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	Paedophile Clergy Shun the 'Cost of Discipleship' The Nation May 8, 2010 http://www.nation.lk/2010/05/09/newsfe3.htm His own parents, he that had father'd him and she that had Conceived him in her womb and birth'd him, They gave this child more of themselves than that, They gave him afterward every day, they became part of him. ("There Was a Child Went Forth – Walt Whitman) Clergymen who sexually abuse children are those, whose spiritual treasury is filled with what Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls 'cheap grace' that is generated by the "official religion of doctrines, rites and institutions". Not a day passes without reports in the press that high-ranking clergymen have sexually abused young children in Europe and America. Can a child's parents, send him forth to a Church alone with any confidence? Why has this epidemic broken out? The purpose of this article is not to condemn the Catholic faith which in its core is congruent with the sublime faith taught and instilled in the minds of the faithful by Jesus Christ, but to show that institutional excesses that have clung to the hull of the Vatican luxury liner, like barnacles on the hull of a ship, have led to the permanent crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the Suffering Servant, the Son of Man (Mark 8: 31). The Catholic laity must understand that the Church is a human institution that is finite, fallible and subject to error. They not only have a duty to be critically loyal to the institutional Church but also to declare their preferential and unconditional loyalty to the person of Jesus Christ and thereby establish solidarity with the Church as the People of God. Since the Church traces its historical authenticity (apostolic succession) to the simple and humble fisherman Peter, who denied Jesus three times, it is time it realises that it cannot fill the gaps of human insufficiency with pomp and ritual grandeur (Mitre and Staff) and grand claims to infallibility. It should also be borne in mind that Jesus Christ did not choose his disciples from among the official priesthood (Levites) and that his humiliation, brutal crucifixion and death were engineered by the Chief Priest and the Sanhedrin. The moral of this story is that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Tower of Babel and exaggerated Ecclesial Power are of the same order: a show of unlimited ambition and a tilt of hubris in the face of God. Soren Kierkegaard once remarked that the two most powerful enemies of Christianity are un-reflective church-goers and Hegelians. Accepting the Catholic faith and rite, as I do, does not mean that Catholics must be subservient to the point of surrendering their critical faculties and the radar of their collective conscience. While they respect and honour clergymen in general and exult in the exemplary conduct of men like Bishops, Dom Helder Camara of Brazil, Oscar Romero of El Salvador, our own Bernard Regno (coolie bishop who laboured to serve plantation workers), and priests like Fr. Claude Lawrence, Justin Perera, Peter Pillai, Ignatius Pinto, Kingsley Jayamanne, Dalston Forbes and others, they have a right as lay believers to diagnose the reasons for the decline of the Church as a moral force. Let me now explain the relevance of Kierkegaard's reference to Hegelians. Hegel was a German philosopher who believed that Reason was the supreme principle, because as he said "all that's real is rational, and all that's rational is real." He called this total indivisible reality the Absolute or Absolute Spirit. He glorified the State as the complete embodiment of the Absolute Spirit. He drained humanity of the richness and warmth of particularity and life-assuring salve of natural affection. If we replace the term 'State with the term 'Church', we will see that Pope Benedict XVI, like Hegel, has drained Christianity of the warmth of the personality of Jesus Christ and his love for the finite human. From the time that he, as Cardinal Ratzinger, ruled the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, he has paid scant respect for the collegiality of Bishops and succumbed to the obsessive pre-occupation of savouring the power of the Papacy and the Roman Curia. Here are two examples of what I mean. One of the conditions laid down by Cardinal Ratzinger for the withdrawal of the order of excommunication passed on a priest, specified "religious submission of the will and intellect to the teachings, which either the Roman Pontiff or the college of Bishops enunciate in the exercise of their magisterium". The other is an example of a desiccating theology that relies more on verbal conceits than relevance to humanity, namely: "Similarly the doctrine of the faith regarding the unicity of the salvific economy willed by the one and Triune God must be firmly believed". (Dominus Jesus, Declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith). We need to set these statements against those made by other theologians, to realise how far Cardinal Ratzinger has veered away from the mission and teachings of Jesus Christ. One among them is the observation made by Edward Schillebeeckx in his work "Human Fulfilment in Christ'. "History teaches us that there has never been a perfect redemption, but that in Jesus there is a divine promise for us all, and that this is anticipated in any definitively valid act of doing good to our fellowmen in a finite and conditioned world in which love is always doomed to failure and yet nevertheless refuses to choose any other way than that of loving service. Christian belief in salvation from God in Jesus as the Christ is the downfall of any doctrine of salvation understood in human terms, in the sense of an identity which is within our control and therefore can be manipulated". From this we can see how "unicity of salvific economy" is a cerebrally manipulated concept that has no relevance to the life-enriching practice of Christianity. Structures bound with the mortar of pomp and power The memorable lecture delivered at Oxford, on June 29 1996, by the former Archbishop of San Fransisco, John Quinn on the occasion of the Campion Hall Centennial, provides a diagnosis of what has gone wrong with the Vatican (see Commonweal, July 12, 1996). Archbishop Quinn refers to Pope Adrian VI (1522-1523), a Dutchman, "who despised humanist elegance and called the carved treasures of antiquity, 'heathen idols' and attributed the state of the Church to the degeneracy of the Roman Curia". The Pope is in reality a 'primus inter pares' (first among equals) within the College of Bishops, as far as ecclesial authority goes. Archbishop Quinn states that the Curia, though it is designed to function as the administrative arm of the Pope, has arrogated to itself the status of an institution that is superior to the College of Bishops. He mentions that the English version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which was prepared and agreed on by an English-speaking task-force, was rejected by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith even though it was supported by English-speaking Cardinals. Few Catholics, whether priests or laymen, would know that the doctrine of papal infallibility was declared by Pope Pius IX as late as July 18, 1878, when my grandfathers lived in peaceful privacy. The thief of time has robbed my family archives but I remember my mother telling me that her father, my grandfather, rejected this doctrine outright. According to Archbishop Quinn, Cardinal Henry Newman "who expressed clear and principled objection to the opportuneness of the definition of papal infallibility and who spoke in strong condemnatory tones about the methods used by the pro-definition group", "is under consideration for canonization as a saint of the Catholic Church'. The scandal of sexual abuse and the need for reform The rule of celibacy for priests and the exclusion of women from serving in the priesthood are not based on dogma or doctrine. They are decisions taken by the Church for practical and historical reasons. They are subjects for endless debate without any conclusive grounds for a final determination. For men who are not naturally inclined to be single, celibacy will certainly be a nagging problem, because they are essentially human. In these circumstances those priests who wish to be released from the priesthood should be allowed to do so with every possible effort being made to relieve them of lingering guilt. The same principle should be applied in the case of indiscretions involving consenting adults, with the priest being admonished to manfully bear the responsibility for the fruits of such a union by contracting a legal marriage. In the latter instance sending the priest abroad and leaving a woman in the lurch is an affront to the spirit of Christianity. Sexual abuse of children is not only an infraction of religious law, but a criminal offence. It is a perverse abomination that involves an abuse of ecclesial power. Attempts to cover up these incidents by transferring priests or bishops to other stations are premeditated crimes. The hierarchy from the Pope downwards cannot share the power of God. They have limited authority derived from the earthly mission of Jesus Christ but this authority involves what Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls the 'Cost of Discipleship'. The following extract demonstrates what Bonhoeffer meant. "And here, said Bonhoeffer, is the essential truth about Jesus Christ, that He 'lived in deputyship for us as the Incarnate Son of God, and since 'His living, His action and His dying was deputyship,' in Him we have the responsible person par excellence': 'in Him there is fulfilled what the living, the action and the suffering of men ought to be' ". (Quoted by Nathan Scott Jr. from Bonhoeffer's 'Ethics', in 'Faith and Art in a World Awry'). The lure of power has enticed career-churchmen to the episcopate. This has resulted in the wrong men being appointed bishops: the criteria of choice being blind conservatism and cringing obedience. What celibates need is not enclosed space to exercise power but the wide open field where natural affection, the warmth of mutuality, understanding and empathy prevail as a consoling element in the human predicament. I was disturbed by the following reckless statement made by the Pope's personal preacher, "As the pope listened in a hushed St. Peter's Basilica, Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa likened accusations against the pontiff and the Catholic Church in sex abuse scandals in Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere to "collective violence" suffered by the Jews. (Frances D'Emilio, Associated Press Writer). This I must say is a foolish statement that merely indicates the Church's determination to defend its territory at any cost. It has not only offended the Jews but also caused disillusionment among Catholics and cynical rebuke by non-Christians. The practice of Christianity demands that the Church faces truth, however embarrassing it may be, and takes steps to avoid wrongdoing in a spirit of humble sincerity
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