I am going to do my very best not to offend anyone here.
Why do people continue to support organizations, such as the Catholic church, that have a long history of atrocities? I’m picking on Catholics because they are such a large group of people and because the history is so well known, not because I have any particular animosity toward them. I think the organization provides ample temptation for abuse of power. History has shown that this abuse does happen. And yet, millions of people continue to support the church.
Actually, I don’t know much about this. I hope I’m not showing glaring ignorance. I expect that there have been some changes in how the church organization runs. I want to know if Catholics know what has changed, if they care about it at all, and generally how they deal with people who criticize the atrocious historical incidents of the church.
To contrast, let me use the US government. Here is another organization where power was abused and atrocities were committed. I see that power still gets abused in the US government. Yet I still support them. I rationalize this by saying that the government changes continually and people work constantly to set up systems to prevent the abuse of power. I can vote or run for office myself if I want. So, though the government has problems, it’s not the same government that permitted slavery and people are constantly working to improve upon it. Also, it is partially my fault that it is the way it is and my duty to try to improve it.
Do Catholics justify their support of the church similarly? Or some other way entirely? Or do they not think the church has been involved with atrocities?
Why belong to a country club that at one time practiced discrimination? Why work for a company that at one time wouldn’t hire minorities or women for important positins? Why support a public school district that at one time required Negro children to attend separate schools?
Things change. Catholics certainly know about the abuses that led to the Protestant Reformation, and they know a great deal more about what the RCC calls the “counter-Reformation” than most Protestants. They know all about the institutionalized intolerance and persecution that I gather you are refering to.
They also know what the current situation is, and a lot of the more learned Catholics can give you a chronology of how things changed.
If you say that you can support the United States because it’s not the same bad old nation that did bad old things, you should be able to accept that other institutions can change similarly.
I’m not sure you’re going to get a LOGICAL answer on this one VileOrb. I certainly can’t give you one but, here’s what I can say:
Religion is very personal and deeply emotional. It’s my feeling that Catholics (and other religions, as well) do not use logic as a basis for support of their church. I left Catholicism behind ten years ago because I disagree SO much with what it stands for but, every now and then will find myself defending it just because it’s a part of who I am, my heritage.
Yes, I sort of figured that the Catholic church had changed. I hoped so anyway. I did note that indulgences were brought back for the Jubilee. Another temptation for abuse fo power rears it’s ugly head.
It’s the people who stick to the Catholic Church solely because of tradition etc. that I would like to wake up a bit here. For those that know how their church prevents further atrocities, I applaud them and hope that they will chime in with information to help me, but more to help the less informed Catholics. It’s the masses of blind followers that make massive abuses of power possible, and I’s like to keep that to a minimum. I am not ashamed that my knowledge ot Catholocism is limited because I am not Catholic. I have met catholics who know significantly less about their own church than I do.
Didn’t I just read something about a Catholic Bishop being excommunicated from the Church for distributing condoms? I know that there are movements within the church to make changes, I just don’t know how effective they are. Hijacking my own thread here, don’t you think that the Church should have no postion on contraception for recreational sex? They are against recreational sex. Why do they have to even comment that some particular aspect of recreational sexis an additional problem. Personally, I think that this position has created a large number of atrocities in the modern world. However, I cannot think of any personal agenda thatthis might have served, so I think it is the result of a mistake rather than corruption.
Back to the OP. Anyone out there with a good synopsis of what the Catholic Church has done to prevent corruption and abuses of power?
What about other organizations? Anyone out there support an organization with a bad reputation? Microsoft? Big Tobacco? Exxon? Hun Sen (Pol Pot’s successor)?
The RCC took the simplest route possible to prevent the sort of abuses that you have pointed out: it lost its temporal power. No pope or bishop can bring a country to its knees by calling for an ecclesistical interdiction that prevents other countries from trading with that country. The pope could call for a crusade today, but who would answer? Few countries are so overwhelmingly Catholic in their make-up that they have no pluralistic attitudes.
The RCC is now a religion like many others, a bit larger (and rather disorganized), but hardly a world power capable of dictating the actions of millions of people.
Some of the issues you brought up are not even issues of “abuse.” Indulgences are a theological concept with which Protestants are at odds in a complete setting of theological ideas over which Catholics and Protestants disagree. The selling of indulgences that irritated Martin Luther were wrong in the view of the Church even without Luther’s condemnation of the concept of indulgences. JP II’s reference to indulgences at the end of 1999 had nothing in it to fatten the coffers of the Church or to enrich local bishops. (The utterly cynical could point out that among the acts that could garner indulgences was giving to charity and that the RCC runs a lot of charitable organizations, however, I have never sen any of those charities make a profit and most need to dip into the general fund of the local diocese to get sufficient support.)
People who consider it “wrong” for the RCC to oppose abortion, birth control, or other acivities are simply declaring that their opinions on those subjects are better than those of the RCC. As practiced in the U.S., where people are allowed freedom of thought and expression, the opinions and judgements of the RCC are simply one more voice among many advocacy groups for many positions. This hardly qualifies as exercising abusive power.
There are enough issues in the OP to spawn multiple threads. I’ll attempt to address some of the issues noted.
The RCC has undergone significant changes over the last five centuries. The Second Vatican Council is just the most recent of times when significant changes were introduced.
The abuses of power by the RCC, especially at the height of its existence, have been acknowledged by the Church. The most morally reprehensible one that I recall is the Sack of Constantinople in 1204. It was horrible, brutal and lacked any basis as a “christian” action. The Latin Crusaders were merciless. From Warren Carroll in A History of Christendom
The Pope at the time, Innocent III, had forbidden this type of action against other christians with the threat of excommunication. He was not aware of the activities of the renegade crusaders. Theses things done in the name of Catholism even at that time were not deemed to be moral actions.
I don’t know where the information on the RCC’s supposed support of slavery came from (as mentioned in the other thread). As early as 1435 Pope Eugene IV condemned the enslavement of black natives of the Canary Islands, and ordered their masters to free the slaves under pain of excommunication. In 1537, Pope Paul III condemned the enslavement of West Indian and South American natives. Papal condemnations of slavery were repeated by Popes Gregory XIV (1591), Urban VIII (1639), Innocent XI (1686), Benedict XIV (1741), and Piux VII (1815).
In regards to Nazi Germany, the Historic context has changed greatly since the end of the war. Pope Pius XII upon his death was honored by no less than Golda Meir who stated
Rabbi Pinchas Lapide, a former Israeli diplomat, credited Pius XII and the Catholic Church with saving 860,000 Jews.
The Pope was basically a prisoner in the Vatican. The Vatican was surounded by the fascist armies. Every time the Pope spoke out, Catholics throught the occupied territories were further punished by the Germans. There are two sides to the critisim of Pius XII during those times.
Things aren’t always as they seem. I support the Church for what it is now and for what it can become. It is easy to overlook the many acts of charity and goodness in any organization and to concentrate on the negatives. As with many things, I believe that the good of the RCC far outweighs the bad.
So, the church cannot abuse power because it has none? Well, I think that there is less temptation for corruption because of the reduction of power. Perhaps that’s enough.
Most of my real problems with the modern church, like their stance on contraception, occur, I believe, when church officials make proclamations based on some bit of bible scripture or doctrine and fail to think about what effect it may have on society. For the faithful, there is an assumption that doctrine based on scripture will be a good thing. As an atheist. I don’t make that assumption and so am upset when the church makes proclamations that I see as damaging to society. I know that not all Catholics agree to all the doctrines of the RCC. Is there any method for the dissenting Catholics to make their position known without getting kicked out as a heretic?
It’s no less consistent for the RCC to have a stance on both birth control and “recreational” sex than it is for the courts to impose a harsher punishment for killing someone during a robbery than they would for a robbery alone. The church has a stance on pre and extra marital sex, and it has a stance on artificial birth control (they advocate natural family planning which means they aren’t officially opposed to married couple having sex for purposes other than conception). The issues can be seperated so it’s perfectly logical to have a stance on both.
I’d say switching masses to English (or whatever the applicable language of the particular parish is), having a much better educated congregation, having much more separation of church and state, and people having resources they can turn to outside of the church have all contributed to keeping it’s power in check. Plus churches and church officials are bound by the same laws (pretty much) as the general public. If I have a real problem with my local priest I can file a complaint with the parish. If nothing is done–I can access higher levels. There are formal channels that the average church member can go through. Those channels didn’t always exist.
When people say they like roman catholocism because of tradition it’s not necessarily blind and unquestioning. There’s the tradition of transfiguration which is simply not present in Protestant churches. There’s also traditions of providing charity, providing free counseling, etc. There’s also family traditions that may revolove around Catholicism. What’s wrong with being proud of good traditions within an organziation you’re part of?
It seems there’s this misconception that the RCC is this strict, ultra-conservative and unfathomable religion. But really, aside from sex issues which in my mind shouldn’t be the driving force for one’s religious beliefs, they’re allied more closely with liberal causes than conservative ones. And hey–at least they believe in evolution.
The more relaxed agenda of the Church could be coming to an end. There’s a good possibility of the College of Cardinals electing a pope who is loyal to Opus Dei, which could very well put Vatican II on the ropes. JPII is himself fairly well-disposed to Opus Dei, which should be a warning sign of sorts.
Then there are the clergy in Latin America-you want liberal…you should see the ones who work for human rights and the Jesuits and the like.
They were the only ones who could stand up to Pinochet and get away with it.
To expect any religion to decide its position based on something other than its doctrine is like expecting the ACLU to take a position based on something other than civil liberties.
Of course, Propaganda Due is a lightning rod for every half-baked crackpot who wants to tie the Vatican in as the real controlling power behind the Fascists, the Communists, the Jewish Bankers, and other odd assortments of 20th century villains.
(This is not to say that there has not been corruption, even recently, among men in the RCC hierarchy–and issues such as the Banco Ambrosio collapse are also real. However, most of the P-2 “reporting” out there is so full of tripe that it is more suited to boiling haggis than to providing useful information.)
I wasnt aware as a very lapsed catholic, that you can get kicked out easily as a heretic. AFAIK, it’s generally quite hard to get excommunicated, and you have to do some pretty serious offenses to get kicked out of the church. I seriously doubt voicing diagreements is going to cause the pope to kick you out.
Can TomNDebb or someone who is more versed in this kind of thing clarify?
Also: I would like to say that the strictness of the church varies where you are. The authority in the church has little to no control over parishoners and in my experience, people will tend to do and think what they want. I’ve also found that the conservativeness of priests vary. One of my monter’s friends who is a priest is quite liberal in his thinking (he chose one of the charities he helped found over the will of the bishop and got demoted from a parish priest for a few years).
Formal excommunications from the Church are rare. Even Cecil had a column on it. www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_242.html
Although it is the most severe punishment that can be issued by the RCC, it is meant to show the offender the errors of his ways and to hopefully bring them upon a path back to the church.
The Catholic Encyclopedia has a somewhat long explanation and history here: www.newadvent.org/cathen/05678a.htm
There are certain offences that may result in automatic excommunication from the RCC (i.e. procuring an abortion). Absolution from these offences may be obtained. Excommunication can always be absolved.
Of course, Vile Orb’s actual question could be reworded, How does one lodge a protest that gets some action?
The answer is, you generally don’t. The best way to push for change in the RCC is to write serious essays on problems faced by the church while being careful not to flagrantly offend anyone in power.
Examples in opposition would include Hans Küng and Richard McBrien. Küng spen the better part of 20 years documenting issues of the RCC’s self-perception, hammering away most frequently at Papal Infallibility. He was tolerated for a while, until he began to publicly declare that his opponents in academic debate and the Curia were obviously wrong. At that point, the Curia arranged to have him banned from teaching Theology at Catholic Universities. McBrien followed a similar path. He did not taunt his opponents in the manner that Küng did, but when one of his theses was declared “wrong” by Rome, he took the issue to the popular press–a standard tactic in American academia, but a death blow to someone trying to change the RCC. He too was declared ineligible to teach theology on a Catholic campus.
On the other hand, most of the changes that took place during the Second Vatican Council were ideas that had been kicking around the church for 40, 60, or 80 or more years. In those cases, each time an idea had been condemned in the 1940’s or 1920’s or earlier, the author had deferred to the wisdom of the church, then published the same idea from a totally different perspective. By the time of Vatican II, many of the ideas had been in circulation long enough to be acceptable.
tomndebb - Thank you again. I can feel my ignorance cringe in fear every time I see your name on a post.
I can see value in many of the traditions of the RCC. Also, I see that the RCC does change, however slowly, and that it is not entirely impossible for the general populace to influence that change.
It does sound to me like there is potential for problems because of the slow pace of change and the amount of effort it takes to influence that change. I can only hope that things in the future will go better than the predictions that I am seeing.