Reform Crashes Against Church’s Structure

Priestly abuses are entailed by the very idea of the Roman Catholic Church and will continue as long as it does.

When Martin Luther broke with the church in the 16th century, he did it for many reasons, but one above all: He didn’t want anything coming between him and God. He was disgusted by the idea that he could know God -- and that God could know him -- only through a bureaucracy. And so he objected especially to every aspect of Catholicism that tended toward a separation of the worshiper from God.

He translated the Bible into German, so that his parishioners could understand it. He criticized much of the mumbo-jumbo surrounding the sacraments and tried to make them simple and meaningful to the people who performed them.

The deepest objection of Luther and the reformers who followed was to “priestcraft”: the notion, which is fundamental to Catholicism, that one’s access to God comes through his representatives on Earth in the form of Roman Catholic priests. Luther argued for “the priesthood of all believers,” in an attempt to make people see that everyone was revealed directly to God, and God to everyone.

Many Catholics think that the problem of abuse can be solved by internal reform of the church. But the idea that the institutions of the church could be made transparent and accountable is incompatible with the basic structure of Catholicism, which is a hierarchy -- a pantheon of intercessors, from priests to saints -- empowered by God to interpret his will to the world.

As we peep ever further into the private lives of priests, the scene gets ever more lurid. In the latest parting of the curtain -- via thousands of personnel records released by the Boston Archdiocese -- we find, for example, that Father Robert Meffan allegedly convinced teenage aspiring nuns to have sex with him by claiming to be God’s representative and that he was the path of their access to the deity.

But in fact, the recent abuses of power in the Catholic Church are less shocking than they are typical. Compared with the extent of the corruption and concupiscence displayed by the church in history, the current transgressions are mild.

Much of the incredible wealth of the church, for example, was derived from the sale of indulgences -- forgiveness in exchange for cash, a kind of pimping for God. The intrigues -- sexual and otherwise -- of the papacy have filled volumes.

The authority of the Catholic Church, on its own account, is mystical, God-given and total. Such an institution cannot be made democratic or responsive.

If we know anything, it is that human beings abuse power. Power doesn’t corrupt, but corrupt people wield power corruptly.

The civil bureaucracy may claim jurisdiction over your money and your behavior but the religious bureaucracy claims jurisdiction over your conscience. Thus the abuse to which it gives rise is of the most intimate and destructive variety: It is a destruction of inner autonomy, an attempt to control or destroy not what one does but what one is.

Let me issue a sincere disclaimer: The Catholic Church has done and is doing much good in the world.

However, if you authorize a group of people to supervise your conscience and your relationship to God, you are likely to find that you have created a brotherhood of monsters.

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Crispin Sartwell teaches philosophy at the Maryland Institute College of Art.