Purging a Monumental Evil.
Institutions that seek overtly to do good, or which require of their members an honesty and discipline which is very hard in life, often attract bad people to them. When those institutions, like the forces of the United Nations across the world, or the sundry departments associated with high-minded social work in the depths of human existence go wrong, they often cover up. Because those in their charge are at their most vulnerable, and because the repressed and the bad are often at their most powerful at such times, evil things can result.
Across the world, what might seem to some catholics like a frankly satanic attack on the church has been ongoing for years. It may seem to some that a secular media, and armies of secular lawyers, have been using the failings of the church to smear and attack it for a long time over the issue of the sexual abuses tolerated again and again in the church. It may well be that some, who think us judged in eternity and who live their lives in forgiveness, cannot see the wrong that has been done, and confuse the money that people gain as meagre compensation for motive.
They would be wrong.
Catholicism is founded on the absolute imperfectibility of human beings in a fallen world. But, over the past few decades, it has, rather than resigning itself to human failings and to evil, begun actively to stand in its best traditions. I would be foolish indeed to pretend that antisemitism was never a feature of my church, and worse than ignorant if I did not acknowledge its organic connection to fascism in the past.
The Second Vatican Council, and the new constitution that emerged from it, in my view began to purge the Church of some of the bad things of its past. I have been proud, though pride is a sin, of popes and their willingness to apologise for horrors done in our name or with our institutional consent in recent years.
Today's revelations in Ireland, however, show that, like the UN, and like all entities that were raised beyond family and local knowledge, the Church was guilty at the very least of covering up abuse; in fact, many acting in its name were guilty of the vile abuse of children and the limitation of lives.
I still love my church. I love its traditions, and I love its clarity and logic. I love its song, and its indifference to the race or class of the billion and a half of my brothers and sisters at mass. The men and women who sacrifice their lives for their beliefs and the good of others across the world, by taking holy orders, are worthy of the highest respect.
I think that the safeguards now in place, long long after they were necessary, to at least try and preclude evil men and women from perpetrating abuse, and the vigilance of congregations, are in some ways superior to what went before.
But I think that the purging has a long way to go. As someone who was called to the bar, I write with bias, but I am glad that the common law of tort gave rise to a responsibility to uphold a duty of care, and that breaches of that duty that led to the tragic waste and damage of lives and the refusal to acknowledge badness are now being exposed by lawyers. I hope that the institution of the church survives. Christ, and the message of the Church, will live in our hearts. The Holy See is not the Vatican.
Today, however, I am appalled by what was done in Ireland, and elsewhere, and I will pray for the victims. It is a mark of why my faith is worthwhile that it would require me to pray for the souls of the perpetrators of this vile evil too.
Institutions that seek overtly to do good, or which require of their members an honesty and discipline which is very hard in life, often attract bad people to them. When those institutions, like the forces of the United Nations across the world, or the sundry departments associated with high-minded social work in the depths of human existence go wrong, they often cover up. Because those in their charge are at their most vulnerable, and because the repressed and the bad are often at their most powerful at such times, evil things can result.
Across the world, what might seem to some catholics like a frankly satanic attack on the church has been ongoing for years. It may seem to some that a secular media, and armies of secular lawyers, have been using the failings of the church to smear and attack it for a long time over the issue of the sexual abuses tolerated again and again in the church. It may well be that some, who think us judged in eternity and who live their lives in forgiveness, cannot see the wrong that has been done, and confuse the money that people gain as meagre compensation for motive.
They would be wrong.
Catholicism is founded on the absolute imperfectibility of human beings in a fallen world. But, over the past few decades, it has, rather than resigning itself to human failings and to evil, begun actively to stand in its best traditions. I would be foolish indeed to pretend that antisemitism was never a feature of my church, and worse than ignorant if I did not acknowledge its organic connection to fascism in the past.
The Second Vatican Council, and the new constitution that emerged from it, in my view began to purge the Church of some of the bad things of its past. I have been proud, though pride is a sin, of popes and their willingness to apologise for horrors done in our name or with our institutional consent in recent years.
Today's revelations in Ireland, however, show that, like the UN, and like all entities that were raised beyond family and local knowledge, the Church was guilty at the very least of covering up abuse; in fact, many acting in its name were guilty of the vile abuse of children and the limitation of lives.
I still love my church. I love its traditions, and I love its clarity and logic. I love its song, and its indifference to the race or class of the billion and a half of my brothers and sisters at mass. The men and women who sacrifice their lives for their beliefs and the good of others across the world, by taking holy orders, are worthy of the highest respect.
I think that the safeguards now in place, long long after they were necessary, to at least try and preclude evil men and women from perpetrating abuse, and the vigilance of congregations, are in some ways superior to what went before.
But I think that the purging has a long way to go. As someone who was called to the bar, I write with bias, but I am glad that the common law of tort gave rise to a responsibility to uphold a duty of care, and that breaches of that duty that led to the tragic waste and damage of lives and the refusal to acknowledge badness are now being exposed by lawyers. I hope that the institution of the church survives. Christ, and the message of the Church, will live in our hearts. The Holy See is not the Vatican.
Today, however, I am appalled by what was done in Ireland, and elsewhere, and I will pray for the victims. It is a mark of why my faith is worthwhile that it would require me to pray for the souls of the perpetrators of this vile evil too.
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