Lately at a party the conversation drifted towards religion and upon hearing that I'm catholic someone congratulated me on the new pope. This let me to some half drunken attempt on explaining my complicated feelings towards the catholic church. My rational intellectual views on this institution conflicts with positive childhood memories drenched in nostalgia.
In my village the church was the main organiser of youth work. There was the village association, which sometimes organised walks and funded the theater club my father had founded and I had acted in a few times (
link!). Later there were the scouts, but being scouts they were all about exclusion and uniforms.
Our youth activities were always inclusive. All you had to be was a kid and from our village to come to the weekly playgroups or participate in the yearly camping trip.
Not to say that I was not religious, even though it was not required. In fact after all the stormy happenings of the last 4 years, Taizé might be one of the few places that still feel like home. Though I would not describe myself as a believer in the Catholic doctrine. Nor do I think that anything good can come from organised religion.
Here is my beef with the institution which is the catholic church:
By its very nature it is inevitable that it will have a net negative impact on humanity.
Even if one believes in a benevolent beginning of the church, in other words if one believes the church was founded as an institution to promote christian values (love one another and all of that), according to the calling of St.Peter "You are the rock on which I shall build my church", one has to admit that the institution of today does not only fail to fulfill its original purpose, but also acts in contrast to it.
Of course one could argue that the main intention of the church was always to accumulate power, rather than live christian values. But for the sake of argument let us give the early church the benefit of the doubt.
The church has created its own cultural bubble out of touch or even in conflict with the life of the people it has profound impact on.
Let's have a look at how the institution is organised. Membership is restricted to only a part of society (males) and comes with ridiculous conditions (don't ever have sex). Obviously this does not appeal to a great many people and the people it does appeal to are probably not your average Joe.
As an aside, I have heard people blame the celibacy for the child abuse. The argument goes thusly: if you keep suppressing your sex drive it will at some point come out in an unhealthy manner. I disagree, not only because of the apparent "they just cannot help themselves" excuse, but also because I think the higher incidence of child abuse in the catholic church is rather a selection bias. People with an unhealthy relationship to sex are more likely to choose a career which forbids them to have any.
Additional to exclusive it is also undemocratic and characterised by top to bottom decision making. In Cologne there is now a movement lobbying to let members of the diocese vote for a list of candidates for bishops. This list will be send to the pope who can then choose three candidates,
who can also be candidates which have never appeared on the list. These three names are then send back and the cathedral chapter votes for a candidate from this list. This is a revolutionary idea. I'd call that an absolute monarchy posing as a pseudo democracy.
The Vatican is its own state. It is undemocratic and nontransparent, and as has been shown again, be it in the child abuse scandal or the latest in the Vatican bank it is riddled with corruption. It is also misanthropic. Pick any minority and chances are they had been demonised by the church.
The catholic faith is based on guilt. It used to be the main source of power over it followers, dangling absolution over people who would sin by following basic human nature.
Now how did the message of "love one another" lead to such an institution? Easy, because it is an institution.
The major flaw of any institution is that in the end self-preservation will always win over the actual purpose of it.
And this is were the church ended up, controlling people with guilt, persecuting anyone who might question it, locking themselves away in their own culture, desperately clinging to every bit of power and wealth paranoid of the outside with the persistence of the institution as its primary goal.
Now the pope is cool.
The fact that a person can stay morally sound while going through the ranks of an institution like this is inspiring and it shows a true strength of character, however, it does not suddenly justify the institution.
How would my childhood have looked without the church? I'm sure my father would have found a way to realise his ideas and while we critisise the church we have to make sure to have a different alternatives to it than scouts, because...uniforms, urgh!
