In March 2002 I submitted this article to The Irish Times for its "Rite and Reason” column. The paper did not publish the piece and it appears here for the first time.
Apart from one or two typos which I have corrected, it is exactly as I wrote it almost 20 years ago. The main title and the image are taken from emptychurch.org, a now-defunct web site I set up during the mid-2000s.
I wrote the article in a state of disgust after watching a television programme about Ireland’s Magdalen laundries. Set in the 1960s, Sinners was a dramatisation of life in a fictionalised home for unmarried mothers. It was screened in the wake of a flood of revelations exposing the unsavoury side of one of Ireland’s most revered institutions, the Roman Catholic Church.
The first book I read on the subject was Paddy Reilly’s The God Squad. That was back in the late-1980s and it took a while longer for the dam to burst. Eventually it did with TV documentaries like Dear Daughter and States of Fear.
The brutality and occasional depravity I had seen in my own Catholic day-school prepared me for the greater horrors revealed in these accounts. Thankfully I could go home every afternoon. The unfortunates held in the industrial schools, orphanages, and Magdalen laundries had to stay there, sometimes for years.
The abuse of women and children could not have happened on such a massive scale without state complicity or public indifference. What stuck in my gullet though was that an institution - the Catholic Church - supposedly there to represent God not only did not stop this great evil, but actually perpetuated it.
I am not a priest, nor am I a theologian or a philosopher. I am not even what one might call an active Catholic layperson. Like many Irish people of my generation, I was raised as a Catholic, went to a Catholic school, and generally accepted the various beliefs of my Faith. As a child I served Mass and had the pleasure of experiencing the rituals and mystery of the old Latin rite before it was banned. The Catholic Church, to me, was the one true Church outside of which it was impossible to be saved.
Nowadays, however, I am feeling increasingly betrayed. The Church to which I have given my allegiance is revealed to have many skeletons in its closet, completely at odds with its divine mission.
How is it possible that an organisation that claims to follow the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth could also be responsible for the litany of crimes that are now receiving long-overdue publicity? Everyone is familiar with the well-known examples of institutional child abuse and the Magdalen laundries. Of course, as a boy growing up in Catholic Ireland, I was aware of the Church’s attitude to extra- or pre-marital sex. On the other hand, my childish mind was also more dimly aware that physical contact with certain men of the cloth was to be avoided. If I ever tried to reconcile these darker aspects of the Church with what I understood to be the teachings of Jesus Christ, it was too easy to push such contradictions aside as mysteries beyond my understanding. I cannot do that anymore.
It does not require a theological or philosophical qualification to distinguish right from wrong. It is wrong to rape anyone, let alone a young and vulnerable child. It is wrong to tolerate such actions if you have the power to prevent them, even if that power extends only to notifying the police. It is wrong to deprive young women of their liberty and their dignity simply because they have become pregnant out of wedlock. Subscribing to the beliefs and rules of any organisation does not eliminate or diminish the responsibility to follow one’s conscience, no matter what the consequences. And that applies to us all, from lay people like me to Cardinals and Popes.
Ultimately, the Catholic Church must serve as the means to a greater end, not as an end in itself. That greater end, surely, is to show its members how to know, love, and serve God. And what must God think of the Catholic Church today? A rhetorical question perhaps, but does it really require such a leap of imagination to figure out? If we cannot second-guess the mind of God, then can we learn anything from the life of Jesus?
Even someone with a superficial knowledge of the Gospels can see that here was a man trying very hard to understand and carry out God’s will. He was eager to teach anyone who would listen how to live a good life. His own example is probably the best lesson he could offer. For instance, when he showed his concern for the children whom his disciples were trying to keep away from him. Or his kindness to the woman taken in adultery when her accusers wanted to kill her. Clearly, Jesus would have been appalled and angry that any of his so-called followers could abuse women and children. Given that Jesus devoted his life to God, then maybe we can begin to understand what God must think of those who have committed or tolerated the horrors we are constantly reading about and seeing on our television screens.
I sometimes wonder also what ordinary Catholics of my own generation and older must think about all that is happening in the Catholic Church today. Many must be disillusioned, to the point of severing all connection with the Church. Perhaps others go further and abandon belief in a God Who could allow Himself to be represented by what they see as an irredeemably corrupt institution. No doubt others continue to give their allegiance to the Church, perhaps out of habit, or because they are in denial. Ultimately, each person must decide for him or herself. Well, here is what I now believe.
If the history of the Catholic Church has taught us anything it is that we cannot look to any institution for example in how to live a good life, never mind how to seek God. In the case of the Church, one only has to read about the Crusades or the Spanish Inquisition to realise that. Instead we must turn to the true followers of Jesus, those men and women who developed such a relationship with God that it transformed their lives. I refer to the likes of Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, or in our own time, Padre Pio, who is due to be canonised soon. These three developed such a deep love of God that they drew others to them. In the case of St. Thérèse this happened most spectacularly after her death. What they had in common was a direct personal relationship with God. To me, this seems to be the only way that anyone with a spiritual hunger can reach fulfilment.
Young children were not afraid to approach Jesus. They were simply responding to his evident goodness. Unfortunately we have been taught to keep God at a distance, to hold Him in such reverential awe that we dare not approach. Is this what God wants, to be surrounded by fawning subjects like some tin-pot dictator? This is not to suggest that the alternative is the kind of ‘matey’ attitude that some feel is appropriate. The truth is we all have an image of God that is probably nothing like the reality.
For instance, we all agree that God is male, don’t we? Anyone using the female pronoun to refer to God must be a feminist of the most extreme kind. Well if God is a man, that must mean men are closer to God than women are. Men, especially, will see immediately how ridiculous that notion is. If anything, biology alone would make it more likely that God’s nature is female rather than male. After all, women, not men, give birth to new life. So, when I have to use a pronoun for God, ‘She’ and ‘Her’ make greater sense to me.
So what other inaccuracies are there in our perceptions of God? The only way to find out is to get to know Her, just as we would any person in whom we were interested. By learning that it is possible, not only to speak to God, but to hear Her voice, not as some miraculous or paranormal experience, but as an inner awareness. And through this form of ‘silent prayer’, God can draw us closer to Her and, perhaps, even make use of us to counteract the evils that I have referred to in this article.
If this sounds like pious nonsense, then nothing written here will persuade you otherwise. But for anyone not immediately dismissive, consider that we have only one life here on Earth. Is there a better way to spend it?