Can the Catholic Church be saved?
Pope Francis has gone to the Father in Heaven, will politics continue to rule the faithful?
Early this morning, Easter Monday, Pope Francis grasped Jesus by the hand, and went to be with Him in Heaven. Believing that the head of the Roman Catholic Church was a man of solid faith in the Savior, I do not mourn his passing, but join the host of angels who have surely welcomed Jorge Mario Bergoglio after an extraordinary, and long, life.
It is a particularly political time for Catholics. Both the previous President of the United States and the serving Vice President hold to the faith, though they hail from nearly opposite poles of the political spectrum. Similarly, the Catholic Church itself has suffered from a schism between progressives, who value world cooperation and ecumenical harmony, and conservatives, who hold to church tradition and the global reach of the Holy See.
I am not going to offer any kind of eulogy for Pope Francis. Nor will I offer any opinion on ecclesiastical matters regarding the Roman Catholic Church. Others can fulfill that role much better than I.
I will say that many things in the Roman Catholic Church require some deep examination, and perhaps the men who decide the direction of the next pope will spend time in prayer and meditation to reflect on these things. Nothing in the church should be spared from this matter of the heart. The 2013 election of the first non-European pope represented a profound break in Catholic leadership. Now the cardinals have the opportunity to continue the breaking of hidebound tradition.
If you are Catholic, forgive me for intruding into matters you may consider indisputable, even sacred. But Catholics must understand that the elements of their religion they have learned may require realignment with Biblical principles, going back to the first split when Martin Luther, a Catholic, nailed his ninety-five theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church.
If the pastor of the church can offer Joe Biden, who is pro-abortion and as president persecuted pro-life activists, communion, and also offer Vice President J.D. Vance, who has embraced Russia in its quest to dominate an independent Ukraine, communion, could it be that the practice of the priest giving that rite, and the doctrine of transsubstantiation that underpins it, may require rethinking?
If you have been to a Catholic parish, inside the room where the priest and altar boys prepare the communion elements, you know the instruments and various ornate utensils used to perform that sacred ceremony. But we also know that some priests and altar boys engaged in unclean acts, and at times in that very room. The scandal of sexual abuse cannot be escaped, and if we are to judge by the standard of holiness in the Old and New Testaments, many of these sins would be deserving of death. It leads me to the question of whether the elements themselves were holy when offered to parishioners.
If they are holy, it’s because of the heart of those partaking in the body and blood of Christ, regardless of the actions of the person preparing them. If they are not, then it’s a grievous sin to offer them to anyone. And if it could continue to happen, the Catholic Church must examine its own heart.
Common sense dictates that when you limit a ministry to unmarried men, give them privacy and authority over parishioners and lay people to hear confessions and offer counsel, assign young boys to them as assistants, and make them mentors to those youths, you will attract some people who see that as an irresistible urge to fulfill their own abominable lust. This has proved true over a hundred years as record have been unearthed and victims have come forward. Perhaps it would make sense to allow priests to marry, and to re-examine the role of women in ministry?
Over the years, the Catholic Church has reformed many practices, like ending the limiting of liturgical mass to Latin, and allowing different kinds of music and other worship to occur. I have personally known charismatic, spirit-filled Catholics who would fit in at any pentecostal congregation. There are also Jesuits and academics of deep faith, who understand God’s creation and can help those who question fundamentalist doctrine to find a strong and lasting faith. These are the positives, the assets, and the workers in the harvest who are powerful in their labor for Christ.
As I see it, the cardinals have an opportunity to move toward a Biblical contrition and a better path for Catholics worldwide. Or they could pursue a nakedly political and carnal path, which will not honor the Roman Catholic Church’s unique position as the largest denomination of Christians in the world.
One thing they must all know, but is not really spoken of. If 135 cardinals who are eligible to vote for a new pope (a requirement is to be under 80 years old) out of 252 members, are fallible, sinful flesh and blood humans, how can they themselves decide one whose judgement and pronouncements are held as infallible by Catholics all over the world? How can one man, though he occupy the office of pontifex, held by St. Peter himself, repent on behalf of a billion who identify as Roman Catholic?
Peter would never have presumed to repent on anyone’s behalf. He would call them to repent who have been stiff-necked, self-aggrandizing, self-righteous, hypocritical, or deviant in their sin. He would cast out the demons from those who were afflicted, heal the sick with the power of the Holy Spirit, and call upon believers to exhibit the love and charity of the One they serve, Jesus Christ.
One thing I liked about Pope Francis was his rejection of the trappings of the papacy. He favored a simpler life and a simpler faith. He offered a path of love and inclusion, while holding to Biblical, if not conservative Catholic, doctrine. He tried to do what he could, but communication from such an isolated and tightly scripted pulpit frequently gets lost in (literal) translation, and (rhetorical) context. When one is considered to be clothed with the mantle of infallible wisdom from Heaven, it is very difficult to break the religious spirit that frames the position itself.
I believe the Catholic Church can be saved. It can be saved if the cardinals seek and find a humble soul, one who values study and careful application of Biblical principles, one who loves without question, and eschews politics in the way Jesus did. Jesus did not rebuke Pilate; he confounded him with truth (“what is truth?”). I pray that such a man exists somewhere in the College of Cardinals, who can assume the real spiritual mantle of Peter, preaching with fire and conviction, while walking away from the political intrigue and petty spats within the church’s walls.
Remember, even Peter was rebuked by Paul. Peter was led by the Holy Spirit to include gentiles in the Kingdom Christ brought through His new covenant. It’s time to go back to that covenant, and to move the Catholic Church into the force for evangelism and love that it could be—the riches of the world have been stored up for a time such as this.
God knows, as has been seen in America, the protestant church is not immune from error, scandal, sexual perversion, or political idolatry. In Europe, much of the population believes they live in a post-Christian world. In east Asia, Christianity is either the neutered state-sanctioned shell of religion, or the white hot faith of dissidents meeting secretly in kitchens and living rooms.
It would be an ideal time for the giant of the Christian religion, the Roman Catholic Church, to shed the spirit of religion that has brought spiritual death and ossified faith to so many, and to unsheathe the sword of the Spirit of God that I hope still lives within it. That is my prayer.
In other matters…
MARCO RUBIO, what does “move on” mean? The Secretary of State said if the U.S. can’t broker a deal to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, we may have to “move on.”
"We are now reaching a point where we need to decide whether this is even possible or not," Rubio told reporters upon departure. "Because if it's not, then I think we're just going to move on."
"It's not our war," Rubio said. "We have other priorities to focus on." He said the U.S. administration wants to decide "in a matter of days."
If this means we leave the war for Europeans to fight, it could be the death knell for Ukraine, or it could mean the war widens if Russian President Vladimir Putin decides to cross more red lines. He has already ignored President Trump’s and his administration’s offers of peace, including an embarrassing U.S. refusal to condemn Russia’s continued targeting of civilians.
THE SUPREME COURT has told the Trump administration to stop deporting Venezuelans to El Salvador, where they would be imprisoned. The ruling was 7-2, with Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissenting. These Venezuelan deportees are not only being stripped of due process, they are being shipped to a country they are not citizens of, where they are imprisoned without a trial. We will see if the administration defies SCOTUS.
IRAN IS DIRECTLY NEGOTIATING with U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff, at the Omani embassy in Rome, where Witkoff met with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. While this goes on, Iran has already rejected U.S. calls to dismantle its uranium enrichment enrichment program. Iran is very good at using negotiation as a delay tactic while it continues to march toward a bomb, which it could assemble fairly quickly. Israel has every right to be worried, though without U.S. support, it’s unlikely they would be able to decisively strike—and now they’ve lost much of the element of surprise.
THE BOSTON MARATHON is today. About 32,000 runners will try to complete the 26.2 mile course, up and down the hills of eastern Massachusetts, including “Heartbreak Hill” in the 20th mile, through Newton. My niece is running today, after many miles of training. Cheer her on with me.
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Steve,
You make excellent points about the state and inherent problematic traditions of the Catholic Church. All church traditions are fossilised: The 1st split though, was not the Great Reformation when Luther nailed his 99 theses to the door at Wittenberg in the 15th century. It was when the Eastern and Western church split in 1054. Interestingly, the split over the nature of the Holy Spirit was just the final straw. Long before this there were disputes about the nature of the Eucharist, the doctrine of transubstantiation, (a 2nd millennial doctrine), etc. and the increasing amassing of power by Western (Roman) leadership. I make this point to illustrate that the whole idea and declaration of the papacy and its claims, was already in dispute. The church has always had a political nature because no human is infallible and Jesus never declared humans to be so. We now as Christians hope and pray for the fallible men who elect the pope to hear the Holy Spirit and elect God’s choice to lead the Catholics of the world on God’s path. Many Protestants join in this prayer. Otherwise, the Roman Catholic Church will completely dissolve into worldliness, and its disastrous outcome.
The Church needs to modernize parts of the Mass. Swinging a pot of burning incense for an hour in a poorly ventilated building prohibits my asthmatic spouse from attending any function in that building. I suspect that this practice got its start back in the times when people rarely bathed as there is little support for it in the Bible beyond the Old Testament practice of animal sacrifice.