THE resignation of Pope Benedict has prompted much debate about his legacy but another question also arises — why do so many people in this country continue to care about an anachronistic institution that doesn’t want them as members?
It’s ironic really.
Senior Church figures
whine about the increasing marginalisation of religion in society
without ever conceding that it is their own intransigent dogma that is
to blame for its increasing irrelevance.
While the behaviour
of the Catholic Church is hard to comprehend, so too is that of à la
carte Catholics determined to remain part of an organisation with core
teachings many find offensive or, frankly, ridiculous.
Personally, I
have some degree of sympathy for the view of Archbishop Diarmuid Martin,
who last year implored lapsed Catholics to have the courage of their
non-convictions and stop cloaking themselves in the comfort blanket of a
faith they no longer possess.
There should be no confusion.
It’s not as if the Church’s strident views on a host of controversial
social issues — like homosexuality and contraception — are shrouded in
any mystery. In his infamous letter on the pastoral care of homosexual
people, written in 1986, the then Cardinal Ratzinger was unequivocal.
“Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a
sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic
moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective
disorder.
“Therefore special concern and pastoral attention
should be directed toward those who have this condition, lest they be
led to believe that the living out of this orientation in homosexual
activity is a morally acceptable option. It is not,” he wrote.
Anyone who doesn’t believe that homosexuality is “a disordered sexual
inclination” is engaging in “deceitful propaganda” which is “profoundly
opposed to the teaching of the Church”.
But wait. All is not
entirely lost. Renouncing homosexual acts and living a chaste existence
will allow gay people to “dedicate their lives to understanding the
nature of God’s personal call to them”.
In short, you can
spend your life as a self-hating homosexual, tormented with the
knowledge that God instilled in you such disgusting urges as a sort of
bizarre penance, or you can simply ignore all of that guff and get on
with your life.
The stark choice between abstinence and
damnation is something of a recurring theme when it comes to much Church
teaching. In his 1968 encyclical, Humane Vitae, Pope Paul VI laid out
the unambiguous Catholic position on contraception — it’s against God’s
divine plan.
“It is not licit, even for the gravest reasons,
to do evil so that good may follow … even when the intention is to
safeguard or promote individual, family or social wellbeing.”
Couples wishing to plan their families were told to roll the dice and
rely on the rhythm method.
Bizarre as it seems now, this view persisted
in Ireland up until the early 1980s, even after a young mother was
forced to go to the Supreme Court, in 1973, to fight for the right to
import contraceptives after her doctor told her another pregnancy could
kill her.
While there may still be some devout Catholics who
adhere to this teaching, the suspicion must be that most happily ignore
it yet the Church’s position hasn’t changed a jot in the intervening 40
years.
“One cannot accept the hypothesis that a slight moral
disorder, on the lines of venial sin, is at stake … for the Magisterium
contraception is such a morally disordered form of behaviour that it
constitutes gravely sinful matter,” explained professor of moral
theology, Fr Lino Ciccone.
The only softening was an admission
by Pope Benedict, two years ago, that the use of contraceptives was
acceptable “in certain cases”, for example by gay prostitutes to reduce
the risk of HIV.
However, the Vatican later stressed that the
Pope was not redefining Catholic teaching and the pope had merely
“considered an exceptional situation in which the exercise of sexuality
represents a real risk to the lives of others”.
So, if you’re
married and using contraceptives you are still engaging in “gravely
sinful” behaviour. Meanwhile, it goes without saying that those
unmarried people living in sin — with contraceptives or without — are
hopeless cases whose eternal reward will likely be a fiery affair.
While the Church is happy to see women barefoot and pregnant, it
definitely doesn’t want to see them ordained and anywhere near an altar.
To understand why a penis is the most important qualification when
becoming a priest, the faithful are asked to delve back into the mists
of time and remember that Jesus chose 12 male apostles.
Writing in 1994, Pope John Paul II repeated this mantra, saying the
Church therefore had no authority to ordain women, while Pope Benedict
urged Catholics, seeking a more nuanced explanation, to submit to the
“radicalism of obedience”.
Basically, just accept it. In case there was
any lingering confusion, the Vatican, in 2010, said that anyone involved
in the ordination of women was engaged in a grave crime against the
church, on a par with child abuse, and would be instantly
excommunicated.
Strangely, the fact that there were no female apostles
is reason enough to debar women from ever being ordained, but the fact
that the same apostles were married is not seen as convincing evidence
that priests should also be allowed to marry.
None of this makes any
sense, but that doesn’t stop otherwise erudite members of the hierarchy
trotting this out as a supposedly credible excuse when asked about the
lack of women in positions of authority in the Church.
MEANWHILE, a recent discovery by a Harvard professor, who has found a
scrap of 4th-century papyrus that indicates early Christians believed
that Jesus was married and his wife was an apostle, could prove most
inconvenient for the Church.
While the scrap of papyrus is
still undergoing tests to prove its authenticity, a number of
preliminary examinations by experts have found no evidence of any
forgery — a minor detail that has not stopped the Vatican from claiming
that it is a dud in order to avoid any awkward questions.
Instead of encouraging dialogue and debate about contested teachings,
the hierarchy advises conflicted Catholics to either shut up or sling
their hook — and then professes bafflement when church attendance is
down and their archaic views don’t gain any traction in public debates.
Religious faith is a matter for each individual’s conscience, but the
line of demarcation between faith and habit seems to have grown
increasingly blurred for many still maintaining a tangential
relationship with an organisation that displays so little comprehension
of the reality of their lives.
The election of a new pope is
certainly a historic occasion, but there has been no indication that a
modernising or revitalising force is waiting in the wings to breath life
into a decaying institution.
Once the pomp and spectacle is
over, it is likely that nothing substantive will have changed and the
inexorable decline of the church in the West will continue unabated.