In the Washington Post’s On Faith blog, author Donna Frietas has begun a series of blog posts under the title “The Stubborn Catholic,” which propose to tackle the moral quandary of staying in the Church despite the revelations of systemic rape, betrayal and abuse committed by priests and their higher-ups. (I hope they’ll also get around to discussing misogyny, homophobia, opposition to contraception and other shortcomings of the Church.) In the first post “On why I am (still) here“, Freitas reveals:
So here it is: For over two years I was stalked by a Catholic priest. I recognize that I am not a “typical victim” in the sense that I am (was) a girl and, in my case, I was not sexually assaulted.
But as with other victims I know what it is like to have my faith in the priesthood terribly violated, and for that violation to nearly destroy me….And, like other victims, when out of desperation I finally told on him, the Catholic officials’ response (or lack of one) to my begging and pleading to make his behavior stop was to prioritize only my silence. I know what it is like to sit in a room with powerful people who want nothing more than for you to disappear, to shut up, who could care less for your safety, your sanity, your well-being. I also know the fear of speaking up to my very core. I still feel that shame and fear. I feel it right now as I type these words. I know the exhaustion of living in the aftermath of this experience and trying to move forward from it without any place to put all that feeling, all that anger. I know what it is like to never have anyone say, “I’m sorry about what happened to you.”
And yet, she is still a practicing Roman Catholic. Why?
Freitas explains:
The reasons I love Catholicism–its priests and nuns, its rituals and culture–far outweigh this one hateful part of my past. My faith and place in this tradition is much bigger than one single priest and some terrible church officials. It transcends victimization and unspent anger.
My Catholic faith is so much more. It is my family, my friends, my professional life as a theologian and scholar of religion. It’s the way I mark time during the week and the year and the food I cook depending on the holiday. It is a childhood and a lifetime of experience. It is all over my writing.
I am more than this one scar, even though, like me, it is a stubborn scar. It simply won’t go away.
From this broader sense of Catholic identity I wish to discuss many things–yes, the scandal as it unfolds yet again, but eventually to move on from here to other topics. I will begin from my experience and from there hope to reach beyond my particular story and place in the Catholic tradition to that of others, too, who have stuck around like me. I look forward to the conversations. I hope you do, too.
…I will write this blog from a place of hope because I am hopeful–in the possibility of healing and moving forward on a personal level, but on a communal one, too. I have hope that my Church will some day begin to heal these gaping wounds, which will turn to scars and fade with the years, even though they will never disappear–nor should they. But the hope and healing starts from modest places–from telling the stories of ordinary Catholics who have suffered, who, like me, are still here, from shifting our attention from the clamor about the hierarchy, the pope, the Vatican, to the ordinary folk, the ordinary lay people, priests, and nuns, too, who make the Catholic Church what it really is. The Catholic Church is not all hierarchy. Thank God.
I hope she’s right about the healing and solace of people coming together. But Freitas is fooling herself if she thinks the Catholic Church is not all hierarchy. The Catholic Church is and has always been all about hierarchy; that is precisely what distinguishes it from other Christian denominations. The authoritarian abuses and corruption of the Catholic hierarchy have always existed; they sparked the Protestant Reformation almost 500 years ago. In that backlash, Reformers rejected the Papacy and democratized Christianity by doing away with the notion that priests were somehow closer to God than the people they served. Because of them, Freitas could easily reject the Church’s hierarchy and still be a practicing Christian; Catholicism is far from the only game in town.
I’ve always believed that if you belong to one of the Abrahamic religions, you automatically enter into a (sometimes dicey) bargain with the Patriarchy. Christianity, Judaism and Islam are patriarchial and—to varying degrees—authoritarian religions, with all the potential for disaster you’d expect. But the good news is that you can comparison-shop. The Jewish denomination I belong to is fully egalitarian and performs gay marriages. My sister’s Methodist congregation in Chicago has a giant banner outside their church proclaiming “Jesus Was Radically Inclusive.” Freitas, however, is reluctant to comparison-shop, and feels invested in the Church despite her experiences. I have several devoutly Catholic friends who are similarly entrenched, even as they abhor the institutional Church.
The “On Faith” commenters did not treat Freitas kindly. Even the less rant-y ones were sharp in their criticism. For example:
You have no influence on church policy. As long as you continue to sit in the pew and drop your money in the basket, it’s not that you don’t matter, it that you are actively condoning and enabling abusers to flourish.
What do y’all think? Does Freitas’s argument make sense to you? Does her unwillingness to quit the Church constitute some kind of Stockholm Syndrome? Or is she simply making her version of the bargain that most of us who practice organized religion make?
I grew up Quaker with strong ties to my Meeting but my household was very secular and my Quakerism is more about the community I was raised in and the fight for social, economic, and environmental justice. So I can’t say that I understand what it’s like to grow up with religion that intertwined with the day-to-day aspects of life.
I suspect Freitas is making that bargain with herself: to remain optimistic about the future of the church while focusing on what she perceives are the positives Catholicism offers. I just don’t think it’s a bargain I could make. Not when it is so abundantly evident that the very structure of the religion is rotten. Not when the Pope is focused more on protecting criminals than protecting the vulnerable. Not when the Catholic hierarchy is more interested in demonstrating intolerance than embracing differences and loving others.
This is a tough situation, but there comes a point when staying in an organzation that is hostile to your own values becomes either cowardice or hypocrisy. Leaving the Catholic church has been a very sad and painful experience for me. There are so many things I love about the faith, but I can’t justify being a part of an organization that seems to be an active force of evil in the world. I’ve always had disagreements with certain doctrines, but the latest revelations about sex abuse and the Church’s recent forays into the political arena have made me reach the end of my tolerance. I will probably always feel a sense of loss when I think of the Church, but I am also very happy to have found a vibrant, open community that shares my values in my local Unitarian congregation. It is a relief to be able to worship without that feeling of, “If these people knew what I truly believe, they would throw me out (or at least deny me communion).”
Very occasionally, I have moments where I think I might believe in God. I never have moments when I believe in religion.
I find that this issue is different with Catholicism than with any other religion because of the hierarchical nature of the Church. Freitas can say this: “My Catholic faith is so much more. It is my family, my friends, my professional life as a theologian and scholar of religion.” and it’s reasonable for her to have that experience, but the fact is that *her* Catholic faith is not the same thing as *the* Catholic faith as defined by the papacy and due to the nature of Catholicism, the Church wins that one. It is not the case that her interpretation of Catholicism is just as valid as the Pope’s whereas it is the case that my interpretation of Judaism is just as valid as that of someone who’s Orthodox.
It’s not that her argument doesn’t make sense, it’s that I can’t buy into the premise. When I realized the religion I was practicing as a teenager didn’t care about Me, The (outspoken, feminist, pro-choice) Individual, I left. I didn’t have the enforcement of a culture of the Church, or significant family investment in religious aspects of the holidays, etc so it was easier for me to pick and choose.
My religious expressions are pretty portable – I can go to any church/cathedral, read a variety of texts or sing all different hymns and still feel connected. The act of worship is internalized, not rooted in external actions/relationships/leaders. The ritual/calendar would never be more important to me than the failings of the institution.
If it were important to me that my religion and I believe and behave the same way, I couldn’t separate the behavior from the beliefs. I couldn’t make the bargain she’s making without seeking out liberal parishes or interfaith houses of worship.
I am a reformed Catholic, reformed in the sense that the machinations of the Roman Catholic Church caused me to reform my beliefs, and cut out the Church as arbiter of my faith. I find it easier to believe in the values taught by Christ if I don’t have a dogmatic patriarchy telling me how to go about it, especially where their designs go against accepted facts and my conscience.
More on topic, I think this woman is fooling herself if she thinks the Church is invested in any kind of healing process. No healing can take place until responsible parties take full ownership of their sins, and so far all we have seen from Church leaders is deflection and rationalization. In the meantime, American Bishops are fighting against healthcare reform and denying communion to pro-choice politicians, and the DC Archdiocese is using it’s charitable works as leverage to try to block gay marriage. The church is not trending in a direction of hope or healing, but towards deeper entrenchment in patriarchal oppression.
@JennyK: Word. The Church as an institution doesn’t give a fuck about healing the damage or doing the right thing. The institutional Church has never given a fuck about anything but reinforcing and maintaining its own power structure.
Which is why, sadly, I tend to agree with that commenter who said that Freitas was basically aiding and abetting the crimes of the Church and its pedophiles.
Well… not that I’m defending the Catholic Church here, but I have some major issues with capitalism… and yet I still participate in it.
I just think maybe some respect is owed to the fact that people grow up with complex histories and influences that may not be your own. Not that that means everything, but it does mean something, i.e. I think aiding and abetting is going overboard without some element of intent.
The Catholic church isn’t really the kind of institution you “change from within.” It seems like the only solution is to shift the community from the hierarchy to the laity. Can you have an independent Catholic church, that follows the same rituals/dogma but doesn’t report to anyone? I mean I guess you can’t right now, but perhaps in the future.
Also, is it true that boys have been victimized more than girls? That seems to be an assumption, but I’m not sure if the facts are there.
@Pilgrim Soul: Well, capitalism is something you can control, to some degree, by where and how you spend your money, and there really is no single, controlling authority governing it (don’t kid yourself — The Fed doesn’t govern anything, just sets policies that influence the markets).
The Roman Catholic Church is a patriarchal theocracy, that sets strict rules on what it means to be a Catholic and a follower of Christ, and expects strict obedience to its commands. The Church decides who is and isn’t a member of the Church, whether you follow the precepts of The Bible or not. The Pope is supposedly the sovereign ruler of the Catholic faith, and is considered infallible.
@Spark: See, The Protestant Reformation. There are plenty of churches based on Biblical scripture, in every flavor you can imagine. The problem is, the Catholic church does not recognize the individual sovereignty of those religions over the message of Christ. The Vatican is supposed to be the sole seat of power for Christ’s message, and The Pope his direct representative on Earth. So, by the RCC’s standards, believe in The Bible and Christ all you want, but you ain’t gettin’ into Heaven unless you do it our way.
@NefariousNewt: Right, but isn’t this something we might see going forward, “unauthorized” Catholic churches? I’m pretty sure they already exist, if not in the US, then in other parts of the world. Occasionally you hear about priests and bishops in Africa who get excommunicated for non-church-approved things like marriages and exorcisms, but they’re still doing their thing.
Maybe Catholics will start going to the Episcopal church, the same way that the RC Church just offered entry to unhappy Episcopalians.
I think to a certain degree this is a question about whether there should be common standards for staying in a religion across cultural and economic boundaries. There’s no way to ponder this without sounding somewhat paternalistic, I suppose. But I think that most non-Catholics are less likely to fault believers if the religion provides believers with networking and coping mechanisms that they need to subsist. Because your average middle-class Westerner doesn’t have the same essential need (in a non-spiritual way) for these features as a poor Peruvian probably maybe does, does this heighten her evaluative responsibility? I bet most Catholics think it should be the same across the board.
And to further complicate things, as with the FGM discussions, liberals get twitchy about telling third-world foreigners how to live their culture, so there’s that.
I’m an ex-Catholic turned atheist, but with a lot of Catholic family, including an Irish Catholic grandmother who believes every inch of her catechism. (Miss church on Sunday and die on the Monday? It’s hell for you, mister!)
I think that I am, for better or worse, still culturally a Catholic, though – the most obvious way this manifests in my own life is guilt (caveat: I think this is more of an Irish Catholic thing than a Catholic thing in general). It’s really crushing, because I can feel guilty for anything at any time – and it’s even worse when you are an atheist, because there’s no-one you can turn to for absolution.
On the other hand, while I have a lot of issues with the Church, sometimes I think it’s at least not worse than a lot of other religions. I mean, the institution is no doubt screwed up, but relatively speaking, Catholics don’t care much about the Bible, and don’t usually take it literally, so hardly any will tell you that they don’t believe in evolution, for example. Despite the Church’s intolerant message on all kinds of issues, I think the ‘sin on Friday, confess on Saturday’ thing does mean that Catholics, on the whole, tend to be a bit more liberal than an awful lot of strains of Protestantism.
A lot of people upthread have already said exactly what I would say, and I will only add that although I sympathize with Frietas’s longing to cling to comforting rituals, there is a point beyond which it is unethical to support an institution — no matter how comforting it is to you, personally — that has proven itself to be entrenched in its own corruption and amorality.
@Spark: The “unauthorized” Catholic churches are a very small minority and some of them are actually MORE conservative than the Vatican because they use pre-Vatican II ritual and dogma.
If someone likes the dogma and ritual of the Catholic Church but doesn’t want the papacy and the hard-line authoritarianism, the Anglican Communion is a good alternative. High Church Episcopal rites are almost identical to Roman Catholic ones. The similarities lead to quite a bit of back-and-forthing between Catholics and Episcopalians.
I was baptized Catholic, raised by two Catholics-turned-agnostic. Religion was not part of my upbringing, but I know several people like Frietas who on one hand reject Catholicism, but still identify as Catholic.
“I just think maybe some respect is owed to the fact that people grow up with complex histories and influences that may not be your own.”
Given that I had few ties to the church in the first place, turning away from it really wasn’t issue. To be honest, it really wasn’t an option. I know more people who’ve been hurt by religion than helped by it. I understand this, though, that my history isn’t everyone else’s. I think this is important to remember.
Endora I completely agree with you. Though to be honest my experience of the Catholic Church in England is so benign as to be as though it was an entirely different church altogether.
It’s left me in a very odd position because while Nefarious Newt is right about the church and it’s patriarchy and its sins, it’s often very hard to reconcile with the faith i was raised in, which practically teetered on secular at times (ie my medical parents, who would describe themselves as devout Catholics believed in and have both carried out abortions, my mother also as an Aids specialist was strongly in favour of contraceptive)
So basically I grew up with Catholicism as a sort of pick and mix bag, I was married by the Jesuits and had some great disagreements with the priest who married me during our Catholic classes where discussion was encouraged. And the whole point to this is that it leaves me with this very odd situation: the Catholic Church is clearly in crisis and clearly in need of reform and terrible things have been allowed to happen and I can understand the hatred surrounding it.
But personally if i’m honest that church is a church I don’t recognise, you know when i got confession as a little girl sitting on the priest’s knee he wasn’t feeling me up or molesting me, he was simply demystifying the whole confession process so that a seven year old wasn’t frightened by it. So you know my whole experience of the church personally was a kindly one.
Anyway this is rambling and confused and to be honest it’s not as though I practice my faith or indeed as though it manifests itself as more than the odd guilt issue but I suppose i just wanted to point out that there are differences within the catholic church itself as well as within people’s experiences.
I don’t envy Frietas’ position. Catholics, like a number of other denominations, seem to place quite a bit of emphasis on theirs being the “one true church” (case in point: the word means “universal” even though it split from an earlier incarnation, the Orthodox Church). I have a few devout Catholic friends who are quite worried about my unwashed Protestant soul.
If a massive scandal involving the United Methodist Church were to hit news stands tomorrow, I doubt I’d be going anywhere. There are theological aspects of my faith that I have not found in other denominations. I imagine the same is true of Frietas. At the same time, as a voting member of the church, I am in a better position than Frietas in that I have at least some hope of bringing change should the need arise.
I’ve said this before commenting on Gawker, but I think it needs repeating:
You can still be a good Catholic who goes to Mass every Sunday and all of the random days of observation you’re supposed to go to but never do (the Immaculate Conception, the Annunciation, etc), actually goes to confession, observes Lent, etc, without supporting a corrupt regime.
The secret? Not putting a dime in the collection plate.
See, the Vatican doesn’t care about American attendance numbers. It cares about American money, because American (and to a lesser extent, Irish, British, and Australian) Catholics subsidize the rest of the Church.
That’s our leverage. Little slips of paper in the collection plate saying “Until the Vatican accepts that the Church is broken and needs systematic reform, with significant input from laypersons and women religious, this is all you’re getting from me.”
She means the church as in ordinary faithful Catholics who continue to practice and who make up the church just as much or more than the Vatican. It isn’t true that Catholicism is reducible only to the Vatican, and I think it ignores the agency of the faithful who resist the abuses of the hierarchy while remaining observant. “The Church” contains not only the official hierarchy but also a long and rich history of dissent, schisms, fringe movements, and organic, disorganized and local interpretations of Catholic practice.
I agree that Catholics of conscience must abstain from giving money to the church. Unfortunately the Vatican is a racketeering organization and skims off up to 60% of whatever the local community raises for itself. My parents deal with it by making out weekly checks to the St. Vincent de Paul society which gives 100% of the money in emergency payments to individuals in need in the community.
@Brennan: See, the thing is, the UMC isn’t likely to have a similar scandal because their hierarchy–such as it is–isn’t as centralized, rigid, exclusive and secretive as the Vatican. Also, the Methodists–like most mainline Protestant groups–have a strong, active female presence in their clergy and bishopric, which is so incredibly different from the privileged, exclusive male autocracy of the Catholic Church.
@JD and RocktheDebit: I think both solutions to the tithing issue sound ideal. Tithing is the thing that really bothers me about people who hate the institutional Church but still participate. The money that goes into the collection plate pays for the lawyers who defend pedophile priests, and pays the multi-million dollar compensations for their victims. It pays for the lavish retirements of wrongdoers like Cardinal Law, who helped cover up the abuses in the Boston Archdiocese. I can understand wanting to stay a part of the Catholic community and continue to worship as a Catholic, but I can’t imagine giving money in good conscience to the institutional Catholic church.
@Endora: In my experience, Catholic guilt is not particular to the Irish. My extended family is Eastern European, non-orthodox Catholic, and guilt was practically a way of life! One of my bosses was Italian Catholic and we’d have rollicking conversations about Catholic guilt. I’m not saying that all people who consider themselves Catholic are wracked with guilt, but I do think there’s something about the religion that encourages it.
@Tall-in-Heels: You’re probably right that guilt always plays a role, but my conversations with Italians make me think that it’s much less pronounced there. The Irish are really virtuoso in that respect. I hear Jewish mothers are the only ones who come close, but I don’t know enough Jewish mothers to be able to say whether it’s true or not.
A note on tithing: one thing that I really dislike in Germany is that if you are a member of most mainstream churches (Catholic, the main German Protestant churches, Jewish congregations), you are automatically tithed a certain part of your income – no Church donations, the state just levies a special tax (Kirchensteuer) of 8 to 9% of income. The federal state takes a percentage of that as an ‘administration fee’ and then passes the rest on to the respective churches. (I never told the German state I was baptized, myself, although they did ask when I first registered there).
What that means, though, is that a lot of people who in the States or other countries would just stop attending Mass in Germany actually go as far as to leave the Church so they don’t have to pay. I knew hardly anyone who belonged when I was there…but then, I was living in Berlin, which is not very religious (Wikipedia says 60% of Berliners have no religious affiliation).
This is reminiscent of the debate concerning practicing Mormons who disagreed with church doctrine and its monetary involvement in the Prop 8 debacle. I tend to think you can’t continue to be a part of an organization and support it financially and call yourself a feminist/progressive/whatever if that organization is actively and unquestionably anti-feminist/progressive/whatever. It just seems deeply, deeply inauthentic to me. On the other hand, I’m sort of abnormally rational and obsessed with authenticity, and I’m not at all emotionally invested in the church of my childhood, so I’m not sure I’m in much of a position to judge. I personally cannot stomach the misogyny and exclusionism of my parents’ church, and can’t imagine being voluntarily involved in it, but maybe there’s a lot of stuff going on with other people’s relationships to their childhood religions that I don’t have access to.
I remember a point being made (somewhere- maybe here?) about the sometimes fine distinction between religion and culture. I identify as culturally Catholic, but religiously agnostic. For me, this means that while I enjoy practicing the rituals- Lenten sacrifice, praying the rosary, even going to Mass sometimes- they are important to me as a means of connection to my family and community, and only tangentially related to my belief in a deity. I see a similar dynamic here- Freitas trying to cling to the Catholic culture while struggling with the religion.
I’m not 100% clear on what Freitas’ explicit argument is for staying. Is she saying she wants the community? Really I suspect she stays because she believes. I get a real belief vibe from her.
I quit the RCC and I have lost the community, but I’m more anti-social than some others. People say that I have taken that community from my kids. I think my kids are better off finding community in shared interests with others.
I quit the RCC because I just don’t believe in it anymore, to the extent that I can no longer endorse it at all by my public actions. I won’t go to mass even for family events and trust me it pisses my family off. I just won’t endorse it by my actions anymore. I think that by attending, I am lying in public, and lending support to system that I actually hate, and I don’t want to do that.
But Freitas does seem to me to believe, and I think ultimately that is what enables her to stay.
I find no fault in anyone turning away from Catholicism (I’m speaking as a former Catholic-now-Episcopalian) after its many scandals, but I think with more people like Frietas, the church can turn around—it’s biggest problem is it is refusing to come forth toward modern times.
Coming out bisexual, my viewpoint on Catholicism changed when my atheist friends (not all of them!) turned on me, becoming appallingly homophobic (biphobic?) toward me, meanwhile it was my Catholics friends that had embraced me, and with not condescending treatment at all. It opened my eyes to never generalize such a thing as one’s beliefs ever again—it also made me feel ashamed at the hypocrisy of my thinking as I’m one to always balk at generalizations of any sort of group of people.
If the members of the Church are willing to stand up more to the Pope, are more open, more accepting, there’s hope that the hated hierarchy within can crumble slowly but surely.
I think instead of just ignoring the troubles with the Church, maybe it’s time more church members be more vocal about it. I’m happy to know that my Catholic friends are already doing their own way of fighting the hate by not donating to collection plates anymore.
I’m uncomfortable with the dismissal of this woman’s faith and especially her good intentions in these comments. Being a practicing Catholic doesn’t automatically mean that you’re abetting rape or on the side of evil. Catholicism isn’t all rape and hierarchy, it’s also liberation theology and concern for the poor and social justice. And the truth is that while the RCC isn’t democratic, the only change does come from inside so it’s not counterproductive for the faithful to stay in and work within the Church for change in spite of their justified anger at abuse scandals and the way the Church responded / responds to them. Plus recommending another church to switch to, while presumably well-intentioned, is symptomatic of viewing Christianity through a Protestant lens (which I’ve come to expect in America, but still bears mentioning): Catholics as a rule don’t just switch faiths when they’re discontented, though they might switch congregations. And that’s what it is to switch to a Protestant religion from Catholicism; it isn’t just pulling into a different parking lot on Sunday, it’s completely changing religions, which is a bigger deal to Catholics than Protestants.
Another positive aspect of the Catholic church that I never see get any credit is diversity: I’ve attended services at probably a hundred different places in my life, between different Catholic churches and numerous Protestant denominations, and the only times I saw racially diverse congregations were at Catholic masses. Lastly and least importantly, Catholicism isn’t a denomination, it’s a religion; insofar as there are denominations they are Roman Catholic, Marian Catholic, etc. Protestant is a religion with a grillion denominations, Mormonism is a religion, etc. (And the Catholic Church’s official position is that the Orthodox Church is the one that did the splitting off.)
So all of this is really just to say that I share a lot of people’s anger at the way the Church has conducted itself in the abuse scandals, and I reject the value judgments implied by the ingrained patriarchy of the Church, and I appreciate that Frietas is speaking out about her experiences and being thoughtful about her faith — yet I think that it’s important for people criticizing those who stay in the Church to recognize that they are criticizing both an individual’s faith from the outside (always a dicey proposition) as well as criticizing the Church itself from the outside. And I think outside criticism of the Church is merited and should be welcomed, but those on the outside should also recognize the limits of their understanding of the institution and what it means to the faithful.
Full disclosure: raised Catholic, now atheist and culturally Catholic. And I agree with everyone who said that you shouldn’t tithe to the Church while you have deep disagreements with it on important issues (or receive communion, but I digress).
Did anyone watch the PBS Mormon series that just concluded? They look very very different yet who knows what good theyve done. Everything humanly put together sooner or later falls apart seems like. That doesn’t negate the good. Who among us can do good without being human?
@yvan:
Lastly and least importantly, Catholicism isn’t a denomination, it’s a religion; insofar as there are denominations they are Roman Catholic, Marian Catholic, etc. Protestant is a religion with a grillion denominations, Mormonism is a religion, etc. (And the Catholic Church’s official position is that the Orthodox Church is the one that did the splitting off.)
No, Catholicism is one branch of the Christian religion. Only the the Roman Catholic Church itself believes that Catholicism is the One True Religion. No one who studies religion academically would describe it as a “religion”. Catholicism is part of a larger global religion. And Mormonism is defined—non-pejoritively—by religious scholars as a cult, i.e. a dissenting group that splits off from a larger religious group because of a new prophet, scripture or revelations.
As for liberation theology…it was a noble and positive movement within the Church….until the Vatican squashed it:
The influence of liberation theology diminished after liberation theologians using Marxist concepts were admonished by the Roman Curia’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in 1984 and 1986. The Vatican documents criticize certain strains of Liberation Theology for focusing on institutional dimensions of sin to the exclusion of the individual; and for undermining church authority by identifying the church hierarchy as members of the privileged class.
Love that last bit. The Church doesn’t get a cookie for liberation theology, IMO. It was their one shot at a serious social justice movement and the Vatican killed it and punished the priests and bishops who embraced it.
A question: am I correct in my perception that virtually all of the criticism of the RCC has come from the US? I see that there’s some coming from Ireland as well lately. The point is, though, that my understanding is that the Church is not growing in those areas. I thought it was in Africa and South America where the numbers were on the rise. Granted, the money comes from the west, but will that give American Catholics any power to cause change? Or will the Church just turn its attention to the places where the highest numbers of believers are?
@mm My casual observation of the RC Church makes me think that yeah, they are abandoning serious efforts in the US Australia Canada etc as per JPII’s interest in a smaller yet more faithful church. In other words, STFU American Church and Jewish media.
I don’t think JPII really meant it when he hinted at smaller, but he sure as shit meant it when he said faithful. Proselytizing energies are clearly focused on Africa and Asia, plus some small scale stuff in Russia.
They are into keeping the Catholics in South America from becoming Protestant, which is happening very quickly.
As pointed out upthread, the money is coming from those big western nations, tho. So they can’t just cut off the American church.
Since I don’t make my living by thinking and researching this topic, take it with a grain of salt. Here is my main source, other than living in a Catholic family: I read Catholic NY, a monthly. It’s an eye opener.
@MM and Rodriguez: You’re right about the Catholic Church’s efforts to keep their flock growing and in check in Latin America and Africa, although they’re facing serious challenges from Islam in West Africa and evangelical Protestantism in Latin America. Even in the US, it’s the Latinos who constitute the biggest church-going Catholic population–even the Irish- and Italian-Americans are not attending Mass or sending their kids to Catholic schools they way they did 20-30 years ago.
One of Benedict’s stated goals was to help bring formerly Catholic but now secularist nations like France and Germany back into the Catholic fold. Yeah, good luck with that. This sex scandal’s going to kill whatever interest Europeans had in the Church. Even the Irish are turning away, and that takes some doing.
I really feel like this site is biased against Catholicism. Perhaps I’m sensitive, being raised Catholic and facing a lot of discrimination for my views, but I see Catholics called out here more often than Jews, Southern Baptists, Lutherans, Evangelicals, etc. And in reading the news every day, I find that the faults within that church are relatively common through all religions. The catholic church does have a hierarchy, yes, and they do make efforts to cover up crimes. Most religions act that way, it’s just that with Catholics, the organization makes them more efficient.
I struggle a lot in my faith. It isn’t simply a question of, “I don’t like this pope so I can’t be Catholic anymore,” unfortunately. That had been my theory, but I realize I still believe in many of the teachings that go beyond priests, bishops, and popes. I often find that the Catholic communities I know are more welcoming, open, and interested in people’s welfare- gay, pregnant and unmarried, rebel, etc- than my baptist and lutheran friends’. I have never heard a Catholic say that their’s is the one true religion but I can’t count how many times things like that have come out of friend’s and roommate’s mouths! Perhaps I’ve had an idealistic upbringing within the Church, but I’m honestly more wary of other religions than catholicism. As a previous commentor noted, stop giving them the money and they lose an enormous amount of their power. I’ve stopped giving money and I speak with nuns and others within the church to try to effect change. If everyone just drops things/companies/religions/anything that has a problem, it’s a waste. With all of the good that the church is able to accomplish with their money and fame and influence, it seems ridiculous to write them off.
I am not making any excuses for the church- I’d probably be the first to list all of their faults! They have A LOT which is why I don’t currently practice. But so does EVERY organized religion. I’m tired of hearing about just the Catholic problems.
@feminizzle I personally criticize religion generally and the RC Church specifically because it’s the only one I’v ever belonged to. And there’s no getting over the fact that it may be the majority religion/sect/belief system on the planet. That’s why it gets the most criticism.
There is certainly not a harpy bias against Catholicism.
There’s not even a bias against the RCC in the MSM either. When the criticism is warranted, it needs to be put out there. But religion occupies a special niche in our society that makes it seemingly immune from criticism. In my view we need to change that, desperately. I think there is a bias in favor of the RC Church in the MSM.
When the Church complains about its enemies in the media, I start to worry that it is actually creating Antisemitism.
@Becky – I didn’t say that it’s the One True Religion, I said it is a religion. And the RCC is not the only religion that believes itself to be the OTR, so I don’t know why you would say that.
@yvan: Because you were differentiating Catholicism as a religion in and of itself, and Protestantism as a religion in and of itself, etc. Factually speaking, Catholicism, etc. are just branches of a larger religion.
@Feminizzle: I’m curious why you think we’re biased against Catholicism. I’m having a hard time remembering any other posts we’ve written about Catholicism at all…except for the profile I wrote of Julian of Norwich and the recent one about the sex abuse scandal. Which posts struck you as anti-Catholic and why?
I think that factually speaking you’re incorrect: religion is defined by a set of beliefs, a narrative, symbols and practice, and Christianity-writ-large does not share all of those things. With that thinking, let’s say deism is a religion and Judaism, Christianity and Islam are denominations. Still doesn’t explain the jump to OTR.
@Rodriguez: When the Church complains about its enemies in the media, I start to worry that it is actually creating Antisemitism.
I particularly like how one Catholic higher-up says that the Church is being persecuted just like the Jews, while another blames the “New York media” and Jews for “spreading gossip” about the Church.
I mean, if you’re going to be anti-Semitic, at least get your stories straight. You can’t BE the Jews and BLAME the Jews at the same time.
@Yvan: But deism is very different from Judaism, Christianity and Islam:
Deism: aterm derived from Latin deus, meaning belief in a Supreme Being and used to describe the system of natural religion first developed in the late 17th cent. The classical exposition of deism was John Toland’s Christianity not Mysterious (1696), which argued against the supernatural. Deists asserted the supremacy of reason and denied the validity of miracles, prophecy, and a literal, fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. The term deism was little used after the 18th cent., when the term free thinkers came in.
@mischiefmanager: I haven’t been in the US for several months, so I don’t really know how much criticism the church is getting there, but I can tell you that the sex abuse scandal has been all over the British, Irish and German presses. It doesn’t seem to be getting as much attention in France, for some reason.
(And with that, I’m out of countries whose media I am at least reasonably well versed in).
(I haven’t been in Germany or Ireland recently either, btw, so I’m going off the same basis there – reading online papers – as I am for my understanding of US reporting on the issue).
Yvan and Becky, I don’t know if anyone is still reading this. I have a new job that doesn’t let me online very often and I can’t keep up like I would like to.
I have never successfully been able to convert away from Catholicism, though I have tried Episcopalianism, Quakerism, Buddhism, and Wicca. None of them fed me spiritually the way Catholicism has. I suppose it comes down to “culture,” but there are also theological, historical and political reasons that I feel Catholic, even though at the same time I hate Catholicism for other historica, theological and political reasons. It’s really complex and not cut and dry at all and hard to explain. The diversity is part of it — in America at least the communities I found in those other faith groups were overwhelmingly WASPy. In Catholic churches I find community with the widest swath of humanity you could imagine and it connects me to my neighbors with a depth and breadth I haven’t found elsewhere. Within Catholicism I have experienced an amazingly diverse set of practices including asceticism, charismatic miracle-working, goddesses and saint working. I count practices that are fought and made illegal by the Vatican also Catholic. I consider ex communicated womanpriests to be part of the Catholic church, the church I consider myself to belong to. Those women all consider themselves Catholics. They aren’t trying to become Episcopal priests, you know? There is something too deep about religious identification, deeper than the political (but not separate or free from it).
I find it nearly impossible to divorce myself from the church that has been there for my family through everything. The church that just this month gave my brother counsel and last rites in his last hours on earth and bestowed a peace on him that none of us could; that honored him with a beautiful and meaningful funeral celebrated by the same leftist priest who married my parents; that nurtured my leftist radical ideas and trained me in political organizing and yes, liberation theology and sent me to El Salvador to train with ex-guerilla fighters; that indirectly or directly provided me with more income and higher educational support than any other entity; that is sending my parents to Haiti on a medical relief mission, you get the picture.
I can’t express the agony of having this deep relationship with the Church and yet feeling so strongly that it is my biggest enemy on earth. But I feel that I can’t opt out of it; I’d be Catholic anyway and if I wash my hands of it, how can it ever be reformed? I don’t want to leave the treasures I have found there to the scoundrels who seek to destroy all that I love about being Catholic. I refuse to cede what it means to be Catholic to them; or rather, I feel that I physically cannot.
But I get that it is a completely irrational and possibly deeply sadistic way to be, and that in my last hours on earth I might be thinking, why the fuck did I waste all that energy on those motherfuckers. Or worse, to feel I’d damned myself by doing so. Still, it’s just not true that I can just convert to a more sensible religion. It feels like not a choice, almost like sexual “orientation.” That might be a totally offensive comparison to make and untrue but I am just trying to describe how it FEELS, not how it is in reality.
I definitely believe that as long as I identify in any way as Catholic it is my duty to actively resist conservative and hateful aspects and to work for reform.
@ JD – I was hoping you’d show up. I think that feeling of *being Catholic* even when you disagree with the Church on important issues, even when you don’t attend mass (or, in my case, stop believing in God) is very very common and it’s easy for people from other religions or faiths to not grasp what it means in practice if they can get all or almost all of the benefits of their faith and faith community by just switching to another denomination.
@JD exactly. I haven’t been to church regularly for years and i have a very conflicted relationship with it but I don’t want some other church to go to in its place. For better or for worse I am a Catholic culturally and even though I never give money to the Church and rarely go I don’t believe that changes. Plus this probably doesn’t play so much in the US but having grown up in Scotland I’m slightly biased against Protestant churches given the Presbyterian inclination to condemn Catholics as the very devil.
Oh, JD, I’m sorry to hear about your brother. That said, I’m really really glad you contributed that comment. I’m not Catholic, nor was I raised so, but I was trained in my leftism by a lot of them, so I’m roughly where you are on Catholicism.
Oh, and feminizzle: I’m not sure the site is biased against Catholicism, as I’m part of the site, and I’d call myself quasi-Catholic at times for the reasons I cite above.
I can’t express the agony of having this deep relationship with the Church and yet feeling so strongly that it is my biggest enemy on earth. But I feel that I can’t opt out of it; I’d be Catholic anyway and if I wash my hands of it, how can it ever be reformed?
I think that’s beautifully put, JD, and much better expressed than the original post by Donna Freitas (who I suspect feels exactly the same).