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THE PARABLE OF THE HOUSEWIFE AND THE HAM: PART II
05/18/2009
In my last essay, I retold the story of the housewife who cuts off the ends of the ham and throws them out before putting the ham in the roasting pan because that is how her mother always did it. Her mother then tells her the only reason she cut off the ends of the ham is because her roasting pan was too small, and since the daughter has a sufficiently large roasting pan, cutting off the ends of the ham is not only unnecessary but wasteful.
And thus we revisit the tendency of human beings to draw the wrong conclusions from something they have seen, and to pattern their behavior accordingly, repeating the same mistake over and over again, leading to everything from wasteful and self-defeating actions on the part of individuals all the way to violence and mayhem on the part of nations.
I have already shown how today's Republican Party is misinterpreting their recent defeats, drawing the wrong conclusions, and perhaps dooming the party to irrelevancy for years to come. Like the Republicans, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church is also in trouble. The bishops have lost their moral authority with many people both within the Church and in the larger American society. Their attempts to regain it are based on mistaken assumptions and are likely to fail, just as the Republicans' strategy is failing.
We know, of course, why the bishops have lost their moral authority. It started in the sixties when this group of unmarried men insisted that any birth control other than selective abstinence was immoral. However, the sexual abuse scandals of the past couple of decades, which the bishops enabled by transferring priests, and then covering up the transgressions until lawsuits exposed them, have damaged their authority even more. And the bishops only made things worse by using all sorts of rationalizations to defend themselves and their priestly tradition of celibacy, which they insist has nothing to do with the problem.
The bishops have said that the offending priests were small in number, which appears not to be true. In a 2004 survey by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, it was found that 4450 priests had been accused of sexual molestation. No one knows how many priests who molested have not been accused, either because they are deceased or because their victims have not spoken up. So we're not talking about a few bad apples. We're talking about something systemic.
Then the bishops tried to blame it on "gay" priests, though most child abusers are actually not gay but straight men with an immature or distorted sexual development. It appears the celibate priesthood was a place where men with flawed sexual development, and an inability to form a healthy sexual relationship with an adult, could attempt to hide their problems, only to find themselves exposed to the very people they were attracted to – children and teenagers. (It is true that there are a significant number of gay men who are priests, and though that fact can also be attributed to the celibacy rule, it is a different issue that will not be discussed here.)
In all the agonized discussion over the problem of molesting priests, the bishops were never willing to admit that celibacy itself may be a large part of the problem. First of all, prohibiting a priest from marrying means he has to be willing and able to make a huge sacrifice and give up something most men want: a lifelong relationship with a partner, a healthy sexual life, and a family. This leaves out most men. The ones who are willing to enter the priesthood are thus of two varieties: extremely dedicated and spiritual men who are willing and able to make an enormous sacrifice, and men who are trying to hide from their sexual impulses or sexual identity. As the number of vocations dwindled over the decades, it appears the Church was so eager to accept candidates for the priesthood that it did not screen its candidates adequately, admitted men whose sexual development was disordered, and then allowed them to remain even after it became obvious they should never have been ordained.
In order to discuss celibacy intelligently, it is important to know how the tradition began. Priests in the Roman Catholic Church were not always required to be celibate. In the early years of the Church, in fact, many priests were married, but the early Church Fathers spoke of sexual behavior itself as sinful and soon, in 306 A.D. at the Council of Elvira, the clergy were prohibited from marrying because it made them less "pure."
During the Dark Ages, starting in about 500 A.D., the unwritten rule was ignored and priests returned to marrying, or having mistresses, and then leaving church property to their children. This latter detail was significant. Many historians think this was the real reason for the celibacy rule. Losing church property was unacceptable to the hierarchy, and ultimately in 1139, at the Second Lateran Council, the first written law forbidding priests to marry was recorded. The rule has not changed since then, though today married Protestant ministers who wish to become Catholic are ordained as priests and allowed to remain married.
Today, most Catholics say they would find no problem with a married priesthood, and many would even be accepting of female priests. Many priests themselves are not opposed to a change in the rule. Yet the pope continues to insist on priestly celibacy, even though the rule has created many problems for the church. It has, for example, contributed to today's shortage of priests, and was a contributing reason to the mass exodus of priests in the seventies and eighties. Many of these men had been inspired by Vatican II's reforms and calls for social justice, and saw the priesthood as a calling to engage positively in society. After John XXIII's untimely death and the election of a more conservative pope, reforms were slowed, and these priests became increasingly unhappy with the Church's authoritarian limitations on them, including the continuing demand for celibacy. I know many priests who left the priesthood, and almost to a man they continue to work in fields where they live lives of service to others. They would have been good priests.
While the celibacy rule, as well as the rule that priests be male, has long been characterized as mandatory in order for priests to imitate Christ in every aspect, including his gender and unmarried status, it is probably more likely that the biggest impetus to the establishment of a celibacy rule was the need to protect church property in the relatively lawless society of the Middle Ages. Of course, with today's legal system, the church could easily allow priests to marry and still protect church property. Protestant churches protect their own property and they have married ministers. So we see that the Church today is like the housewife who cuts off the ends of the ham. While once the celibacy rule made some sense, it no longer does. Still, the Church continues to insist on the rule, not willing to acknowledge how much damage it has done over the years, including being a significant contributor to the sexual abuse scandal of the past decades.
But the bishops haven't just misdiagnosed the problem of their loss of moral authority. In an effort to regain that authority, they have opted for an entirely different strategy than correcting the underlying problem. They have decided to go on an anti-abortion crusade, which helps them distract people from the sins of their ordained men, and puts the focus back on the sins of women, something the church has always been good at.
We have seen over the past five years, and even more so in the past few weeks, an attempt on the part of American Catholic bishops to focus in their public statements almost exclusively on the issue of abortion, often creating controversy where none were necessary. Two manufactured controversies that come to mind are the bishops' outrage over the invitation extended to President Obama by Notre Dame to speak at its graduation and receive an honorary degree, and the ongoing refusal of communion by some bishops to Democratic politicians who are politically "pro-choice."
Jesuit Father Thomas Reese, writing in the Washington Post, says that a majority of American Catholics are ignoring the bishops in their protest over the Notre Dame invitation and in their admonitions regarding voting because "the problem is that the bishops stopped listening and teaching and started ordering and condemning. With an educated laity it no longer works to simply say, 'it is the teaching of the church.' This is the equivalent of a parent shouting, 'Because I said so.'
The bishops must persuade and convince with arguments, not by turning up the volume. When they resort to commanding and threatening punishments, people are turned off. Banning speakers, denying Communion, silencing theologians is a sign of weakness not strength. Censorship and violations of academic freedom come across as admissions that their arguments are not convincing and therefore the opposition must be silenced."
A majority of American Catholics are anti-abortion, but that doesn't mean they approve of the bishops' tactics. They welcomed Obama's presence at Notre Dame and they believe they should be able to vote for the candidates they think will best govern the country even if that politician wants abortion to remain legal.
The bishops objected to Notre Dame's invitation to Obama because they say Obama takes a position that is contrary to Catholic teaching. One wonders if that is the real reason. Interestingly, other presidents have spoken at Notre Dame, some who supported the death penalty and waged unjust wars, both opposed by the Church, but no objection was made by the bishops to their speeches and honorary degrees. No, the bishops have laid down their marker on abortion as the only issue over which they will protest a speaker at a Catholic university. It is the hot button emotional issue that they think will restore their moral authority.
In the past two presidential elections many, though not all, of the bishops also insisted that Catholics vote against the Democratic candidates who opposed criminalization of abortion solely because of that one position. Obviously, Catholics do not all agree with the bishops, as a majority voted for Obama, including this Catholic. And we do not agree because we do not think the bishops have the high ground here on abortion. In fact, we think they are completely mistaken in both their reasoning and their strategy if what they hope to achieve is a reduction in the number of abortions. We actually think this is an area where our position - to keep abortion legal but implement effective policies to reduce the numbers - makes more sense and will ultimately be more successful. (Certainly the strategy to reduce abortions through legal means has failed over the past 30 years.)
Getting back to our parable of misunderstanding, it is clear to me that the bishops, living a sheltered and constricted existence, and refusing to dialogue with anyone who disagrees with them, have concluded that the only way to regain their moral authority is to speak loudly against abortion and condemn any politician who does not promise to criminalize it. Thus they condemned Notre Dame and its president for inviting Obama. They made a serious miscalculation. I watched Obama's speech yesterday. His brilliant call for dialogue and mutual respect, his humility and reasonableness stood in stark contrast to the bishops' hard headedness. He seemed more Christ-like, more reluctant to condemn, more inclusive and gentle, and they seemed more like the Pharisees.
If the bishops really want to reduce the number of abortions in this country, rather than simply assert their authority, they would welcome the chance to hear from this president and speak with him. They would recognize that Obama is the first president in a long time who really wants to work to reduce the number of abortions (he has created a White House office solely dedicated to that goal) and to offer help to desperate pregnant women. They could use this opportunity to form a real partnership with him to help women rather than condemn them.
The bishops should realize that Obama's position is actually a common sense one. There are many things that are legal that the bishops also find immoral including the death penalty, war, divorce, greed, and according to the last administration, torture. And if they thought about it for a minute they would realize that making something illegal does not do one thing to stop people from doing it. Think drug abuse. Drugs have been illegal for years and yet the United States has among the highest rates of drug abuse - and incarceration for that behavior - in the world.
The Catholic Church is 2000 years old, and while it has a wonderful history of promoting good, it also has a sordid history: the Crusades, the Inquisition, the persecution of scientists, looking the other way during the Holocaust, and now the molestation of children. The Church is, like all human institutions, imperfect. It is also slow to learn, its leaders reluctant to humbly listen. While in recent years Popes have apologized for historical injustices like the Inquisition and the treatment of scientists such as Galileo, things that occurred five to ten centuries ago, one wonders how long it will take for them to admit the damage done as a result of their authoritarian practices, the celibacy rule and the abuse of children, and the lack of success in actually reducing the number of abortions because the bishops preferred condemnation of politicians to dialogue with them.
Yet throughout history, we see how slow the Church is to evolve and grow. The Church hierarchy always tries force before it realizes its error and starts to listen and lead more intelligently. Like the housewife, the bishops are going to keep cutting off the ends of the ham, maintaining practices and mindsets long after they have been proven unnecessary, senseless, and self-defeating.
All content © 2005 outragedcitizen.com
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