| Reconsidering Catholicism | |
Quite a few Roman Catholics, mostly in the United States, grow increasingly disillusioned and alientated from the Church they have long called their home. People in the pews can no longer relate to their priests; priests can no longer relate to their bishops; and all levels of the hierarchy have trouble relating to the Vatican in Rome.
There was once a time when such disaffected people would quietly leave the Roman Catholic Church and join some other denomination - perhaps the Anglican church, because of its similarities in rites and traditions. Or they might have drifted away from organized Christianity altogether, not finding any outlet for their religious feelings. A very few would lead rebellions against the Church and start their own, new religious movements. Most were unsuccessful heretics, while a few, like Martin Luther, changed the shape of Christianity forever.
Today, however, Catholics are increasingly less likely to do this. Maybe they are feeling more self-confident about their own religious ideas when in conflict with Vatican orthodoxy, or perhaps they have absorbed enough from modernity to think that they can make a difference in changing the Church. There are even priests who choose to remain with the Church even as they strongly disagree with any number of rules and dogmas.
Whatever the personal reasons, more and more Catholics are remaining a part of their Church and choosing to challenge what they perceive as errors and wrongs from the inside, rather than from the outside. Both laity and clergy are forming organizations which claim to be Catholic, but which exist to explicitly challenge traditional Catholicism.
They say that they love their church and they adhere to the dogmas which (as they see it) constitute the real heart of Christianity and Catholicism - the Trinity, the humanity, divinity and sacrifice of Jesus, etc. In their minds, they are challenging doctrines which are not essential to Christian faith and which do not follow necessarily from Christian faith. They feel that the Roman Catholic Church is ultimately wasting energy on irrelevant things.
What are those doctrines? You will hear about different ones from different critics, but they all seem to share in common the charge that they are rooted in errors of the past and, as such, fail to adequately meet the challenges of today. A second commonality among complaints is a question of honesty - not everyone believes that the Vatican is being entirely truthful about its past and what it does today.
Some of the most debated doctrines are those concerning sexuality: homosexuality, contraception, female priests, sexual abuse committed by clergy, sex outside of marriage, etc. Although critics share the Vatican's concerns with human life and certainly agree with statements that life is sacred, they disagree that such principles require particular conclusions regarding sexuality.
They do not, for example, agree that the sanctity of human life means that every sexual act must also be open to the production of such life. It is because of this that the Vatican has decreed that contraception and homosexual sex are sinful, and it is with issues such as these where we find some of the sharpest disagreements. When Catholics personally experience that their valuation of life and sex are not diminished by the use of contraception, it is hard for them to believe when the Vatican tells them the opposite.
The question of honesty includes, but is not limited to, matters of sexuality. Parishes in the United States and around the world have experienced priests who have preyed upon nuns, parishioners and even children. But instead of being open about what has happened, a more common response from the Church hierarchy has been to engage in cover ups: denying what has happened, blaming the victims (which bears uncomfortable similarities to the tradition of blaming women for sexual desire in men), and moving the priest to a new place where they fail to warn anyone about his prior history.
Honesty has also apparently been lacking with regards to the Church's past, in particular with its dealings with Jews. Although there have been many efforts by the current pope to "come clean" and admit wrongdoing in the past, it is clear that these efforts fall far short of the whole and unpleasant truth. Indeed, too much of their efforts are focused on making up reasons that allow them to excuse the Church as an organization and institution.
All of those efforts, from bolstering ill-founded doctrines to covering up past sins, have been criticized and exposed in any number of books. But there are two recent books, both by long-time Catholics, which are worth taking a look at and which do a good job at exploring alternative views of Catholic doctrine and history.
Garry Wills' book Papal Sin: The Structures of Deceit, focuses primarily on the attempted cover ups of what the Church has done to the Jews and upon the foundation of major Church doctrines regarding sexuality. In both cases, he argues that they are not what they seem, and that a much more skeptical approach to them is required.
Constantine's Sword, by James Carroll, takes a more historical approach and deals primarily with the efforts of the Church to maintain control through the suppression of both internal and external dissent. Thus, the historical roots of the Church's attitudes towards Jews is revealed, which might hopefully better enable Catholics to move beyond them.
Read the reviews:
Constantine's Sword, by James Carroll.
Papal Sin: The Structures of Deceit, by Garry Wills.
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