Today is, what, Christmas? I suppose that when I was a kid
it had “special” meaning, and if you happen to be employed in non-service jobs
it means a week or two of vacation. Since I currently work in a
transportation-related job, “holidays” are just another day of the year. This
year Christmas just happened to fall on my regular day off. I was reminded of
the meaningless of the day for me when I walked across a street today. I was
waiting for the walk sign at an intersection, and proceeded across the street
once it did so. Half-way across I was almost struck by car making a left turn;
who was the idiot who didn’t understand right-of-way and committed a reckless traffic
violation? Why, a smirking Kent cop who obviously thought this was “funny” in
an intimidating fashion. My expression
told of my displeasure, and the cop proceeded to drive down the road very
slowly; since I knew he was looking at me through his rearview mirror, I gave
him a “salute.” Christmas—bah, humbug. Scrooge had it right.
Christmas, of course, means other things, as Linus told us
in that Peanuts Christmas special. I haven’t been a regular practicing
Christian for many years, so I’m not going to give a sermon on the “real”
meaning of this day. I was raised in the Roman Catholic faith, and attended a
Catholic grade school for eight years. While I don’t have many fond memories
from my youth, the ones I do have were during those years. I admit I didn’t
care for attending church service before school every morning, or being made to
feel “guilty” about not going to confession every week--having to make-up bad
things to tell the priest (I confessed to lying, talking back to my parents and
taking the Lord’s name in vain so often I thought I detected a “here we go
again” in the confessor’s tone whenever I entered the booth). But I never
questioned church dogma; the Catholic Church has been around so long that I
figured there must be a reason for the things it did.
Anyways, in keeping the religious aspect, I might as well
provide my view of a recent local incident. According to the Seattle Times, there has been “growing
condemnation” against Eastside Catholic School’s firing of vice principle Mark
Zmuda over his marriage to his same-sex partner, despite being warned that it
was against the Church’s policy and he would be dismissed if he did so. I don’t
know if this “growing condemnation” is a media creation or not, although the Times claims that the protests against
the decision seem to be louder than those supporting the school’s. Since Eastside
is a private school, it is within its right to establish rules in accordance
with Roman Catholic Church policy. I suspect that most of those kids seen
supporting Zmuda are not even Catholic; they were mostly (white) female, which isn’t
surprising, since they tend to protest anything not out of morality or ethics,
but out of power and contrariness.
Regardless of the rightness or wrongness of the policy, I
find it equally hypocritical of these people and the media to criticize Church
policy while failing to recognize reasons why it might have for maintaining
these policies (again, rightly or wrongly). The Catholic Church has had
well-publicized pedophilia scandals involving priests and boys. It can be
speculated that a few men who became priests did so because they wanted to
conceal their sexual orientation, and the since the Church has a ban on
marriage for priests, it was a convenient way to avoid the appearance of not “preferring”
women. Having relationships with adult males is too risky, and unfortunately a
few of these could not avoid another kind of temptation. The point here, of
course, is that practicing homosexuality in the priesthood has been a huge and
expensive embarrassment for the Church. Those who criticize Church policy while
ignoring the consequences of turning a blind eye to the problem that sexual
orientation has caused the Church are merely exploiting scandals for ratings
and anti-Church personal satisfaction.
The church’s ban on marriage by priests and nuns is apparently
due to the belief that they should be devoted only to the teachings of God, and not be “sidetracked” by domestic
entanglements. Would allowing priests to marry attract more men, whose
principle complaint is that they have certain biological needs that being a
priest doesn’t meet? That would require a major policy change that the Pope is
unlikely to make unilaterally, along with altering its attitude toward
homosexuality, abortion and female priests.
In the past, the Church has faced the challenges of “modernity” with
grand councils of bishops. There had always been “heretical” threats to the Church,
but with the coming of the Renaissance there was increasing resistance to the secular
power of the Pope, and the disreputable worldly ambitions and accumulation of
wealth by some in the clergy. One of the more contemptible practices was the
sale of “indulgences,” in which forgiveness of sins and a place in Heaven could
be had for a sum of money.
In the face of the threat of the Protestant Reformation, beginning
in 1545 the Council of Trent attempted to address doctrinal disagreements and
abuses in the Church. Although German Protestants initially took part in the
meetings, they were frustrated in their demands for doctrinal change and
reduction of the Pope’s power in setting religious policy. A majority of the
council rejected Martin Luther’s reform doctrine of salvation by faith alone,
and for all practical purposes this split the church. Afterwards it was only in
the last stages of the meetings that abuses
by the clergy and the indulgences issues were addressed, and seminaries were
established to prevent the clergy from becoming beholden to secular patrons.
In 1869, the council known as Vatican 1 was convened to deal
with the new threats to dogma, such as from secular philosophies like
liberalism and materialism. However, the principle and most controversial
action taken by the council was to make a definitive statement in regard to the
infallibility of the Pope in setting church policy. The second Vatican Council in the 1960s again
attempted to adapt the Church to a rapidly changing world, including untightening
some of the restrictions of dogma to make the Church more flexible by giving
additional authority to local bishops and giving lay persons a greater role in
the practice of Church policy, rather than just making them sit in a pew and
putting money in the basket. Lay persons were even allowed to do readings
during church services.
So the Church does have a history of addressing major
contemporary issues that threaten its existence. In this age of 24-hour news, rapid
exchange of information and the abandonment of many of the Church for either
the “greener” pastures of “don’t worry, be happy” sects or simply lack of
belief in religions generally, it may be time for another grand council to
address issues like the nature of the priesthood, homosexuality and abortion.
But one shouldn’t expect this to happen any time soon; especially concerning
abortion, these will require dramatic shifts in the interpretation of Biblical
statements. That most of the attacks of the church are coming from outside the
Church, or within from “heretical” nuns’ organizations likely means that there
isn’t sufficient pressure for this come anytime soon; if it does, it will
certainly be the mostly highly contentious since Trent.
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