Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Luther's Knocking




I have been in Italy one week, and have had countless rich, stimulating conversations with Italian Catholic friends. Yet I find that I struggle to convey the gravity of the scandal roiling the US Catholic Church. It doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to many folks here. Some think it’s nothing more than a political attack on Pope Francis. Others agree that it’s bad, but they say the Church has always been corrupt to a certain degree, and don’t grasp why Americans are so worked up about it.
Rod Dreher: The Very Big Deal Catholic Crisis

Massimo Faggioli and Rod Dreher have both been writing--and tweeting--extensively on the sexual abuse saga that seems to have thoroughly permeated the Catholic Church.  While both writers have polar opposite approaches to the issue one thing both can agree on is recognition that American Catholicism is different from it's European version..

Faggioli, particularly, seems to have grasped  just how vast the difference is between the two in mindset,  and recognises that the Europeans have underestimated the seriousness of the American angst--and desired response--to the situation as it is. The Europeans, on the other hand, perplexed as they are by the American response, don't seem particularly perturbed by the saga as their underlying attitude seems to combine both a recognition of the historical corruption of the Church hierarchy and a resignation to its permanence and inevitability.

The Italian response, in my mind, is probably a consequence of Italian culture and I'm not saying this pejoratively. Catholicism has had a long history of illiberality when it came to the rights and opinions of the common man. The laity were subjects to both clergy and nobles and were expected to do what they were told.  Pushback was not permitted, and if the elites or the clergy were corrupt there was nothing you could really do about it: it was a matter for elites to sort out among themselves. This attitude and the reality of life on the ground encultured among the people an attitude of resignation and adaptation.  The family, instead of the State, became the unit of social organisation Any new initiatives were strictly private affairs because assistance from above was likely to be counter productive. It had been this way for centuries and as a result,  a certain resignation cultural resignation within the Italian mindset. You learn to accept it and work around it because there's nothing you can do to change it. When you hear that the local bishop's a pedophile and not much is being done to remove him you've heard it all before; what's the big deal? The Church (clergy) is corrupt.  In a Darwinian manner, Italians have learned to forge a life in a manner which accommodates and accepts institutional corruption.**

This Italian attitude is prototypical of the Latin mindset. One of the things that European, particularly Latin, Catholic culture suffers from is its inability to deal with institutional corruption in any meaningful way. There are many reasons for this. Some are the result of traditional habit, others the result of certain theological biases and it's beyond the scope of this post to go into this deeper, however the overall effect is that corruption remains an entrenched endemic phenomenon.

Protestantism didn't have this problem. One of the main drivers of national development and wealth is institutional honesty and it's no surprise that until the advent of widespread secularisation the Catholic countries were Europe's most backward. Protestantism's apparent economic superiority wasn't just due to the work ethic but the superiority of its institutions, which relative to Catholic ones, were seen to be more honest and efficient.

Protestantism, on the other hand, gave the believer far more legitimacy in public affairs  and the theology of Protestantism expected the  believer to behave act as one of the elect. There was no reliance on the confessional to wipe away misdeeds and poor behaviour was an outward sign of perdition which rightly disqualified a man from institutional office. The net effect of this "theological bias" in Protestant culture was attitude towards institutions which demanded honesty and efficiency.

Which brings us to the phenomenon of American Catholicism. The United States was founded as a Protestant Enlightenment project: the institutional culture is Protestant. While the country was explicitly secular, Protestantism was the de-facto institutional religion of the country and within its theological framework established it's habits, ideas and cultural practices. It was into this culture that the waves of Catholic migrants flooded and eventually became assimilated. However, the assimilation wasn't one way, Catholicism too had to adapt to the culture with the overall result that American Catholicism became Protestantised. (The Church recognised the phenomenon early on issuing an encyclical.) The same phenomenon seems to have occurred in other countries where Catholics lived within a dominant Protestant culture. The Germans and Canadians seem to have been liberally Protestantised while the Americans have assumed more of the conservative faction. Australia seems split down the middle.

Years ago while reading G.K. Chesteron's, Why I am a Catholic, I was struck by this line.
In all probability, all that is best in Protestantism will only survive in Catholicism; and in that sense all Catholics will still be Puritans when all Puritans are Pagans.
What I think what I'm seeing now in American Catholicism, particularly, is the realisation of Chesterton's prophecy, in that it has incorporated the best bits of Protestantism and is now using it as a battering ram to reform the institutional corruption of the Church.  Unlike Latin Catholicism, American Catholicism won't put up with institutional corruption. Massimo Faggioli, in analysing the current situation, sees it as the  machinations of the "right wing" of the American church, using the sexual abuse crisis as an opportunity to dispose of the Pope and his process of reform,  and there is certainly an element of truth in this.  However,  I don't think he fully realises that the current revulsion by the American Church, particularly the laity, is less directed towards the Papacy per se, than the institutional corruption which he is seen to be upholding by failing to adequately deal with the issues at hand. The Catholic Church in America wants the Church leadership to live up to it's ideals. Acceptance of the fallen nature of man as an excuse to do nothing is not going to cut it.

I am generally supportive of Francis and his policy of reform, if not his liberal theology. However I do feel that he his management of the sexual abuse crisis, on the basis of the facts seen by me, hasn't been up to scratch. The Church has got some serious problems that need to be fixed and I'm getting the impression that Luther is going to get his second chance at instituting church reform.

*In other news, Brazilian Bishop Jose Ronaldo Ribeiro of Formosa resigned after he was arrested for stealing $606,000 of diocesan money. Apparently he'd done something similar before and was "transferred". The Church has got some serious problems.

**De Gasperi, one of the great Italian politicians following WW2 shocked Italians by his lack of corruption. To quote Wiki:
It is said that he had to be given a State funeral as he had died with almost no means of his own - a jaw-dropping fact in a country where, even then, politicians were expected to do well for themselves.

6 comments:

Hoyos said...

Catholics who have had to live with protestants have often had the impulse to out-Protestant the protestants as it were. Its one thing to fail at home, another to fail in public and bring shame on the “tribe”. Hence the starkness of Irish Catholicism in history, forged by persecution and competition versus the laxity of Italian Catholicism. There are exceptions of course.

More to the matter at hand...

The shocking thing to me is acting “meh” when faced with the child rape scandals. I’m trying to think of something worse but I can’t. There’s corruption and then there’s something like that.

The abuse of children is so far off the path that you would think it would shock even the most jaded into having the bare minimum of guts required to be a human. These are stories that absolutely turn the stomach. “Hey the church is always corrupt, have some more wine” shows an insensibility that is vile in the extreme. “Hey it’s all political about Francis” is a response that makes me want to ask which God are you worshipping. Francis seemed to be saying that climate change and migrants were more important than child rape. Pardon the obscenity but f***ing how?! If I got him wrong I’m sorry.

If there’s ever a time to be extreme and take some risks that would have to be it. “What can you do?” Well, you could demand the church and civil authorities do their jobs. And if they won’t you get another set of authorities; I’m not a canon lawyer or even Roman Catholic, but past a certain point failure has to be considered an abdication of authority. I know there are some actions that are self excommunicating.

This is bare minimum stuff. If you can’t protect children, you need to quit whatever else you’re doing until you have that fixed. Catholic priest is becoming synonymous in the minds of many with “child molester” and acting like that’s less scandal than actually protecting child molesters seems insane to me.

The Social Pathologist said...

@Hoyos

Hence the starkness of Irish Catholicism in history, forged by persecution and competition versus the laxity of Italian Catholicism

Yes, that was my point. Interestingly, I think it is the laity, which had to live at the junction of the two religous cultures which most represent this fusionism. It's also interesting to note that most of the pushback is coming from the laity, either through demands of reform or by deserting the ship.

These are stories that absolutely turn the stomach. “Hey the church is always corrupt, have some more wine” shows an insensibility that is vile in the extreme.

I think you've nailed it there. There is a serious sickness in the Church when it passively accepts evil in its ranks. As I've said before, some of this is due to the historical context in which continental Catholicism developed but I also think that theological developments in the 20th C have neutered the reformative impulse in Catholicism.

If Christ were appear now and thrash the money changers in the temple, I imagine there would be clerics who would deplore his turn to violence and insist that he "open up a dialogue of respect and reflection." Soy Christianity has a lot to answer for.

If you can’t protect children, you need to quit whatever else you’re doing until you have that fixed

Yep. Mercy without Justice is the mother of dissolution. (That's Aquinas speaking)

MK said...

This was a good post, although as an American I generally don't personally agree with much of the response. I'm more the European or even Italian mindset I guess.

SP: There is a serious sickness in the Church when it passively accepts evil in its ranks. As I've said before, some of this is due to the historical context in which continental Catholicism developed but I also think that theological developments in the 20th C have neutered the reformative impulse in Catholicism.

I think passively accepting evil is more just a realistic understanding of sin. We are seeking sainthood, and not all of us make it.

I think I'm more like B16, rational and practical. Sin gonna sin. My job is to watch my corner and do what I can. God's running things and the Church. I just work here.

Q: Does Oz fit the American or European model? I'm guessing American, but what do I know. And what about Asia & Africa? The West is fairly irrelevant to the future, methinks.

The Social Pathologist said...

Does Oz fit the American or European model? I'm guessing American, but what do I know. And what about Asia & Africa? The West is fairly irrelevant to the future, methinks.

Oz is unique. Far less Irish than the American Model and not European.

Can't say much about the Asian and African Churches.

I think passively accepting evil is more just a realistic understanding of sin. We are seeking sainthood, and not all of us make it.

I think that every Christian has to make a conscious effort to live according to the will of God. We all know that we're going to fail the ideal, but the desire and the intention to live uprightly must always be there. The recognition of the inevitability of sin is not the same as a passive acquiescence of it's existence. The Protestants seemed to have grasped the importance of the transformative element of Christianity better than the Catholics have.

Anonymous said...

@SP

The church in reality adopted the "worst bits" of Protestantism: the Liberal Protestantism of the US Mainline and Northern European state churches, on one hand, and pentecostalism--through Catholic Charismatic Renewal and forms of other pseduo-Evangelicalism--on the other. They heard GKC's advice and totally missed the point.

Robert What? said...

Fortunately the Church does not have the power to compel donations, which I can understand would give many people a more blasé attitude towards Church corruption. Think it's too corrupt? Then close your checkbook. Much worse is a corrupt government where you are compelled to "donate".