IT'S ALL ABOUT POWER

Ellen Rehg, October 13, 2008

The issue is power. Pure and simple. Power is what has given the Roman Catholic Church a bad name. The coercive tactics of the Spanish Inquisition, not to mention the political machinations of the Church during the entire medieval period (thank God for the Enlightenment and the principles of democracy) echo into our present era when we see the list of excommunications lengthen to include even more members of St. Stanislaus’ parish council, and read the pronouncements about whom ought to be refused communion, who is under interdict, who can no longer set foot on Archdiosesan property, or which basketball coaches are not 100% Catholic enough to be a member of the church. The scent of candle wax and communion wine mingling with the whiff of the autocratic ‘leather whip’ - this is sickening.
I guess we can blame Plato for first articulating the dream of an ideal institution ruled through the union of goodness and power. In his work, The Republic, he argues that human beings will not achieve the perfect society until only those who are morally the best people become the rulers. If the rulers were perfect in goodness and wisdom, they would be able to bring about the best society, and hence ought to have the power to make all the decisions about the state, Plato reasoned.
The Roman Catholic Church attempted the experiment of uniting goodness and power, back in the middle ages, when the Church wielded political power over the kingdoms in Europe. The experiment wasn’t a total failure, by any means, but unfortunately Plato’s off-hand comment in The Republic, that it was probably impossible in this world to achieve perfection, proved to be true. As it turns out, being human precludes being perfect.
It was Dante, that glorious poet of the Divine Comedy, and orthodox believer, who questioned the premise that the Church’s political power ought to be pre-eminent over that of the secular governments of the Holy Roman Empire. In the medieval mindset, the Church was likened to the sun, and civil government to the moon. According to this analogy, the sun (Church) had a right and a duty to rule over the moon (civil government).
Without disputing the terms of the analogy itself, Dante countered that although the sun may provide its light to the moon, and therefore be the “greater” celestial body, God equally created them both; hence neither could claim divine hegemony over the other. The Church had no greater claim to political power. The Renaissance and the Enlightenment, which followed the Middle Ages, put its stamp of approval on that idea.
The Roman Catholic Church no longer has the political power it once had, but it still has one power left – the power of exclusion, the power of casting out its own members. And this power it has been weilding – excluding both persons and ideas. I would ask the hierarchy to consider letting this power go by the way side, consigning it to an artifact of history. I don’t mean to suggest that the Church shouldn’t take stands on issues. Clearly, we need to articulate what it means to live as a follower of Jesus. Instead I’m suggesting that it not take stands on people, especially its own people. And if good people have concerns about Church doctrine that won’t go away despite official attempts to stifle all discussion, those concerns ought to be heard.
Why should the Church be holding onto the last vestiges of Plato’s vision, when it has the example of its founder, Jesus? I believe that Jesus shows us that the only power the Church should embrace is the power of love. If perfect love casts out fear, the witness of Jesus reveals that love is also incompatible with force. Jesus did not attempt to compel his disciples to believe him. Neither does it seem that he attempted to police his followers and get rid of any who didn’t think a certain way.
Instead, he invited people into his way of thinking. To invite people respects their human freedom and dignity, their ability to reason, and acknowledges that people might change over time.
How much better to follow Jesus’ treatment of the tax collector and Roman collaborator, Zachaeus, who had climbed a tree to watch Jesus go by. Jesus called out to him, saying, “Come down from your tree, I mean to have dinner with you tonight?” What would it be like if the Roman church had a policy of pro-communication, rather than ex-communication? If, instead of excluding those with whom they disagreed, our bishops made a special point of having dinner with them? Is that too much to ask of those who publicly claim to follow the one of whom it was said, ‘he has dinner with tax collectors and prostitutes’?