St. Augustine's Challenge

Recently I received an essay from a dear old friend by Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. He raised a question by St. Augustine, who asked the Donatists, "Wherefore have you separated yourselves?" In response I ask myself now: Why have I separated myself from the Roman Catholic Church?

It seems a sin of pride to have done so. Who am I to judge the church?
I have set down some of my reasons here as well as I can express them. They represent personal hurts, grievances. I feel deep personal pain because of these realities. I am pretty sure there are thousands, perhaps millions, who feel the pain as well and even more deeply, who have yet stayed with the church.
It was just more comfortable for me to go back to the church I belonged to before I became a Catholic. I can’t really justify the choice. It seemed the right thing to do because in conscience I do not agree with some of the Catholic teachings, and the Vatican seemed to want us to leave who do not agree. My local bishop agreed with me also that I should leave since I do not agree and made clear I was welcome to come back should I come again into agreement.

These are my objections and areas of disagreement.

1. The grave hypocrisy of the Church in this age. And the great cover-up.
The dearest wish of a child abused and made a slave is to die. Yet the church has preached ad nauseum that abortion is the gravest sin, turning its back on these victim children who wish they had never been born. The stench of these horrendous priestly crimes against children continues to rise in the air all over the world, even though the Church has begun to work for justice for victims and to repent of its sins in ignoring and covering up these crimes.

I believe that Christian ethics has yet to deal adequately with the relative evil in the act of murder and the act of torture. A quick, clean murder is less evil in my value system than torture of a victim under one’s power over a period of time. This is a profound evil which damages the victim for life, even making life itself a burden for the one tortured and resulting sometimes in the victim’s suicide.
Child sexual abuse is a form of torture and is often accompanied by other forms of torture. When this is done by a pastor or priest, the damage is even greater to a child because the pastor or priest represents God. The child grows up with the unconscious belief that God is sadistic. It often requires years of hard work in therapy to change this perception. This is a dreadful kettle of fish. The church speaks rather lightly, I think, of providing “counseling” for the victims, because this is no light matter. Therapy itself is a long and hard road that doesn’t always turn out as successfully as hoped.
These injustices occurred at the highest level of the Vatican and so I believe the very authority of the Church is broken.

2. The Vatican as the great liability of the Church
The Vatican is as full of intrigue, corruption, and secrecy as the most evil of governments. This comment is relevant to the first point and to following points. It is seminal to other sins not mentioned that the Vatican has committed against humanity.

3. Cardinal Ratzinger who acted as pope before he was elected
I left the church once before because of the great hypocrisy and the great cover-up at the local level. Deeply hurt, I was enraged for some years, but I came to understand that I needed to forgive personal hurts in the matter and no longer regard priests as better than the rest of us. I longed to come back to the sacraments and so I returned. I began to become more aware of the problem with the Vatican’s rejection of women as equal servants, yet I stayed. I was happy in the church until Cardinal Ratzinger began issuing troubling edicts.

It began with the edict in the mid 1990’s that said Catholics who do not adhere to the teachings of the entire Magisterium are not in full communion with the Church. This applied to tens of thousands of American Catholics and put me in a difficult position of conscience although it didn’t seem to bother other Catholics. My pastor seemed to think it shouldn’t matter to me. I learned that Cardinal Ratzinger wrote this edict and that he seemed to think he was the pope. I stayed on, but I began feeling discomfort at the points of doctrine with which I did not agree.
A few years later, Cardinal Ratzinger began issuing instructions on how we American Catholics were to vote and instructions that some Catholic candidates for office should not be served Holy Communion This was the last straw for me. Women did not get the right to vote in this nation until after my mother was born. I will not be told how to vote. John F. Kennedy became President because he promised the American people that the Vatican would have no influence on his presidential decisions. How things have changed, and all because of Roe vs. Wade, while priests and bishops were being allowed to continue abusing children in secret.

4. Not only has the Church failed children, but it has failed women by denying them ordination.
The defense for this decision, that Christ appointed no women as apostles, is pure poppycock. To add salt to the wounds, the Church has forbidden that the matter even be discussed further in public. To pour acid on top of the salt, I have read that the Vatican is all but persecuting women’s religious orders here in the USA.
It is likely that abuse of children and forbidding power to women are linked. An all-male Vatican is not a healthy thing. This is the good old boy network to beat all of them.

5. I came to the conclusion long ago that the Church’s teaching on human sexuality is flawed.
The roots of this teaching are somewhat obscure and have little foundation, like the foundation for denying ordination to women. In Catholic tradition there has been a grave suspicion of women as automatic temptresses. Furthermore, the notion is taught that any sexual desire must necessarily contain “concupiscence” which is automatically sinful. Although the Church has elevated the moral status of marriage in recent years, the stain on sexual desire even within marriage remains. This “concupiscence” is the reason the Blessed Virgin could not possibly have partaken of any sexual activity. She had to be a perpetual virgin because she had to be sinless. I believe it is Catholic doctrine that God created no evil. All that is, is good. Yet the church teaches that it is impossible to indulge in sexual desire or activity without the sin of concupiscence. This is simply illogical and untrue to human experience.

It has taken a long while for the Church to make peace with scientific discovery. Although the Church now begins to accept that homosexuality, at least in “some” instances, is genetic in cause, yet the homosexual is expected to live in permanent celibacy, as indeed anyone is expected to do who is not married. This ideal of celibacy forbids all sexual behavior of any sort. This is perhaps a beautiful if medieval ideal, but it is highly unrealistic.

A great many gay and lesbian people feel that God made them the way they are; that God doesn’t make mistakes; and many of them would like to live in monogamous family relationships. If they do so, they do not detract from good marriages between men and women. I can see no good reason for the Church to deny them.

I can see no logic at all in the ban on “artificial” birth control, particularly when abortion is seen as the greatest evil, and birth control would tend to prevent abortions.

Waiting

I know that Catholics who have serious objections are to wait and pray, waiting for the Holy Spirit to show the way and the light. We are to wait for matters to be resolved in time within Holy Mother Church.

I see absolutely no sign that the Vatican is going to change in any way, other than attempting to correct the injustices of the great cover-up and doing much to prevent child abuse in the future. I commend them for this. I commend the Pope for disciplining one of the worst sexual offenders as soon as he ascended to the papacy; however, I understand this perpetrator still lives free and he could well be continuing to abuse children.

If the Vatican will ever change regarding women, it changes too slowly. It has changed too slowly regarding children’s rights. It isn’t likely to change its teachings on sexuality. It still has not changed its prohibition of artificial birth control. I say the authority of the church is broken. It is no wonder that the tragedy of the Reformation occurred, if it was a tragedy.

I shudder to think how bad things could be had the Reformation never occurred. I would not want to see the patriarchs of the Greek Church, the bishops of Episcopal and Methodist churches, the Presbyterians, etc., all come into subjection to the Vatican. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is not a Biblical truth, but how often it proves true. The Holy Spirit may keep the church from error, but God has certainly not kept the church from committing atrocities in the name of Christ. It is true that other churches and church groups have committed similar and equally horrible atrocities through their history. With combined strength, these could only get worse. Structural unity, vesting even more power in the Vatican, might well lead to evil effects. Every government should try to seek first to do no harm. Perhaps some harm is inevitable. We are a sorry lot, and I am as sorry as anyone else. But the attempt should be made to first do no harm and then to do good. Democratic forms of government, though very imperfect, offer at least checks and balances.

The brokenness of the church is the human tragedy. I cannot justify my contributing to its brokenness. I don’t know what to do about it either.

The human condition has become ethically murkier with increased knowledge and power through science to do what was in the past only envisioned in science fiction. Difficult ethical issues are surfacing. Change is rapid, and the Church probably needs to be slow in her consideration, but perhaps not as slow as she is to respond to human needs.


So this is my confession. I am at home in the democratic and sacramental Episcopal Church where women and gays and refugees and all manner of people are accepted and welcomed warmly. We are headed toward still more division, it would seem, from the Anglican communion because of this inclusivity. I would rather err on the side of inclusivity than on the side of exclusivity. This seems to me more in keeping with the Gospels. It is sad, however, that another break in the Body of Christ may be looming ahead.

I believe Christ allows his church to be broken as he allowed himself to be broken. The church is broken because we are broken. We are comfortable with our own kind where we fit in, and so there are many imperfect tents in imperfect communion where we worship differently and believe differently according to our diverse needs. The Pentecostal needs to express intense emotion in worship while more formal personalities need more structure. He accommodates our brokenness and gives himself to us on our terms. What great love he has for us. I believe he sees us as one even when we don’t see ourselves as one. He probably thinks our differences are childish but he honors them. On the other hand, he may regard us with our differences as he does his entire and gloriously diverse creation. He said it is good. That they may be one may have meant a oneness that we cannot even imagine. Love is certainly the chief component of oneness. So let us love one another, for God is love.