Abandoned Altars

Welcome to my new weblog. This site is for all those unhappy and puzzled Roman Catholics who wonder what went wrong with their church.

I may have some small insight into that to share. Like many abuse survivors and would-be reformers, I have witnessed the institutional Church lie, deny, obfuscate, and squirm, trying to protect and preserve its secrets, its privileges, and its power. And this, I have found to my horror, is nothing new.

Once, in my long-ago days in parochial school, Sister Perpetua or some other ancient nun remarked that the fact that the “Barque of Peter”, as she quaintly called her Church, was still afloat despite so many bad popes piloting it was proof that it had to be guided by the Holy Spirit. A novel argument for divine inspiration if ever there was one.

Even then I noted the reference to “bad popes”, though it was years before I found out just how bad some of them were. And even longer to discover just how wrong she was

I’m sure glad I don’t have to give the bad news to the old penguin.

It would surely break her heart to learn that the Roman Church has shipwrecked at last, foundering on the jagged rocks of the clergy abuse crisis. Centuries of dogmatism, intolerance, sexism, and papal ambition weren’t enough; it took the still-ongoing unraveling of the greatest cover-up in history to swamp it.

No, not that piddling debate about whether or not Jesus had kids, interesting though it is. Rather, the cover-up of what his disciples have been doing to children, women, their students, and even each other almost since the day he left. The documentary evidence has been around for ages. But only now, in these latter days, have the victims finally had the power to speak out without being shunned, condemned, and tried for heresy.

And so, hit by a tidal wave of lawsuits, the Ship of Fools is going down fast. The captain and senior officers, serenely playing their games of musical chairs below, haven’t seem to have noticed it yet. But the crew is jumping over the side as fast as they can, and the passengers are milling hopelessly, waiting for someone to save them.

The situation in the Church is indeed quite grim. Thousands of priests and over twice as many nuns have abandoned their posts already, and fewer and fewer come along to shore up their failing ranks. Attendance and contributions are in decline; it seems only the elderly are in the pews as well.

The time-honored means of ecclesiastical control have failed: confessionals where once long lines waited to unburden themselves stand empty and neglected. Nobody collects indulgences anymore. Respect for the sacraments has declined to the point that warnings have to be regularly given to keep non-Catholics from taking Communion.

Rome, desperate to hold on to whatever male bodies they have left, has long ago abandoned true clerical discipline for the sake of appearances. The resulting corruption has greatly compounded the crisis. And so the laity, tired of having to do without ministry due to missing clergy and of defending the criminal ones, is finally asking questions.

Yet the Roman Church, as it stands, is unable to offer any new answers to the urgent needs and problems of the third millennium. Fewer and fewer people even pay any attention to the hierarchy’s tired pronouncements condemning the dire evils of divorce, birth control, and homosexuality.

Why should they, when every day new horror stories about the gross perversions of the clergy fill the headlines?

Why should anyone respect an ecclesiastical leadership that responds to moral crisis like any corrupt CEO, with lawyers and cynical PR campaigns, instead of like the compassionate pastors they claim to be?

And above all, why in the name of God should the people continue to give their hard-earned cash to pay for defense attorneys to silence victims?

For the Church has no excuse. Over twenty years ago, their own canon lawyers officially warned the bishops in the United States of the impending storm. Yet they did nothing but enable the clergy to continue by shuffling them around when they got caught. And so the sexual abuse crisis has spread relentlessly like a wildfire across North America, Australia, and Europe, and now seems unending.

The mutiny among the clergy was underway long before the abuse crisis erupted, however. It began as soon as the doors were opened after Vatican II. Pope John XXIII may have wanted to just let a little light in while at the same time he was continuing the centuries-old cover-up, but the plan backfired. The good shepherds got out while the getting was good, and the exploiters stayed for the easy pickings. And so the stage was set for a historical collapse as rapid as it was unforeseen.

To be sure, the Roman Church won’t be easily swallowed by history. A small fanatic core may long linger for millennia like the few followers of Zoroaster still do. But the grand political role of the Church, with pope as kingmaker and arbiter of the world will continue to decline, as it has for centuries.

In time, the Supreme Pontiff will have even less importance than the Queen of England. Like her, the self-proclaimed Vicar of Christ can be assured of steady employment as a character in a theme park, if only for the sake of the tourist industry.

The “Good News” is that the Roman Catholic Church does not have a monopoly on God, Jesus, nor even catholicism, and never did. Here’s something they don’t want you to know: If one wants visible signs of grace, many other churches possess working sacraments. For the theory of apostolic succession that Roman claims of clerical privilege and exclusivity are based on grudgingly admits of other lines than Peter’s. Lines that, try as the pope’s lawyers might to belittle, the Vatican has no legitimate claim against.

These include imposing sacramental traditions such as Orthodoxy and Anglicanism, like great arks full of treasure. There are also hundreds of small Independent Catholic churches, such as the one I belong to, like lifeboats to rescue those who don’t want to drown in dogma or despair.

And beyond that, of course, is a boundless ocean of faith, where every imaginable vessel sails, blow by the spirit where it wills…

However, I’m not here to sell anyone a new religion: I’m here to speak my truth about Roman Catholicism. And to point out that around the Barque of Peter, the water keeps rising.

As for me, I’ll be wandering along the beach, helping other survivors, and looking among the wreckage for that which may be worth salvaging.