A book "The Codependent Church " by Virginia Curran Hoffman, ( published1991) puts it this way ;
"We lie to ourselves that we are being nourished when we are not. We pretend we are happy with the menu, because to do otherwise would risk rupture of the relationship. We lie to ourselves to keep the inconsistencies and abuses of the system in that warm haze, to keep inadequate leadership in a blur. We do not want to see those things, so we do not"see" them and lie to ourselves to quiet the doubt. We lie to ourselves to cover our own codependence. We do not really want to face that we are working overtime to do the work and then praising the assigned leader for a job well done. We do not want to face that much of our "niceness" is our attempt to control the decisions and behavior of the "more powerful" in the church, nor that most of our efforts at control are in vain. We do not really want to face that we are waiting for "them" to change when it is we who need to change....We members lie to others. We lie to children in repeating doctrines we no longer hold, because to do otherwise would threaten our security. We lie to adult candidates coming into the church, or at least give them a false impression, by keeping secret our own doubts. Because we lie about the way things are and cover our true challenges and options, we teach and reinforce codependence as part of the"gospel" of Christianity" (p.121,paperback edition publisher; The Crossroad Publishing Co., N.Y. 1991)