I have just read the Popes letter to the Irish Catholic Church which is available on the RTE/news/ website. I would encourage anyone who seeks to an understanding of how things are within the Irish and by extension the world Catholic Church to read it. The basic assumption or belief system from which the Pope operates id that Catholics know best. That is the mindset you have to deal with first and foremost. This is a religion based on tradition, myth and magic. I suppose all religions are by their very nature.
No one imagines that this painful situation will be resolved swiftly. Real progress has been made, yet much more remains to be done… At the same time, I must also express my conviction that, in order to recover from this grievous wound, the Church in Ireland must first acknowledge before the Lord and before others the serious sins committed against defenceless children.No one imagines that this painful situation will be resolved swiftly. Real progress has been made, yet much more remains to be done. Perseverance and prayer are needed, with great trust in the healing power of God’s grace. At the same time, I must also express my conviction that, in order to recover from this grievous wound, the Church in Ireland must first acknowledge before the Lord and before others the serious sins committed against defenceless children.
Here we have a man who believes the issue is first and foremost a sin which has wounded the church rather than a sin which the church authorities have committed against its members. He also seems to be listening to a rather rose-tinted version of Irish economic and social history when he states that:
In almost every family in Ireland, there has been someone – a son or a daughter, an aunt or an uncle – who has given his or her life to the Church.
My view would be that this was the source of the problem and not something to be boasting of. How many joined the religious orders out of economic necessity? The pope rightly calls attention to the selection process involved and the training and supervision of these people. But when you deliberately create a mystique around a particular lifestyle it becomes very hard to reject those who, for whatever reason, offer themselves for that lifestyle.
Most fundamentally, the letter demonstrates the almost insurmountable problem that faces the Roman Church with regard to issues of sexuality. This Pope cannot I fear get his head around the possibility that men might enter the church because of the power it would provide them over peoples lives. These were not failed priests but individuals, for reasons I’m not sure that psychology fully understands, who had certain inclinations which unless controlled by the environment will be acted upon. The institutions of the church, its seminaries and structures, may well have removed the normal controls that exist within the community at large. When it occurred within families or communities, while a source of shame that may have provoked silence at least enabled the perpetrator to be ostracized or at least identified as a danger. The church in its all pervading arrogance insisted that it knew best, that it would decide and that its needs were paramount.
The church created the societies in which the abuse, physical, sexual and mental, took place. The church in its insistence on obedience to authority and its absolute refusal to acknowledge that it is governed and administered by men and not by Gods, creates a hierarchy that by its very nature abuses those at the bottom of the pile. In laying the blame at the door of the people at the bottom of the pile that arrogance is laid bare.
Fast-paced social change has occurred, often adversely affecting people’s traditional adherence to Catholic teaching and values.
It was the tortuous slow pace of social change that eventually cut through the secrecy of the Catholic Church and forced it kicking and screaming into civil courts of law that saved further generations of children from abuse. The heroes are those who left the churches in numbers sufficient enough to empower journalists and some politicians to tell it like it was. Would this Pope wish to return his church in Ireland to the dysfunction of Irish society in the 1950s and ’60s. I suspect so. To his priests he says
I know that many of you are disappointed, bewildered and angered by the way these matters have been handled by some of your superiors. Yet, it is essential that you cooperate closely with those in authority and help to ensure that the measures adopted to respond to the crisis will be truly evangelical, just and effective.
That never-ending invocation of authority. No matter what, obey. In asking this of his priestly class, he asks it also of the ordinary member, obey. And they did. They obeyed the priest, the teacher, the guard and the banker. And it was the church that said the children should obey the adults, should endure the pain, and stay silent.
It is my belief that this letter will be seen for what it is, another nail in the coffin of an institution which has long outlived its usefulness and is now a hindrance to the coming of the Christ (regardless of how possible you may view that reality. I am willing to acknowledge your free will to choose).
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