‘Religion has given rise to destruction and violence.’
This opinion is commonplace and seems so obviously true that it needs no proof. In the face of this certainty, Catholics may feel awkward. For my part, I do not believe it to be true and I marvel at the simplistic judgements passed by some of our contemporaries on history.
I marvel at the lack of historical awareness or serious research behind their judgements. If you were to read a survey of historical scholarship on the crusades like Norman Houseley’s Contesting the Crusades, you would become aware of the varying interpretations of historical events.
You would also be aware that history has been used to further confessional and ideological concerns; I would suggest and shall try to demonstrate in future articles that some of those things we take for granted vis-à-vis the Crusades and the Inquisition are contestable.
I think that the caution expressed by the International Theological Commission (ITC) in its Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past is salutary: past events are ‘not completely reducible to the framework of the present, but possess an objective density and complexity that prevent them from being ordered in a solely functional way for present interests’.
The caution which historical study requires does not mean that we should not make judgements about the past, just that we should take care when doing so – hard work is needed.
Even as we acknowledge past failures, we should not neglect the heroic witness and faithfulness of past generations. Did you see the episode of Elders on the ABC in which Fr Des Reid was interviewed? His story is an eloquent witness – it is a story of weakness and grace or, rather, grace in weakness.
It is a story one finds writ oft in the history of the Church. Pope Pius XI, in his 1937 encyclical letter to the German Bishops and people condemning the atheistic-pagan ideology of Nazism, acknowledged that the Church’s divine mission, carried out as it is by frail human beings, may be obscured by human sinfulness.
The Church must be clear about sin when it is committed, but he goes on to write that to ignore ‘the overwhelming sum of authentic virtues, of spirit of sacrifice, fraternal love, heroic efforts of sanctity’ is to be blind and unjust.
And if the person who hates the Church and judges her harshly does not apply the same exacting standard to other institutions, ‘then his appeal to an offended sense of purity identifies him with those who, for seeing the mote in their brother’s eye, according to the Saviour’s incisive words, cannot see the beam in their own’ (Mit brennender Sorge).
The words of Pope Piux XI are as relevant now as they were then. In considering the issue of violence, those who criticise the Church should be willing to focus the same, unforgiving light on other institutions and on themselves.
These critics, in laying the blame for violence at the feet of religion, appear to ignore the terrible destruction and bloodshed that atheistic regimes have inflicted on the world. Nazism in Germany, Communism in the USSR, Pol Pot’s murderous regime in Cambodia and Hutu power ideology in Rwanda have brought about a loss of life unimaginable in previous centuries. As I hope to explore, the Gospel as well as inspiring virtue has also tempered violence through history. Do you not wonder at the self-righteous indignation of those who inveigh against the evils of the past? Who are we to gaze on past generations from the vertiginous heights of moral superiority? How many wars have modern, secular democracies, including Australia, waged? How many people are dying as I write, dying in Iraq, Afghanistan and so many other places around the world? Are we too ready to see the mote in our brother’s eye and ignore the plank in our own?
To criticise the Church for the sinfulness of its members is to misunderstand the nature of the Christian family. We Christians do not claim to be better than everyone else.
Jesus tells us that he did not come to call the perfect, but sinners. Cardinal Ratzinger in a 2003 interview (tinyurl.com/yfl8cls) said that out of the sea we pull not only fish, but detritus; in the field of the Church there are weeds as well as wheat.
Indeed, he went on, the choice of St Peter indicates that we should not expect the Popes to be saints, but sinners!
Three years earlier in a press conference, Cardinal Ratzinger recalled the words of Cardinal Consalvi who, being informed of Napoleon’s wanting to destroy the Church, said, ‘He will never succeed; we have not managed to do it ourselves.’ We are sinners but it is not the Gospel which inspires or causes our sinfulness; it calls us to turn from our sins and follow Jesus; the Gospel saves us from our sinfulness.
Our critics may not be convinced by history or argument, but we need not fear their judgement. Our judge is the Word of the living God. This Word calls us continually to repentance and to a change of mind and heart.
The Archbishop of Dublin, facing up to the failures of the past in his Christmas Midnight Mass homily, spoke not only of the need for transparency and of new structures, but also of hope and renewal: ‘What are the Church’s mechanisms of renewal?
They must begin by turning again to the word of God. God reveals himself in Jesus as the Word, the concrete expression of who God is.’ In every age we turn again to God’s Word, Jesus Christ, whose new creation the Church is. This Word is the life of the Church and the hope of the world.