I was thinking about the Scavi tour at St. Peter’s in Rome. It’s a tour of the excavations under the Basilica and an incredible experience.

The bones of St. Peter, who founded the Church, are buried there, they say, and we got to see them, through the plastic boxes in which they are safely stored. The young priest who led our tour ended it with leading us in the Lord’s Prayer. It was a moving visit.

We also saw secret little staircases early Christians used to run and hide from persecution. Imagine what they went through just to worship.

The early Christians would roll in their graves if they knew what was going on today with churches, both capital C and small C. In fact, they may well be rolling as I type.

My church, the Catholic Church, has been corrupt so long it’s a way of life. Now, it’s going after American nuns. The few 70-year-olds that are left. Because they are too modern and insufficiently deferential to the male hierarchy.

It’s not just my church, either. Misled, misguided and just plain greedy ministers and pastors of all denominations and no denomination at all make mockery of religious belief by living corrupt lives.

Jets, designer shoes (even the Pope), fancy cars and expensive mansions are all hallmarks of this set of venal “religious.”

Every year, the church gets more and more irrelevant to my life, even as my spirituality grows.

And while I do like periodically attending church services of various kinds, including Mass, I do so cautiously, holding my nose at those in charge while I get my sustenance from private prayer and meditation.

And so, it occurs to me that maybe God has a point to all of this. Put not your trust in man. Put it in God.