Martin LeFevre: The Catholic Church On Its Knees

Before fifteen thousand priests from around the world, the Pope apologized for the child abuse “filth” that was uncovered this year in the Catholic Church.

“We, too, insistently beg forgiveness from God and from the persons involved, while promising to do everything possible to ensure that such abuse will never occur again,” Benedict said. I don’t know what “too” means here. Did he mean in addition to the pentenance of the pedophile priests, perhaps in attendance?

The hilarious thing about all this is that the new pope dope came as Benedict attended a celebration commemorating the end of the Vatican's Year of the Priest, designed to encourage "spiritual perfection" in priests. I guess that begins with the resolution, ‘I will not fondle little boys.’

Let’s get serious. This apology is not worth the 2000 years of papal exhalations of which it is the last, foulest breath. Bendedict didn’t take responsibility for the Church, for thousands of acts of the worst betrayal of which humans are capable; rather, he assigned the most ridiculous blame for the scandal, saying the devil wants "God driven out of the world."

Conversely, there are lots of people these days who have trouble with talk about souls. It doesn’t fit with their materialistic worldview and belief system. But whatever word you use—essence, intactness, aliveness, soul—there is something essential about a person, a people, and a sentient species, and it can be lost.

Steeped in Catholic tradition, I grew to have an aversion to all traditions, seeing early on that they are spiritually dead things, however much force they have in society and people’s lives. In the West, traditions have eroded beyond recognition, but still many people cling to them.

Inculcated with the ideas about Jesus from generations of second-rate and manipulative minds, I came to doubt he ever existed. Certainly ‘Christ,’ the theologically invented entity of the Catholic Church and its spin-off, the Protestant faith, did not exist. But given that Jesus lived, taught, and was put to death by the Romans, what happened?

The question of why Jesus’ mission went so terribly wrong lies at the heart of Western civilization. As Marcus Borg, in “Jesus, A New Vision,” writes, “the outcome [the crucifixion] was not the purpose of the journey.”

Of course, the vast majority of Christians believe Jesus’ mission did not go wrong, that he made his final journey to Jerusalem in order to “die for our sins.” Indeed, there would be no Christianity without this belief. For millions of people, this unexamined premise has been handed down from generation to generation as truth.

On the other side of the coin are the growing ranks of rationalists who maintain that there is no such thing as a ‘divine mission,’ however one defines it. They believe that all missions are made and arise from the mind of man.

This view has two major flaws. First, it too has an unexamined premise, a belief, at its core. Namely, that the universe is a mechanism, not a living, creative, and unbounded whole.

Second, materialists and rationalists maintain, openly or implicitly, that there is no higher intelligence than the professed intelligence of man. This represents an astounding hubris in my view, which amounts to the idolization of ‘higher thought.’

One does not have to believe in a ‘Creator’ to realize that something beyond the human mind’s inventions, theological or technological, is going on with sentient species. It’s rather absurd to believe that the non-progressive evolution of consciousness is a completely random event confined only to the Earth.

Is the universe an expression of an inseparable intelligence, which is self-aware and infinitely creative, but does not direct and control? Is the evolution of consciousness the largely but not entirely random process of potentially self-aware life consciously and creatively sharing the cosmic intent with which we have been imbued? To my mind, it’s in this context that we have to place the question of Jesus’ failed mission.

Rational materialists refuse to consider that consciousness has any greater meaning than what passes for it on this planet. That’s hubristic.

As Marcus Borg states, “Jesus did not intend to create a new religion…rather, Christianity as religion came into existence as the result of a historical process which took several decades after his death.”

So why did his mission fail? Did Jesus overestimate the capacity of the people of his time and place, and underestimate the power of the devil and his minions?

Perhaps. But the failure certainly wasn’t his. No person, however illumined, has changed the basic course of humankind.

Certainly, thinking people have to throw out the idea that “Jesus died for our sins.” For too long that’s been a cunning, and convenient way to avoid taking responsibility for ourselves.

- Martin LeFevre is a contemplative, and non-academic religious and political philosopher. He has been publishing in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Europe (and now New Zealand) for 20 years. Email: martinlefevre@sbcglobal.net. The author welcomes comments.

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