NO SINGLE future awaits the billion-strong multitude that presently forms the Roman Catholic Church worldwide.Rather different groupings of this multitude will forge different futures, depending upon reforms initiated and embraced. Or not, as the case may be.
But initially at least, the largest grouping of Catholics is likely to consist of those who remain unconvinced that any substantial reform is necessary; nothing more than a clearance of maverick clerical and religious abusers and dealing with other incidental occurrences of that regrettable ilk.
The welcome and willing leader of this grouping is the current pope, a mere mortal man convinced of his supreme infallible power to dictate what we, all “children of our holy father”, are to believe and practise in life liturgical and moral.
As he illustrated so graphically in his letter to the Irish church, in which he blamed our priests, bishops and religious and our whole secularised community – and asked God’s forgiveness for all, excepting himself – he is a man in total denial of his own mistakes and his equal if not greater moral guilt in the matter.
The Continuity Papal Church has a long future ahead of it, albeit with ever declining membership.
It has been fossilising for some time, and fossils survive longer than any living species. For example, recent popes have increasingly used their supreme power to ensure that every new appointment to episcopacy goes to reliable yes men.
And there will always be a majority who prefer a judgmental God for whom punishment is the primary instrument of love (as the Archbishop of Dublin would put it) to the father of the prophet Jesus.
Particularly as this majority sees itself as so especially God’s people, and he their special God, that they have privileged access to the sacramental means for escaping punishment both here and hereafter.
Yet another grouping – probably a scattering of groupings – will remain in the church and refuse to be put out, hoping desperately to reform from within.
That these are capable of deep theological insights for reform is illustrated by a statement from a women’s group: “We have long given up on the idea of God having his innocent son ritually killed by a priest for the sins of the race.”
However, the massed reactionary ranks of hierarchy and a compliant laity must suggest very long odds indeed on bets that these little groups can succeed, although it would not be the first time, nor likely to be the last, that the Creator Spirit chose the weak of this world to overcome the strong; and that by sheer inspiration rather than enforcement with threats of excommunication.
A further option, though one taken by fewer Catholics, is offered by the other Christian churches – there being no “one true church”: the option to leave their church for one of the others.
Or since the Roman Catholic deformation of the Eucharist as Jesus celebrated it is among the worst, Catholics might be better advised to stay put, but to go often to join the tables of the Lord in other Christian churches.
That would at least help a stalled ecumenical movement to restore a truly Eucharistic community in the world, such as Jesus so clearly envisaged for all who could then claim to be his disciples.
There are yet other options for disenfranchised Catholics: decamping to other religions or to none at all; and many take this option.
It is a reasonable option, particularly in the case of Christianity’s two sibling religions, Judaism and Islam.
For Jesus was a prophet in and for Judaism and Muhammad received him as a prophet on a par with himself; and it can be seen and shown that both of these sibling religions retain some features more faithful to the faith of Jesus than are their current Roman Catholic counterparts.
The same can be true in varying degrees for other world religions, and primal religions, and for the personal spiritualities of people disenchanted with organised religion as such.
For God has left no one ever without evidence of the utterly gracious and eternal presence; as the Masai woman introduced in earlier instalments quite amply illustrates.
SIC: IT