Papal Sin (I of III)

Originally posted October 2004

Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit
by Garry Wills

Credit on this one goes to the author, because the title was just too wonderfully provocative to pass up… and to Borders, curiously enough, because they had it on a really good and well-placed sale! ;)

It’s easy to write a critique of a book you disagree with. It can be easy as well to critique a book you agree with, when you’re quite familiar with the research and premises, but feel the author misinterpreted a particular point or two. However, when you stumble across a book on a subject you’ve done some research on, and about which you feel strongly — and find a whole new field of inquiry which even more closely supports your views… well, it can leave you a bit speechless with excitement.

It’s always wonderful to find a perceptive and clearly communicated point of view, and even more exciting when it introduces you to a new angle of approach to what was formerly a somewhat worn subject. As a consequence, I found Will’s book Papal Sin fascinating and absorbing. Ordinarily I start reviews with a quick paragraph or two describing the subject matter. However, I think this selection, written by Wills himself in his Introduction, puts it best:

The truth, we are told, will make us free. It is time to free Catholics, lay as well as clerical, from the structures of deceit that are our subtle modern form of papal sin. Paler, subtler, less dramatic than the sins castigated by Orcagna or Dante, these are the quiet sins of intellectual betrayal.

Wills begins his book with a quick review of the (probably healthy) historical and medieval understanding that clergy, popes included, are human and thus prone to all the same frailties of the flesh we ‘mere mortals’ suffer from. He laments the modern-day loss of this understanding, then proceeds to describe convincing examples of “the quiet sins of intellectual betrayal.”

Wills takes on three dishonesties, as he terms them, within the modern catholic church. The first is the Church’s appalling historical record of casual abuse and violence towards Judaism.

For a religion based on a Jewish messiah, you’d think they’d have a somewhat less viciously judgmental view on their parent religion — especially considering modern scholarship’s discoveries regarding the entire inserted story of Judas as a post-crucifixion fabrication to appease any potential guilt on the part of new Roman converts. You’d also perhaps think things would be better today, in a world where tolerance supposedly doesn’t automatically equate to weakness — but that’s not how the church sees it.

As an example, Wills traces the sorry creation process of the church’s much-vaunted document on the Holocaust, titled “We Remember.” He regards as extremely unfortunate the Church’s belief that this document closes the entire issue, and clearly exemplifies this dismay by quoting the perceptive Rabbi David Polish, who referred to the document as:

a unilateral pronouncement by one party which presumes to redress on its own terms a wrong which it does not admit.

To put it bluntly, the church has apparently decided the Holocaust, which they a) stoutly maintain they had nothing to do with, b) don’t want to talk about, and c) define as not really that bad anyway… must’ve been a real bummer for those poor Jewish folks.

Wills then addresses what he calls the church’s doctrinal dishonesties. There are a dismaying number of them, which one might wistfully wish sheer common sense would have cleared up by now. These range from the rigid insistence of pleasurable sex — even within marriage — equating to sin; the zero-tolerance ban on both birth control and abortion (sort of a “punish ’em both coming and going” attitude, I guess?); the historically immediate establishment of the doctrine of papal ‘infallibility’ and historically recent exclusion of women from the clergy; and the disturbing forced celibacy, shrinking numbers, frequent and repeated sexual deviancy, and increasingly caste-like separation of the clergy from their laity.

Sadly, most of these issues are not new, and have not permitted historical rectification of their poor application. Regarding the recent establishment of the doctrine of so-called papal infallibility, for example, the Englishman John Henry Newman is quoted:

We have come to a climax of tyranny. It is not good for a Pope to live 20 years. It is anomaly and bears no good fruit; he becomes a god, has no one to contradict him, does not know facts, and does cruel things without meaning it.

Those words were written in the mid 1800’s, but I believe they are precisely applicable to the current pope as well. Newman goes on to state his view, based on scriptural readings, that the pope by definition cannot be infallible when he contradicts the will of the Church, which Newman fascinatingly defines as the people — not the clerical hierarchy!

Wills also addresses the disturbing and increasingly male view of the deific, coupled with the loss of the entire (and somewhat female) concept of the Holy Spirit — for a narrow, rigid, and hierarchical viewpoint on both the nature of the Body of Christ, and how to attain grace and salvation.

An unfortunate side effect of this is the increasingly disempowered, marginalized view of Mary, Jesus’ mother, as the pure but helpless virgin who must intercede between us poor sinners and an angry god. What sort of role model is an utterly sexless, submissive woman pleading constantly with an abusive male to not beat his children any further?

With clear, understandable references to history, biblical passages, and the writings of early church fathers, Wills shows the inapplicability of continuing to maintain such outdated and monstrously ridiculous superstitions. I can deeply sympathize with his pain in seeing his beloved church clinging fearfully and ineffectually to antiquated and long-disproven ritualistic beliefs. It must hurt to see one’s church become an institution insulting to the intellect, one which demands active lies and constant self-deception in order to “believe” church dogma.

A particular quote from a priest during the Second Vatican Council resonated quite strongly for me, while reading about this self-imposed clerical resistance to any possible change or application of common sense:

What then with the millions we have sent to hell if these norms were not valid?

What breath-taking arrogance. Statements like this go a long way in convincing me of the absolute lack of relevance the church has on modern life. Do they truly believe they’ve claimed deific perogative, or are they just too stupid to understand the ramifications of what they’re saying?

Wills concludes his book with a wonderful segment on truth and the potential of what the church could be. I am not a fan of the rigidly misogynistic, hierarchialized, reality-hostile modern-day church. However, the church Wills postulates, which he bases on careful, thoughtfully critical reading of biblical passages and the writings of other religious church leaders, is one which resonates to me. Wells quotes Simone Weil as saying,

Christ likes us to prefer truth to him, because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go to the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms.

I don’t know if that’s actual truth or not, but I do know that’s a version of religion I can espouse, right along with the concept of a church based on truth and intellectual honesty — one which does not insult either my brains or my gender, which is unafraid of new scientific discoveries, and which can face a changing future without violent insecurity or shrinking insularity.

As is noted in the bible itself, in Wisdom 1:11: “A lying mouth murders the soul.” I don’t like the concept of a god which demands we brutally murder an innocent in order for him to be appeased, and I’m equally sick of churches which demand you sacrifice/murder your soul in order to safely “belong.”

As you can probably tell, I found Wills’ book startlingly compelling. Since it directly addresses the dismaying separation between spirituality and organized religion, I’ve made it the book review for the same month as my Firestarter article What is spirituality, as compared to religiosity?