The Roman Catholic Church likes to think of itself as the one true church, a notion that does not sit particularly well with most non Roman Catholics, including me. Understandably, people expect an institution that makes such an audacious claim to hold itself to high standards; when, instead, they find child abuse, systematic cover-ups and hypocrisy, it does little for any of the RC Church’s claims, let alone the pretension that it is the one true church.
Ruth Gledhill reports the imminent implosion of the RC church:
Catholic Church ‘imploding’ over child sex abuse.
That is the view of a senior journalist in Rome over the latest round of revelations of the extent of paedophilia among Catholic clergy.
Unsurprisingly, no-one is more smugly satisfied over the troubles in the RC church than Christopher Hitchens:
The Great Catholic Cover-Up
The pope’s entire career has the stench of evil about it.
On March 10, the chief exorcist of the Vatican, the Rev. Gabriele Amorth (who has held this demanding post for 25 years), was quoted as saying that “the Devil is at work inside the Vatican,” and that “when one speaks of ‘the smoke of Satan’ in the holy rooms, it is all true—including these latest stories of violence and pedophilia.” This can perhaps be taken as confirmation that something horrible has indeed been going on in the holy precincts, though most inquiries show it to have a perfectly good material explanation.
Hitchens, as an atheist, likes to indulge in play-morality, and, so, is eminently unqualified to give an opinion on what is evil; for an atheist, such categories are merely preferences induced by the occasional stray spasm of a neuro-mechanism. The fact that Hitchens has said something about a church that is not all wrong, in itself means that there must be something really rotten afoot.
At the moment, the storm for the RC Church has just begun; for the institution to survive, it will need a long-overdue pruning – a pruning that would have to remove and bar homosexuals from the priesthood (60% of the cases involved priests who were sexually attracted to male adolescents). If it happens, there will be great wailing and gnashing of teeth among liberals.
It has been noted elsewhere that in the overwhelming majority of cases of RC Priests having sex with minors, that it is male/male sex (homosexual – go figure) and that the victims have in most cases reached puberty (meaning that it is not really pedophelia, but an adult raping and adolescent). In short, it is almost entirely a homosexual problem.
1 Timothy 3 does have the requirement that Priests are to be men and must be allowed be married, and that Bishops are to be married men. Also, that Priests and Bishops are to be respected men, and are to be tested. Perhaps if all Churches were to adhere to this the problem of homosexual priests abusing their positions and raping their young Congregants would be prevented.
Deutsche Welle had a piece on the scandal in the Roman Catholic Church in Germany. It seems there is a move a foot to lay participation in church discipline and governance. A lady in Cincinnati got in the Archbishop’s face telling him that the people, the laity, who support the church should have some part in the church’s governance. The hierarchy has lost their moral authority by hiding the abusers and now the laity are not going to cower before their ‘betters’. This could end up doing what the Reformation and earlier reform efforts never accomplished, a real reform in the Roman Catholic Church – that, or it will whiter away.
Barry,
Good for the lady in Cincinnati!
I think all this talk of the RCC “withering away” or “imploding” is very previous. Yes, bad things have happened (and, as you suggest, none of it good news for the pro-homosexualist/pro-homosexualist clergy lobby, say in the CofE), but the RCC will clean out its orgean stables, and carry on; and (though an Anglican, and not one planning to join the RCC) I for one am glad of that: what other organisation in the world today uncompromisingly argues for the value and valuing of all human life, and opposes the Culture of Death? Answer – none. Many governments (eg the US under Obama) and super-governments like the UN and EC actively promote abortion, euthanasia, population control, etc. Rely on the Anglicans to oppose them all, and argue for human life? Forget it!
Orgean stables? Maybe Augean stables?
Perhaps no other organization on the scale of the RCC, but you are wrong to say none. I think the RCC in the US carries less weight in this domain than do some other organizations.
Thanks, Warren – “orgean” just did look wrong … too much “orgy” in it maybe … I did mean big organisations, with international presence and some clout; of course there are, otherwise, lots. I don’t live in the US, and am not RCC as I have said, but from what I read on the net, I get the impression the US RCC is getting its act together, eg. in the political of its members (I often say that if the RCs here in Britain just abstained on election day, Labour governments (principal promoters of the CD, here) would be a thing of the past.
And I thought he was referring to organ lofts.