Constantine's Sword and Papal Sin

Dear Katha,

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Your post this morning dovetails neatly with many of the questions I've been asking myself over the last couple of weeks, questions provoked by reading these two books: What exactly is the Catholic Church, at its irreducible core? How should one understand the lines of authority passing between its hierarchy and its laity? How indivisible are its doctrines? To what extent is the current church responsible for, and defined by, its history?

But I also get the impression I'm feeling somewhat less accusatory than you as I ponder these questions. And part of the reason for that is precisely the experience of reading these two books. Leaving aside, at least for the moment, the specifically religious aspects of their authors' faith--the supernatural aspects--I still think it's impossible to confront their humane, generous spirit without being moved and even inspired. It's too simple, I think, to reduce the Catholic Church to, say, the Crusades and the Inquisition, although the evil wrought by those may too often have been denied or minimized. The church has also made a home for people like Wills and Carroll, people with boundless compassion and stunning intellectual breadth, people who actively strive to reconcile their best human impulses with their spiritual lives.

Still, I do share your puzzlement about what, given its long and complex history, the Catholic Church actually is. As Carroll vividly demonstrates--I apparently found these passages a lot more interesting than you did--much of the early canonical Christian writing, the gospels emphatically included, were documents in an intra-Jewish debate. Many scholars now believe that some of the words attributed to Jesus were later additions designed to score political points over those Jews who resisted the blandishments of their Christian brethren. Well, if even the earliest canonical texts are legitimately amenable to this sort of analysis and are, as a result, believed to contain dubious material, what hard core of historical truth reliably remains? (In Carroll's own words, "Is it possible to ask if the entire structure of the Gospel narrative can be criticized as being unworthy of the story it wants to tell?") Surely, once devout Catholics feel free to doubt the literal accuracy of the very words attributed to Jesus, then they can also doubt the virgin birth, the miracles, the resurrection. At which point it seems fair to wonder what's left to make Christianity Catholic, or even Christian.

The church, after all, doesn't present itself as a buffet of doctrines, amidst which one can choose items one finds appealing and decline those one considers dubious. Long before the relatively recent doctrine of papal infallibility was promulgated (and Wills and Carroll are both terrific in explaining its development under the direction of a pope they regard as catastrophic, Pius IX), the church claimed a certain absolute purchase on the truth. By arrogating the right to define doctrine, it also claimed the right to define heresy and the right to punish it. Once you can determine the only acceptable version of truth and sanction any deviations from the truth you've dictated, you don't leave much room for the functioning of individual judgment or individual conscience.

So while I admire the rigor and honesty and passion of Wills and Carroll and find more than moving their efforts to bring church teaching in line with their manifest human decency, I'm also perplexed by the very nature of their faith. What is it they believe that encourages them to continue to regard themselves as Catholic? How much do they need to believe in order to retain that identification, and how much can they freely jettison? On these sorts of questions, both are silent. Both posit a church that conforms to their notions of divine love and common sense, but neither can point to such an institution or explain why the real institution whose flaws they have both written books to expose can still claim their adherence. They understand, of course, that it has always been a human institution, composed of and run by flawed human beings. But the church itself refuses to concede any such thing.

Still, that idea is the reason I find incomprehensible the notion of the current pope apologizing for church inaction during the Holocaust (just as I fail to understand President Clinton's recent apology for American slavery). I'm not offended by it; I just don't get it. John Paul II did not perpetrate the Holocaust, nor, as far as I know, was he complicit in the church's contemporaneous passivity. Why should he apologize? In whose name? (It's unlikely, for example, that Pius XII, were he alive, would encourage such a gesture.) And to whom? To the dead? Certainly not to you and me and our generation of assimilated Jews, born after the war ended. We have no claim on his apology and no right to accept it. Why should someone who bears no responsibility for these terrible events apologize for them, especially to people who were not themselves victims of them? To the extent that church doctrine facilitated or helped enable the process, it certainly seems fitting to admit as much and revise the relevant doctrines. But the sort of group-think implicit in the apology bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the racial prejudice that's being disavowed. (It's worth noting that several postings in "The Fray" this week accuse "the Jews" of oppressing contemporary Palestinians; this is the same flawed, distressingly persistent mode of thought.)

All of which is perhaps a way of saying: Just as "the Jews" didn't kill Jesus, neither did the Church kill Jews and other "infidels." The world has seen lots of individual Catholics over the last two millennia, some of whom committed barbarities and most of whom did not. My wife is Catholic, and I certainly don't feel she owes me an apology. Well, wait, actually she does, but not for the Inquisition or the Crusades. She owes me an apology for not making the bed this morning when it was her turn. That's an apology I'd happily accept.

Cheers,
Erik

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Is the Catholic Church anti-Semitic? This week our critics examine James Carroll's Constantine's Sword and Garry Wills' Papal Sin.

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