Casual Catholics make no such mistake as anyone who has seen what has happened to the weekly collections since the most recent round of sex-abuse scandals will know. They read about this in the media and then they punish the people running the actual building in their community by giving less.
Committed traditionalists look at the actual practices of most parishes and most Catholics and even most bishops and they see a temporary aberration. They say to themselves and others, this is an appalling thing that has been done to the Church by various reformers but there is a true core that will re-establish itself.
Committed liberals make the same distinction going the other way. They say, there are catechetical limits on what the Church can do. There are certain things that will come but there are reactionaries in the pews and even in the hierarchy who are not ready to accept this just yet and so we don't proclaim the real Church until the time is ready.
In neither case is the actual Catholic Church accepted as the real Catholic Church.
The sex -abuse scandals have really underlined this problem. Both sides blame not the Church but elements within it (and often they blame the opposing camp) for what has happened. No one sees these crimes for what they are—that is, no one sees that they are crimes committed by Holy Mother Church. They see only certain priests and bishops as having done it.
Perhaps we all should go to a blackboard like Bart Simpson and write 100 times:
My Catholic church committed horrible crimes.
My Catholic church committed horrible crimes.
My Catholic church committed horrible crimes.
...
You're absolutely right and I agree with you for the most part. But I also think there are those who have said "My Catholic Church committed horrible crimes" and left to join other Christian denominations, or go it alone. Then there are others who say "My Catholic Church committed horrible crimes" refererring to the institutional church of the last 1,500 years which they consider an aberration and the real Church as the Mystical Body of Christ separate from and having nothing to do with Rome. Many of those also left even before the sex abuse scandals, for others the scandals were the tipping point, still others--the ones you refer to--remain with the understanding that "this too shall pass." I think the institutional Church might be on the way to extinction, at the very least it cannot remain the Church we grew up in simply for logistical reasons.
ReplyDeleteI think that what you describe here is good old fashioned Denial, in part, because people can't comprehend the apparent scope of the problem. Their Faith has been shattered and in order to keep hanging on they have to believe that there are better days to come. I guess the only point I would take issue with is your contention that only casual Catholics are witholding money to punish the local churches. Devout Catholics are doing that too, and boycotting or giving less to the Archbishops' Annual Appeals, instead giving to other charitable organizations. They're doing this because they don't want their money used to settle abuse claims and, regardless of what the hierarchy says, that's where some of the money went if only to pay the insurance premiums which must be sky-high at this point.
ReplyDeleteYour post indicates that you have an understanding of the depth and complexity of what has happened. I personally believe that all of it coming to light at this time is the Holy Spirit at work. I keep going back to Tillich who said decades ago in his Systematic Theology that anything that replaces God as the Matter of Ultimate Concern is Idolatry, and he directed this comment specifically to Catholicism and mainline Protestantism. In the minds of so many "devout" Catholics the Church and God were one and the same, and of course this mis-belief has been progressively encouraged and even promulgated by the hierarchy for almost two millenia. As we've seen, its come back to bite them in the ass. I guess the question is where do we go from here, and I think the answer--at least in the short-term--is every man for himself.
If you aren't familiar with www.richardsipe.com I strongly encourage you to check it out. Richard has impeccable credentials--both academic and ecclesiastical--and he has investigated the problem of clergy sexual abuse since at least 1970, when only a very few people even knew it was happening. Richard has gone beyond the psychological explanations, and thoroughly delineated how the very organizational structure of the RC Church and how that has impacted so-called "doctrine" for centuries created the situation we're in today. Its not easy reading because this is a complex issue that can't be explained in "sound bites" but its well-worth the time spent. Richard's use of thoroughly researched and documented historical data makes it possible to connect the dots and thus understand how this is not about conservative or liberal, but something that is endemic and systemic in the Roman Catholic Church.
Thanks for the link. For a variety of reasons that would take too long to go into here, I am not willing to go as far as Richard Sipe.
ReplyDeleteI may spell out where I think the historical roots of our current problems originate but I think there were a lot of things done in good faith and with good reasons have had undesirable results today. This is probably fodder for a few future posts.
I have to believe that those things that have had undesirable results today were initially done in good--but misguided--faith for what were considered good reasons at the time. And I don't argue that hindsight is always 20/20. I don't know if Richard said this but I am saying that these things that we're talking about all seem to emanate from when the Church began to lose sight of "Love God and love your neighbor as yourself" for whatever reason.
ReplyDeleteBut I think there is a silver lining here, as I said earlier I believe that what is going on today is the work of the Holy Spirit. Because of what's happening I believe that people will come to a better understanding that Faith in God and Jesus--not the Church--is what is important and why there's a difference.