't do that the same way again,'" she explained. "We also have those Holy-Saturday days when we say, 'Well, this isn't working, and I am not out of this fix yet, but I sense that God is doing something new in me. I still need to go deeper within!' Then there are Easter days when the relief lifts spirits. Positive changes have resulted because the person begins to see things anew."

No amount of money --- paid out or held back --- can substitute for this process.

Carole Norris Greene is a columnist with Catholic News Service.