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	The Catholic Church Is in Crisis, but It Is Still Able to Influence and Inspire By Madeleine Bunting The Guardian September 6, 2010 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/sep/06/pope-catholic-church-crisis-uk A wise priest advised me a long time ago never to go near the engine room – the Vatican. Keep well away, he warned. I've always followed his advice. This priest was a man of immense humanity – warm-hearted, gentle, humble and radical in his interpretation of the Catholic faith. But he has long since died so I have no one to advise me what you do when all the papal panoply of pomp and authority comes to visit, as it will do next week. As someone who took the decision six months ago to withdraw from the Catholicism I was brought up with, I'm bracing myself for an uncomfortable few days. I suspect it will be rather like those excruciating moments when a rather loud elderly relative turns up at the wedding. Given the sluggish response on ticket sales for the papal events, perhaps there are plenty inside the Catholic church as well as outside who are similarly unconvinced that they want to spend too much time with this German theologian. He may be intellectually brilliant, but he has been remarkably clumsy – and that is putting it charitably – in handling a raft of issues, from the sex abuse scandals, women's ordination, through to relations with Anglicanism and Islam. That has re-energised the anti-Catholicism that has long been an unpleasant undercurrent in British culture; Guy Fawkes and bonfire night are remnants of the deep distrust and hostility with which Catholics have been regarded. But in recent years, this old tradition has gathered new purpose – one can presume the visit will prompt some noisy protests, at least that is what we have been promised by a range of critics from Peter Tatchell to Richard Dawkins. Many of the accusations levelled at the Catholic church have substance. This is a church in crisis in the developed world. Outside its huge growth areas in Africa and Asia, it has been badly damaged by the scandal of priests sexually abusing children. In a new poll commissioned by the Catholic weekly the Tablet, more than half (55%) of Catholics thought the sex abuse issue had been badly handled; only 11% were satisfied by the response. The sex abuse scandals are deeply shocking to Catholics because they strike at the core of the institution's structure: the authority of the priesthood and the deference of the laity. It was not that the incidence of child abusers was higher among the priesthood, but that priests had far more opportunity to reach vulnerable children, and the church's preoccupation with avoiding scandal ensured they were not punished. The wider problem for Catholicism is that the sex abuse scandal over the last decade and a half has coincided with a broader social phenomenon – the end of deference. A model of institutional authority is imploding. The majority of Catholics under 50 no longer expect priests, or even a pope, to give them moral instruction. Teachings on contraception, remarriage and homosexuality are simply ignored. Timothy Radcliffe, former head of the Dominican order, says the model of what the church is and how it operates is not working any more. He traces the difficulties back to the Counter-Reformation; from the maelstrom of Reformation Europe, a militant Catholicism emerged with a great emphasis on obedience and conformity. It is this model of church that is now struggling. "It's creaking and groaning at the moment," he says. Congregations are simply voting with their feet; mass attendance in England and Wales in 1991 was 1.3 million, a drop of 40% since 1963, and by 2004 it had fallen to 960,000. Catholic weddings fell by 25% in the 10 years up to 2007, twice the national rate of decline. The number of priests fell by a quarter in 20 years (1985-2005), and the rate of decline is expected to accelerate, given their demographic profile. This last is hugely significant – no one really knows what happens to a church whose rituals and structure are premised on plenty of priests when the supply dries up. My generation grew up in the rosy afterglow of Vatican Council II, when an extraordinary new energy and optimism had been unleashed in the Church. Latin had finally been abandoned, women gave up wearing the black lace mantilla to church, a new generation of enthusiastic priests arrived in parishes. As one wise old monk told me recently, Rome was abuzz with ideas and debate. In 1969, he remembered, a cardinal stood up in front of his peers and issued a rallying cry for the church to reform itself, identifying its three perennial problems as legalism, clericalism and triumphalism. It was a brave and accurate analysis then, but what followed in the next decades was the closing down of debate in response to a terrible fear of fragmentation. Successive popes, including the current incumbent, put the unity of the institution above all other priorities. The hatches were battened down. All the debates that have torn the Anglican communion apart in recent years have gone underground in the Catholic church: it's a moot point which is the most effective way for a religious institution to deal with challenge. Both carry a punishingly high cost in terms of authority, credibility and, most important, the affection and loyalty that sustains an institution's life. It's easy to criticise Catholicism – and plenty do so. But I have no inclination to join that chorus of contempt, even if I have lost faith in the institution. Deeply flawed it may be, but it is an extraordinary institution that has communicated a set of ideals over two millenniums. I have met dozens of remarkable people who ground their great compassion in its traditions and rituals. I have seen and heard people describe how it has made meaning of their frustrations and tragedies, helping shape the story of their lives. We live in a time when such things are little understood but sorely missed. The Catholic church has always struggled to live up to its idealism, but its own failures don't compromise its conviction in their truth: the unique worth of each human being, divinely created. It has always balanced the subversive radicalism of this belief with its own quest for power and authority; at different times in different places, one wins out over the other. A global institution a billion strong will always be riddled with paradox and contradictions. While it has failed on many fronts to engage with social change – the position of women or a reappraisal of its attitudes to sexuality – in other areas it has been strikingly successful. The papacy has been a powerful critic of the arms trade, war, global inequality. Above all, the church has mounted a powerful intellectual critique of capitalism for more than a century, challenging its inequality and instrumentalisation of human beings as a means to achieve profit. Curiously, this tradition is feeding into British politics more directly than ever before – both the Red Tory Philip Blond and Labour's favourite new speechwriter Maurice Glasman acknowledge its influence. So the Catholic church may be down, but it's not out. It still has the capacity to influence and inspire. Its current predicament provokes huge questions about how religious faith is being transformed by modernity – its institutions stretched to breaking point. While the pope may be a rather awkward visitor, he deserves a hearing.
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