Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Reflections on the Unmodernizing Catholic Church
From Ignacio Prado, reflections on the consequences of the Catholic Church not modernizing (click on his name for full post):
My reply:
I thought you made some good points in your comment.
Ignacio wrote, "The problem, as noted to some extent in Ross' article, is that you end up with a very aesthetic, undemanding set of religious commitments that are, at the end of the day, neither very distinctively religious nor very important on any day other than Sunday."
This problem, however, is seen only if one looks at its detrimental consequences for society, because all the individuals I know who have subscribed to these kinds of religions (including the atheists who don't go to any church, or people who like to apply a religious label on themselves, but who do not commit to real practice of religious teachings) are all delighted with this state of (a)moral or flimsly-moral or diet-lite religions in modern society.
This kind of "religion" (or lack of religion) bloats individual egos and shuns holding these same individuals accountable for many serious things, what more could modern, liberal, egotistical society want?
Regarding who this un-modern Church appeals to, I believe there are still an enormous group of people for whom this kind of Church serves their needs, even though with globalized religion competition, other faiths will increasingly encroach and take over any segment of the population that is not satisfied with traditional Catholic preaching. For the majority of Catholics I know, the Catholic Church is there to provide ritual, not guidance, and certainly not accountability of anything. I would venture, without knowing a lot about the Catholic Church, that Pope Benedict prefers it this way, than to have the Church transformed by "renegade theologians," or to make the Church try to be a moral agent in society and then make these Cafeteria Catholics upset. It is the conservative Catholics I know that are usually more concerned with their religion as a moral force in their lives, and hold themselves accountable to it.
And apparently Pope Benedict prefers to repeat over and over again that homosexuality is a sin, and at the same time, pretend that the lavender mafia and the pink-pedo mafia of Catholic clergy is not a huge problem in the Church, which will only get worse if good, healthy heterosexual men are not allowed to be ordained, and certainly most need to get married when that time comes in their lives. The Catholic Church is behaving towards homosexuality in the same way as if it preached insistently that it was pro-life and thousands of its priests worked in abortion clinics. It's in our faces. I mean, thou shall not lie and insult our intelligence with this mockery. If you are going to be Traditional, fine, but at least uphold in practice what you preach.
.
There are different ways of modernizing. One is to take the traditional route of main-line Protestant churches and simply abstain from upholding traditional moral doctrines that are out of line with contemporary secular norms (as defined by markets, civil society, and positive law). The problem, as noted to some extent in Ross' article, is that you end up with a very aesthetic, undemanding set of religious commitments that are, at the end of the day, neither very distinctively religious nor very important on any day other than Sunday.
[...]
The other approach, which I will call Modernist, is to recognize that there is human suffering, that this suffering is bad, and that nothing less than the Gospels themselves tell us that it requires no transcendental dogma to make this moral recognition or act upon it. The Church's agential mission then becomes associated with meeting and overcoming suffering. It is hard to see how this can be done effectively through a top-down bureaucratic model and by putting gag orders on renegade theologians.
[...]
The Church will continue to find people who are attracted to its aura of tradition and its ability to provide authority on social and moral questions. Once the appeal of that authority starts to wane at the level of individual conscience, however, the Church, under its Traditionalist model, has no consolations left to offer. The choice for the individual then becomes either the unwilling acceptance of dogma or apostasy, and I am fairly confident that unwilling acceptance of dogma is neither a strategy for success nor a model of what success in questions spiritual should be.
My reply:
I thought you made some good points in your comment.
Ignacio wrote, "The problem, as noted to some extent in Ross' article, is that you end up with a very aesthetic, undemanding set of religious commitments that are, at the end of the day, neither very distinctively religious nor very important on any day other than Sunday."
This problem, however, is seen only if one looks at its detrimental consequences for society, because all the individuals I know who have subscribed to these kinds of religions (including the atheists who don't go to any church, or people who like to apply a religious label on themselves, but who do not commit to real practice of religious teachings) are all delighted with this state of (a)moral or flimsly-moral or diet-lite religions in modern society.
This kind of "religion" (or lack of religion) bloats individual egos and shuns holding these same individuals accountable for many serious things, what more could modern, liberal, egotistical society want?
Regarding who this un-modern Church appeals to, I believe there are still an enormous group of people for whom this kind of Church serves their needs, even though with globalized religion competition, other faiths will increasingly encroach and take over any segment of the population that is not satisfied with traditional Catholic preaching. For the majority of Catholics I know, the Catholic Church is there to provide ritual, not guidance, and certainly not accountability of anything. I would venture, without knowing a lot about the Catholic Church, that Pope Benedict prefers it this way, than to have the Church transformed by "renegade theologians," or to make the Church try to be a moral agent in society and then make these Cafeteria Catholics upset. It is the conservative Catholics I know that are usually more concerned with their religion as a moral force in their lives, and hold themselves accountable to it.
And apparently Pope Benedict prefers to repeat over and over again that homosexuality is a sin, and at the same time, pretend that the lavender mafia and the pink-pedo mafia of Catholic clergy is not a huge problem in the Church, which will only get worse if good, healthy heterosexual men are not allowed to be ordained, and certainly most need to get married when that time comes in their lives. The Catholic Church is behaving towards homosexuality in the same way as if it preached insistently that it was pro-life and thousands of its priests worked in abortion clinics. It's in our faces. I mean, thou shall not lie and insult our intelligence with this mockery. If you are going to be Traditional, fine, but at least uphold in practice what you preach.
.
