This has the usual list of received truths regarding the problems
facing the Catholic Church. The Church is an organization tasked
solely with introducing the holy spirit and the teachings of Jesus to
all humanity. It is led by trained priests who manage themselves in
a traditional way that naturally has its failings. They need to apply
the rule of twelve that Jesus did not have time to implement well
enough to avoid its been cast aside. Present forms have worked well
enough to at least conserve. They have not worked well to readily
confront the modern era although in time they will. The modern era
has arrived and is arriving almost fully formed.
The objective truth is that the church has been almost completely
successful. Modernism is an informed Christian society even if many
chose to not espouse religion. That is merely an affectation that
will evaporate the instance that revelation is accepted and the
scientific basis of it all becomes understood.
The foot dragging of the Islamic world comes from their recognition
that their religion has little for women who become empowered by
modernism. The Arab spring has now upset that apple cart however
much the Islamists attempt to put the wheels back on the
authoritarian wagon. It is the women who are revolting and have
nothing to lose.
Other drives into conservationism among other indigenous religions
are expressions of the same effect. They are losing.
The next thirty years are unique. It is now possible to wash away
the historic conflicts, resolve obvious issues and open the Universal Church to
an inflow of all humanity under the Christian umbrella. It may even
be probable. For two thousand years, the church has proven it is
bigger that the people leading it and it is end game.
The Catholic
church's pope-driven peace won't last for long
When Pope Benedict's successor is chosen, the civil war between
conservatives and liberals will resume with ferocity
Andrew Brown
Friday 15 February
2013
Pope Benedict's
resignation has brought about a brief truce in the civil war
that rages through the Catholic church worldwide, but hostilities
will resume as soon as his successor is chosen. In the US, in France,
in Germany, Austria, Australia and, increasingly, in England, the
church is split between liberals who believe in democracy (and that
they are the majority) and conservatives who believe in autocracy,
providing they get to choose the bishops.
The language on both
sides is fierce. Liberals compare the Vatican to the KGB;
conservatives accuse their opponents of heresy and worse, and call
themselves "orthodox" to make the point.
Each side blames the
errors of the other for the troubles of the church. So the sex abuse
scandal is either due to authoritarian clergy and a corrupt culture
of celibacy, or to liberal slackness. The fall in attendance is
either due to the refusal of the church to modernise, or to its
abandonment of eternal truths.
But what really
divides the two sides? The obvious answer is sex, but that is not the
only factor and probably not the most important one. Conservatives
are implacably opposed to abortion, and in theory at least opposed to
contraception too. They reject the notion of women priests and of
married priests unless they are former Anglicans who will join them
in denouncing liberalism. Many take up strongly anti-environment
positions: in Australia Cardinal George Pell is a noted critic of the
science of human-induced climate change.
Americans such as
George Weigel and the late Michael Novak were ideologues of Reaganism
and favour US military and economic expansion but this is not central
to the package. There is an older conservative position that favours
isolationism and is suspicious of international capitalism. At the
rancid fringe this shades into the antisemitism of the schismatic
Society of Saint Pius X, home of the Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard
Wiliamson.
The liberals mostly
buy into the standard progressive package: they want married clergy
(around 100,000 men left the priesthood to marry in the 70s and 80s,
and their loss has never really been made up); they are in favour of
contraception within marriage; and believe that the relief of poverty
is a much more pressing and urgent issue than abortion. They believe
the church should be more openly tolerant of gay people and that the
protection of the environment is a Christian duty.
Most of these are also
the uncontroversial attitudes of the laity in the west: polls and
statistics show clearly that Catholic sexual behaviour is pretty much
the same as that of non-Catholics, and if the Catholic vote inclines
in any direction it is to the left. Conservative Catholicism is very
much a movement of the elites in the west. Even in the US, the right
wing hostility to immigration has cost the Republican party support
among socially conservative Hispanic Catholics.
But the priesthood,
and especially the bishops, of the Catholic church are vetted for
loyalty to the church's sexual teachings. The more the laity reject
these, the greater has been the pressure from the Vatican for priests
who will support them. By now, after 30 years of this pressure, under
Pope John Paul II and later Pope Benedict XVI, there are few bishops
and no cardinals who have ever dared express dissent about this.
None of this would
threaten the future of the church if it weren't also a struggle about
power. The Catholic church is organisationally an absolute monarchy
but it has no powers of taxations. Economically it is dependent on
the donations of the faithful. That's one reason why the German
church, where the government collects a small tax on its behalf, is
so important for Catholicism in Europe. Even the celibacy of the
clergy can be seen as a primarily economic measure (it's not a
doctrinal matter) that ensures the church need never support any
clergy families.
In this light, the
disaffection of the laity really matters. It becomes a bid for the
control of the church they pay for. The most radical element of the
liberal programme for the priesthood is not so much an end to
clerical celibacy as the desire for national churches to elect their
own bishops rather than have them chosen from Rome. This increase in
the power of the bishops at the expense of the pope, and of national
churches at the expense of the Vatican, was a crucial part of the
agenda of the reforming second Vatican council of the 60s. It is also
the section that Pope John Paul II and Benedict after him most
decisively rejected.
The conservative
programme has almost always involved the imposition of bishops from
Rome, or a campaign to undermine existing bishops by intriguing
directly with the Vatican. That element was particularly apparent in
the establishment of the "personal ordinariate" for priests
who left the Church of England to escape the ordination of women.
This – as documents leaked to the Guardian showed clearly – was
co-ordinated behind the backs of the English bishops and against
their will. Advertisements asking for money for support have been a
regular feature of the Catholic Herald ever since.
Yet it would be a
mistake to decide that the conservatives are doomed because they are
out of step with modern society. In the 50 years since the Vatican
council ended, that has become their strength. The general mockery of
Catholics as weird and sexually conflicted tends to make young,
committed ones feel their faith is stronger and more important. If
Catholicism recedes from the mainstream, it is likely to grow in
commitment even as it shrinks. In the end, the liberals might stop
paying and they might stop attending church – 10% of American
adults are now former Catholics – but they are behind a church that
is merely shrinking, not entirely empty
No comments:
Post a Comment