I admit to paying very little attention to the criminal behavior of religious leaders and the expressions of shock and betrayal by the flock when they discover they have been sheared. My sentiment combines the feeling that the betrayed should have known better and that the betrayers deserve burning now, not later in hell. But won’t suffer either.
It helps to be inoculated early against institutions selling superstition and to have discovered the gap between the ideal and the real. It began on a beautiful breezy Easter morning after an overnight downpour washed the world clean.
Though my ancestors include English Quakers, French-Canadian Catholics, German Lutherans, Scottish Calvinists, New England Seventh Day Baptists and adherents to several homegrown sects including River Brethren and Christian Science, neither of my parents had any discernible religion. My father envied his mother’s perfect faith in an afterlife, but could never suspend his disbelief.
Still, my mother thought she ought to do unto me as the small town neighbors did unto their children, so she volunteered Sundays at the Methodist Church while I attended a Sunday School remarkably free of theology.
But on the fateful Easter in our fancy duds, my mother, who walked with a cane due to an auto accident, slipped on the slick sidewalk on the way from parking lot to church. Down she went, and I had trouble helping her to her feet. Families in their nice suits, frocks and bonnets stepped daintily around the puddles, and us as if we weren’t there. We took this exemplum of Christianity in action with us as we made our mud-spattered way home, and never returned.
Later I studied with interest the myths of East and West, admired the beauty of many of the holy books and the idealism of various doctrines, but never again mistook any gospel for gospel. It seems to me people of faith are engaging in willful blindness.
Case in point, on the podcast “Left, Right and Center” recently, two Catholics who comment for a living, the leftish Elizabeth Bruenig of the “Washington Post” and the rightward Tim Carney of the “Washington Examiner” expressed very similar sorrow and dismay at the never-ending news of pedophile priests and the cover-up by enablers, including Cardinals, Bishops and Popes.
How could this be, they wondered. Yet, how could they ask that? Neither would ever express similar astonishment about human nature on their daily beat — politics and government. Did they think religion was exempt? There has been plenty of evidence to the contrary.
Besides original sin, the source of the problem isn’t hard to identify First, there’s straight up hypocrisy, the profession of faith as a habit rather than as a practice, the preaching of morality while failing to embody it. And then there’s worldly cynicism in place of naive idealism.
Long ago the management guru Peter Drucker pointed to the Catholic Church as the oldest continuously operating organization in the Western World. Like all self-sustaining bureaucracies, it looks after its own interest first, which generally means protecting its people from the top down, not from the bottom up.
Brecht expressed neatly what Maslow discovered — “Grub first, then ethics.” That is, survival before morality, theology, faith, hope or charity. Like the police, the army, the corporation, the institution of the church when threatened closes ranks. The first impulse is almost always to deny everything.
Corporations, unions, political parties and even churches all talk a good game — egalitarian, inclusive, deeply caring about the little guy, but when push comes to shove the bosses save themselves and leave the customers, the rank and file, the people. and the parishioners by the wayside.
So a Mark Zuckerberg pretends Facebook is impervious to exploitation by predators subverting democracy in order to make a few billion more,. Whistleblowers lose their jobs and nothing changes. Brett Kavanaugh will likely continue to dispense justice while his accuser gets none. Critics of the church are silenced while the perps are protected.
This is the way of the world. The Methodists on Easter cared more about keeping their new clothes clean than their consciences spotless. They made a pretty picture in the pews and left a mother and child in the mud. What would Jesus have done? Not that. What do Popes, CEOs, senators, voters do everyday when confronted with a moral choice? Calculate what’s in it for them, look the other way, and walk on by.
Of course, every once in a while corruption becomes so blatant and widespread that a Reformation, a Revolution occurs, but soon enough up pops the devil and a reign of terror begins, followed by a Thermidorian reaction, round and round. Alas, that’s life, and Jacques Brel wrote its theme song.
Join us now, we’re on a marathon
We’re always dancing when the music plays
Join us now, we’re on a marathon
Dancing, dancing through the nights and days