"Somewhere underneath all of this there is a root story that has to do with celibacy. The celibate status of its priests is basically the Catholic church's last market advantage in the Christian religion racket, but human beings are not designed to be celibate and so problems naturally arise among the population of priests forced to live that terrible lifestyle. Just as it refuses to change its insane and criminal stance on birth control and condoms, the church refuses to change its horrifically cruel policy about priestly celibacy. That's because it quite correctly perceives that should it begin to dispense with the irrational precepts of its belief system, it would lose its appeal as an ancient purveyor of magical-mystery bullshit and become just a bigger, better-financed, and infinitely more depressing version of a Tony Robbins self-help program."
-I've been thinking its a good time for a well-thought-out essay on why the Catholic church should use the opportunity presented by the child molestation scandal to dissolve itself. Matt Taibbi has written one.
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I read the title of this post and thought, "Eh, they had a good run."
Great tags. And yeah.
I've always found the priest-pedophile connection fairly natural — not because celibacy warps you (though it no doubt does), but because I can imagine that if you were a genuinely devout person who also had unwanted sexual feelings — pedophilia, in this case, though the same can be said of gay people (and here I must emphasize that *I* obviously don't think these are at all the same but if you were raised to be a devout Catholic *you* might) — then you might honestly believe (or fervently hope) that, by signing up for a celibate lifestyle as a priest, God would simply take these feelings away from you. Of course, evidence shows that he is generally disinclined to do so.
The priesthood and the nunneries have collected sexual deviants basically forever, for exactly this reason. (Keep in mind that 'sexual deviants' could often be as innocuous as "unmarried girls who got pregnant.") In a way, this was handled better in medieval times, when this often meant being tucked away at an obscure monastery with little outside contact. Today's clergy have a lot more contact with the public, meaning that the negative consequences of celibacy get directed outward rather than bottled up within the organization.
Just realized that I made it sound like I think unmarried moms should be locked away with pedophiles. OOPS. I meant that you can do worse with pedophiles than isolating them in a community of adults with no outside contact. The 'God forgives your sinful urges' thing works a lot better there than when these people actually have frequent contact with children.
Sorry to pester, but do you have source for this? My understanding is that monasteries are mainly staffed with monks, not priests, and that priests have always been out and about in the world, running parishes, giving the sacraments, etc.
Well, priests have always been required to staff the church bureaucracy (thus 'clerical work'), which involves a lot less public contact than your typical parish priest. As the church got bigger, more and more guys were required to deal with the larger congregation, and competition for bureaucratic spots got more intense.
Monasteries have become more public simply because of human sprawl; there aren't a lot of geographically isolated spots for them anymore. Back in the day, if a priest was caught doing something nasty, his superior could strongly suggest that he pack off for an isolated monastery for some time off.
I'll admit I'm basing these statements on my own general knowledge rather than specific sources I could name – although I will say that my dad wanted to become a priest as a kid and most of my extended family is Catholic, so it's a subject I'm familiar with. If there's a specific assertion you would like a source for, I'll see what I can do.
Except that other examples of Christianity–Eastern Orthodoxy, Unitarianism, pretty much everything except Roman Catholicism–is maintaining its mystery just fine. The primary difference is that only Catholicism considers the church itself the source of faith. If you take away the institution's authority, the whole thing falls.
But human-centered and God-centered faiths are thriving; it's the church-center faith that's in trouble.
Andrew, what do you mean by "Catholicism considers the church itself the source of faith?" Its own texts say pretty clearly that it considers Jesus Christ to be the source of pretty much everything, and that faith is faith in Him and His saving work.
Also, Dave: it's not a question of how much good priests do, or even of how much good the Catholic Church does. It starts with the question of, "Do you believe that Jesus Christ was God, that he rose from the dead, and that he founded a church – that is, a body of believers who would share in His spirit and seek to unite themselves to Him and to carry out His work on earth?" If you believe that, and if you believe that the Catholic Church is the church with the most direct connection to Jesus' foundation, then you don't get to dissolve yourself, even if your institution is riddled with sin and human failure.
Jfruh – I have never met a Catholic priest who has imagined that signing up for the priesthood would prove a magic relief from temptation. Just the opposite.
"If you believe that, and if you believe that the Catholic Church is the church with the most direct connection to Jesus' foundation, then you don't get to dissolve yourself, even if your institution is riddled with sin and human failure."
seconded, libmas
@libmas: I think the difference Andrew is referring to is that Catholic doctrine defines the church as the highest earthly authority on spiritual matters, whereas most protestant sects doctrinally consider individual inspiration just as or more important than clerical authority.
Of course, once you get away from doctrine you'll find that the practice converges. Catholics as individuals tend to take Vatican decrees with a grain of salt, and plenty of protestant preachers teach that their interpretation of the Bible is the only acceptable one.
I have trouble understanding-and I know that the leap of faith, the accepting that which is not understandable is a big part of religion-but I have trouble understanding the part about how one organization, and one human, the pope, is thought to have a more direct connection to the foundation, to Jesus, to god, than other humans. Religious belief seems like such a deeply personal thing to me. To adhere to a system about it, especially such a hierarchical one, one that flows from the words of one other person, seems against the whole point. To put another person, or a set of rules issuing from that person, in between oneself and god, runs counter to what my understanding of people's belief in god is. But again, I don't share that belief. And I know the not understanding is part of it for some people who do.
I dunno, DoctorDisaster – I get what you're saying, but I attend churches – Protestant and Catholic and everything else – as part of my job, and my experience has been that the chief difference between Catholics and Protestants on questions of authority has been this: Protestants say the Bible alone is the source of authority, whereas Catholics go with the Bible plus tradition. If by "individual inspiration," you mean "individual interpretation of Scripture," then I get what you're saying a little more. But I've never met a Protestant who suggested that every person should go it alone, "just me and my Bible."
In thinking about this issue these days, what I find interesting (you know, when I'm not choking with rage over the behavior of perverts and the bishops who cover for them) is the idea of 'The Church' as an institution that must be protected and preserved at all costs.
Isn't that institution the people who make it up? Especially in the old days of the apostles, 'The Church' was the people who believed in Christ and got together to celebrate him and his life, even under threat of persecution and death. Now it seems the people who support the elephantine structure that the Catholic Church has become are expendable, as long as that structure can be maintained.
(OK, I've worked myself back to choking with rage and will now /rant.)
@libmas: Actually, I considered saying exactly that! But I wanted to include the people who make the claim that God just straight-up told them, with no scriptural reference at all. And I personally have met protestants who prefer their own interpretations to any preacher's.
@Dave: You have a good point. Remember, though: Catholicism is really old. At the time most of these traditions started, the priest might be the only person in his parish actually capable of reading the Bible. It might help to think in an almost tribal paradigm: the priest is the storyteller, who knows all the old stories and their morals and teaches them to the rest of the community. In a broadly literate society, this seems odd, but on the flip side, the Catholic church is seeing remarkable growth in the third world today.
Religious belief is indeed a deeply personal thing. But this particular religious belief – that Jesus is God, and that His words can be found in Scripture – brings with it some notion of system. It starts with Christ's line to Peter: "You are rock, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, etc." And later, he tells Peter, "Feed my sheep." (Yes, I know there are huge points of theological debate on this; I'm just giving the Catholic notion here.)
Further, while belief is indeed personal, Christianity as lived is very much corporate. All those who are joined to Christ by the reception of His Holy Spirit form one spiritual body, with Christ as the head – which body exists on earth to carry out the work of God. This is why, at the last judgment referred to in Matthew 25, Jesus asks the judged about what they have done – feeding people, clothing them, visiting them in prison, etc. It's not a private religion – it even carries with it a commandment from Christ to go out and proclaim the Good News to the whole world. And the name of this spiritual body is the church.
The pope is considered to be the spiritual successor to Peter, upon whom the church was founded. The nature of his authority is actually pretty subtle – he doesn't get to just sit up on his throne and issue rulings, except in very rare circumstances. The church's teachings are not seen as things put between oneself and God; rather, they are seen as an illumination of what God has revealed about man and about Himself, and what the law of love requires.
I've gone on too long. But it's not simply a matter of saying, "not understanding is part of faith."
@libmas — I'm not saying that all or even more than a tiny percentage of priests feel this way. I'm saying that if you were a pious person who believed that your urges were sinful and that celibacy was a necessary adjunct to the priesthood, you might think (or dearly hope) that joining the priesthood would solve your problems.
Catholicism is even older than that, Doctor Disaster. The Bible didn't get put together for centuries. It survived first as an oral tradition, maintained by a community of believers.
It might also help to remember that the first Christians were Jews, people who were well acquainted with the notion of a God who makes rules and communicates them to His people through human instruments.
Thanks for the clarification, jfruh. I can't, of course, argue that your proposed scenario is impossible. But while I can imagine someone joining the priesthood in an effort to avoid dealing with what he perceived to be sinful urges, I can't imagine him thinking that joining the priesthood would make those urges vanish. Still, as you say, it's possible.
Bittersweet: your rage and your impression are certainly understandable. What has happened is horrible. I know I'm running around on this thread giving a sympathetic account of Catholicism; I just want to be clear that I'm not trying to defend evil actions.
And with that, I'll sign off.
Thanks, Libmas, for your thoughtful and elucidating comments.
As an Episopalian who gives great weight to tradition and the development of theology over time, I have a great respect for the Catholic Church and its prayers/services/traditions/etc. And I have a lot of respect for many priests, monks and nuns I've met who do great work in the world. So I'm with you on being sympathetic to the Church, and I never once interpreted your posts as supporting criminal behavior.
It's frankly really hard for me to think about this issue objectively, having been affected by it and seen the sickness and evil of one of its perpetrators.
@Bittersweet: I know whereof you speak.
@Dave Bry: You're most welcome. Thanks for reading.
*sniffs, wipes away tears, goes to cheer self up with brisket recipes and bear videos*
Taibbi's position on this matter was altogether unpredictable. Watch out, sacred cows — Sheriff Taibbi's in town!
This has echoes of Watergate – but, you know, with victims that are children who will be scarred for life.
Someone has got to be held legally accountable for this; I refuse to accept that this institution will be immune from prosecution.
I mean, strip the bank accounts and give them to the victims and to children's aid societies, let's see how devout some of these cardinals and bishops are when stripped of the pomp and circumstance and jewels and Prada slippers
None of the priests own anything – everything they have is really owned by the Catholic church. That's why the church imposed celibacy in 1139 – too many priest kids were making claims on their fathers' estates. With no kids, the church owns it all.
John – whatever the reasons the church imposed celibacy, it is simply not the case that priests don't own anything, unless they join a particular religious order which requires vows of poverty. My family used to stay in a lake house owned by a priest, bought with his book royalties. He let families use it as a getaway.
Financially, he church has already paid dearly – and rightly so – for these offenses, and will continue to do so.
Hired Goons – you might be surprised at how austerely a bishop may live. The finery is brought out for religious ceremony.
I might be indeed!
But then again, you might not.
Humans beings "are not designed to be celibate"? Way to sneak in subterranean ideas of higher powers, my free-thinking friend. Just say "human beings are generally fucking terrible at being celibate, though yes, some people can do it, and they're kinda WEIRD."
Also: even if we say "human beings are not designed to be celibate," really, is that enough a reason not to promote celibacy? Are we "designed" to be astronauts, or comic book illustrators, or genetic engineers?
i'm not sure about you, but i was genetically engineered to be a comic book illustrating astronaut. then i discovered sex, drugs and rock & roll and the whole plan went to hell.
Celibacy fares extremely poorly in natural selection. Consequently, human beings are very poorly adapted for celibacy.
Better?
We're mammals: born to snuggle, etc.
Someone should totally write a novel that explores some of these issues of celibacy and sexuality for priests, but in a light-hearted non-preachy manner.
Pride and Pederasty?
That's fucking genius!
Telling lines in Taibbi's article: "I was raised Catholic but stopped going to church at the age of 12. … I knew back then that the church was a scam. … the institution as a whole is a gang of cheap charlatans preying on peoples' guilt feelings …" Clearly his views on the subject of Catholicism have not developed much further since then; they demonstrate the subtlety and nuance you'd expect from a clever, cynical 12-year-old.
Here's another somewhat dubious claim: "I KNOW THE CHURCH DOES SOME VERY GOOD THINGS, IT DOES MORE HARM THAN GOOD OVERALL THOUGH." I guess this depends on whether you believe in the concept of a soul and/or God; if you do, you'd place an inestimable value on the immaterial or spiritual "things" the church does. But even if you don't, consider the work of the church in the material sphere: running hospitals, schools, homeless shelters, soup kitchens, just to scratch the surface.
These sexual abuse incidents are of course terrible but Taibbi's call to dissolve the Catholic church in response hardly even warrants being discussed.
Aye.
Plenty of the good works you list are also done by non-believers. Religious faith and belief in the divine are not essential to the practice of altruism.
No argument there, but the question is whether the church "does more harm than good." I would argue that's not the case.
People within the Church do many, many good things. The Church's prohibition on birth and STD control–leading to tens of millions of early, unnecessary deaths from HIV/AIDS alone, not counting starvation–is genocide, I think. It also contributes to anthropogenic causes of extinction of other life forms via human over-population, which gets no play but bugs me.
So, with the pederasty and enslavement of native peoples throughout its history, the Church has done devastating harm as an institution (great art, though). The Catholic individuals given to good deeds could and perhaps would perform them under secular circumstances. Others do.
You think opposition to birth control is genocide, I disagree with you there. I'd like to see a footnote on your allegation of church "enslavement of native peoples," I'm not aware of that being a church practice.
As far as the "devastating harm" done by the church, I looked at some statistics online. In the U.S. alone there 562 Catholic hospitals which treat tens of millions of people a year; over 2 million students being educated in catholic schools; and catholic charities providing food to over six million a year. What part of treating the sick, educating the young and feeding the hungry do you see as "devastating?"
http://www.usccb.org/comm/catholic-church-statistics.shtml
Re enslavement of native peoples: see the New Mexico Pueblo Revolt of 1680 http://www.newmexicohistory.org/filedetails_docs.php?fileID=423
Re devastating harm: see the Church's stance on condoms and AIDS in Africa, which I believe is the continent with the fastest growing number of conversions to Catholicism. According to UNAIDS, there were 1.9 million new HIV transmissions and 1.5 million deaths in 2007 alone, which is like six times the number on any other continent.
Re Catholics treating, educating and feeding: I'm all for it. In my comments above, I said just that, twice.
That link you provided does not refer to the church enslaving anyone. Slavery in the Americas was of course an odious crime but it was not perpetrated by the church. Regardless, the present, not the past, is what's relevant here.
As far as the AIDS epidemic I don't think the catholic church is a decisive factor either way. (Catholics are only around 15% of the African population anyway.) Yes, the church is opposed to the use of artificial birth control, but, more broadly, to the concept of sex outside of marriage. Adherence to the latter would, of course, help reduce the spread of AIDS. I'm not saying I personally advocate these positions, but I don't think this particular policy is grounds to denigrate or dissolve such a venerable institution.
It seems you think (or hope) that catholic churches, hospitals and charities would continue to exist somehow if the church were to dissolve itself. I don't think that makes much sense.
Forced labor and behavioral control don't count? Ok. There's also the practice of encomienda in the Americas in which Spaniards were granted a number of Indians, from whom they could extract treasure or labor in exchange for instruction in the Catholic faith.
But you're right, it's not ongoing and that was careless of me. I guess it's just the pederasty that's been with the Church all along.
Re AIDS in Africa, get real. People have sex outside of marriage. They just do. Prohibiting them from using condoms in the midst of a sexually transmitted epidemic seems like an extreme punishment to me.
Re your last point, no. I don't think or hope that Catholic charities would continue without the Church. I think and hope that people would be inclined to care for others through secular means, as many do now.
I think you mean to say sexual abuse, by the way, not pederasty. Anyway, no one else seems interested in this little debate of ours so I'll let you have the last word.
You can only hold the Church culpable for the high incidence of AIDS in Africa via a very selective apportioning of it's influence. While it does oppose contraceptives it also opposes things like sex outside of marriage and anal sex. You have to believe that Africans are for some reason very devout when it comes to that one particular prohibition that your argument depends on and blithely ignore everything else the church says in order to see church teaching as a big factor in scale of the AIDS crisis in Africa. Any continent where the vatican really wielded as much power as its critics sometimes suggest it does in Africa would have amongst the lowest incidence of AID's in the world.
Dude, I get real tired of the "like all organized religion groups" line, and frankly, I expect better from you.
First of all: No. "All organized religion is bad" is a falsifiable statement, and one can fairly quickly point to plenty of religious groups that are "good" inasmuch as any set of human beings is "good" (i.e., more good than bad).
Second of all: This is like another version of the same mind-set that infects angry 20-year-olds who just know that music would be better if it weren't for the fuckin' record labels, man. Actually, like, organization is a Really Good Thing. We can argue about whether religion's contributions outweigh the problems it's caused, but let's agree that it would never have made any contributions if it weren't organized. Groups do not just randomly coalesce and decide to start doing meals-on-wheels or rebuilding Haiti or preserving the knowledge of the ancients throughout the Dark Ages. Further, without organization, you don't really have either a base for serious theological discussion — that is, examination of the Big Questions — or a good way to see how the abstract theories those discussions generate might operate in practice.
I mean, basically, if you just have a bunch of fucking hippies standing around going, "Well, I'm like spiritual, man, but not religious" — then you're stuck with a bunch of hippies around going, "Well, I'm like spiritual, man, but not religious." Organization is how shit gets done.
Finally of all, I would heartily concede that, yeah, organization is also how shit goes wrong, but that part of that is just a function of the human condition; and that part of it is also a function of organizations in general. The downside to organizations is that they separate responsibility for any accomplishment to such a degree that many, many people can do mildly awful things that, when taken together culminate into one big, genuinely atrocious thing. (I'd also add that this last point isn't as relevant to the situation with the Catholic Church, where really, all the little people who let the child molesting and raping slide, were all doing a genuinely atrocious thing. It was just still worth mentioning, I thought.)
Thanks, Moff. Good points. (And thanks for expecting better from me.)
Maybe I should have dropped the word "organized." I wouldn't want to be stuck with a bunch of hippies around going, "Well, I'm like spiritual, man, but not religious." But in considering how many conflicts around the world seem to be based in differences between religious groups, and how entrenched and irresolvable those differences tend to get when both sides refer, at a certain point, to an authority that the other side has zero access to-because it's a different authority, and by definition mysterious-it seems to be that the shit religious organizations get done is often bad shit. The organization part is the part that draws the lines and divides people, right? I know there are lots of other ways people divide themselves, too. But faith-based part + the organization part seems to be the root of a lot of problems. A lot of death.
As for groups coalescing to do good and help other people, i'm definitely okay with that kind of organization. I'd just prefer it to be without an appeal to a higher authority.
I'm more inclined to your side of things, but this does remind me of the Southpark episode in which Cartman goes to the future, a future in which religion has been banned or gone extinct … and the atheists are gearing up to fight each other over which group holds the true key to atheism.
In other words, perhaps humans are genetically programmed for celibacy, but maybe they are for fighting/war … and the religion just provides a convenient tribal excuse.
I think that's probably right. It'd be nice to think that the bad parts of humanness could be solved by changing one thing. But people would probably find other reasons and ways to divide themselves and kill each other, even if we removed what some of us think is a big source of the bad.
Well, to add to all the great stuff above:
I think it's a fallacy to blame religion for all of this "bad shit" committed by humans, and not just as a cop out to arbitrarily decide that the good things are "God" and the bad things are "human". Rather, the construct of these religions, both the spiritual texts and the rules of the organizations, rarely or never include any directives about large-scale war, murder, denial of basic liberties, etc… and most of them include a lot of very specific directives indicating the exact opposite. "Thou shalt not kill" is as basic of a tenet as you'll get in Catholicism or any of its siblings/ancestors. As a matter of fact, the primary non-spiritual purpose of organized religion is to create a framework of morals for its followers. It is an attempt to create something bigger than individual free will so that we can STOP the bad shit.
Atheists do not hold the high ground here because there is no correlation between immoral activity and religious participation. Their implication otherwise – that God=murder – is just utterly fucking moronic.
Just to really bring home how much responsibility that humans and their own psychologies really bear: most people on Earth believe in a handful of different religions, and three of them are directly related and incredibly similar in their supernatural beliefs (and consistent in their denunciation of warfare). So anything that involves interfaith conflict between them is just completely nonsensical, and is our fault no matter what the case is with God.
But that said, I would like to see a lot of changes with the Catholic Church!
'the construct of these religions, both the spiritual texts and the rules of the organizations, rarely or never include any directives about large-scale war, murder, denial of basic liberties, etc…'
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, but there you go.
Atheists do not hold the high ground here because there is no correlation between immoral activity and religious participation. Their implication otherwise – that God=murder – is just utterly fucking moronic.
Thanks, Brian! Whenever any of my atheist friends talk about all the wars and destruction engendered by religion, I gently point out the millions killed under Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, etc. Quite as murderous as the Inquisition, but on a more wholesale scale.
I think I probably agree with most tenets of most religions. Though shalt not kill is a very good one. I think the biggest problem with religion is the way that people tend to use it. To divide, to oppress. But on a more mundane level, to abdicate responsibility. To find a truth or a final answer to questions that we don't know a truth or a final answer. And then to wield these truths or final answers in ways that hurt other people. Too often, I think, religion is a discussion ender. It's very hard to get past "because my god has told me this is true." A big part of the idea of god, in the eyes of most people who believe in god, is that he or she or it is the number one most important thing. I prefer a worldview where human beings hold that postion.
Your point seems reminiscent of Protagoras' line, "Man is the measure of all things," which I find quite compelling. You seem to be an advocate of secular humanism which is a pretty good outlook in general. But you also seem to be opposed to religion generally on grounds of atheism? (Correct me if I'm wrong.) One might argue that uncertainty is really the only intellectually defensible position – ie, skepticism of both theism and atheism.
This op-ed in the NY Times makes an interesting argument: "both religion and science are founded on faith – namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too. For that reason, both monotheistic religion and orthodox science fail to provide a complete account of physical existence."
So, one might as well keep an open mind about the truth claims of organized religions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/opinion/24davies.html
@Dave: Well, I totally agree with you on all the practical points! I'm just not sure most of what religion accomplishes is bad; I think the bad stuff might get a lot of attention because the nature of news is to focus more on bad stuff, and the good stuff might not get so much because it's fairly mundane (but still a necessary part of life).
I just know too many people for whom religion — the organized kind — is a place where togetherness, discussion, and responsibility start. And I'm pretty sure that's because they're doing it right. I really, truly think that if you start with the idea of a genuinely loving God (or whatever higher power) and work from there, you inevitably, objectively must ultimately arrive at a set of tenets that force you toward those things (and that, not coincidentally, resemble the main tenets of most religions).
Obviously (although I feel like I know many who have and that it's not just coincidence, but rather because there are many), a lot of religious people haven't arrived there yet. But I don't know — most people are pretty bad at poetry, too. I think when it comes to anything that takes a certain level of thought, the number of people who are good at it will be much smaller than the number of people who aren't. I'm just not convinced the answer is for all the people who are good at it to stop doing it. I don't know how the bad ones will get better if there's no common ground from which to reach out to them.
You are right, I'd think, that much of the good churches gets little news attention. The many small, quiet acts done through religious organizations that do tangible good in the world. I should consider this more. But I would counter that churches, and The Church, enjoy an overwhelmingly positive image in the media and American culture in general. The adjective "churchgoing" is still an oft-used shorthand meaning "good person," even with all the negative attention priests, and the church, especially the Catholic one, have been receiving over the past few years. Politicians still make a show out of going to church while campaigning.
And by extension from your latter point: I'm all for common ground. And I'll cite Bono (you're a fan, if I recall, right?) and the way he uses a belief in god to reach "across the aisle," as they say, to get good works accomplished with political players he might be at odds with otherwise. I like when he does that.
Yeah, I like when he does that too, and I guess I wish there were other people doing that, and a larger, more public liberal (for want of a better adjective) church to counter the fundamentalists. Because as it stands, so much of the opposition to fundamentalism seems to come from people saying "Religion is mostly bad; we should get rid of it." And since I think fundamentalism is rooted in fear, and that just exacerbates the fear — well, I don't see how it can be a successful strategy. So there's a reason I get worked up about this — however it plays out when the eschaton is finally immanentized, at present I think there are smart people who could use religion, and I definitely think religion could use them.
You're absolutely right about the positive media image, and it drives me nuts, because instead of presenting the church as a place where everyone is flawed and welcome and deserving of love, it perpetuates the myth that church is just a place for, as you say, "good" people. Anyway, as far as practices themselves go, I'm pretty sure we (and most of the people commenting here) are on the same page, even if we have different ideas about the theory.
I basically agree with you Brian when you criticize the idea that religious organisations have a unique capacity for evil not shared by other human organizations. The 20th century should have put an end to the notion once and for all but there doesn't seem to be anything more durable than a bad idea.
That said I think you overstate lovey doveyness of the Abrahamic religions in making the case. Neither judaism or christianity are all that consistent in their denunciation of war and Islam certainly isn't. It would be fair to characterize the Quaran as a pro war document.
The most important element of this sex abuse scandal – which has unfolded over roughly 50 years (only the revelations of abuse have been more recent) – is something that was briefly mentioned by another commenter above. It is the reality of the Catholic ecclesial subculture, a matter removed from doctrines and policies.
Priests used to be unquestioned and exalted authorities with enormous local power at parishes. This power was exponentially multiplied for bishops and archbishops. In a time before Vatican II – when the Mass was said in Latin and the priest had his back to the congregation – Catholicism was cloaked in more mystery and the laity was relatively uneducated. Only with the emergence of the early boomers, the GI bill, and other trends that reshaped the socioeconomic landscape in America (John F. Kennedy's rise to the presidency representing many of them in one fell swoop) did Catholic laypeople become as educated as their clergy on various issues and concerns.
The Church has in many ways been re-fighting the same battle over the past few decades since Vatican II occurred. Today's aged bishops (Ratzinger is one of them; he's the bishop of Rome, of course) were educated in seminary before Vatican II and had an old-church "protect the fortress" mentality that endures today. The very same subculture which exalted priests and bishops as unquestioned all-encompassing authorities on everything under the sun is the subculture that made priests and bishops think they could make sexual abuse go away by reassigning bad priests to different parishes. By viewing the Church as the entity which needed to be protected more than anything else, the laity – more precisely, victims of abuse – did not acquire first importance or primary consideration.
Thanks to Katie Baker-Bakes for calling my attention to this discussion via Twitter.
Matt Zemek
(Disgusted but not surprised) Catholic in Seattle
Matt: the Church in America is not the Church everywhere, and the clerical culture that arose in the US is not the same as the clerical culture everywhere. Many Catholic immigrants to America were relatively uneducated, but even there, there were differences in how, say, Germans and Italians and Irish viewed their priests. Back in Europe, there was considerably more understanding, I think.
Even so, well before Vatican II, the Catholic university system in America was a model of success, and produced a great many folks with more than a little understanding of the Church and theology.
And while it's true that Ratzinger was ordained before Vatican II, it was priests ordained before Vatican II who called and implemented the Council. I'm pretty sure that Ratzinger was actually on the side of the progressives at the Council, along with JPII. Both eventually came to believe that the implementation of the council was flawed in the decades that followed, but that doesn't mean they were advocates of the toxic subculture you mention.
Oh you needn't shut the Roman Catholic Church down. There is another way. You could even keep teh celibacy, if people like teh celibacy very, very much.
For lo, a compromise has been offered:
"For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it."
I say we whack them all.
And why stop at priests?
Not to harp on the issue here, Dave, but you rather blithely endorsed Matt Taibbi's ridiculous call for the dissolution of the Catholic church, commenting via a tag that the church "DOES MORE HARM THAN GOOD OVERALL" – a rather provocative statement.
In defense of your position you posited some vague notions of "bad shit" being done by faith-based organizations, such as inciting wars, and "dividing people."
You haven't presented any substantive arguments to support "shutting down" an organization with over a billion adherents worldwide, which plays an important role in the lives of millions of people, and which does a huge amount of charitable work here in the U.S. and around the world. (As noted above, I cited verifiable statistics about the work done by the church in the U.S. alone: treating millions of sick people in hospitals, educating millions of people in schools, and feeding millions of hungry and poor people each year.)
If you're not going to justify your claim concretely, maybe you should withdraw the proposition.
No. I do think the world would be better of without the Catholic church, and without churches in general. I think religion gets in the way of scientific progress and reconciliation between people. It starts, and extends, fights. I think it hurts people on an individual level, too. In ways that I discussed above. Sorry if those are ideas seem vague. I think they're pretty important and profoundly affect the way people live. Despite all the good things you cite-and i agree they're good and that there's lots of them-I still think we'd be better off without the church. I believe much of the good the church does could be done, and maybe would be done better by non-religious organizations. But it's okay that we disagree about this.
I agree that it's okay if we disagree, but I'm not sure it's okay that you're using your platform on this website to promote anti-Catholic or irreligious views in such a casual way.
These are indeed "pretty important" and profound questions and that is why I'm disappointed that your comments on the subject consist of vague generalities and unsubstantiated opinions.
Seems you're unwilling to withdraw your proposition, but not interested in justifying it either, so I guess that's the end of it.
Well, my proposition is just my opinion. And I've been trying to explain the thinking behind it. I'm sorry if that's doesn't justify it to your liking. Also, just to be clear, I think it's very much okay for any person to espouse irreligious views in any way, casual or formal, anywhere. And I wouldn't describe myself as anti-catholic, or anti- any specific religion at all. I guess I could be described as being anti-religion in general. But only in the way that a democrat might be described as being "anti-republican." That's the way i look at it. Thank you for reading and thinking about this and for your comments.
I think it's safe to say that calling for the catholic church to dissolve itself qualifies as anti-catholic, doesn't it? By definition? But at least your civility is appreciated.