Non habemus Papam. Pope Benedict XVI left office last week, becoming the first Pope emeritus in more than 600 years. His tenure has been as reactionary as many of us feared when he started. Catholics should demand better from his replacement.
I am not a Roman Catholic, so I can already hear the objections that this is none of my concern, and truth be told I would prefer to leave it to Catholics to sort this out. But so far, I am not seeing very much dialogue among the faithful, so it seems worth broaching.
Let me first justify the intrusion into this topic. Some religions legitimately do not impact people outside the faith, or at least not in direct ways. Many religious people, including Catholics, do not particularly care to impose their beliefs on others, at least not without their consent. I firmly hold that people whose faith is private should be left to it without my contravention. Adults can choose to believe what they like, and live their lives accordingly, as long as they don’t want to force others to do it too – although what they can choose for their children is a subject fraught with moral dilemmas.
The Catholic church as a political entity does not share my attitude on that, so the rest of us are legitimately concerned about its hierarchy. The church lobbies politically, and in countries where it is powerful, this can be decisive. In the U.S., unlike the NRA or the Sierra Club, it even gets a tax exemption. I will stop being as concerned with the internal workings of the church when the all-male, supposedly celibate priesthood stops testifying to the U.S. Congress about the birth control pill, for instance.
The church continues to do real damage to real people through much of its work, and it does it in the name of Catholics. When challenged, the clergy cites the number of people baptized into the church, and this goes largely unchallenged by lay Catholics, even though they largely disagree with the decisions.
Take the HIV/AIDS epidemic as the worst example. Not content with unsuccessfully ordering its adherents not to use condoms, nor even with petulantly refusing to cooperate with charities which distribute condoms, the Holy See lobbies governments in the worst-afflicted countries to eschew aid programs to distribute prophylaxis, because condoms also serve as contraception. As a result, millions will die.
The part that makes me grind my teeth to nubs is that polls consistently show that a majority of Catholics approves of birth control, and a larger majority uses it. The clergy cannot convince the flock to stop, so they need legislation, and they lobby for it and fleece everyone else in the bargain.
Similar problems occur with a host of other issues. The clergy lags lay opinion in that it is not even having serious conversations about gay rights, women in the priesthood, abortion and countless other issues of direct relevance to parishioners.
And then we come to the apparent exemption of the Church from laws to which all other organizations would be held. Benedict was elected shortly after the breaking of a large wave of scandals involving the sexual abuse of minors by priests. Rather than choosing a Pope with no connection to the scandal, the cardinals chose a man who was among the most implicated in the cover-up. Some held out hope that this would mean he had a working knowledge of the problem so that he could clean house more effectively, but we cynics won this round of predicting the future. The church has continued to fight legal battles with victims of sexual abuse rather than punish the abusers or their accessories.
The College of Cardinals has the option to change course. The new Pope could turn over all of the information that the Vatican has about sex abuse by priests, and cooperate with investigations in all affected countries. He could begin a dialogue about opening the priesthood to women, or even to married men, change course on the Church’s ludicrous stance on birth control and make Catholicism less bigoted toward LGBTQ members. But I won’t hold my breath.
Brad Erthal is a doctoral student in economics. His column runs on Tuesdays.
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