OPINION: In the final article of a series prompted by the recent World Atheist Convention, the state of Catholicism is considered.
ROMAN
CATHOLICISM faces a crisis comparable to that brought on by the
hostility of Roman emperors to early Christianity, before it morphed
into a religion more Roman than the Roman empire itself.
It is a
crisis comparable to that caused by the rise of democracy and the modern
world, in that Catholicism responded by becoming even more of an
imperial power over its members than before.
How are we Catholics
now responding to this contemporary crisis, which has been brought to a
climax by the immoral behaviour of the ruling clerical caste in the
broadest sense?
A common response is to give up on religious faith
and religions alike, and to opt instead for agnosticism or atheistic
humanism.
Jesus would understand that response, for he once
allowed that where people could not accept a divinity portrayed by
disputing and self-styled representatives, they could read from creation
the “works” of the true God, who distributes the sources, supports and
enhancements of life to all, good and evil equally and alike.
They
could then keep faith with what are the works of the Creator in
creation, even as contending representations of God confused them and
hid the face of the true God from them.
Through the experience of doing this, they might eventually come to recognise the real presence of God in this world.
This
response confirms the validity of the morality-based attack of Richard
Dawkins upon religion already conceded; although one might add once
again that the attack would come better from a humanist who did not feel
she needed to profess atheism to engage in such combat.
This is
so if only because atheism can be just as much of a dogma as theism
sometimes is when it is imposed by authority rather than resulting from
the lived experience of a presence behind the overwhelming goodness of
creation.
Then there is the response of the so-called à la carte
Catholic; a response invoked by almost all the Catholic laity when a
previous pope committed the essentially immoral act of imposing on them a
false moral teaching on contraception that threatened and caused such
harm to their married lives, their persons and their faith alike.
More
specific examples of such damage include the prohibition of the use of
condoms to stem the spread of Aids.
And there was the life-long
disability and suffering visited by relatively ignorant and
correspondingly dogmatic “good Irish Catholic” medics on women in
childbirth through a largely discredited procedure, symphysiotomy
without so much as by your leave.
The à la carte option is more
than justified by the regrettable conduct in hierarchical teaching in
the case of contraception, by its praxis in the recently publicised
scandals, and in many other instances of teaching and praxis.
Unless
our priestly ruling class confesses its faults and reforms itself from
the top, the à la carte option will rightly continue.
There is also the response of seeking another church or even another religion.
This
is fine, provided one keeps in mind the drawbacks to which every
religionising of a prophetic faith seems to give rise, and then checks
whether these are as much in evidence in other churches and religions as
in one’s own.
And last, but by no means least, there is the
option of living by the prophetic faith of Jesus himself, without
priests or blood sacrifices (particularly human blood), and needing but
the one sacrament of the common meal of thanksgiving (Eucharist) in
which the celebrants thank the Creator for splurging life in such
abundance and unconditionally to all.
This option involves
following the logic of such gratitude by the simple sacrifice of
offering the food and drink of life to others before oneself, and but
one short prayer, the Our Father, which summarises things most
succinctly and begs God’s help and inspiration for living the faith by
which Jesus lived and died.
James P
Mackey is visiting professor at the school of religions and theology at
TCD, and Thomas Chalmers professor emeritus of theology at the
University of Edinburgh