I am a few days away from finishing The Tudors, the Showtime series on Henry VIII. It's been great fun, though not great television. Watching Henry fight with his wives, his nobles, his government and his church is always entertaining. Just as I did when I watched Pillars of the Earth, I sit incredulous at the workings of the church (Catholic in Pillars, Church of England here.) The corruption, the striving for power, the pretend certainty of church leaders that they were doing God's work while getting richer and richer – it's all pretty disgusting.
Then today I read in the New York Times that the Vatican ordered Irish bishops in 1997 to NOT report suspected child molesting priests to civil authorities. And I ask again, has anything really changed?
I don't think so. Not really. Just as it was in the sixteenth century, the church is interested in nothing as much as preserving its power and its wealth. Back then it was heretics burnt at the stake or hanged, drawn and quartered. More recently it is little boys sodomized and sexually abused. It's all the same to the church. Keep the faith. Keep the power.
I am disgusted.
Again.
And here's a nice footnote: the Times reports that the Vatican has been working since last Spring on a policy for what its bishops should do with their suspected perverts; the last line of the article reports “In November, Cardinal William J. Levada, the prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said the Vatican would soon issue new guidelines to bishops worldwide.” Fourteen years ago they had time to tell the Irish bishops to hide their crimes, but today they are still working on guidelines to protect children?
How anyone can believe in these criminals is beyond me.
I recently read Wolf Hall and got a(nother) fascinating insight into how politics so totally shapes religion. Yeah, ultimately it's really about power & wealth, has always been, and, no doubt, will so continue.
ReplyDeleteMy family has left the Church largely because of this issue of child molestation and subsequent coverups. I join them in condemning these actions. Yet the Church--and I speak primarily of the Catholic church--counts among its adherents such heroes for justice as Dorothy Day, activist and foundress of the Catholic Worker movement, the Berrigan brothers, Oscar Romero who died defending the poor of El Salvadore, Cesar Chavez who was a giant of the nonviolent movement for the rights of farmworkers, and even Henry VIII's friend Thomas More who was executed for his principled stand on marriage and the separation of church and state. The Church is a microcosm of the world at large in which abominable evil coexists with absolute bravery in resistance to that very evil. Is it hypocracy to receive Catholic sacraments, to work alongside justice-seeking priests as I do, to reject a variety of tenets of the Church and yet to not entirely divorce oneself from that Church? My argument with my family is that the Church is not the hierarchy but rather the people of God who embody a Spirit at work in the world to promote justice, to advance healing, to educate, to resist, to reach out in places like Haiti and Darfur, etc., etc. CAN a person "work from within" without compromising his/her very self? I liken this question to my son's defense of Barak Obama whom I see as a sell-out on many fronts yet who I'll concede is trying to get some things done out of a sense of pragmatic realism. I'd be interested in people's comments on these reflections.
ReplyDeleteThanks,
T. McD.