Authored By Paul Luikart
In the wake of last week’s grand jury revelations in Pennsylvania about the Catholic Church’s seemingly never-ending priest sexual abuse scandal(s), I have some questions. Here they are in no particular order. Feel free to provide answers if you have them. I sure don’t have any … At what point — if such a point exists — do the wrongs done by a given institution, especially one whose mission is, ostensibly, the betterment of the world (e.g. the Catholic church) cause it to collapse? When do those whose needs are met by the Catholic church, its parishioners, abandon it en masse because of its wrongs and seek to have their needs met elsewhere (resulting in the disappearance of the Catholic church?) Does such a tipping point exist? When do those whose needs are met by the Catholic church decide that what they’d originally believed were needs are not really needs at all? Rather than seek to have their needs met by the Anglicans or the Methodists or the Unitarians or the Wiccans, simply divest themselves of those needs? And does the divestiture of those needs by such people happen easily, at least relatively easily, because of the Catholic church’s own wrongs? Does the rottenness of the institution, if the institution is rotten, rot not the people the institution serves but the deeply felt needs of those people, the needs the institution originally purported to meet? It may be that people originally turned to the Catholic church because of their deeply felt needs for their personal wrongs to be redressed. Particularly in a way that reverberates in heaven as it does on earth. But what happens when those who turned to the Catholic church for that redressal seek not redressal elsewhere but re-evaluate their needs for redressal in the first place? In particular due to the perceived or actual inability of the Catholic church to satisfactorily redress its own wrongs? Are there good values or morals the Catholic church has instilled in its parishioners over time (i.e. the history of the Catholic church, spanning centuries up to and including now) that would dictate, when followed with honest effort, that it is in fact time to abandon the Catholic church? Or, do those instilled morals include — whether naturally, unwittingly, or sinisterly — some subset of morals that dictate parishioners never abandon the church no matter what? Does the Catholic church’s teaching include a mandate, however it might be worded that, “We’re all supposed to go down with the ship,” if/when the ship goes down? Or, is it not time to abandon the Catholic church? Has the sexual abuse scandal that has plagued the Catholic church publicly since the early 2000s up until the present, but evidently privately dating back to the 1950s or 1960s, fundamentally altered that which may have previously seemed unalterable? Has what the Catholic church done and tolerated over the decades changed the essence of the morals and values it teaches? Do those morals and values (e.g. charity, piety, forgiveness, service to others) belong to the Catholic church? Can they be successfully lived out in any form inside the Catholic church, by its parishioners and current clergy, from local parish priests up to and including Pope Francis, in light of the Catholic church’s wrongs? Can they be successfully lived out by former Catholics who’ve left the Catholic church because of the Catholic church’s wrongs? Can they be successfully lived out by anybody? What’s the difference between successfully and perfectly? Is it right of me, and others, to equate, as I have done in places here in this column, the discovered actions and inactions of Catholic clergy that have constituted this scandal with the entirety of the Catholic church, from its inception (i.e. “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Matthew 16:18, English Standard Version, the words of Jesus Christ to St. Peter, generally accepted in the Catholic church as Christ commissioning Peter as the first Pope) up until present? Do a few absolute bad apples spoil the bunch absolutely, no matter where those bad apples appear in the course of the apple tree’s history? Is there such a thing as an “absolute bad apple?” Is there such thing as a good apple? Does current Catholic church leadership, from local parish priest up to Pope Francis, understand the ramifications of the scandal? Is it possible for anybody, Catholic or not, to understand those ramifications? Does current Catholic church leadership, again, from local parish priest up to Pope Francis, expect that those impacted by the scandal would seek to come to grips with the scandal inside the Catholic church? That is, does Catholic church hierarchy expect, or even hope, that victims would find healing within the confines of the Catholic church? Is it possible to find healing in the arms of the entity that perpetuated the need for healing? Particularly when looked at through the lens of the need for healing, I ask again, it is right to equate this perpetuation of abuse with the entire Catholic church? How should those impacted by the scandal understand any Catholic priest or brother or nun, or even any lay leader, who states in one form or another, “Come to me so I can help you heal?” What happens next? Whatever happens, who is in charge of what happens? How does the Catholic church carry on? When will all this end? When it does, if it does, who will be left to whom the end of the scandal matters? Paul Luikart is a writer whose work has appeared in a number of places over the years. His most recent book, “Animal Heart,” is available now from Hyperborea Publishing. Follow him on Twitter. The opinions expressed in this column belong solely to the author, not Nooga.com or its employees.
