The Pope’s Bedevilment
It is hard to believe that
someone as theologically sophisticated as Pope Benedict would resort to blaming
the devil for the church’s present problems, but his allusion to “the enemy” in
a speech given to a large group of priests last week (where he bemoaned and
apologized again for the sins of some of the clergy) leaves one puzzled to say
the least.
There was a certain note of
irony in this, inasmuch as the occasion was the conclusion of what was
originally billed as “The Year of the Priest” (whose patron saint was the 19th
century French parish priest St. Jean Vianney, the
“Cure d’Ars”-- who was reported to have suffered all
kinds of personal attacks from the devil). Still, the allusion seems ill-timed.
Although the full-force of the pedophilia and other criminal sexual behavior
may have hit the European press only this past year, it was nothing new to the Irish, nor to Americans over the past two decades.
In fact, to serious students
of church history, it may be an old story. It seems that, judging from some of
documents dating from the 5th and 11th centuries, when
such fiery preachers and writers as St. John Chrysostom
and St. Peter Damien damned clerical misbehavior and demanded drastic reforms, there
have been periodic outbreaks of such problems.
All this suggests that there has been a problem almost from the
beginning of Christianity, the only difference being, depending on the temper
of the times, how widespread or public it had become.
Why hasn’t the Church found a
lasting solution by now? Perhaps, for
want of a better explanation, we can blame Original Sin. Martin Luther saw
human nature as essentially corrupted by it and made allowances accordingly, while
the Catholic Church maintained that the damage, while serious, was more
peripheral and curable by grace and self-discipline. What Sigmund Freud thought of these
particularly Christian interpretations of the Book of Genesis, I’m not sure,
but he recognized that the manifestations of the human sexual drive could be,
as I think he put it, “polymorphously perverse.” In other words, we should not be surprised by the
atrocious forms it can sometimes take – nor by the human propensity to blame
someone else. That too, according to the story about Adam and Eve, was part of
their sin, their refusing to take responsibility, even while they claimed the
right to decide what is good or evil on their own.
Here I think I recognize the
same syndrome I encountered years back when I volunteered to do “Fifth Step”
work with an AA sponsored rehabilitation center. When alcoholics have reached
this stage of the recovery process, they are supposed to share an in-depth
assessment of what led up to their addiction with someone else, usually a
clergy-person or counselor of some sort. I saw it as being a kind of what we
called, in Catholic parlance, a “general confession” – a complete review of
one’s life, hopefully leading to some deeper insight as to what has gone wrong.
Most of these interviews (generally taking an hour or so) went very well, particularly
those of women – often the victims of sexual abuse – who, despite that trauma,
usually had a very clear insight into their own failings and what would have to
be changed in their lives. I wish I could say the same of all the men. Instead,
what I often ran into was a litany of things that had gone wrong that “wasn’t
their fault” and no clue into their own thinking and what they must do to
really change the booze-centered “culture” of their free-time activities or the
wider course of their lives.
So why do we find the pope,
of all people, falling into the same trap and engaging in the all too
predictable blame game – singling out those priests who are duplicitous or those
who are inclined to an “objective moral disorder” (homosexuals), chiding bishops
who failed to discipline them, and when all else fails, blaming “the enemy” or
the evil one? I can’t help but think it is for much the same reason as for too
many of my male clients at that AA rehab center. As much as they said they wanted to be sober,
they were unwilling to quit blaming others, change their own habits of
thinking, or give up their accustomed way of life. So too, the present agenda
in Rome seems to be headed in the direction of firm resolutions and for a
crackdown on any leniency, but no serious re-examination of or change in the ecclesiastical
“culture” that has failed time and time gain.
R