I have been lumbering (as opposed to racing) through the Why We issue of Commonweal. I have one more essay to go, but I just skimmed it to make sure it won't make a liar of me.
I realized this morning that Jesus never appears, as a reason for coming, going or staying. Chesterton gets some attention. Charles Davis, Flannery O'Connor, Mary, even a truly detestable human being, are mentioned, but the name of the Lord never appears.
A Baptist magazine couldn't do an issue like Commonweal's without Jesus appearing all over the place. Part of the collective authors' reticence may be a Catholic thing. What with "name in vain" and "every knee shall bend" banged into our heads, Catholics tend to say Christ when they mean Jesus, which is OK, but it's a title, not a name.
But it is striking, if you think about it, that most of the essayists cover the accidents. I'd say only one gets close to the essence of the Catholic faith, but he says it's too boring to think about. The rest is doctrine or execrable 1960s music (now that is boring) or a certain aura that seems to migrate from ancient cathedrals to execrable 1960s church architecture for some but not for others.
If I had been writing one of the essays, I would have done the same thing myself. So I do appreciate what the essayists have done. It's only looking at them as a whole that I can see who, or Who, is missing. And that's kind of odd, since Jesus is why there is a Church. If not for him nobody would talk about coming, going or staying.
How about this explanation: Jesus is pretty scary; whereas Christ the Risen Lord is not so much.
ReplyDeleteFor me it's the other way around; Christ the transfigured/risen Lord is more scary than Jesus.
DeleteTom, an interesting point. I didn't think about that glaring omission until you pointed it out. However a lot of people will say that you can quit the institution and keep Jesus. But sometimes they lose both.
ReplyDeleteSince you mentioned Baptists, I know that they and other Protestants have had scandals also. But they are less of a centralized organization than we are. Maybe when they get disillusioned with the group they're in they are more likely to find another one?
One of the phrases used by certain Protestants (some Evangelicals, some Baptists, etc.) that I find almost repugnant ("almost" because I could be wrong) is, "Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior." One of the good things about Catholics I know is that they never say that.
ReplyDeleteBut we believe it's true, don't we? The one that I find annoying, but it's a personal thing, is the saying that Jesus Christ is my "personal" savior . Because He's not particular to me, he's everyone's Savior.
DeleteYes, Katherine, the Baptists and other evangelical groups have had plenty of their own scandals and coverups by individuals who knew that their star preacher was taking sexual advantage of others. But most (not all, but most) of their scandals involve adults, not kids.
ReplyDeleteSince they don't have an international organization with an extensive international hierarchy, the kind of widespread cover-up and protection of molesters by those at the highest levels of the organization is absent. Someone might be kicked out of the presidency of an evangelical seminary, or as head of a mega-church, but it doesn't come across as systemic throughout ALL of evangelical protestantism or in protestantism in general. It happens in all religious groups. Orthodox Jews have had more of a problem with abuse of the young than other branches of Judaism it seems. The Mormons have some problems, mostly involving adults. The Orthodox have had some problems with sexual abuse of the young also, especially in countries where most of the population is Orthodox. Everyone has a problem. But nobody has shown that the abuse of kids was as widespread as in the RCC nor that it was systematically hidden by those in charge.
It's systemic in the RCC and it's international. We read of youth ministers in an individual church or perhaps the minister himself abusing kids, or some other local church official or leader.
But in the RCC it has involved thousands and thousands of kids and a widespread cover-up among the management class - hundreds and hundreds of bishops throughout the world - that went on for decades. The top management, including the CEOs of the RCC have protected the local management - the bishops who enabled the abuse of the kids. Unfortunately, the stock holders in the RCC who provide the money to keep the international enterprise going, have no vote - can't vote the management out at the next annual meeting.
The management class of the RCC also abused their roles as "religious and spiritual leaders" to intimidate Catholic parents into agreeing to stay silent in order not to "hurt mother church".
So maybe part of the problem is too much centralization, and too much careerism, to the point where the organization becomes more important than the people. Would more "subsidiarity" be part of the solution?
DeleteLast night we were watching an ESPN special on coach Bob Knight, who was fired in 2000 by the University of Indiana for abusive behavior. Or rather my husband was watching it and I was a couch potato in the same room. However I got caught up in the story too. I was struck by the similarities between this story and that of numerous abusive clergy and hierarchy in the Catholic church. What was similar was the refusal to care about the victims. Knight was the big cheese who brought fame and honor to the institution. Until it got to the point they couldn't ignore it anymore.
DeleteKatherine, I think that's an astute observation. College sports are susceptible because of the institutional element, and because a lot of coaches, athletic directors and boosters seem to be cut from a certain cloth that is prone to deny, cover up, stonewall and attack the victim.
DeleteIn addition to Bobby Knight's history of disgraceful conduct, Melinda Henneberger has written some devastating things about Notre Dame and its football program - she shook the Notre Dame dust from her sandals a few years before doing the same to the Catholic church. Penn State is still recovering from the sex abuse that took place under Joe Paterno's watch. And Urban Meyer's program recently had some serious allegations made against it at Ohio State.
correction - In the non-Catholic world, We read of youth ministers in an individual church or perhaps the minister himself abusing kids, or some other local church official or leader. Isolated cases.
ReplyDeleteOff topic, apparently Commonweal doesn't want people who are renewing their subscription to choose "online only", because there is no option or price listed on the form for that. There is an "introductory special" on their site for six months at $9.97, but that is for new subscribers only. I am trying to cut down on paper clutter; I mostly read it online anyway. Do any of you subscribe to "online only"?
ReplyDeleteI finally succumbed to that for the New York Times. But I don't read as much of it as I used to back in the day when my employer paid for my subscription to the real, holdable, foldable paper thing. I habitually don't (can't?) read all the way to the end of anything I try to read on line.
DeleteI signed up for it on Kindle awhile. I liked that option, but don't know if they still have it.
DeleteRaber prefers paper, so he signed up for the paper copy, so now we can both read it and discuss. He donates old copies to the liberry.
There is now a podcast available on the Website. Have not dipped into that, but looks interesting.
Seems like the organization has a much younger staff, all white urbanites as far as I can see, and is putting energy into appealing to younger readers and moving more aggressively into new media.
Despite younger staff, DWM (dead white men) receive lots of attention--Tolkien, Greene, Chesterton, Lewis, etc.
I always like the movie reviews, poems. Wish there was as much coverage of fiction as non-fiction.
I'm perpetually confused about my status with them. Sometimes hard copies show up, then they stop for a while, then they start up again (it's entirely possible that I have more than one subscription). I do have an online subscription, which I am sorry to say I look at only intermittently. Getting emails from periodicals to which I subscribe electronically is critical for reminding me to go read the content. At any rate, they seem to auto-renew my digital subscription.
DeleteI suppose I will go ahead and renew my subscription, since tomorrow is the expiration date. Some people leave their Catholic content magazines at church after they finish them. Not going to do that with CW though, I'd probably get burned for heresy (not really, but it'd raise some eyebrows :)
DeleteTom - it's a sharp observation. You've probably plowed through more of the essays than I have, but reading them in light of your comment, I definitely see your point.
ReplyDeleteOne or two that I've read seem to run along this plot line. 'I was reared in the pre-Vatican II church, but then real adult life happened and I left.' For them at least, the pre-Vatican II church left some people with a rather brittle faith that wasn't able to withstand the bombardments that life brings.
Jim: the pre-Vatican II church left some people with a rather brittle faith that wasn't able to withstand the bombardments that life brings.
ReplyDeleteit seems to me that you are jumping to conclusions that are completely unwarranted and show a surprising condescension that one normally doesn't find in what you write.
I just re-read the articles and I don't see that these people have a "brittle faith" that can't stand up to real life.
What I saw is what I have seen countless times among people I know who have left the RCC. They grew up, and as they matured began to lose the childhood faith they were born into. Not everyone does this,obviously. You and Katherine and Tom stay, and you and Katherine have explicitly said it was because of your families, priests, nuns, teachers, community. Some say they stay because of "beauty", whatever that means. They talk about being overwhelmed by Chartres Cathedral or by the 2000 years worth of art and music that christianity has produced. Really? Is that really the reason to be Catholic? As Tom points out, Jesus is seldom mentioned.
As adults, some realize that their devout childhood faith had been inculcated by parents, family, neighborhood, parish, school etc at an age when most accept what these people teach one to believe as truth. As adults, they begin to see where what the church teaches no longer fits their adult understanding of God, Jesus, Christ, christianity.The dogma and doctrine become problems that have nothing to do with "brittle faith".
It's a lot tougher sometimes to leave than to stay.
You seem to believe that they all left because their faith was "brittle" rather than accepting that as people mature in their faith, they may realize it wasn't "their" faith at all, but the faith of those whom they loved, cared for, and respected.
Anne, thanks. Just to make sure I'm being clear: I didn't say "all left because their faith was brittle" - I said one or two of the essays struck me as running along that plot line. But it's something I've also observed in my own travels through life: I've known quite a few folks from my parents' generation, some in my extended family, for whom the changes wrought by Vatican II triggered spiritual crises. Perhaps by attributing that to the brittleness of their faith is unfair.
DeleteNor did I say that I stay because of families, priests, nuns, teachers, community. I said that my faith was passed on to me by them. I'm at the age now where I'm the "passer" at least as much as I'm the "passee" in that exercise.
Yes, same here, "passer" as well as "passee". But still a passee in the sense that I am observing that the faith that served some of my elders in their younger years is still wearing well in old age. Politics is another story as I have moved on from the conservative/Republican politics I greww up with. So it's not a matter of blind acceptance of what one grew up with, you have to decide what to discard and what to keep. And yes, I have known some who were so thrown for a loop by VII that the whole thing fell apart for them.
DeleteThe ones I felt sorry for were the then-recent converts who had gone whole hog, including fish sticks on Fridays, to get in and then found the initiation hazing was being reformed. If you come on the bark of Peter now, you know the decks are awash and the crew is down below fighting over the last candle.
DeleteTom, your comment about the initiation hazing being reformed reminds me that a practical reason that the church is slow to allow priests to marry is that nearly all the existing priests were told they couldn't marry and have had to spend their whole lives and ministry not being married. It just doesn't seem fair.
DeleteInitiation hazing. I would enjoy reading a memoir about a reluctant convert in the preVatII days who went through the sit-downs with the priest in order to marry a Catholic spouse.
Delete"I woke up, Sabrina, I woke the hell up!"
ReplyDeletehttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji0TgBy085U
Weirdly, this started an interesting discussion with The Boy about how organized religion is used to justify, manipulate, regulate, make money, etc., but seems to be very unconcerned with whether any of it is true and why people think so.
There might be a Unitarian gene floating around in our DNA.
Yeah? Well Gil Hodges never partook of steak on the Dodgers' Friday night flights because on an airplane he was "too close to where I might be seen."
DeleteThat's pretty funny about Hodges. One of my Jewish co-workers was endlessly fascinated with preVatII Catholicism and used to ask me questions. One time I asked him about the yarmulkes, and he gave me the standard answer that God is everywhere and the cap is a sign of humility. But he said that as a kid, he and his brother believed it was like a force field so that G-d would not see into the bad thoughts in their brains while they were at synagogue.
Delete