Signs of the Times: Weaknesses of the Catholic Church

“It is the system that is wrong for the times, and they are among the victims of it.”

There are three principal elements in the Catholic Church. They are its membership, its product and its form of organization. The first two are pretty well given and the third is subject to change.

The Church is made up of people who are basically volunteers and equal. Its principal product is had in its founder, Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus, the Christ, his  person and his message. During the Second Vatican Council the Church redefined itself as the People of God. Since that time it has worked on making more clear who Jesus is and what he was about, and renewing its chief resources. It had set basic guidelines for renewing its form of organization, but they have been ignored since that time.

The chief weakness in the Roman Catholic Church, in this author’s view. is to be found in its outdated form of social organization. It is based on a thirteenth century model that has long since outlived its usefulness. It is especially inefficient in an organization composed of volunteers who are free and equal persons.

It is a model that puts total control in the hands of a relatively small group of male celibates, whose chief concern is the good of the organization. Their chief concern should be the good of the people, and not the organization, and the two are frequently not the same. The system calls for individuals who are responsible more to those, or the one, at the head of the organization. That largely explains the bishops obtuseness during and in the aftermath of the recent sexual abuse of minors scandal that has rocked the Church. They are largely unconcerned about the individuals involved and deeply concerned about their own position, simply waiting and hoping the whole thing will blow itself out. That is not about to happen, although the bishops refuse to accept that fact.

There are a number of other weaknesses that follow upon the selection of this model. The bishops, key players in the model, are increasingly out of touch with ordinary people in the church.  As a result, they cannot be of help to them. They are principally involved in the administration of the physical assets of the organization, and, while this gives them a great deal of satisfaction through a sense of busyness and otherwise, it removes them even further from the concerns of ordinary people. Pastors of parishes, are selected more for their ability to gather funds and build buildings than for their abilities to be of spiritual help to their parishioners. The result is the situation that we are presently facing in this country – people deciding to do something else with the time they previously devoted to church matters.

A further problem with the system presently employed is the fact it insists that bishops, by virtue of their office,  are essentially different from and superior to other members of the Church. This places the people who are bishops in a truly awkward and false position. It attempts to make them something they are not, with irreparable harm to the individual persons involved and to the entire community of people they are meant to serve.

This model of social organization is built upon the belief, no longer shared by most Americans, that authority descends from on high to lesser individuals and groups. The American revolution challenged that belief effectively for most people here with the democratic conviction that authority is given by God to the people and they commission selected members of their own ranks to handle it. The Church is very ambivalent about democracy at the present moment, on the one hand endorsing it officially, yet refusing to accept it for their own organizational apparatus.

Certainly, the Roman Catholic Church is one of the most egregious examples of male domination in our society today,  if not in all of human history. At a time when the era of male domination is drawing to a close the present system of social organization employed by the Church is out of keeping with the times. The same could be said of the thinking of younger people today and that of Hispanics.

The above comments are not meant to cast bad aspersions on the men who are presently bishops in the Catholic Church. For the most part, they are truly decent and honorable individuals -- more sinned against than sinning. It is the system that is wrong for the times, and they are among the victims of it.