Though the Catholic Church and I have resolutely parted ways, I can admit there's a Catholic shaped hole in my "soul." That's why when asked I'll still say I'm "ethnically Catholic." If it weren't for the monstrosity of its crimes — institutional complicity in the rape of children — I can imagine a world with a few different breaks in which I am a Liberation Theology-spouting, local pastor-bothering, Democratic-voting, member of the Roman Church's lefty fringe. Of course, the institution has also done everything possible since Second Vatican to drive folks like that away.
So I'm fascinated in what the Old Firm is up to as it picks a new CEO, and I've followed the coverage closely. I've found the tone a bit frustrating — in 2005, when it had been almost 30 years since the last time it happened, there was a need to go over the details. About locking up in the Sistine Chapel, voting in Latin, the threaded ballots, the chimney. And the searching coverage what may or may not be happening amongst the "Roman" and the "Reform" cardinals is also annoying, the same kind of horse race election coverage we have to put up with on election years.
The issue is that there is no actual information out there, but it still must be covered. But that doesn't mean you can't think beyond the obvious narratives, especially when it isn't working. We hear over and over how the Church is in "crisis." That would be a grant opportunity to really dig into how things are — all the "papabile" cardinals have positions on sex abuse and financial mismanagement and corruption within the Curia. Why not try to explain it? because that would be dull and depressing.
And the joke is on everyone because just like the previous conclave, this one will be anticlimactic. If you want to bet, just look at the record which, conveniently, goes back centuries. My grandmother used to say about things that are obvious, "Is the Pope Italian?" I grew up under John Paul II, so that didn't make sense to me. What she meant, of course, is that the Pope was always Italian, except for this strange 30-odd year omission that the Italians are probably sore about. So draw your own conclusions.
But the occasion of a conclave is a great chance to ask more questions, and I've been unimpressed with the ones Catholics seem to be having with themselves. There is a great urge to not ask too many questions. For example, I am personally outraged that Benedict XVI welshed on his deal. The reason John Paul II hung on for so long, and allowed his weak, drooling half-corpse to be dragged around the world was to make a very important Catholic point about the value of suffering and duty. It was "Christ-like." Of course, that's complete sado-masochistic medieval nonsense, but that's the Church's logic and good for him for sticking to it.
For Benedict to quit was cowardly and hypocritical. Should a frail old man be allowed to leave his demanding job for a quiet life of contemplation and prayer? Absolutely. But if you stubbornly cling to your dogmas, presume to push them on others, at least have the decency to be consistent. If you can't budge from your position that condoms cause AIDS, or tone down your hatred of gay people, or care a bit more for living humans rather than fetal tissue, then no, get back in the chair. Your worldly job ain't done yet.
No surprise that television in particular loves the pomp and ceremony of what going on. In all coverage of costumes and strange languages, it feels a little like the way they would cover a Unification Church mass wedding or some such. It is a weird exotic ritual that foreigners get up to. And many are bitching that it is a waste of time and resources on cable television that could be devoted to the next round of sequester posturing or musing over who will run in 2016.
Certainly you can dismiss and mock it, or you could consider that this is an unbroken tradition handed down for twenty centuries that has been a major underpinning of Western civilization (for better and for worse). Many critics, and many former Catholics, begrudge the church its opulence, the fancy costumes and the ceremony. But rubbish, that's what's great about it. This, by its own logic, again, is the Kingdom of God on earth. This represents some other plane of existence, it damned well better be fancy.
Last year around this time I was pottering around Italy, and of course spent many hours in churches in Venice and Florence. And the stirrings in my old Catholic soul were very great. What, I wonder, would my life have been like if my parish church was the Church of Madonna dell'Orto in the Cannaregio district of Venice rather than Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in the Polish neighborhood of Easthampton, Massachusetts. If I had grown up staring at Tintoretto's monumental "Last Judgment" rather than a dingy replica of Our Lady of Czestochowa, and some of those awful pastel-colored reproductions of the life of Christ. Even in elementary school I knew it was cheap. I realize that's not supposed to matter, but you know, it does. It seems like an accurate reflection of the scale of the matter that the cardinals are meeting beneath Michelangelo's "Last Judgment," a painting that many humans would recognize on sight.
I would like to think that the the idea of a conclave worked. These men who rose to the top of the Church should be worthy, it all worked correctly — and god knows Cardinal Timothy Dolan only has to open his mouth to realize it doesn't. They should be wise and humble, and by meeting in prayer and with good hearts, the Holy Spirit should guide them to choose the best of them for this great task. He would don the white robes in a spirit of service and humility.
Wouldn't that be something? And it isn't even a very well-concealed fact that it's all smoke and mirrors. As Gary Wills neatly observes in the New York Review of Books blog, St. Peter, the alleged first pontiff, wasn't even a priest, let alone a pope (and the fact Jesus picked him of all people to be in charge says a lot of about mortal frailty). The Church's positions are not eternal, but evolved through centuries of debate and argument and back-biting.
Many former Catholics I know have nothing but scorn for the Church and how it thinks, but I don't. I can look back with forbearance on our middle school principal, who lectured us for an hour a week on the horror of abortion in graphic detail. I can forgive poor old Sister Mary Presentia, my fifth-grade teacher who instructed us that pinching was known to cause cancer, and my fourth-grade teacher, Sister Mary Veronica, who I am unable to remember speaking in a not angry tone of voice.
The world "Catholic" comes from the Greek, "katholikos," which means roughly "universal." The Church — once again, by its own logic — is supposed to include me, to have room for liberal believers in science and modern health care. We are supposed to be in conversation as one great flock under one resurrected king.
But obviously, the institutional church has had more than a little trouble with that noble idea, going back well before 1517. It's just another corrupt institution of corrupt men, whose ignorant and mean-spirited stubbornness causes real harm to people all over the world. Its fancy, ancient heritage is a fabrication. Its crimes against humanity are too real and monstrous to dismiss.
But for all that, still I could be one of the millions of Catholics who believe one thing and ignore what the institution of the Church is up to. But to do that would require feeling some stirring inside, which I don't feel. That is another story.
So I'm fascinated in what the Old Firm is up to as it picks a new CEO, and I've followed the coverage closely. I've found the tone a bit frustrating — in 2005, when it had been almost 30 years since the last time it happened, there was a need to go over the details. About locking up in the Sistine Chapel, voting in Latin, the threaded ballots, the chimney. And the searching coverage what may or may not be happening amongst the "Roman" and the "Reform" cardinals is also annoying, the same kind of horse race election coverage we have to put up with on election years.
The issue is that there is no actual information out there, but it still must be covered. But that doesn't mean you can't think beyond the obvious narratives, especially when it isn't working. We hear over and over how the Church is in "crisis." That would be a grant opportunity to really dig into how things are — all the "papabile" cardinals have positions on sex abuse and financial mismanagement and corruption within the Curia. Why not try to explain it? because that would be dull and depressing.
And the joke is on everyone because just like the previous conclave, this one will be anticlimactic. If you want to bet, just look at the record which, conveniently, goes back centuries. My grandmother used to say about things that are obvious, "Is the Pope Italian?" I grew up under John Paul II, so that didn't make sense to me. What she meant, of course, is that the Pope was always Italian, except for this strange 30-odd year omission that the Italians are probably sore about. So draw your own conclusions.
But the occasion of a conclave is a great chance to ask more questions, and I've been unimpressed with the ones Catholics seem to be having with themselves. There is a great urge to not ask too many questions. For example, I am personally outraged that Benedict XVI welshed on his deal. The reason John Paul II hung on for so long, and allowed his weak, drooling half-corpse to be dragged around the world was to make a very important Catholic point about the value of suffering and duty. It was "Christ-like." Of course, that's complete sado-masochistic medieval nonsense, but that's the Church's logic and good for him for sticking to it.
For Benedict to quit was cowardly and hypocritical. Should a frail old man be allowed to leave his demanding job for a quiet life of contemplation and prayer? Absolutely. But if you stubbornly cling to your dogmas, presume to push them on others, at least have the decency to be consistent. If you can't budge from your position that condoms cause AIDS, or tone down your hatred of gay people, or care a bit more for living humans rather than fetal tissue, then no, get back in the chair. Your worldly job ain't done yet.
No surprise that television in particular loves the pomp and ceremony of what going on. In all coverage of costumes and strange languages, it feels a little like the way they would cover a Unification Church mass wedding or some such. It is a weird exotic ritual that foreigners get up to. And many are bitching that it is a waste of time and resources on cable television that could be devoted to the next round of sequester posturing or musing over who will run in 2016.
Certainly you can dismiss and mock it, or you could consider that this is an unbroken tradition handed down for twenty centuries that has been a major underpinning of Western civilization (for better and for worse). Many critics, and many former Catholics, begrudge the church its opulence, the fancy costumes and the ceremony. But rubbish, that's what's great about it. This, by its own logic, again, is the Kingdom of God on earth. This represents some other plane of existence, it damned well better be fancy.
Last year around this time I was pottering around Italy, and of course spent many hours in churches in Venice and Florence. And the stirrings in my old Catholic soul were very great. What, I wonder, would my life have been like if my parish church was the Church of Madonna dell'Orto in the Cannaregio district of Venice rather than Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in the Polish neighborhood of Easthampton, Massachusetts. If I had grown up staring at Tintoretto's monumental "Last Judgment" rather than a dingy replica of Our Lady of Czestochowa, and some of those awful pastel-colored reproductions of the life of Christ. Even in elementary school I knew it was cheap. I realize that's not supposed to matter, but you know, it does. It seems like an accurate reflection of the scale of the matter that the cardinals are meeting beneath Michelangelo's "Last Judgment," a painting that many humans would recognize on sight.
I would like to think that the the idea of a conclave worked. These men who rose to the top of the Church should be worthy, it all worked correctly — and god knows Cardinal Timothy Dolan only has to open his mouth to realize it doesn't. They should be wise and humble, and by meeting in prayer and with good hearts, the Holy Spirit should guide them to choose the best of them for this great task. He would don the white robes in a spirit of service and humility.
Wouldn't that be something? And it isn't even a very well-concealed fact that it's all smoke and mirrors. As Gary Wills neatly observes in the New York Review of Books blog, St. Peter, the alleged first pontiff, wasn't even a priest, let alone a pope (and the fact Jesus picked him of all people to be in charge says a lot of about mortal frailty). The Church's positions are not eternal, but evolved through centuries of debate and argument and back-biting.
Many former Catholics I know have nothing but scorn for the Church and how it thinks, but I don't. I can look back with forbearance on our middle school principal, who lectured us for an hour a week on the horror of abortion in graphic detail. I can forgive poor old Sister Mary Presentia, my fifth-grade teacher who instructed us that pinching was known to cause cancer, and my fourth-grade teacher, Sister Mary Veronica, who I am unable to remember speaking in a not angry tone of voice.
The world "Catholic" comes from the Greek, "katholikos," which means roughly "universal." The Church — once again, by its own logic — is supposed to include me, to have room for liberal believers in science and modern health care. We are supposed to be in conversation as one great flock under one resurrected king.
But obviously, the institutional church has had more than a little trouble with that noble idea, going back well before 1517. It's just another corrupt institution of corrupt men, whose ignorant and mean-spirited stubbornness causes real harm to people all over the world. Its fancy, ancient heritage is a fabrication. Its crimes against humanity are too real and monstrous to dismiss.
But for all that, still I could be one of the millions of Catholics who believe one thing and ignore what the institution of the Church is up to. But to do that would require feeling some stirring inside, which I don't feel. That is another story.
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