in which I exercise my right to probably piss some of you off.

[lagilman]

This may not be the best weekend to post this -- or it might be exactly the time to do so. I don't know. As you read forward, please be aware that this is not an attack on anyone's beliefs or faith, but an examination of my own reaction to what is going on in the news this week regarding the Catholic Church.


So. Over on Facebook I linked to an article about the recent abuse-and-reinstallment scandal of the Catholic Church. You know, where priests who had been charged with, and in many cases removed from office because of sexual misconduct and abuse, were quietly (after monies were paid out) returned to their positions...often with access to children, just as before and against all promises made by the Church. Meanwhile, similar accusations have been brought against the Irish Catholic church as well, and even the Pope is implicated, as much of this happened on his direct watch. And then the Pontiff's own pastor called accusing the Church of crimes it had admitted to "like anti-Semitism."

(Um. Yeah. The ways that last one is wrong would take an entire screen just for the prelude, okay?)

If the Pope is the shepherd of his flock, IMO he is also the master of wolves. Because, what all this tells the rest of the world is that it's okay if sinners are not only not repenting and atoning, but in full-out denial about their sins, if they're men of the cloth.

Yeah, I don't understand the "The Church is Right" mentality. I admit this. I'd have walked in disgust, taking my faith with me in a kit bag, and found somewhere that was less hypocritical, not to mention less damaging.

I believe that Religion and faith are two completely different things. I respect an individual's faith the same way I respect their rights to think, to love, and to breathe -- that is to say, it's a personal and IMO inalienable right and I would never mock or deny it. Religion, on the other hand, is like any power structure, is open to abuse, and those abuses must, to keep the faith true, be faced and rooted out.

If you go back to the beginning of the Christian faith, and look at Jesus' teachings, it seems to me that he was saying much the same thing. Nobody has yet come forward and explained to me how saying "he is the Pope, so he has authority, we can't do anything to change what happens" is not denial of responsibility on the part of every single member of that Church; that they are not part of the abuse, themselves, by not speaking out against it, by saying "no, this is wrong, and we will not stand by and let it continue."

It sounds harsh. It is harsh. It is less harsh than what is being done, and then denied, to those who should be protected. Wolves in crimson cloth.

Comments

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Most organized religion is about gathering power and wealth. Sometimes the power and wealth is used in ways that make the world a better place. Sometimes not . . .

[lagilman]

That's probably why I've often referred to modern Judaism as a "disorganized religion." We tend to be local-level, with rabbis responsible and answerable to their congregation, not a hierarchy. Even the organizations that serve various denominations (Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, Orthodox, etc) are mostly for guidance and pooling resources, not amassing power or wealth.


Clearly, we're doin' it wrong.

There's also a strong streak of "It's my right to question God if I don't understand" running through our genetic makeup. Going unquestioned with blind faith in anything ceased to be an option roundabouts 1930 or so.





[we shall draw a veil over certain of our charismatic sects, who are Mostly Harmless but often somewhat OMG insane)

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

One of the first things I learned about Judaism, long before I met Wife -- there is no Jewish pope.

[irishkate.livejournal.com]

"he is the Pope, so he has authority, we can't do anything to change what happens"

This is a bull**** attitude and anyone who argues it should get a good smack. But many people will and as someone who HAS stood up for the church (as a concept if faulty in execution) when people threw the baby out with the bathwater in discussions of it, I find I can not stand up now. There is no way to say that what was said is a mistranslation, he didn't mean it like that or that we are missing the point.

If I hadn't walked away before I would now.

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

Ah, that "ancient" (actually since 1870) doctrine of papal infallibility.

I walked away over the treatment of women, long before the sex scandals started. Nothing has ever persuaded me to go back. As a medievalist I know where the B.S. comes from and who started it, and as a cultural historian I have a fairly decent handle on where the myths and fables come from. It's not possible for me to recite the Nicene Creed as anything but a historico-literary piece. "I believe in God (well, maybe), the Father Almighty (patriarchal authoritarianism, much?), Maker of Heaven and Earth (well, it got made somehow, but I'd be more inclined to argue that if there's a Supreme Being, it made the laws of physics that caused the formation of the universe)..." So. Yeah.

Recent developments affect me about the way BushCo did in its heyday. It makes me want Hell to exist, so that they can end up in it.

[lagilman]

As a medievalist I know where the B.S. comes from and who started it,

I recited the punchine "Jesus? Nice fellow, smart boy, pity about some of his followers" to an old friend of my sister's who is now clergy, who attended our Seder. My sister was somewhat mortified, but Beth laughed.

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

Heh. "Nice Jewish boy. Got a bit carried away at the end there."

There are truly good people in the clergy, who both believe in their religion and think for themselves. Catholic as much as any. It's intensely painful for those good clergy when the bad apples not only turn up everywhere, they stink up the whole rest of the barrel.

[gonzai55.livejournal.com]

I've always liked "Jesus is great, but I'm not crazy about his fan club."

Catholicism has been about, almost exclusively about, obtaining and maintaining power, wealth, and tight control of the masses. Centralizing the power structure is quite possibly the worst system for a religion and, hopefully, some of the masses may actually realize that now.

[lagilman]

For many folk it's not a question of them "realizing" it, though, so much as it is the generations worth of training that tells them that this is the only way they can be "proper Christians," that to walk away is to deny their religion and their faith.

That's what makes me sad, because it keeps people locked in place even when they're uncomfortable there.

[irishkate.livejournal.com]

Ignoring the point of how someone can declare themselves to be infallible, it does only count in certain circumstances none of which have been invoked here.

I have trouble with the Creed cause it was a camel (a horse designed by committee?). You can't (or shouldn't) define faith by committee and armies..Kinda defeats the point...If it was still a way of proving your faith I would have been stoned to death long before I gave up on being a catholic.

But I was raised by a god loving catholic who taught me the history of the religion and to question everything - he provided me with access to Canon experts to answer my questions when I had them. I grew up knowing men and women who do (and did) stand for things Jesus would have given his approval for and it just tears me up on their behalf to think they get tarred with the same brush as the monsters (I don't mean specifically any one group by that but all those who betray the faith).

Thanks to the people running my local churches when I still went I didn't have problems with the treatment of women cause they ignored where they had to and defied as openly as possible when they could. I believed change could be brought about from the inside since I could see it happening.

Now? I am tempted to go back to my childhood dream of being pope.

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

When they elected Ratzinger, it indicated the direction the Church meant to take.
Two shades of response here:

If you believe the Pope is infallible on matters of faith or morals, which is what I was taught, then this comes under Morals. Fine distinctions and the nuances of canon law won't get much play when you're caught up in the great game of CYA.

If you do belong to an institution that holds that its leader can be inerrant on anything, no matter how restricted or qualified, you're setting up for a case of "The Pope says so. Therefore it's so."

Which is why I'm completely unsurprised by the way this situation has been handled so far. It's in keeping with the structure of the institution.

Wouldn't it be something if all this did in fact force change? I'm not optimistic. Still. You never know.

[irishkate.livejournal.com]

(Change - we don need no stinking change....)


I would be bowled over in shock. Still as you say...

[miintikwa.livejournal.com]

My dear Mother continually begs me to come back to the faith of my childhood. I can't abide it, not only because of all this now, but so many other reasons. The simple election of Cardinal Ratzinger told me all I needed to know about what the church really wants in the future.

[djonn]

Regarding the Pope's pastor's remarks:

Elsewhere on LJ, a linguist acquaintance located the relevant paragraphs of the actual homily, posting both the original Italian and a fresh translation. (It's in a friends-locked post, or I'd link to it.) Insofar as the poster and I can tell, the homily as written and delivered doesn't go nearly as far as the press coverage would suggest that it does.

Contextually, a general connection is implicit, but the actual language is not nearly specific enough to justify the journalistic conclusion that the Jewish correspondent's "violent attack and disgust" [the linguist's translation] is anything like one-to-one match with the totality of the criticism leveled at the institutional Roman Catholic church regarding the sex-abuse scandals.

Which -- of course -- is not, cannot, and should not be a defense of the institutional RC church's handling of abuses committed by its priests. That's been a tragedy of errors right down the line.

For myself, though, I can see the point that I think Father Cantalamessa and his correspondent were trying to make -- although I'd have used a different analogy. My own sense is that there's as much of a difference between the higher institutional RC hierarchy and the rank-and-file parish membership of the mainstream Catholic church as there is between the higher institutional GOP hierarchy and the great numbers of average voters who check "Republican" on their voter registration cards when they fill them out. (And indeed, there's arguably a good deal more active rank-and-file resistance to the RC's ingrained doctrine at the parish level than there is by street-level GOP registrants to the hard-line conservative right's hammerlock on the GOP's upper hierarchy.)

And to the extent that the entirely justified tirades against the handling of the abuse scandals are misconstrued by observers -- or insufficiently focused by the critics themselves -- then that's precisely the sort of rhetorical fallacy that's too often used to justify vilification, violence, and ostracism.

[lagilman]

um, djonn? I think your intent got lost somewhere in there, because I'm not sure if (and how) you're trying to defend the Church or...?

(also: considering Ratso's history, linking him as a defense to anything Jews have suffered was... Really Unwise. Really. Also, stupid)

[djonn]

[blink]

Er, but there is no direct link between Ratzinger and the quoted statements. The homily was written and delivered by Father Cantalamessa, and the letter quoted in it was from a correspondent of Father Cantalamessa's.

As for my intent: I was trying to point out simply that (a) the press coverage of the homily badly overstates what was actually said, and (b) that I agree with Father Cantalamessa and his correspondent that blanket persecution based on labeling is wrong -- whether the label being applied is "Jew", "Republican", or "Roman Catholic".

[lagilman]

1. Being accused --with documentation -- of allowing proven pedophiles to go back to ministering w/ access to young children, despite promises to the contrary is not "blanket persecution." It's an accusation of very specific wrongdoing and a cover-up of said continued (over decades) wrongdoing.

2. There are a number of connections to Ratzinger, not the least of which is that he is the Pope and the leader of the Church that is trying to claim a similarity in that sermon (as translated by several different sources) between the anti-Semitism faced by Jews (including Ratzinger's own actions both past and present) and the claims being made against the Church (and the Pope) now.

[djonn]

I agree that specific accusations against specific individuals or administrative bodies -- whether of abuse or of inadequate response to incidents of abuse -- are not equivalent to blanket persecution.

I disagree that "the Church is trying to claim" anything in the homily under discussion. That presumes that Father Cantalamessa is officially empowered to represent the Church -- whether from pulpit or press room -- on matters of policy and theology, and nothing in any of the coverage I've seen suggests that this is so. As "the Pope's pastor", my reading is that he's attached to the papal household rather than the papal administrative hierarchy; as such, claiming that he speaks for the Church would be like claiming that the White House butler (or chaplain, if the White House had/has a chaplain) speaks for the President.

Now there is one weak link in the chain of rhetoric -- nobody really knows what actions or incidents the Jewish letter-writer was referring to when he used the phrase "violent attack and disgust". The words of the phrase suggest that blanket persecution of a kind akin to anti-Semitism is what's meant -- and if that's what the writer observed, then the conclusion drawn seems justified (to me, at least).

This doesn't prove, of course, that such blanket persecution is in fact going on, whether inspired by the abuse scandals or on other grounds. OTOH, I don't think it's unreasonable to point out that if it were, it would be capital-W Wrong.

[cepetit.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

The biggest problem that I have with what Catholicism has become over the last thousand years or so is that it wants all of the privileged -- but none of the responsibilities -- that go with being both a religion and a polity. And this isn't Bob's Country Bunker: Unless your objective is totalitarianism, you can't have both kinds. Wait a minute...

(NB It's not just the Catholic Church, although that's certainly the largest single example. Consider the Islamic Republic of Iran; or, more to the point, the state-level government in Illinois, which has not one non-Christian from outside of Chicago city limits... let alone the governments in Alabama and Oklahoma. It doesn't have to be a specific subset/denomination/whateveryawannacallit; it just needs to act as an excluding mechanism against the Other.)

[joycemocha.livejournal.com]

I'm a Catholic, and I'm pissed. However, taking my faith and walking to another church also isn't an option because too damn many Protestant churches trigger a traumatic fundamentalist background in me as well. Comparable things can and do happen in Protestant churches; it's just that there isn't a centralized, abusing hierarchy involved. Look up Bill Gothard to understand what my triggers are with Protestant churches. I converted to Catholicism to get away from that crap, and there's no protection against Dominionist crap in most Protestant denominations.

Ratzinger has been simply awful for the Church. I was sickened when he was elected Pope, and he's proven my sick feelings right. And my current Archbishop is no better--he suggested that locals should unsubscribe from the local newspaper for encouraging that something should be done about it.

I'm still sick because I think Francis George of Chicago would have made a better Pope. Sadly, he's American. No chance in hell. And if Levada (who once was my local archbishop) steps up to replace Ratzinger, then I'm really pissed. He's as much of a jerk as Ratzinger (I'm sorry, I just cannot call him Benedict right now).

On the other hand, I just start thinking about the history of the Church, and past events where horrific and awful stuff has happened. Reform can and must come from within. It's going through the process which sucks mightily. Maybe this crap needs to happen to thoroughly discredit those like Ratzinger and Levada who have been opposing the spirit of Vatican II ever since it was being held.

[mtlawson.livejournal.com]

Nah, you didn't piss me off.

We live in a heavily Catholic part of the country here in SW Ohio, so my experiences are probably different than areas where Catholicism isn't so prevalent.

I'm an ex-Catholic, and the sex abuse scandal was just one of the big reasons why my wife and I left. The shutting down of parish schools in lower middle income neighborhoods to chase the money in the higher income neighborhoods is mind boggling too. Then you add in other items, like the sanctimonious hypocricy you get from parishioners who say that their kids are morally superior because they're being raised in a proper Church tradition, but then how do they explain the bullying and cheating and other shenanigans that go on? Throw in the sports culture, where the attitude is "I don't care what happens just as long as the athletics program isn't affected", and it's a poisonous atmosphere.

And don't even start about the women issues.

The breaking point for my wife and I came one day when we were going into Church and nearly got run over by another parishioner while we were crossing at a crosswalk. She glared at us like we were at fault, zipped by, parked, and ran inside. My wife looked at me and said "I can't take this anymore."

So we left.

The thing is, I personally know a lot of good people -Catholics, other Christians, people of other or no faith- and the injection of crap into what should be a tremendous force for good in the world really depresses me. Like what your quip about Jesus and his followers says, the problem isn't the religion itself, but the people.

[maureen-the-mad.livejournal.com]

I'm reminded of the Catholic Church near where I lived in Ann Arbor -- I learned quickly to NEVER ride my bike near there on a Sunday. The parking lot was far too small for the number of people in the parish, and I swore that instead of "go and sin no more" the parish priest must have ended every service with the words "go and drive very badly, you've earned it!" I nearly got creamed several times by people peeling out of the parking lot after services.

(On another note, I never refer to myself as an "ex-Catholic," but rather as a "recovering Catholic.")

[severedscythe.livejournal.com]

unfortunately for the masses who believe in the Catholic religion, it's always been that way. The whole religion is about shaming people into behaving. :/ I've never been so glad I got out of there as I have in recent days, and I was always glad that I had the parish priests that I did. I lucked out in a big way.

[liamstliam.livejournal.com]

In some ways, today is an excellent time to be reading this.

I struggle and struggle with this.

You are right, there is no Biblical reference to papal infallibility or the central control of the church.

I really like your disinction between religion and faith.

[baka-kit.livejournal.com]

I think Christianity lost its soul when it became Rome's state religion. Everything since has just been gravy.

[smoemeth.livejournal.com]

I'd have walked in disgust, taking my faith with me in a kit bag, and found somewhere that was less hypocritical, not to mention less damaging.

This is why the vast majority of my Episcopalian friends grew up Catholic, attending Catholic school.

I was having a discussion about this exact topic with our drummer last night -- he grew up Catholic (also in Maine), and even seriously considered becoming a Benedictine monk at one point, so all of this hits quite close to home with him. There are some truly good and humble priests out there, and it's a shame that they're all being painted with the same brush. But sadly, it appears that the good ones are very much in the minority. And that's not even going into the issues with the Church heirarchy. Feh.

I left the Church back in college, when I realized that as a woman, there was no welcome and no place for me there (oh yeah, and when I read Joseph Campbell and realized it's all just a mythological construct anyway). But if I hadn't, I definitely would've left by now, because of all this crap. Sigh.