General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: This anti-Catholic crap is getting to be annoying [View all]patrice
(47,992 posts)a relationship (to a church in this instance) or to leave is what makes it possible for that relationship to live, no matter what one chooses. That's not a guarantee, but it does make creative potential possible.
A lot of people have become reactionaries relative to any power, limiting their perceptions of how to assert their own powers only to the power to reject others. There are some grounds for that reaction in concerns that one may lose what is most authentically one's self in any kind of relationship to strong/powerful others, but that is not necessarily so. The dynamics of two (or more) power positions can make a strong person even stronger. Struggle clarifies values and commitment in service to even small potentialities for change that would not have been evoked if the particular individual who CHOSE to remain in the relationship, CHOOSING not to leave it, had not done so.
Yes, to me, the element of choice is vital, because without that freedom, or at least as much of it as possible, the good effects of a decision, one way or the other to stay or go, are warped by unrecognized slavery. My ideal is to free one's self as much as possible to be capable of authentically saying either yes or no.
If people feel as though they don't have that freedom, that they MUST stay or they MUST go, at minimum, the recognition of that bondage is a good thing which can allow what good may come of a thing by not lying about its price.