The Negative Trajectory of Faith

Catholicism In The Rear-View Mirror

by Shelton Hull

Earlier this year, I was granted ten minutes to interview the former editor of a well-known conservative publication, a man whose name will go unmentioned for reasons that will soon be clear. His remarks were made into a running tape recorder, so I’ll assume his words to have been on the record, even though his palpable lack of respect for me may have well negated the substance of our conversation– perhaps the opposite.

I asked him, when the smoke had cleared and the relevant documents opened up to our grandchildren, where the source of America’s greatest surprise would be as far as potential supporters of the terrorist threat. He paused, looked off into an empty corner of the room, then answered through a row of polished teeth: “The Vatican.” What? I was surprised, but only because I tend to regard the Church as one of the victims of 9/11 and its aftermath.

Some of the clearest lines being drawn in the nascent world war, besides the obvious ones between the three major monotheistic sects, are between monotheism itself and the minions of secularism represented most prominently by central governments (both eastern and western) and the administrators of international finance. That the control wielded by “the Pentagon” and “Wall Street” amounts to a new sort of religion should be obvious enough, given a vague knowledge of how religion actually works on the minds of populations.

Paleo-conservative poobah Pat Buchanan’s column of Dec. 11 references Kenneth Jones’ Index of Leading Catholic Indicators: The Church Since Vatican II. Vatican II, for you heathens out there, was a 1965 conference convened by John XXIII that sparked the massive liberalization of Church policy– “appeasement,” says Buchanan, who blames it for, among other things: A 22% drop in the number of domestic clergy, from 58,000 to 45,000; a 71% drop in newly ordained priests; a 58% drop in nuns; a 94% drop among seminarians–including an 89% drop among Jesuits and a 98% drop among Franciscans and Redemptorists–and the closing of over 400 of 600 seminaries (a word that’s probably best never used again). In a period in which America has added 20 million new Catholics, the institutions that once catered to the faith have been decimated. 3,000 parishes have no priests of their own, some because their priests are on trial. Most of these drops predate the child rape scandals of “2001.”

One of the modern Church’s imperatives was to reverse the negative reputation Catholicism has had among outsiders, and I don’t mean social policy. Some of the most brutal and mindless episodes in history, from the Inquisition to the Witch-hunts (about which we’ll never know exactly how many women were burned, drowned, tortured, or intimidated into submission) are directly attributable to a Catholic Church that defiled itself with gusto in the previous millennium. Atheists, agnostics and the clergy of competing religions– many of whom have developed in direct reaction to the Vatican– have the new advantage of saying that the Church of John Paul is also the Church of Shanley, Geoghan, Law, Egan and Murphy, as it once was of the Borgias.

When Buchanan rails against Vatican II, his critiques center on the decision to admit gay priests (nevermind that celibacy is no less abnormal) and to back away from their strict prohibition of birth control and abortion. It’s hard to reconcile a doctrine of “inclusiveness” with numbers suggesting the opposite result, unless we consider that Americans, boasting greater levels of self-esteem due to our country’s post-War dominance, have simply evolved beyond the point of needing organized religion. Indeed the meaning of religion for more and more Americans has changed dramatically since Vatican II, though not necessarily because of it.

As for the allegations of serial pederasty among some Catholic priests, aided and abetted by bishops and archbishops working toward a purpose that may never be fully understood, let’s assume them to be mostly true. It’s easier that way. The immediate consequence of all this negative publicity is the virtual guarantee that no American will seize control of the Vatican in the near future. One easy way to halt the negative trajectory of faith is to appoint an American Pope, because Americans love being on the winning team. However, if the next Pope (who’ll probably be from Europe or the “lower” Americas) lasts as long as this one, there may be no Catholic Church in this country by the time we have a shot at the large hat.

Ex-Cardinal Law, after shucking and jiving himself into a piece of pathetic trivia, left his Boston Archdiocese under Chapter 11, which represents the official sublimation of God to the state. Now is not the time for setting such precedents. Now is the time- actually, it’s been the time for a while now– for the Pope to show the dynamic leadership for which he has been lauded throughout his career. Now is the time for him to purge his Church of those who would bring dishonor to the institution at a point of historic importance. Let’s stop pretending that John Paul II’s mind is as decrepit as his body, and let’s also stop pretending that the Vatican doesn’t have its own secret police, which exists to do things like what needs doing now.

Let’s not forget that the Vatican, being a sovereign state, has a certain amount of leeway when it comes to handling internal business; this is why it’s been so hard for victims to get access to the relevant documentation. American Catholic priests are essentially agents of a foreign power, diplomats of a sort, and if their conduct undermines the interests of the Vatican, they can and should be removed.

Anthony Gancarski, of CounterPunch.org, had the following suggestion on Dec. 13: “There has to be a reinvention of the US Church for it to have any chance of remaining financially viable to the Vatican. And for the Church to reinvent itself, it has to dedicate itself institutionally to the honorable work of directly challenging the US government.” Assuming, however, that the Pope is not interested in following the historical example of Archbishop Oscar Romero, I propose a stop-gap measure, of a sort:

All clergy with verifiable histories of child molestation while wearing the collar should be removed from the planet. Any priest accused of molestation must be taken off the pulpit until the truth can be determined in one forum or another. Any higher-ups who knowingly protected serial abusers, thus exposing them to other children, should be given a year’s salary and thrown out. Any moves made short of these will likely negate the present Pope’s legacy and will cripple the moral authority that the next Pope will need to rule in these times of great and precipitous turmoil. It doesn’t take an Albert Anastasia to recognize reality, and to act appropriately.