It had been weeks since I’d stepped inside my parish church. Apprehensively, I paused in front of the ornate, oversized doors guarding the entrance and reached out to pull open the weighty door and step through the narrow aperture. Believing that attending a mass or religious service would perhaps be too soon since my departure from Catholicism, I chose to instead visit the Church after hours and reflect on my conflicted faith in solace. After quietly slipping through another set of double-doors, I was confronted with the heart of Catholicism, the crucifix, before which I bowed my head and began to cry.

While for some religion is not required in order to overcome and cope with the obstacles of daily life, for me, faith has been an absolute necessity over the years. Having been born, baptized, and confirmed within the Catholic Church and having attended Catholic School for nearly twelve years, the recent absence of this Catholic bedrock has been difficult. Although a number of sex scandals involving Catholic priests have surfaced over the years, the most recent scandal, seeming to have implicated the Pope himself in the cover-up, has severely shaken my Catholic beliefs.

It is not exactly the news of the sex scandal itself that was the impetus for my—temporary, I hope—departure from the Catholic faith, but rather, the fact that the Catholic Church, headed by Pope Benedict XVI, refuses to bring to light, acknowledge, correct, and repent for these mistakes. Quite simply, it is the failure of the Catholic Church to recognize itself as an imperfect and flawed institution that pains me the most.

The first major modern sex scandal involving a Catholic priest was reported during the 1980s with Louisiana priest Gilbert Gauthe pleading guilty to molesting eleven boys. Since then, additional accounts have been reported over the years, with the most recent being the molestation case in Munich, Germany, where the Pope previously served as archbishop. A number of other molestation cases have also been linked to the current Pope, including the case of the Wisconsin priest, Father Lawrence Murphy.

In response to the continuously surfacing reports of priest sex abuse scandals, Pope Benedict XVI, like the majority of the Church leaders before him, has refused to publically acknowledge and attempt to correct such flaws. Although, according to reports, he has “apologized” to the victims of the sex scandals, the Pope has neglected to take further action, such as defrocking and expelling the indicted priests from the priesthood and providing further assistance and support for the victims of such sex abuse scandals.

Newsweek’s Lisa Miller recently labeled the Pope a “Bad Shepherd” for allowing the accused perpetrators to continue to work as priests within the priesthood. Miller points out that it is not a submissive and meek Pope that the Church requires in these times, but an authoritative and reliable leader that is willing to uncover and expose the corruption embedded within the Church.

Many individuals since, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, have called for the resignation of the Pope; however, since such an event has only happened a handful of times, the chances of the Pope resigning are small. The best option that remains is for the current Pope to adopt an entirely new approach that would aggressively expose corruption within the Catholic Church.

Indicted priests must be held accountable and, if proven to be perpetrators, must be defrocked and therefore, expelled from the priesthood. The requirements for becoming a priest and the actual process itself must be made more stringent in order to, in some way or another, weed out pedophiles, despite the difficulty this will cause in light of the current Catholic priest shortage. And victims of sex abuse must be acknowledged and supported in any way possible.

I am only one person, but I don’t think I’m alone: As of now, although it pains me, I have not yet returned to the Catholic Church and I will not do so until the Catholic Church has made a genuine effort to acknowledge and take action to correct its mistakes.

Giby George is currently a sophomore at Drexel University, majoring in biological sciences with a pre-med concentration.