The incarcerated Catholic

THE Pope, the spiritual leader of the world’s one billion Catholics, resigned recently. It’s interesting because he is the first of his kind to do so in 600 years. It’s more interesting in what the announcement reveals about Ireland as a nation.

 

As soon as the news was released, the social networks lit up. Irreverent commentary and anti-Catholic jokes abounded. The majority of the content was spread by my Irish friends. It caused me to pause and wonder why Irish people still care so much about the political machinations of a tiny European state? The reason is, despite our protestations to the contrary, Ireland has yet to shake off the yolk of Catholic oppression. The vitriol and irreverence smacked a little too far in the direction of the lady protesting too much. Clearly, horror at the moral bankruptcy of the Catholic Church as an institution, combined with a belief in the inherent decency of Christian values has led to cogitative dissonance in a portion of the Irish population.

There is a palpable desire on the part of many people, young and old, to distance themselves from the Catholic Church in the years since it has been exposed as a corrupt institution. Despite this, most people in Ireland were raised with what amount to Christian values. The Golden Rule with regard to treating others as you would wish to be treated yourself makes a lot of sense but was not a guiding value of the marauding sexual predators who populated the ranks of Catholic clergy all over the world for so many years.

Neither was it a principle of the political cabal within the church hierarchy, which protected the abusers at the expense of the victims. Years of indoctrination have indelibly imbued the psyche of the Irish people with a doctrine which has not been adhered to by those who preached it.

The extent to which the power elite within the Church rejected, and continue to reject, human decency as an ethical touchstone is evidenced by their attitude to “liberation theology”. The rising tide of engagement by clerics on the ground with political issues around social justice a number of decades ago was met with stern resistance by the hierarchy. The Polish pontiff, who was predecessor to Benedict XVI, was particularly vehement in his opposition to such activity. In 1990, John Paul II delivered a sermon in Mexico in which he warned those priests and bishops dedicated to the social justice inherent in liberation theology that they should refrain from involvement in “activities which belong to the lay faithful, while through your service to the Church community you are called to co-operate with them by helping them study Church teachings”. Any reader of political speeches will clearly see the implication in this statement.

The clergy were being warned to stay away from Marxism or anything associated with it as means of delivering social justice. Not because the faith is essentially against social justice but because the Catholic Church is a political entity which views Marxism as a rival and a threat. The potential for social justice is washed away in a sea of realpolitik. Rather than selflessly aid the poor in line with the message attributed to Christ, the church chose once again to protect the institution to the detriment of the faithful.

We all know teachers who wish to teach and educate children. The number of teachers we know who can do this to the best of their own ability within the education system is drastically reduced by the ethos of that system. Targets and the language of the market have infiltrated the process to the detriment of the children who are supposed to be learning. Individual good intentions within a poisoned culture will wither and die very quickly. A well-intentioned worker in the financial sector will not last long if they are not meeting their targets because the overarching ethos is corrupt. The principle remains the same for a good priest within the ethical desert that is the Catholic Church hierarchy.

I, and many others, have said repeatedly that there are good people within the Church and it is worth reiterating. It is also worth repeating, however, that to remain a member of the Catholic Church as an institution is to be complicit. Aware of this and in an effort to stop people following their conscience, the Catholic Church changed Canon Law in 2010 to prevent people defecting. A statement issued to RTE News, and published on the Count Me Out website, states, “The Holy See confirmed at the end of August that it was introducing changes to Canon Law and as a result it will no longer be possible to formally defect from the Catholic Church.”

I, along with many thousands of others, are trapped, against our will, in an institution which has lost all moral credibility. My parents, in good Catholic faith, made me a member of their church when I was a child as they were told to do by that institution. They did it for the most laudable of reasons having been told that my soul would be sequestered to Limbo for all eternity If they didn’t. Now, as an adult, when I no longer wish to be associated with the institution, I am disbarred from leaving. One might be forgiven for referring to this behaviour as utterly cultish.

A political process is underway in the Vatican to select a new pontiff. All the backstabbing and Machiavellian machinations we generally associate with politics will take place in a room where breaching the code of secrecy will lead to excommunication. The next Pope will be charged with protecting the vastly wealthy institution first and foremost. The world’s poor and downtrodden will not be given consideration. Those within the church who wish to help them will be repressed and silenced. Those who abuse will be protected and those who want to disassociate themselves from this reality will be told that they cannot.

I began by stating there are one billion Catholics in the world. I am one of them. Not because I have that faith or practice but simply because I cannot leave. It is ironic that like many others it is my grounding in Christian values of basic decency in the way I should treat others that now leaves me so utterly repulsed by the vile institution which claims to represent these same values.