IMPORTANT UPDATE below

At a Good Friday service in the
Vatican and attended by Pope Benedict, preacher Father
Raniero Cantalamessa compared the current scandals over sexual abuse by Church
officials with “the most shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.” To say this is obscene is perhaps an understatement.

I
have refrained from commenting on the current sex abuse scandal rocking
the Catholic Church’s leadership, partly because it’s so obvious that the
guilty were systematically protected and the victims systematically injured and
partly because it is not a Pagan issue – though that wing of the Church that is
most anti-Pagan seems also disproportionately guilty of these crimes.

MONOTHEISM and ORGANIZATION

But there is an interesting
theological point here.  The
penchant for powerful centralized organizations that become corrupt at the top
is something Christian monotheisms are particularly prone to because most have
a radically hierarchical model of reality.

Smaller decentralized monotheistic
groups do not have the numbers to seek political power and domination, but often have
a similarly hierarchical view of a ultimate king share this weakness.  As soon as they see an opportunity to
exercise power their lust for domination is as strong as was the Catholic
hierarchy when it was at the peek of its power. The conservative and right-wing
branch of the Southern Baptists are proving this big time.

The problem is inherent in belief
in a single divine “king” that can be understood as a “personality.” It suggests that all good authority is ultimately top-down from a Big Boss.  A human organization then takes it upon itself to serve as The Boss’s representatives to the rest of us.  (As monotheists move towards a more mystical understanding of the One this problem seems to diminish – but (if I understand it correctly), they have to abandon the “King” imagery.)

As soon as such an organization
arises it tends to redefine its task in terms of what is good for the
leadership.  Leaders come to view
themselves as identical with all that is best about the organization.  That is what we are witnessing today.
It is fascinating.

Such corruption can survive when it
has political power behind it, but when political freedom enters in, these
organizations have a hard time.  For example, the Church was dominant in Ireland until a free
political environment enabled its leaders’ crimes to be exposed along with that
of their political allies.  It’s subsequent fall was rapid. Now
evidence is rapidly accumulating that this problem is endemic in the Church all
over.  My guess is the Church will
not reform itself effectively because the leadership is concerned primarily
with itself, not its supposed spiritual mission.  That is why criticism of the Pope and many around him can be
compared with the worst aspects of anti-Semitism by these people.  It is a totally distorted view of the
world.

NOT JUST A RELIGIOUS PROBLEM

This morning I listened to a
absolutely fascinating NPR Podcast about the failure of General Motors to
reform itself. It had a chance, for  it had
accomplished a miracle in its successful
Fremont, California plant that, using Toyota’s methods, moved from being GM’s
worst performing plant slated for closure to one of its best.  The result of its failure was
bankruptcy. The reasons were complex, but leadership’s failure to appreciate
their situation was a major factor. 
The podcast is free through the weekend, and available here [mp3] or through
iTunes.

The
Church’s problems are not unique to Catholicism, nor to Christianity, they are
a disease of all big organizations.  

UPDATE

Tristero at Hullabaloo has a very perceptive analysis of why the obscene remark on anti-Semitism appeared at theVatican – to change the subject from evil deeds by many to evil words by one.  To give another example, when a “hotline” for victims of sexual abuse by priests was set up in Germany it had to be  shut down because of the enormous number of calls seeking help.

The most important point here is not priestly misbehavior, dreadful as it is.  It is the long record of cover up by higher-ups, and of putting the interests of criminals ahead of the interests of those the organization was charged to serve.  It takes a sociopath come up with a plan to derail news coverage of the abuse and cover-up, which involves the institution, with focusing on a priest’s disgusting words, which involves a man.  

One commentator observed that small organizations can be as bad.  Other than small cults dominated by a twisted personality and explicitly criminal gangs I think this is not so.  Large organizations engage many decent people and ultimately corrupt them on a large scale, getting them to do things they otherwise would not.  Think of Germany and the Holocaust, the killing fields of Cambodia, or murder and torture of prisoners by Americans and the defense of it by many more.  (The scale of the latter crimes is smaller, the moral degeneration it exhibits is not.)  These are not explicable by reference to a cult.