Where to
Benedict XVI? Early 2005
With the demise of Pope John Paul II, many concerned
Catholics are wondering what is in store for them under the regime of the new
pope. Will there be further regression from the ideals set forth in Vatican II?
Most Christians, I daresay, would believe that the Edict
of Constantine was a great boon to Christianity. No more persecutions or
clandestine meetings, no more martyrs, plus a newly acquired respectability.
Let’s see what happened. As time went on, the clergy and hierarchy acquired the
symbols and accoutrements of the Roman senators and emperors. They donned togas
(called albs), miters (bishops’ hats) and crosiers, all of which are designed to
impress ordinary Christians, as if to say “We are important persons, we are
higher, holier(?) and more powerful than you are.” I have this image of Peter in
his fishing boat on Lake Galilee all decked out in white vestments, the tiara on
his head, the golden crosier in his hand, while the other apostles are on the
shore rolling in the sand with laughter: “Who does he think he is, the emperor?”
As time went on, in addition to the paraphernalia, there was a plethora of
titles: right reverend, most reverend, your excellency, your eminence, your
holiness (hopefully Alexander VI eschewed this etiquette!), supreme pontiff,
vicar of Christ.
One would be hard put to find justification for this
behavior in the Gospel accounts of the life of Christ. A casual reading of the
‘Good News’ shows that Jesus gave first place to behavior, deeds and actions
which would then give credence to sermons and words. “By their fruits you will
know them.” [Matt. 7, 16] “By this they will know that you are my disciples,
that you love one another.” [John 13, 35] There is no place for fancy garments
or symbols of power, in fact Christ had nothing good to say about the
phylacteries and tassels worn by the Jewish priests.
By the time of the Middle Ages, we find an escalation of
power language and behavior. Power was seen as cascading from Christ, to the
Pope, to the Bishops and to the clergy. And there it stopped! There were some
theologians and Canon lawyers who claimed that the pope had fullness of power
both spiritual and secular. Again, one would be hard put to find support for
this in the Gospel accounts. After Jesus washed the feet of the Apostles at the
Last Supper, he remarked that what he had done, they should also do, even if
they didn’t understand the import of his behavior. [John 13, 5-7] He had also
told them that they shouldn’t lord it over others as the Gentiles do. [Luke 22,
25]
It is noteworthy that Jesus did not associate himself
either with the religious or the secular establishment of his day. In fact his
behavior was a constant rebuke to the self-righteous minions of power who would
enforce religious or secular behavior and that was why he was killed. No, the
Jews did not kill Jesus. Had he been born in China or Africa or South America,
the result would have been the same. To constantly rebuke the establishment
cannot go unpunished.
One of the titles used by the popes is ‘servus servorum
Dei’ (servant of the servants of God). A disinterested non-Christian visitor to
Vatican City and observer of a papal audience would be puzzled by hearing of
this papal title. Servants don’t live in palaces and they certainly don’t get
their hands and feet kissed.
Today there persists a reversal of the priorities
exemplified and espoused by Christ such that vestments, symbols of prestige and
liturgical paraphernalia take a place of honor as if to lend support to edicts,
sermons, yes and even encyclicals, while behavior, actions and deeds are often
made to seem irrelevant. If there are exceptions, foremost among them are the
missionaries who go to the third world countries, not with the attitude “we’ve
got it and we’re going to give it to you”, but with the attitude “how can we
help?” Humanization needs to precede evangelization.
There is a pervasive addiction to power and control in
the Roman Catholic institution. After Vatican II there was a token gesture made
to democracy by the inauguration of the Parish Council. However, the pastor
retains veto power which cannot be overruled. The pastor’s house is called a
‘rectory’ another power word. The hierarchy and clergy have for centuries
fostered a passive laity. Seminaries give no training in consulting or
soliciting suggestions. By and large, the only solicitation directed to the
laity is a request for money. There is no evaluation process regarding the
performance of priests or bishops. After almost two millennia the vehement
criticisms of Jesus regarding the power addiction and self-righteousness of the
Pharisees have fallen on deaf ears, as if there is no pharisaical behavior
today!
Priests and bishops guilty of pedophilia have not even
been reduced to the lay state by the Roman Catholic authorities. It is to the
everlasting shame of Roman Catholic officialdom that the victims of pedophilia
have had to have recourse to the civil courts in order to obtain justice and
closure, or what is worse were bribed into keeping silent.
It is clear that the hierarchy have not followed the
example of Christ who, after his 40 days in the desert, resisted the third
temptation of the devil. “Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain,
and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence, and said to
him ‘All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship
me’. At this, Jesus said to him ‘Get away, Satan!’.” [Matt. 4, 8-9] The
temptation proffered has been the enticement to power and
wealth.
This power mind-set is reflected in a tendency to
‘triumphalism’ within Roman Catholicism. There is a liturgical feast of Christ
the King, although Jesus never agreed to this etiquette. Ironically, there is no
feast of Christ the Prophet which was really what he was about during the years
of his ‘active ministry’. Ours is a pilgrim church and we certainly have no
cause to be ‘triumphal’. We really ought to consider ourselves as a disreputable
lot trying to make our way in the footsteps of our leader.
The result of this ‘overturned’ order of priorities is
an obfuscation of the Gospel message validating the old adage: “What you do is
so loud that I can’t hear what you are saying.” The life of Francis of Assisi
stood as an eloquent testimony to the Gospel message and was an appeal to return
to the sources. Sad to say it had little lasting effect.
Faith is a leap into darkness, a shout without an echo.
In a Christian context, it means that ultimately we came from God and we are
created to return to him, i. e. the soul is immortal and there is life after
death. Survival after death was a constant concern for the philosopher Seneca.
The greatest theologians of Christendom admitted that one could not prove the
immortality of the soul from reason. It was a tenet of faith. Life without
belief in an afterlife substantiates Jean-Paul Sartre’s remark that ‘man is a
dirty puddle of water running down the drain’.
Faith by force is an oxymoron. Faith is a free
commitment to something beyond the ken of reason. Faith cannot be instilled,
nurtured, enhanced, no not even extirpated by force. In the history of
Christendom this has been a hard lesson to learn. The Crusades did not work, the
holy wars did not work, the communist occupation of Poland did not work. The
lessons to be learned from the Inquisition, the trial of Joan of Arc, the
condemnation of Galileo have had little effect on Roman Catholic bureaucracy.
The inquisitional practice of ‘turning over heretics’ to the secular powers was
hypocrisy reminiscent of Pilate’s washing his hands prior to condemning Christ.
Forgotten was John Chrysostom’s remark that falsehood and error are best
ignored, because the truth will prevail.
If we turn to the Gospels, we find that Jesus exhorted
his listeners to faith, he chided those of little faith, he invited to faith,
but never did he use force. In fact the message of his life was clear: it is
better to endure suffering than to cause it. Of course, he was able to
corroborate his appeal to faith by extraordinary deeds: “the blind regain their
sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised,
and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them” [Matt. 11, 5] It’s a little
tougher for us these days, since we aren’t usually witness to such miraculous
deeds. But faith untested isn’t worth much anyway.
Faith perdures in the community of the faithful. If
there were no believers, then the clergy, the hierarchy and the pope would be
‘unemployed’. Their job is to invite, invigorate, enhance and inspire, first by
their behavior and then by their words. Those of us Roman Catholics who were
raised in the early days of the 20th century all knew pastors who
fancied themselves as architects, financiers and even school principals even
though the seminary gave them no training in these areas. The time is long past
when the laity were ignorant and illiterate. However, generally speaking, the
clergy and hierarchy have not adjusted well to this reality. Many of the folks
in the pews have as much or more education that the priests and bishops. Gregory
the Great and Pseudo-Denys the Areopagite remarked those who cannot ‘beget
spiritual children’, meaning I assume, inspiring them and inviting them to
reflect on the Good News of the Gospels, then they should be deprived of their
office. The laity of today can easily discern whether the preacher has been
reading, reflecting and meditating on meaningful issues revolving around the
Christian faith. It is ironic that an affluent laity can be spiritually
undernourished. All too often, parishioners are bored by desultory ‘sermons’
stemming from little reading and reflection.
During the pontificate of John Paul II, two secret
societies were granted favor, viz. Opus Dei and the Legionnaires of Christ. With
some oversimplification perhaps on my part, their avowed purpose was to
infiltrate Roman Catholic parishes and revert to the practices and mind-set of
pre-Vatican II. The founder of the Legionnaires of Christ was accused by nine
men (former seminarians) of pedophilia and no action was taken by the Vatican.
These secret societies reveal tendencies to fundamentalism, which borders on
fanaticism. They favor a literal interpretation of the Scriptures, a blind
obedience to authority and a stubborn unwillingness to listen to alternate
views. None of the great Christian exegetes of Scripture ever favored literalism
as the only approach to understanding the Bible. Such ‘literalism’ is not good
faith, it is bad faith and an unwillingness to use another God-given gift,
namely the power to think.
‘Faith seeking understanding’ is the adage of the great
theologian Anselm of Canterbury. This approach should be adopted by any human
being living in a faith context. It is often called conscience, namely an effort
by the individual to figure out what his or her faith requires in a given
situation. As such, reason is not the prerogative of professional theologians.
We all must be theologians. Can we support stem-cell research and under what
conditions? Is cloning morally correct in the case of human beings? Are we
morally obliged to accept artificial means in prolonging our life? Is divorce
morally justifiable in cases of spouse abuse? Is artificial birth control really
sinful? What are the conditions for waging a just war? Are employers obliged to
pay a ‘living wage’ and what might that be? Are women unfit to be leaders? What
are the situations in which the common good must be given priority over the
private good of an individual? This means that ‘father knows best’ or ‘bishop
knows best’ or yes even ‘pope knows best’ must go out the
window.
Those of us who have grown up in the 20th
century were fed a steady diet of sexual morality from the hierarchy and clergy
which has become their fixation, so to speak. Abortion, birth control and
divorce too often exhaust the clerical agenda. We in the pews hear little or
nothing about issues of social justice, the economic oppression of the third
world nations by the first world nations. “We’ve got it but you can’t have it
and you can’t come into our country to get it!” Little do we hear about our
‘obligations’ regarding the environment, about the immorality involved in
corporate mergers where CEO’s retiring and present are offered big bonuses while
thousands are put out of work without medical insurance or retirement benefits.
We aren’t made aware that the good old USA is in a mind-set of
hyper-individualism: my sex, my religion, my family, my rights, my liberty, my
right to sue. Our legislators are so beholden to private interests that they
don’t even know what the common good might be. The great philosopher Seneca knew
better when he remarked that the human community would be better off if the
words ‘mine’ and ‘yours’ were banned from our vocabulary. Let one example
suffice: the outlandish awards resulting from lawsuits have escalated to such a
degree that physicians have to pay incredible malpractice premiums which, of
course, either they pass on to us COMMON folks or they quit practicing.
It seems that it has taken mankind(!) longer to understand that women as
persons are equal to men than it has taken for slavery to be abolished.
Acknowledging this equality is not a problem peculiar to Eastern or Muslim
cultures, it is a global problem. It has not been long ago since wives in Japan
were expected to walk ten paces behind their husbands. It is still the custom in
parts of India for women to be ‘sold’ as wives to the ‘highest’ bidder. Those of
the Taliban persuasion regard women as good only for the three C’s: cooking,
cleaning and child-bearing. Those of us who are part of Western Christianity
might think that our tradition is not tainted with this bias, but that is
clearly wrong.
Early in the history of Christianity, the famous philosopher-theologian
Origen wrote: “Behold woman: the leader in sin (caput peccati), weapon of the devil,
banishment from paradise, mother of deceit, corruption of the ancient law.” St.
Jerome wrote: “In the ruination of the human race, it is woman who most easily
falls.” Or again: “Why would you delight in the company of women? Why get on
this fragile raft buffeted by waves?” These sentiments were often repeated and
viewed favorably by many Christian theologians during the Patristic and Medieval
periods. The great St. Thomas Aquinas wrote: “In paradise (in statu innocentiae) woman was less
perfect than man, both as regards her body and her soul.” Or again: “Because
woman was weaker than man, she could be more easily
seduced.”
Male dominance,
patriarchy and power were unquestionably the prevalent mind-set of the Jewish
scriptures and in many Eastern and Muslim cultures today, and still a
‘subliminal’ part of western culture. This so-called superiority can in no way
be justified by the Christian Scriptures. Even St. Paul’s ‘wives be submissive
to your husbands’ can be attributed to the cultural world of which Paul was a
part and not to some immutable divine mandate. Some of Jesus’s and Paul’s most
faithful followers and disciples were women, the same women who stood by Christ
through the crucifixion when most of the males deserted him. A number of women
supported and aided Paul in his ministry before there were ‘priests’ and
‘bishops’! Jesus spoke to the Samarian woman at the well: unheard of and
scandalous in the Jewish society of that day! He sought to overturn the custom
of stoning women caught in adultery, especially because there was no such
penalty for adulterous males!
During Jesus’s time it
was inconceivable that women could assume positions of leadership. However, this
is no more than a cultural phenomenon. There is nothing whatever in the
‘deposit’ of Christian faith or in the Christian Scriptures which would prohibit
women from assuming positions of leadership (e. g. the priesthood). This is not
a question of sex, it is a question of one’s ability to be a ‘leader’ according
to the norms established by Jesus himself, namely leadership as service.
Unfortunately, the Roman Catholic hierarchy perceive this as a threat to their
‘fortress’ of masculinity.
This masculine superiority mind-set is still prevalent in Roman
Catholicism. This was eloquently evidenced by John Paul II’s ukase that the
question of women priests is not on the table for discussion. In the early days
of Christianity, leaders were selected by lot from among recommendations of the
COMMUNITY. [Acts 1, 21-26] This of course, is a far cry from the present policy
where the laity have absolutely nothing to say about the selection of bishops
and even the clergy are not generally consulted except perhaps to make
‘clandestine’ suggestions. The policy of John Paul II of selecting a bunch of
‘yes men’ as bishops does not bode well for the future of Roman Catholicism. It
merely embeds the mind-set of masculine domination and so-called superiority
while treating the laity as non-entities.
The Roman Catholic
institution of the Latin-rite has fostered the idea that celibacy is a higher
(holier?) state than marriage and has ‘pitted’ the sacrament of Orders against
the sacrament of Marriage. In the mid 15th century, prior to his
election to the papacy, Sixtus IV wrote a treatise “In Praise of Chastity” which
could more truly be entitled “A Diatribe against Women”. Women are portrayed as
seducing men into abandoning their power to think (an ability presumed to be
superior in men), as being emotional rather than rational beings, more
susceptible to the enticements of the devil. All in the same vein as the passage
from Origen cited above.
It is well known that mandatory celibacy was inaugurated
for economic reasons, namely to prevent priests from willing church property to
their heirs. This hardly raises celibacy to any sort of supernatural level.
Writing around 1270, the future archbishop of Canterbury, John Pecham, wrote
that hardly any of the clergy in his day were observing their vow of celibacy.
Priestly concubines were apparently more the rule than the exception. The
history of celibacy has not been entirely felicitous in the Roman Catholic
Latin-rite. Married priests of the Eastern Catholic rite must be puzzled to hear
that their state is inferior to that of their Latin-rite
brethren.
Celibacy ought to be regarded as a charism, a gift of
the Holy Spirit, and not under the control of the institution. The precious gift
of freedom should not be compromised by laws unless obviously justifiable by the
requirements of justice and clearly demonstrable necessity, neither of which
obtains regarding mandatory celibacy. The laity are not supposed to ask ‘why?’
Meaningless laws (e.g. segregation) fall into desuetude and rightly so. In spite
of Vatican II, present behavior would suggest that the ministry and the
propagation of the faith is the prerogative of the clergy, that the priesthood
pertains to the divinity of Christ and not to his humanity, that celibacy is
‘best’ or ‘inexorably’ linked to the priesthood. Catholicity is not fostered or
obtained by imposing the Roman-Vatican-Italian cultural mind-set upon the
world. Indeed, this violates the
principle of subsidiarity promoted by the decrees of Vatican II. The Gospel is
trans-cultural!
Thousands of priests have been prohibited from
functioning in the active ministry because they have married. Getting married
for priests has been treated as scandalous behavior. They are treated as pariahs
and a shame to the institution. All this time, there is an aging priesthood
where many of men in their seventies are over-burdened with responsibilities
which would be difficult for younger men. Many are unable to serve the people
well because they are ‘burned-out’. They have earned retirement and should
retire. Recently, a large number of parishes have been shut down without so much
as consulting the laity who have been supporting them over the years. All this
means that the laity are not being served well. The priest shortage has
generated a policy of institutional hypocrisy whereby convert priests and
pastors from Anglicanism, Episcopalianism and Lutheranism are regarded as ‘big
catches’ and are functioning in the active ministry of the Roman Catholic Latin
rite albeit married and with families. In the secular realm, this hypocrisy
would be regarded as double-standard discrimination.
In recent years, there has been a large number of
priests and bishops of gay orientation ordained to the ministry. Some officials
in Vatican circles have regarded gay sexual orientation as a perversion of
nature, whereas the truth might well be that it is in a person’s genes. In the
priesthood and the episcopacy, gays have found a respectable profession, albeit
in Roman Catholicism there appears to be a policy of ‘Don’t ask and don’t tell’.
It is one thing for men of gay sexual orientation to function in the active
ministry, it is quite another, after having taken the vow of celibacy, for them
to indulge in sexual relations with their partners. This is demoralizing for
their ‘straight’ colleagues who are remaining faithful to their vow of celibacy.
While statistics are skewed because in certain instances, coroners have listed
priests who died of AIDS as having died of natural causes, however based on
available data, there is a higher percentage of deaths from AIDS in the
priesthood than in any other segment of the population.
A final note on this stubborn adherence to, this fetish,
regarding celibacy. One has to wonder if this is perhaps somehow related to a
disproportionate focus on sexual morality: abortion, birth control, pre-marital
sex, adultery etc. to the neglect, as we have mentioned, of issues regarding
social justice.
Prior to President Bush’s pre-emptive invasion of Iraq,
there was almost total silence in the United States from the pulpits of
Christendom, both Catholic and non-Catholic. Many Christians would be surprised
to learn that this war would have been judged immoral and unjust by such
thinkers as Cicero, Augustine of Hippo, Isidore of Seville and Thomas Aquinas.
Their criteria: either the recouping of stolen territory, goods or people; OR
the repelling of an invasion by the enemy. Clearly, neither of these criteria
was the case prior to the invasion of Iraq. There can be no mistake that Sadaam
Hussein’s regime was responsible for many horrible crimes against humanity, but
ironically some of the same above-mentioned thinkers would have approved of
tyrannicide, but apparently the CIA was incapable of pulling this off. The
silence from the pulpits has been a clear abdication of responsibility by those
who purport to be spiritual leaders of the people. Those who have opposed the
wars both of Vietnam and Iraq have consistently been regarded as unpatriotic and
as not supporting our troops. This is a distortion of the truth. The best way to
keep our troops out of harm’s way is not to send them into immoral and sometimes
futile wars. This is the best support we can offer our military
personnel.
The best of patriots are the parents who, with a great deal of effort and
a little luck, have succeeded in raising their children to be of impeccable
character, responsible for their actions and imbued with a keen sense of justice
together with a sincere concern for their fellow human beings. These are the
citizens who make up the moral fiber of a nation.
On the ‘home front’ there persists a serious conflict and obstacle to
peace. Many sincere Roman Catholics feel alienated by so much anti-Christian
behavior, by being regarded as inferior to the leaders, such that their ideas
are given little significance and they are debarred from the decision-making
process. The fostering of passivity in the laity is not virtuous, it is vicious.
Unless issues such as we have outlined above are addressed and given realistic
closure, the obstacles to unity will persist and the thoughtful and sincere
laity will persist in ‘the winter of their discontent’.
The
Challenge
And so, dear Pope, bishops, priests and deacons, there is a Christ-like
agenda at your disposal. A return to the Good News of the Gospel as clearly
promulgated by Jesus’s articles of independence in his Sermon on the Mount
[Matt. 5, 3-10]. Blessed are the poor in spirit (no touting of wealth and pomp),
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they who mourn (not cause
sorrow), for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek (who abandon power and
control), for they will inherit the land. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst
for righteousness (no cover-ups), for they will be satisfied. Blessed are the
merciful (concern for the poor and disenfranchised), for they will be shown
mercy. Blessed are the clean of heart (no more hypocrisy), for they will see
God. Blessed are the peacemakers (‘If you seek peace, work for justice [Paul
VI]), for they will be called children of God. Blessed are they who are
persecuted for the sake of righteousness (by opposing the abuse of wealth and
power), for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Girard J. Etzkorn