I grew up in an Italian, Catholic family with one son in the Jesuits (no longer as he left to become a doctor). At the age of 24 it occurred to me that God, as he was portrayed, was an ego-maniac and a sadomasochist (burned people in Hell for taking his name in vain or missing church). I gave him the ultimatum of striking me with lightening or convincing me that the church was wrong. Now in my 80th year I have no use for religion but am happy with God and life.
53
Why is this puerile screed on the oped page of the Great Gray Lady?" An essay that befits The Catholic Times occupies precious white space, displacing science, logic, reason, or even simple empathy. Fundamentalist converts, such as St. Augustine and Ross, always see the mote in the eyes of others, while ignoring the California Redwood in their own.
Many have wearied of the interjection of religious mythology and superstition into our daily lives, not to mention the pernicious effect of religious faith upon Americans (and some nations as well).
I hate to burst anyone's comfort bubble, but there is no Supernatural Being overseeing and interposing Itself into our lives, rewarding us when we are "good" or punishing us when we are "bad". The make-believe worlds cultivated by religionists have perverted our lives, if not our nations, as witnessed in modern day proxy wars without end and Middle East conflagrations.
If one sincerely believes there is a spark of the Divine within each of us, it would behoove each believer to treat others accordingly. Concepts such as karma and the Golden Rule would lend an entirely different connotation to the phrase, "This hurts me worse than it does you", than when uttered by parents.
Kurt Anderson's "Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire" should be required reading for ALL civics. social studies, and/or political science classes. Perhaps then we might better realize the religious can of worms released upon the world and humanity.
58
I am a "recovering Catholic" and have, after decades, finally discarded the baggage that came with my upbringing, but at Christmas I admit to missing the spiritual depth that made the season always more than the exchange of gifts and overindulgence. I keep that part, the spirituality, close at this time of year through volunteering, donations and connections with loved ones. The church itself, I have very little use for given that women remain second class and sexually screwed up males have gotten a pass for decades...
33
..I'm staying as a Nazarene Jew. That is who I am but my actions will show what I am made of.
I work like others also, but in so many ways I need to work twice as hard for to try to do the right thing often is followed by much back lash that requires even more work.
Life I short, who knows what comes next, I don't really care for I need all the time and energy right now for this reality, at this time that I have been placed in.
My parents are Holocaust survivors (they both passed on years ago) but they always said, over and over, "We Jews have made and will make mistakes like anyone else. We are few in number but we must try to learn by example...yet, we always start to forget our faith and then everyone turns against us for we ourselves forget why we are sometimes so successful - for we learned to pray besides and along with our suffering and work. Without a balance we get lost. We are not sorry we did not leave Poland though we lost our families. Poland is filled with many good people who are not Jews. It is our wish that you return and help the good people against the bad, be they Jews of the few left or the Poles."
I got my PhD in Law specializing in human rights and for over twenty-five years started and run my own largest (was) private human rights NGO in Eastern Europe. I say this not for praise , I say this to hopefully remind us all, again, life is short and the best feelings come from helping others. Now, in USA we need support the good people and TOGETHER.
17
I wish all Catholics a Merry Christmas. It cannot be easy to just enjoy the celebration free of scandal and controversy, considering the administrations of the Church and State this season.
6
Many of the commenters on today’s column will enjoy many of the reflections of the late Ian Paisley, compiled here: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/the-sayings-of-ian-paisley-30582269.html
To my way of thinking, staying RC for anyone now is very like a woman
who sticks with a husband who beats her - sad, but understandable if she has no
other place to go.
22
Ross, I don’t know if you will ever read this note, but really you should take another look at Judah and Tamar. Yes, the family was dysfunctional. All the patriarchal families are. (This relates to another point you cite: once Matthew found it imperative to link Jesus to patriarchal ancestors, he had no choice but to include badly imperfect human beings.) With respect to Tamar, Judah had promised her his youngest son. He withheld that son, and hence the child that she needs--for reasons of social security--and that God needs too, in order to carry out the historical design. Tamar then manages, by subterfuge, to have a child with Judah: she takes agency in the only way available to her, and God not only doesn’t punish her, but makes her the progenitor of an important line. The important thing here is not that Judah threatens to burn her, but that he “recognizes” his own culpability. Judah acknowledges his guilt. That’s a big deal. Worthy of praise in a big way.
6
I suppose it is natural that a conservative like Douthat should mostly be concerned with the Church, the material, human organization, rather than with the theology, the message of "salvation."
The Church has been corrupt ever since the Council of Nicaea when Constantine called together the Christian bishops and "made them an offer they couldn't refuse," and they accepted.
This was the historical moment that corresponds to the mythical tale in the New Testament when Satan took Jesus up to a "high place" and offered him the kingdoms of the earth. Jesus' response (in modern vernacular) was "Get out of my face, Satan."
If this story were to be continued, the Bishop of Rome would have stepped up when Jesus walked out and said, "Hold on, Satan, I think we can make a deal." That "deal" was signed at the Council of Nicaea in 325-327.
The decline of the Church comes mostly from a failure of the theology to meet modern circumstances. Fewer people actually believe the Christmas story with each passing year. Christianity presents a myth of salvation as historical fact, and that's simply not believable anymore for many educated people.
The fact that pedophiles and power hungry con men have again taken over the Church as an institution is no surprise. It shows that the "great Christian myth" has failed. Douthat's other beloved "great myth" -- "small government" conservatism -- is now failing, too. No "Merry Christmas" for you, Mr. Douthat.
21
Hello woke Cardinal Douthat, your biblical exegesis is fine--except why the big C Catholic rather than just little c catholic? or just Christian? Why not stay Orthodox Christian? Or stay Protestant Christian?
1
Owing allegiance to Christ, and not to the institutional church, is the way I keep my faith intact. The institutional church, like every other institution, is human-made and human-run. It is designed, like every other institution, to protect itself, promulgate itself, and make sure outsiders are kept out. These institutions are the precise opposite of the real Church, the diving one, made up of those called out by God to serve.
7
I am a nearly-70-year-old cradle Catholic who remains on the same lifelong spiritual arc. My thinking about philosophical, theological and religious matters became somewhat independent in my Catholic high school years -- a result of what I understood to be the spirit of Vatican II, as well as my growing appreciation of the diversity and evolving nature of tolerable thinking within the broader Church worldwide.
It was the ex cathedra proclamation of the Assumption that got me started -- that and the paucity of objective known facts about very early Church history. I have since increasingly reserved my own judgement about the "truth" of current Catholic dogma, and about its historical assertions regarding Judeo-Christian origins.
I see the Church as a human institution -- one that quite understandably is finding it increasingly difficult to successfully assert its very self (magisterium) as its keystone doctrine.
I wish there were a place in the church for respectful but openly freethinking Catholics, where a re-framed perspective along more intellectually defensible lines could be considered and developed. In my opinion, the outdated but still orthodox view expressed by Ross is not sustainable. The trend I see is devolution into mindless fundamentalism appealing mainly to credulous authoritarian personality types.
I hate seeing the Church, with its rich cultural history, going town the tubes.
But the poetic perspective articulated by Ross is beautiful to read.
3
"But it is the season’s promise, and in the long run its testable hypothesis, that those who stay and pray and fight will see it improbably reborn."
They will imagine it that way, yes. Mass delusion (pun intended).
7
This argument is made in human terms while attempting to find justification for an extra-human idea, religion. The entire Bible, in fact, is just that: full of decidedly human foibles and demonstrably human justifications. It is labeled, with no rational basis, as the “word of God,” when every idea in it is so clearly human, not divine, in origin. Personally, I would prefer a god who is less human in nature, as the biblical god is so often portrayed. If I’m to have faith, it must be in something more compelling than words and ideas clearly conceived thousands of years ago by humans.
That sort of faith is easy, and requires so little of us, and, so little of god. A god worth having faith in ought to be more mysteriously compelling and less humanly petty. It would be a god whose righteous anger would not be aroused by petty disobedience. Rather, it would be a god who could reside in the mysteriously vast universe that modern humans have knowledge of, but which was unknown to the composers of the Bible.
That sort of god would be naturally appreciated as we celebrate the rebirth of life at the winter solstice, at least here in the northern hemisphere. By recognizing the simple yet powerful explanation for that rebirth, we arrive at the heart of this celebration of life here on earth.
3
We are told, in the Catholic Church, that THE CHURCH is the people, not the clergy. The clergy, and the church hierarchy, mostly act, and many lay people encourage due to clericalism, the exact opposite. I am always reminded of my devout, though clear-eyed Dad's saying: "The Church, and all Christianity, has endured despite the clergy, not because of them". I disagree with my church on many topics, believing and praying that given time and further enlightenment, my chuch will work to repair itself, and get closer to my way of thinking. Lord, hear our prayer.
10
One of my first disillusionments with Christian faith was when I read the genealogies in Mathew and realized that the writer had gone to great lengths to establish Jesus' bonafides by tracing his lineage through Joseph. and then later insisted that Joseph was not His father.
13
Rambling thoughts deserve .... best wishes to your mental glotony. NO other culture (tribe, nation, even the so called races -color- can trace the origin of ANYONE beyond a few generations. What does that mean ??? Sart with pride for the Jews -Israelits-, continue to sense for us western civs -greek/roman-, and finish with love in cap lettters LOVE of our Faith for the Christian world. We have a Redemer. He redeems us from our history of ... you said it.
1
Christmas is a blend between Jesus believers and pre-historic North European attempts to stay warm in winter. This is then further messed up by prohibiting male Christian leaders to ever love a woman but instead allow them to rape minors, primarily young boys. To still have followers of this believe in the 21st century is incredible.
14
When a normal and natural drive is denied and shamed, sexuality can become twisted and ugly. It baffles me how Catholics can repeat that they’re true Catholics but hate what the pedophile priests do. Seems to me, and I’m not a Catholic, that if droves of congregants left in protest, the Catholic Church would have a much needed wake-up call. Until then, I don’t think we should expect much change. The sexual abuse, payoffs, denial and coverups seem too ingrained in the system. How many lives ruined by this evil? Heartbreaking.
17
This silliness is what convinced me to be an atheist.
21
Good points, well made!
5
However you'd like to explain Catholicism, don't bring the Jewish people into it. The concept of the Jews as a "chosen people" (which many modern Jews don't believe), has nothing to do with the actions of all the people listed in the "begats". Yes, we recognize that the people of the Old Testament - including patriarchs, kings, and prophets, were flawed human beings. But Jewish theology doesn't claim a human being can be perfect, and definitely not that our clergy speak with the authority of God and must be obeyed. Many of the problems the Catholic church is facing stem from the power that your clergy - from the Pope down to parish priests - have been imbued with. In a system where your religious leaders' statements are believed to be infallible, these humans leaders are not likely to be held accountable for their actions when they sin. Especially when their sins are victimizing the very people who view them as God's emissaries.
18
You are right. And the same may be true of some of the ultra-orthodox Heradim, who treat their chief rabbis as princes and popes and messiahs ("We want Moshiach!"), even. Is it any wonder, then, that the small number of clergy child sex abuse cases impacting the Jewish community in the US seem to be concentrated amongst those claiming to be the "true believers"? It's a shanda (shame). And remember, Judaism teaches that God forgives sins against God, but if you sin against another human being, you must first seek that person's forgiveness before seeking God's.
12
Douthat's rationale is a roundabout way of acknowledging the fact that religions are man-made institutions that seek God, but that God remains high above them all. Does loyalty to our own dysfunctional faith family improve it or merely enable the continuance of that dysfunction? I think a better lesson of history for the Church was the one taught by Martin Luther, who avoided Jan Hus' fatal mistake of respecting ecclesiastical authority. Reformation led to Counter-reformation wherein the Catholic Church experienced its greatest resurgence of faith and art in modern history. The whole of Christianity was made better by the challenge. The fact is that, as man-made institutions, churches are really only good when they are getting their butts severely kicked. This chastening of the "righteous" is the hand--make that the foot--of God at work in the world.
3
I like how Alan Watts casually put it:
“When someone says God, the Father Almighty, most people feel funny inside”
5
Boccaccio already made an almost identical point in the Decameron - the second story in the first day - about Abraham the Jew who travels to Rome and sees the depravity if the Church leaders. Upon returning to Paris he converts because he concludes that God must indeed be the support of the Church to cause it to continue and flourish in spite of that depravity. This logic would seem to be no less valid today.
5
Anything less than removing (and bringing to criminal court) each and every priest found guilty of sexual predation, while at the same time reaching out to each and every person who has been abused within the church, with compensation and modes of sponsored healing, is not an appropriate message for today's Catholic Church. Silence would be more truthful. There is no moving on, as Douthat would have it, until all those defenseless and violated children have the chance to catch up, and are nourished by the church towards wholeness. Without this, sacrosanct words such as hope, forgiveness, prayer, etc. will have no meaning.
8
Every Yom Kippur my rabbis' fine liturgy reminds our congregation that if you do wrong to another person(s), you have to stop doing that wrongful thing, make meaningful restitution to those you harmed, and do what you can to seek and receive their forgiveness (without causing them more harm). Only after you've at least tried in earnest to do these things does God forgive. Might be an interesting lesson for the abusive priests you mention.
10
Douthat writes: "The idea that biblical religion has always proposed is emphatically not that you can tell whether a people is chosen by the virtue of their leaders. It’s that the divine chooses to act constantly amid not just ordinary fallibility but real depravity...."
By dumbing down the DNA of his church, Douthat exposes the central problem for its members: How can you tell that this institution is divinely inspired? Not only is it indistinguishable from secular, human-inspired organizations, the church's corruption, malfeasance and greed make it the worst of them. The faithful can only conclude that the ways of the Lord are not just mysterious, they're downright inscrutable.
6
It never ceases to disturb me how so many of us who comprise the homo sapiens species have so little knowledge or understanding of human history, particularly of that part we call "Western Civilization" and the three "great" religions it spawned: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. That history clearly shows that all three of these religions, and their sectarian offshoots, have relied on what is euphemistically called "faith" but is no more than an inchoate, willfully blind belief in ancient myths about the existence of a single male god who somehow created out of nothing the universe, our world and the flora and fauna that have populated it. Since scientific evidence and common sense have show the falseness, if not silliness, of the scriptural history set forth in their holy books, true believers such as Mr. Craig have struggled to find ways to rationalize their religious beliefs. But of course they can't, so they fall back on their "faith".
But how does one acquire faith in something that is demonstrably untrue, such as there is "good evidence" of a "creator and Designer of the universe" in the form of the God of the Bible and Quran? By closing one's eyes; clearing one's mind of all knowledge of history, science and other rational thoughts; and telling one's self repeatedly that God created the universe, Adam and Eve, etc. as the Bible says until such time as the brain somehow accepts that as "true"? If that is how such faith is acquired, I want none of it?
8
It is interesting to read Mr. Douthat's take on King David's Biblical role . Both Judaism and Catholicism consider David to have been the worthy progenitor of the Messiah, the world's savior ---albeit the two movements disagree whether this salvation has already come or is to come and also disagree as to the degree of change ushered in by Messiah's arrival; Orthodox Jews say that when Messiah comes, all illness will disappear and permanent peace will reign. Regarding King David , he is thought to have been an essentially saintly figure although there were times when his actions were cruel and corrupt. But he quickly responded to the admonitions of the Prophet Nathan and is the arch representative of the true penitent, totally changing himself into sainthood. But what is astounding about King David's portrayal in Bible and in Talmud is that two entirely different personalities are portrayed. The Old Testament paints the picture of a military leader who could be conniving and corrupt ---claiming allegiance to Israel's enemies the Philistines at the same time that he was slaughtering them. And the episode where he arranged to have Uriah the Hittite (who is shown as a loyal soldier who avoids cohabitation while on duty ) sent to the front lines to be killed is a horrid action. But in the Talmud , King David is painted more as a scholarly rabbi than as a warrior and many of his rulings are taken as binding today among Orthodox Jews. Will the real King David please stand up?
2
Why?
Why would you spend time and effort trying to reconcile generations of indisputably evil behavior in the name of a bad fairytale written thousands of years ago and used almost exclusively to justify a power structure that does nothing but perpetuate itself? Just stop. Just wake up tomorrow and say "I choose to embrace a rational world, and to act with the best of intentions and the most ethical principles I know." And then all those begats are irrelevant.
22
The argument that "all this has happened before and will happen again" is the case for remaining Catholic?
You're talking about the church that has been covering up an internal priest pedophile ring for decades? The church that dictates what women can and cannot do with their own lives and bodies? The church that recklessly encourages overpopulation among the poorest people in third-world nations?
So basically "All that the Catholic Church has done to destroy people's lives and our environment has happened before, is happening now, and will continue to happen again and again."
The Catholic Church is a for-profit corporation run by corrupt men. Don't think otherwise. They may market themselves as humble saints, but take a close look: follow the money. They are living off the fat of the land while sprinkling holy water on the desperate ignorant throng crawling through the gutter.
"This era feels understandably like another death." Ross, death in this case is a good thing. The Catholic Church (as is true with all organized religions) is a menace to society and all life on our planet. It needs to die.
12
Your church, and all major religions today, date from a time of literacy, when the stories they come from were able to be recorded for the those following the decedents who wrote them down. Without that, we have only cargo cults, that don't survive the times they arose in. Homo sapiens may be 250,000 ears old. How many religions, some depicted on cave walls, have come and gone since we had brains that could imagine the supernatural? But according to you, these Abrahamic traditions, maybe 6,000 years old, are all we have after 4.5 billion years of evolving life. Yet you cling to these curious stories, and follow the grown men who don their vestments over their wingtips and brogans every Sunday, and preach to those like yourself, who can't believe there is no higher purpose than the simple binary choice Darwin proposed- it works, or it doesn't.
8
A wonderful and succinct statement of how Christian faith does not depend on the fidelity of our leaders, but on the content of our souls. Merry Christmas!
8
I was raised in the Catholic Church, and my mother, a very devout Catholic, campaigned mightily to convince me to be a priest. That lasted until puberty set in. At age 18, I walked away from the church, dismayed at the cynical attitude displayed, and have never looked back.
While the religion itself provided solace to my mother, and I am sure, may others, the church is in need of reform. The exclusion of women from the priesthood has led to the present sorry state of affairs, and it won't change until such time as they are allowed full access.
14
There would be more benefit in being open to all knowledge, and to love in a larger sense, than in "staying" with any particular religious dogma. That said, the smug atheist can no more disprove the existence of a higher power than the dogmatic religious person can prove the existence of God. When questioned about the existence of God, Albert Einstein answered thusly: "I prefer an attitude of humility, corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being." A dose of such humility would benefit many commenters here.
1
I am a lifelong, middle-aged Catholic who served as an altar server, sacristan, attended Catholic high schools and two Catholic colleges. Throughout I have spent much time with priests and sisters and been inspired by their mentorship as devout human beings in the service of others. Being Catholic is about joining with others each day (not just once a week) in service of those in need. We do this through education, hospitals, assistance to the poor and the very important sacraments. Many, many times have priests and sisters been by my side at key moments to minister spiritually when my family and I needed it. Faith and community with fellow Catholics carries me through and reminds me that, thanks to God and Jesus Christ, we fallible beings have a duty to all human beings because we are Catholic. As Catholics, we are not perfect, but we are fortunate to be called to serve others.
157
@ChrisI could cut and paste it and call it my own. Man these are tough times for us but I constantly refer to my Catholic upbringing in so many personal and business dealings and it has never failed me to this point. Thanks for enunciating these feelings.
34
@arthur your write: "man are these tough times for us" ... not tough times at all ! ... but instead great times, crunch-time, time to get clean, to face our sins ... and it is during such times that the Holy Spirit can work her magic ... best of times ... we are told (in the imperative, not a suggestion, not a piece of advice, but commanded) to not be afraid. So, let's not be afraid but continue marching forward.
13
What a lovely comment. Thank you.
Since Jesus was Jewish, as Ross' piece reminds us, I assume Jews are among the brothers Jesus speaks of in the quote you included. I hope and pray that Catholic people and all Christians remember this guidance from God/Jesus. I wish the priest I heard preach libel against Jews had considered and prayed on Jesus' words before he spoke and before the lie he told even entered his heart.
21
Keep Christ in your heart, no matter what the church does. but be careful to remember that sometimes a church, any church, does not preach the gospel but instead reaches for power.
Christ asked us to feed the hungry, care for the sick, and welcome the stranger. He asked us to think of those in need as our neighbors and to treat our neighbors as we treat ourselves.
Who is the stranger today? The immigrant, the gay, the homeless, those whose appearance is different from ours: all colors, all shapes, all languages. The only criterion is need.
Our family has given up Christmas presents this Christmas and will gather to love one another. I'm giving to homeless men on the street. Look for Christ and you will find him.
237
@memosyne
Your words are profound! Thank you sharing your beliefs so eloquently.
18
I was born into a large Irish Roman Catholic family of 9. While we are proud of our heritage None of us are “ practicing” catholics anymore. If i had to use a word that encompasses our collective belief system I would use “ spiritual” which is admittedly a big umbrella that fits all. But thats the point: we don’t have to buy anyone’s dogma anymore. Each of us is free to create our own vision of “ god” and live our lives according to the values and teachings we value most from our traditions and any others we care to adopt and honor. We may have started at the same place as Mr Douhart but we believe that Jesus’ message called on us to evolve and adapt on this earthly journey and I don’t see that message in this column.
275
Why, oh why, oh why are the police not arresting abusers and anyone who knowingly protected them? They are criminals. Why are they not treated like Harvey Weinstein? They are much worse - thousands of cases of underage, non-consensual forced sex and institutional cover-up. Why is there any discussion of the church self-adjudicating any of this? And why would anyone - looking at you Ross - remain associated to such an evil enterprise?
8
Why is anyone surprised at the hypocrisy and debauchery in Catholic church? Christianity's Old Testament has a cruel and badly behaving god (commanding a father to kill his son, then calling it off??), its New Testament is based on non-consentual sex between god and an underage woman (I would term this rape), it worships the torture of of its second god, Jesus, then proceeds to institutionalize cannibalism (they believe they are actually eating the flesh and drinking the blood of their god.) Pretty horrifying stuff when you are looking at the religion from outside of it.
5
As a profound atheist, I am dismayed and somewhat angered when publications with the reputation of the NYT publish the neuronic fantasies of those who worship a fairy tale god.
And would you leave your five year old son alone with a Catholic priest? I certainly would not.
10
Douthat first of all, your prose is practically unreadable, it is so scattered and boring. Also, for someone who tries really hard to come off as super-educated, how can you still pretend that your church is anything more than a criminal enterprise of unspeakable horror? Haven't you gained THAT knowledge by now, like most actually enlightened, free-thinking adults?
Your ilk prey on fools for funding used to coverup institutional child rape and gilded shrines, not to mention all those ornate hats. Further, your kind steal from folks using guilt and shame and by conditioning them to fear an underworld of magical demons that thru non-compliance, will assure a place there in a mythical afterlife. Doesn't this sound silly to your oh-so-educated self?
Wouldn't a benevolent and ultra-rich "church" be more valuable to mankind by dealing in reality, doing good for fellow humans in the one world we actually live in?
7
I just have to chuckle at church-going Catholics who pile their hard-earned money into collection plates at mass as good-intentioned offerings that, in turn, are used by the Church to pay multi-million dollar court settlements to abuse victims whose abusers are of the very same ilk (and sometimes the same men) who pass around the collection plates! Wake up already!
10
Yet another example of Christians mischaracterizing and using Judaism and Jewish texts to justify and proselytize Christianity; which too often has been mischaracterized and used to oppress, harass, and murder Jews.
6
I’m a cradle Catholic and a historian. The Catholic Church has always been corrupt and it needs to just stay dead.
4
I was indoctrinated into the Catholic Church from youth, and though the scandal of sex abuse among the clergy does not surprise me in the least, my utter contempt for the Catholic Church predates the current problems. As a sensitive and impressionable young boy in a Catholic grammar school, I was taught over and over how hell is a real place in which you will feel the pain of fire on flesh for eternity. What does it take to get to hell... something as trivial as missing mass on Sunday. It doesn't matter what good you have done in your life, if you die with a mortal sin on your soul, which can result from something as trivial as this, you will go to hell. In fact, I was taught by a priest that even thinking about missing mass is a mortal sin. So if one thinks thought crimes are the reserve of North Korea or Stalinist Russia, you are not Catholic. What does it take to get to heaven...first and foremost, one must be Catholic. I still remember like it was yesterday a priest telling me this knowing full well my father was not Catholic. My point being is, the Catholic Church (and just about any other institutionalized religion claiming sole possession of a divine truth) has got more problems than just sexual predators for its clergy.
13
Thank you, Ross. If there is any blessing in the chaos caused by irresponsible bishops and popes, it is in shaking us up.
I left the seminary 55 year ago. I am driven now to remember the good, in the past and today.
For the Church had my back when I declared myself a conscientious objector after induction into the Army during Vietnam. The Catholic Chruch, and especially this pope, is preaching income equality and fighting hard against climate change and, yes, child abuse.
The hang-up has mostly been about sex, and about trying to defend unnecessary and ill-conceived "dogma."
These are not fatal flaws. The mystery of God is within us and around us. The problem of evil is our problem to solve. As Kennedy said almost 70 years ago, ". . . here on earch, God's work on earth must be truly our own."
So, a call to arms, and minds, and hearts.
Here in Mexico, we are starting a very ambitious solar energy company, to serve rural areas and towns. We will use the proceeds to fund scientifically based reforestation.
What's your gift to humanity, your expression of your own divinity?
8
Gorgeous and inspiring. Love the last line in particular.
Blessings to you as you celebrate and live your faith. Have a meaningful Christmas indeed.
5
Your comment and your project remind me of the title of an excellent book by Rabbi David Cooper (deceased):
God Is A Verb
4
Weak, Ross. Weak. In linking the “sinners” in Jesus’ family tree to the irredeemable clergy monsters of today’s Holy Mother Church, you missed about 2 millennia of opportunities where social mores became complicated thanks to evolving thought and now the boys in beanies should know better. Celibacy- the death knell for the RC Church.
1
If I hadn't read Ross' other op-ed pieces I would have thought he was building a case for the American Christian support of Trump.
2
Wow! as a result of this column the CC and Catholics are taking a beating. But remember the CC gave you Western Civ. and one of the two most profound statements in history: the prayer of St Francis. Merry Christmas,
2
If all good things and all bad things are equally evidence of the existence of God, then by all means, go to church. As for myself, I prefer to use my brain for something else: critical thinking.
2
Ross, your sermon on "begats" suggests a too-clever link between the Old and New Testaments! Overall, it’s theological nonsense when coupled with the miracle of the virgin birth!
Gospel writers constructed a contradictory genealogy and a host of pre-science "miracles" to portray Jesus as the Jewish messiah and the king of the Jews. Their efforts were unconvincing. Judaism doesn’t recognize Jesus.
A remarkable man named Paul structured a new religion, Christianity, from the reported teachings of Jesus. Unlike Judaism, Paul’s Christianity had only two commandments with no supplementary rule books like Leviticus and Deuteronomy. It was open to all men, not restricted to those born to an Israelite/Jewish mother. It came to be dominated by non-Jews and eventually to be adopted as the official religion of the Roman Empire.
Over the centuries, Paul’s Christianity has been twisted and compounded into a mishmash of superstitions, prejudices, and ad-hoc rules with little deference to the teachings of Jesus. The Nicene Creed is an early example of the perversion of the gospels into a fantasy about God and heaven, but devoid of the teachings and humanity of Jesus.
Modern Christian sects worship Jesus, his mother, and a bevy of dead saints. They are inspired by far-fetched tales, awed by preposterous miracles, but give short shrift to Jesus's teachings.
1
Sorry Ross, prayer will never solve the criminal nature of the world’s largest, most evil, tax free, pedo sex cult.
Not using facts and reason is exactly the problem that has allowed such terrible crimes to occur around the world.
4
Love, kindness, forgiveness, humility, do no harm - all of these, Ross, are the foundation of a life well-lived. Jesus, be he the Son of God or merely the wisest Prophet that ever preached, never aspired to be the CEO of a huge corporate “institution” with major Real Estate holdings and powerful men who do it’s bidding. Open your eyes kiddo, “love”, the main message of faith, needs no middle man. Simplify! Therein you’ll find your God . . . .
2
I'm a lapsed Catholic, to me the Church is dead. It's own clergy and leadership killed it. All that's left is a beautiful shell and some really great real estate. Sad, but deserved.
1
All institutions are corruptible because they are run by men (and occasionally, women) who are themselves corruptible. Whether in the government, corporations, the military, unions or organized religion, leaders generally rise to a position of authority because they put the institution before the people it serves. As an individual who is a part of an organization, you have to decide: is what this institution espouses worth defending?
The Church is frequently criticized because did not stop the Holocaust. Yet Belgian nuns saved Jewish children by hiding them in convents, the town of Assisi under its Catholic bishop hid 300 Jews during its occupation and was honored by Israel for it. In France, in Poland, in Germany, Catholics and other Christians risked much to save a few. Did their faith and its teachings help them in any way to do what was right?
In 1924 Congress passed the Johnson-Reed Act that severely limited immigration from Eastern Europe and prevented entry of Jews fleeing the Nazis in the 1930s. Must we abandon America when it doesn’t live up to its ideals or fight to make sure it does?
The Church is not only its hierarchy, it is the people around the world and across the centuries who have tried to live a better life through its teachings of mercy and charity. In America we can vote out a corrupt politician. We don’t have that luxury in the Catholic Church. But to survive, the Church must let the laity in, it must reform, the brass has failed in every way.
2
Ross throw in a couple of dragons and it sounds like "Game of Thrones".
2
Mr. Douthat's very informative article reads to me as if he apologizes for the Roman Catholics adhering to the faith, despite the wave of revelation of pedophilia and homosexuality within the Church.
The stories if incest and other hanky-panky in the Gospel according to St. Matthew prove that nothing is perfect in life, but something new, "As sweet as honey" (an old saying in Hebrew) eventually appears.
Those who are vehemently opposed to the current state of the Church can always join the ranks of the Sedevacantists, the believers that all the Popes, starting with Paul VI in 1969, are illegitimate occupiers of the Throne of St. Peter.
Sorry, Ross, the story of the angels and the shepherds is in Luke, not in Matthew. (An "angel of the Lord" appears to Joseph in Matthew, but there are no "angels" in this Nativity narrative.)
1
A strange club. If you close your eyes and your mind really tight and just believe, you can almost block out the cries of all the women and children who've been sacrificed, over hundreds and hundreds of years and all around the world, for the benefit of a cabal of men in dresses who pretend they have a direct link to a supernatural being. The scale of the suffering is staggering but appears to be a fair price for membership in this special club. People can get away with anything, the most egregious and appalling crimes, just by indoctrinating people as children and then convincing their marks that they control access to eternal life. And don't forget to be generous when the collection plate is passed. The RCC isn't about to lose any of its wealth paying the small fraction of its victims who win lawsuits.
4
"[N]one of them remotely pious." For reasons best known the writer(s) of Matthew, King Jehoash of Judah, who reigned for forty years, is omitted, and "All his days Jehoash did what was pleasing to the Lord, as the priest Jehoiada instructed him.' (II Kings 12:3).
Frankly, anyone who takes the New Testament as a guide to the contents of the Hebrew Bible is probably listening to Macy's take on Gimbel's (apologies to younger readers).
So when are we going to hear from a mainstream Protestant ?
I have just come from making a visit to my local Catholic Church and it is so beautiful at this time of year. The crèche is just waiting for the baby Jesus to be placed in the manger next to Mary and Joseph and the various animals.
This is a very solemn and joyous time in the Christian calendar and important one. I am a regular Catholic which means I attend every Sunday and often go to Mass on weekdays. My faith is my rock and I love my religion. I know the Church is not perfect but no religion or institution is. I need to believe in a higher power which for me is God.
I am planning on going to Midnight Mass which is something I have not done in years. I usually go during the day but this year I want to attend because it is an exquisite Mass. I am so blessed to believe and faith is a gift. This is the best Christmas present I have ever been given. I will always remain a Catholic no matter what. It is that important to me. I adore my faith. Merry Christmas.
93
@WPLMMT If faith is a gift (that also gets you to the good place) is it not a bit unfair and discriminatory that it's only given to some?
12
@WPLMMT
I am a fully-lapsed Catholic, become a non-believer; but I must say that I find real beauty in your comment (and, in its consequence, I am 'suffering' more than a bit of melancholy, a sense of comfort lost ... but 'awakened' by remembrance of years of service as an Altar Boy, and of the pageantry of dress, of colors and other sights, of sounds and of smells in our dressing room, in our Priests' preparation 'vestibule,' and thence … most commanding ... in 'the scene' within the Church during High Mass @ Midnight 'on' Easter and Christmas 'Eves').
15
Giving up in the Church is not giving up on God. You still equate the Church as speaking for/representing God’s will on earth. Rejecting these bad men is not the equivalent to rejecting faith. There are many other reasons to reject the Church and its teachings. Its temporal and eternal damnation of LGBT people, many women and all who do not submit to the Pope is more than enough. This Christmas I am glad to say I walked away from both the Church (and God) and am a better person for having done it.
1
Yet again, the chosen people business - a conceit that, if not universal, is still sufficiently widespread that those of us who imagine ourselves chosen on the basis of faith, tribe, ethnicity, race, or nationality are never alone, no matter who we are.
The notion of a chosen people is perhaps just an inevitable elaboration of the idea that we are created in the divine image - the chosen of the chosen, as it were.
A few days ago in this space, in response to a post I made about climate change policy, reader HCS observed that climate change is "an existential threat to life on our planet," possibly on the order of the Permian-Triassic extinction. Point taken.
Accordingly, those of us who fancy ourselves the chosen, on whatever basis, might consider what we may have been chosen for, and that again, we will not be alone.
1
I am agnostic. I think it may be true that there is a God, and may be true that there is not a God. I simply don't know.
I do know that an institution that continues to harbor and protect rapists and molesters of children is not the house of any God that does exist.
The Catholic Church is far more interested, as ultimately is any powerful institution, in its own preservation.
4
Matthew lists 27 ancestors of Joseph after King David. Luke has 45 ancestors, almost all different. Yet this striking array of contradictions is less illogical than connecting the kings and patriarchs to Jesus via either genealogy, because Joseph was not even his father. You lost me here.
1
I'm staying Catholic at Christmas because I believe humans are creatures of God.
If my belief is wrong, then humans are almost certainly 'highly evolved apes' as Darwin theorized.....not much hope for us in that.
So I prefer to keep my religious beliefs.
Or am I missing something here?
2
Ross this is hollow. Your column asks to be recognized like only a good Catholic boy can. I was taught by nuns and ex-nuns, raised by women married-joined forever-to working class drunks. My priest tried to prevent my mother’s best friend from speaking at her funeral mass based on liturgical doctrine-whatever that means. The people of the Church were my friends and family but the rules are arcane, misogynistic and homophobic even at Xmas. Your parochial school system doesn’t even commit to educating children with special needs. And all you can say is scandals are because we are sinners. Wake up.
4
If the "case for remaining Catholic ... is basically that all this has happened before and will happen again," why, in God's name, would anyone with a conscience stand by a Church that will continue to perpetuate such depravity until the end of time?
3
I have never understood the idea of prayer. Why is it that a loving and just God needs prayers and yet more prayers in order to listen to his 'children'? Why is it supposed a prayer vigil by many, for a sick parishioner would bear more weight with the Almighty than one lonely prayer, or none at all? Isn't this akin to offering a monetary bribe to God? If one sick child receives several hundred fervent prayers and another sick child down the road receives five, is God be more likely to heal one than the other?
If so, what does that say about a just and humble God? Would it not be an insult to God to suppose 'him' to be such an insatiable, greedy, egotist?
2
And can God make a rock so heavy he can’t lift it?
1
Great. Let’s hear it for the Church’s resiliency. But we dare not forget those who mourn the loss of their innocence... both physically, the abused, and as importantly those whose faith has been shattered and who grieve the spiritual void that they’ve suddenly inherited because of a corrupt clergy and worse, corrupt hierarchy.
“Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees! You lay burdens on (men’s) backs that are too heavy for them to bear!”...recognize that one, Ross?
Where there's a will, there will be a rationalization.
1
"The case for remaining Catholic in this moment, then, is basically that all this has happened before and will happen again".
The everybody does it, always has, always will defense?
Stay Catholic. Or don't. It's a personal choice. The "case" that collectively concerns everyone is the criminal and moral case against an organization that has repeatedly covered up the rape of children.
Feel free to "pray and fight" and hope to "see it improbably reborn". Again, your choice.
But until there is full accountability and steps taken so the latest examples of institutional "real depravity" will NOT "happen again" would it be too much to ask the believers to stop acting like they have some special insight into morality that MUST be foisted on everyone else? And to stop looking for excuses for the inexcusable?
2
December 22, 2018
The birth of Christmas is eternal for my soul and belief in the story of that my relation to living strong that every newborn Catholic is given the gift of faith. This is a family thing and a way of loving with belonging to a truth about what is told to stay alive in soul, spirit, and character with loyalty to all who struggle and are given account here at the New York Times - both steadfast is for locality to hope's salvation albeit the cross to carry and climb by forgiveness and everlasting salvation that is a near perfect truth - so to say their nothing fake in Catholic apostolic gifts we pass to our generations and so Merry Christmas from yesterdays, to tomorrows but with penance of self reconciliation and the times will of course only get better as in this era presidents and leaders rise and fall - come and go but diving connectivity to faith is forever the gift we must want, earn and enjoy - joy to the world Ross and all of us.....
1
Tracing Jesus through the line of David was essential to the quaint idea that royalty was inherited. So Jesus couldn't just be a common carpenter, he needed to be a king, because, of course kings ruled by divine decree, and that divinity was embedded in their seed and passed on to their progeny. No commoner need apply.
Another myth of Catholicism – among others.
3
Not giving them a pass. A depraived ancestral line is no argument for criminal, physical, emotional, and spiritual montrosities. The time for reckoning is centuries past due for the Catholic church. No one is above the law - as our infamous Commander-in-Chief will ultimately find out.
1
A much larger scandal is that christmas has absolutely no Bible basis for Christians. Jesus was not born on December 25, no where in the scriptures does it say to memorialize his birth, but it does say you should observe his death. Pat Robertson said in one of his shows that Jesus was not born on December 25 and that the christmas tree, mistletoe, etc were all of pagan origin, but he closes by saying that that's ok. Since when do pagan celebrations become acceptable to followers of Christ?
3
You are using a made up genealogy to advocate for not abandoning an institution that protects child molesters.
Beyond being profoundly insensitive to the victims, this argument is theologically and intellectually bankrupt.
thank you Ross. I’m not Catholic but your lovely article spoke to me. Merry Christmas to you and your readers.
5
Ross
The Catholic church has lost the new generation of teenagers and young adults. I am noticing more and more that young Catholics are getting married in every setting imaginable - other than a Catholic church. Forgiveness rings hollow when the sins are protected by the forgivers.
Sorry, this is the kind of medieval theological mish-mosh that the organized churches have been using for years to cloak their corruption of the simple words of Jesus in a cloak of legitimacy.
Christmas is fun.
Jesus taught many valuable lessons that are still important today.
And since the death of Jesus, for 2000 years, the organized churches have been corrupting those simple teachings to entrench their power over believers who wish to find guidance and redemption, but instead are lead into evil and corruption.
There is an argument for finding the good in the teachings of Jesus and ignoring the evil that has been layered over those teachings. Perhaps it would be better to reject the carapace of evil and just accept the good word on its own, without the lies and foolishness that have been associated with those teachings by the "saints" and churchmen.
I saw the headline for this piece and in the spirit of Christmas I was ready to give Ross a break. Of course, he’s entitled to his faith and I, too, was raised Catholic and I remember fondly midnight Mass and taking comfort in the liturgy.
Then I read this and couldn’t help feeling that Ross was justifying, at least minimizing, clergy sexual abuse by pointing out that people are rotten to each other in the Bible. His point, I really hope, is that through Christ we rise above our sins to become good, to be one with God. But, he completely skips the part about understanding that sins are sins because they are wrong, they are actually against God, and that salvation through Christ happens by recognizing and acknowledging what we have done and then being penitent.
Given what the priests have been doing for decades, and what the church leadership has allowed and attempted to cover up, only to admit when they get caught (each and every time to this very day), perhaps the penance the church must go through is many decades cast out into the wilderness, its leaders alone to contemplate their sins and beg forgiveness from God.
The Catholic Church doesn’t deserve another chance because people in the Bible were also sinners. It will only earn another chance when the men who run the church understand and acknowledge their own sins. Neither those men, nor Ross apparently, understand that. Until they do they won’t know the meaning of Christmas.
2
From what I remember of the Catholic theology I was taught as a child, God was supposed to be guiding the decisions of those in authority over the laity. That is, the priestly hierarchy made the crucial decisions for the Church & the faith b/c they were guided by God - apparently to a much greater extent than “ordinary” Catholics. So, shouldn’t God be held responsible to some extent for the corruption in the hierarchy?
If the College of Cardinals is guided by God in their choice of Pope, then doesn’t God bear some responsibility for the Pope’s lack of transparency & failure to rid the church of corrupt cardinals & bishops? If God guides bishops in their decisions to protect predatory priests & move them to parishes where they have access to a whole new congregation of vulnerable children, doesn’t God bear some of the blame for this?
Or do we only credit God with the moral decisions that his representatives make, & blame their evil decisions on their humanness? But if we do that, did not God choose them, knowing full well the evil they would commit, when he guided their placement into authority? It seems to me that either God must bear some of the blame for the corruption of the church, or God is singularly ineffective in his guidance of his chosen institution. Either way, I see little basis for faith in Catholicism, or by extension, any human created theology.
1
If there is a god--a heretic like me would imagine he'd be the same for any religion anyone could think up. This competition between different religions is, for people like me, one of the most bizarre aspects of religion. But if you see a religion as the refuge of hucksters seeking to build tax free wealth on the backs of people's fear, then all these competing religions make perfect sense.
2
As expected, Douthat attempts to defend the indefensible. These "priests" etc. presented themselves as, took vows to be, above these behaviors. As I realized, about age 5, growing up in a fundamentalist church, be very wary of converts. Douthat fits my profile of such.
2
If the Catholic Church had remotely been serious about purging the pedophile priests from their clergy, the Pope would have directed action, specifically in the US, after the earth shattering Boston Globe series exposing pedophile priests in 1991, seventeen years ago. He didn't.
Instead, the church doubled down, denied, financially divested the affected parishes to maintain their wealth, transferred the abusers and continued on business as usual. There was no systematic purging of the pedophiles.
Some lawsuits were successful, some survivors compensated, but no one is made whole, no matter how much money exchanges hands. The damage is permanent.
The recent pronouncement denouncing pedophile priests by Pope Francis is long overdue; but they are only words. What are the specific action steps? Without specific action to assure the church is free of these abusive clerics, we are in the same position as in the 1990's. Words are empty action, nothing is accomplished.
Ross, I left the Catholic Church at 17, and have never looked back. The incongruence and hypocrisy were too unsettling for me, a teen, trying to make sense of nonsense. I have spiritual faith and community. Too much damage is done in the world under the guise of religion (ex: Middle East).
3
I'm in the midst of a trip to Rome. While I've thoroughly enjoyed visiting many of the churches and the Vatican to see the spectacular art, I couldn't help obsessing over how obsessed the church has been with taking people's money over the years (stealing it, requiring payments to get into heaven, tithing), resulting in ridiculous amounts of riches, while seeing beggars outside each church that the devoted seem to ignore. The catholic church's obsession with money is reason enough to look elsewhere. Just this year my devout elderly dad died, and the church seemed only interested in how much we were going to pay for his funeral mass. The parish priest never even gave his condolences to the family at all - but I got many requests for the check to the church (dad always gave his 10%, plus responded to every other call for money). What a racket!!
4
I would just like to say to all of the Posters that, whatever your opinions are, I am encouraged that you have opinions, and that you are well-meaning. To me, that is the best of what the human community can do to work things out as a family.
4
Catholicism in particular, and Christianity in general, may be wheezing toward cultural irrelevance in our humanistic age, but once the underlying nihilism and tyranny inherent in humanity's deification of itself is fully revealed, look for people to return to a faith in a sovereignty that is outside the human realm.
3
Catholics don't have corner on sinful leaders and hypocritical followers, we can readily see such likes in our politics and government, corporations, and secular organizations.
Instead of taking potshots at believers because of the celebrity of the sinners and hypocrites in those entities, look instead to the members who walk the talk. Consider the religious who help the poor, government officials who fight for equal justice, for corporations who respect employees and community, and secular organizations that create meaningful goods or services.
Look to the best people as examples of membership in those entities, not the worst people.
4
"...with saints and prophets and reformers carrying things forward despite corruptions that seem like they should extinguish the whole thing. The case for remaining Catholic in this moment, then, is basically that all this has happened before and will happen again.... those who stay and pray and fight will see it improbably reborn."
I'm sorry, but I read this as an immoral directive to merely ignore (and thus enable!) more corruption and terrible behavior within the Church. Why bother trying to root out all the depravity of the institution, because it's managed to survived all of these millenia in spite of the depravity?
"Stay and pray," and this too shall pass....
1
Had the RCC fulfilled its God-given mandate it would have by now (after 2 thousand years) rendered itself obsolete or near obsolete. Instead it became a monolith of money, power and resulting corruption and immorality. Hang on like children if you must, or wake-up and smell the roses of independent thought and true connection with spiritual evolution grounded in the personal and the sacred, free of authority but open to communion and community.
Staying Catholic at any time is a mystery to me. I knew by my 4th grade of Catholic school that it was an elaborate fairy tale. And by the time I was able to argue my parents into public high school, I plainly saw that the rich got their marriages annulled and their daughter's "problems' taken care of quietly, while the poor had a dozen babies and struggled through it. The news of abuse by priests did not surprise me in the least. What does is that so many adults continue to obey this scam called "religion".
5
And yet, unlike the Anglicans, Catholics have a closed communion, deeming those who have not confessed to a priest unworthy. It is Christ's table, but not everyone is welcome. I love Catholics--most of them. But for a long line of sinners, I cannot understand why the blood and body of Christ would be refused to anyone who wants to come to the table.
1
@wanda
The Methodist church says their communion ritual is open to all. Or as one of my ministers used to put it: "This is not a Methodist table. It is God's table."
But then the Times doesn't care what Methodists think. Just Catholics and evangelicals, both of whom have gotten into scandals recently.
3
Not about chosenness necessarily. The version of that I heard is that it's proof the Torah is true that the people it describes aren't flattered, but are described in all their flaws and muleheadedness. Even if the Torah is true, there is the theoretical possibility that the Jews could be unchosen which both Christianity and Islam have happily used in the course of their history.
In complete lack of scholarship, I would think at first that what Matthew is doing is like what museums have to do when they show the provenance of a work of art. They have to show exactly where the line of David moved along because if Jesus is not of the line of David he has no claim on the Jewish people at all. But certainly the moral ambiguity of King David himself and of his ancestors is extremely important. It shows that morally/ancestrally imperfect humans can have perfect love of the Almighty.
1
Nothing new here, in this column or in these comments.
On one side are the Catholic faithful, who can always be counted on to cultivate a defense of the horrific crimes committed by an organization they choose to continue to be members of, and on the other side are the clear thinkers, sickened by those defenses, who see the Catholic Church as the criminal organization that it is, devastating the lives of thousands of children through systemic sexual abuse.
1
There has never been so much wasted amongst humans than what faith and belief have wrought.
In second grade I told my nun that I had a dream where I was Jesus. I expected a backhand across the back of my head for being a heretic but she very sweetly told me to "hold that thought close the rest of your life." I did.
Whatever we call the spirit/energy that animates us all it is undoubtedly in every atom of every one of our beings.
As the great bluesmen Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee sang: "God is in you and God is in me. To love all of God is to love humanity."
Sing it out, brothers and sisters, "God is in you and God is in me. To love all of God is to love humanity."
1
I rarely find myself in agreement with Mr. Douthat, but today is a day of Christmas miracles. I'm a convert brought to Catholicism as a senior. And I agree with every word he's said. By studying we see that Jesus, by his parables, always came into a town and sought out the 'less than' desirables. I've taken that to mean we should not judge. Also that everyone is redeemable. What a wonderful message He has, if we'll only listen. I'm so lucky. My church is in a very conservative portion of California. Our masses are packed. And our school is thriving..many students not even Catholic. It is time for rejoicing and proclaiming our faith. Thanks be to God.
2
Most of the people I know who were raised in the RC church hate the religion. That could be just a matter of random chance, or the fact that most of my friends were not raised in an area/culture where the RC church was nearly the only game in town. Most of my friends who were raised in main stream Protestant denominations are basically indifferent to their religious roots. And most that I know who were raised in Evangelical churches could not wait to get out of the house, and as far from that culture as possible.
2
I can certainly see being drawn to the beautiful ritual of the Catholic church; I feel it myself. I have no trouble understanding why someone would want to participate in the many good and kind works performed by the Catholic church and its many volunteers. I am grateful for the beautiful music, art and architecture produced directly and indirectly by the Catholic church.
But the painfully punitive, misogynistic, homophobic teachings, dogma, and practice; No. Think what the church could be if it left these things behind.
9
God, saints, prophets, popes, virgin births, messiahs...all just stories, Mr. Douthat. Stories that billions of us *choose* to believe -- usually because we were raised on them, and because everyone around us believes them. Nevertheless, none of these entities are any more objective or real than...money, or nations, or religions. They are human inventions that will pass away in time as we lose faith in them and begin spinning new stories. And yet--and yet! We hold onto the old tales, myself included, as long as we can. Until faith gives way to the truth of their emptiness. So too your Catholic Church in the wake of newly emerging narratives.
2
That is not true. It is not just concocted stories. It is the truth. Not relative, but the undeniable, universal truth. Ask any adult convert who intentionally chooses Catholicism over any religion (or no religion) that they leave behind. It’s understandable that Cradle Catholics could feel this way because of the notions of culture, family and society entangled with their faith. But I highly recommend taking RCIA at your local parish or reading/watching testimonies of intelligent, highly educated converts. There is no way the Holy Spirit will not move your heart.
@Tanvi Chopra
"any adult convert who intentionally chooses Catholicism over any religion"
I know a lot more people who are leaving Catholicism because of its scandals.
Catholicism at it heart is a Christian sacramental faith. Nothing that fallible church leaders do will or can change that aspect. The key is for the Catholic faithful to make clear to the leadership from Pope Francis on down, that this behavior, while typical of human failing and not exclusive to the priesthood, cannot and will not be tolerated.
We are taught to hate the sin but not the sinner and to forgive. So we can forgive, but not fully until the church allows true justice for it's own errant leadership to be exercised.
The task of building the true "catholic" (universal) church is never finished and will continue with the faithful leading the way as in times past. This too shall pass.
3
On the main topic of this column, clearly both my husband and I are outsiders who don't know what's going on. But we think that the laity are much more the real church than the clergy who didn't trust their flock in their zeal to be absolutely revered and possibly for power. The laity should form a church beyond the church. Fortunately a real Catholic made this same point in another op-ed.
1
@bordenl
That's the big difference between Catholicism and Protestantism. In Catholicism, "the church" is the church hierarchy, and the rest of humanity, including their church members, are outsiders. In Protestantism, the "church" is the set of all believers, and the hierarchy are just their chosen leaders.
1
Ross, your convert’s ardor for the faith is admirable. Alas, for those of us raised in the Church, the atrocities carried out in her name rather closely resemble the iniquities of an abusive parent. As any good Catholic understands, true reconciliation requires a contrite heart; it is the Church, and not her flock, who bears the onus of such a conversion. In the meantime I see no reason to enable the shameful dissembling that has been going on for half of my 34 years on this earth.
115
It's always a day brightener to have a fairly recent convert to Catholicism lecture lifelong, parochially educated and, sometimes, religiously and spiritually and physically abused Catholics on why they should remain Catholic. Of course, not all NY Times readers are Catholic to begin with and Ross's sermons must be really funny to them.
Still, the innocent little Catholic girl in me likes the photo that accompanies Ross's sermon. The blessed mother might have been characterized as a virgin because, according to the gospels, Mary was a poor, unwed girl who became pregnant with the "lord's" child and that child grew up to be the One the writers of the gospels revered. (There are likely more than a few very young mothers out there who ended up less blessed than Mary did when they became pregnant, they knew not how. Such very young pregnancies happened to unwitting girls in my lifetime and certainly may have happened way back when around the time of Caesar Augustus's "worldwide" census, which of course, wasn't all that world-wide even then.
53
@Debra Merryweather I was raised Catholic in my youth all through high school. During the '50's and '60's it may have saved me from a worse fate. The enormous guilt put upon people was disabling. However, I still pray my Rosary even though I've been told it is not right to give honor to anyone but Christ! It is shocking that the Catholic Church let abuse go unreported for such a very long time.
8
@Debra Merryweather In the Magdalen Laundries.
8
@wanda And in convent-like facilities here in the USA. The Good Shepherd Home for girls in Buffalo was surrounded by barbed wire.
10
As a cradle Catholic, at 62 I find my faith in the Church tattered, although my faith in God is still strong. I wish I could blindly accept the Church as it is, but frankly Rudy Kos is in every single one of my wedding photos. I have friends of my younger brother who were molested-all the while as the local media lauded Kos for being so edgy for adopting a troubled teenage boy (which all the while he was molesting...) Those specific incidents were enough to rock my faith, but I raised my kids Catholic and I was a CCD teacher for years. But then things changed. Suddenly, social justice was a recurring theme over and above the discussion of the Gospels, traditions or prayers. While seniors and vets in our area struggled, second collections were taken up for people in other nations who were often already getting help via Federal aid. The topper was when my Mom was in a rehabilitation facility after a stroke on Easter and not one of the four priests came by in the entire six weeks she was there in spite of her being a more than loyal parishioner for more than 15 years. While the Church seems to have plenty of time for special groups, they seem to have precious little for the folks paying into the collection plates. In that regard, they are little different than the Fed. I'll go to Mass with Mom on Christmas, but I really miss the wonder and joy I used to hold.
47
Re not visiting your mom:
I’ve heard the same exact story from credible sources and relatives countless times. Thought it was a mistake but no, now I believe that many priests were lazy, freeloading humans hiding behind the sacred veil and when it came time for real work, real engagement, they weren’t up to it.
11
@Outer Borough Unfortunately with the number of vocations in the West sinking, most of our priests come from either Ireland or India. While they seem to be decent guys, they are often woefully out of touch with mainstream American culture, which, like it or not, is unique and different than those they came from. While the inclusion of such clergy has stepped up the number and diversity of our suburban parish, the counseling and relationships and fellowship often seen by other congregations is almost non=existent because the priests seem to have their own kind of religious side hustle with people who share the same backgrounds as they do often leaving the long time faithful bereft of counsel or comfort.
6
@Ellen K
You have not been paying attention over all these years - the Catholic Church has always prioritized outreach and aid to the entire world. It is a universal church, not an American sect. US foreign aid is vital but not near enough to alleviate conditions brought about by events such as today’s tsunami in Indonesia. You can be sure Catholic Relief Services are there, helping the injured, bereft, and displaced. The Catholic Church also has many domestic ministries - our parish runs a soup kitchen, winter homeless shelter, and other services, including many programs for seniors. Social justice has been an aim of the Catholic Church for centuries, although it has always been a steep uphill fight. To resent the Church for doing what it has done for centuries is useless. The priests should have visited your mother, though. That was sheer dereliction on their part.
10
After nearly becoming a priest, for the Catholic Church was my refuge from alcoholic parents, I found its history and contradictions too numerous and extreme. I embarked on a study of numerous other faiths, from variants of Protestantism to Judaism (to which I nearly converted in law school), Islam (which I found utterly derivative and loathsome, on a par with Scientology’s), Buddhism, Confucianism, and philosophies including Stoicism and atheism. For most of the last fifty years I viewed myself as an atheist Stoic, with the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius as my “Bible”, and a strong undercurrent of Buddhism.
All that changed in the last six months, Triggered by a series of major life events, I read a bit about Orthodox Christianity. My wife, raised a Greek Orthodox, was NOT the reason. After being drawn to read a great deal more, I attempted my first prayers in many decades. And for the first time, something stirred. And did the more I read the Scriptures and prayed. So I attended a service, and was overwhelmed by how much it felt like home. I am now fully committed, and will be Chrismated (I was already confirmed, the Catholic equivalent, sixty years ago) on the Feast of the Theophany ( non-Orthodox Epiphany).
I had become bitterly cynical, an angry, sarcastic, unpleasant progressive. Progressive I remain. Misanthrope I remain. But where before I craved death, now I find joy in life, and in a faith without the encrustations humans have burdened Roman Catholicism.
31
@Publius Several people have recommended the Orthodox Rite to me knowing the vacancy I feel in terms of "being churched." My own background is somewhat unusual for my age group as my Mom was a devout Irish Catholic and my Dad a Presbyterian who joined that church after leaving the Methodist church as a teen. That all being said, and I'm still researching this, I have every reason to believe that my family immigrated from a part of eastern Europe and may have been Jewish, claiming early on to be Lutheran as they immigrated because it was simply easier to gain admission in the 1880's by doing so. There is much to recommend about Judaism and I find myself very drawn to it. But I will take your experience on recommendation and perhaps explore this myself. However, that being said and knowing how my Mom and Dad tussled over the requirement that we be raised Catholic in order for them to marry in 1950, I won't change officially until Mom is no longer around to be hurt.
4
I was a born and raised a Catholic but left the religion long ago. (However, some would say you may leave the Catholic Church but you are forever on their membership roles).
What I enjoyed most about the Catholic Church was the pomp and solemnity of their services. which unfortunately were discarded after Vatican II.
The problems of the Church are not new except for the fact that they have been made public. But all may be rest assured that the problems with Catholic clergy are not uncommon in other religions and not limited to Christian churches.
3
The Catholic Church has two components: a mystical one and a physical one. Bad people can act badly regarding the physical component, but that has no effect on the precepts the religion is based on. It's only when the Pope speaks ex cathedra that Catholic dogma becomes involved. While there certainly have bee bad popes, the core dogma of the Catholic Church has remained exemplar.
Too often, people assume the laws of the Latin (Roman) Rite are the laws of the Catholic Church. Married priests are allowed in the Catholic Church. While currently prohibited, there is no dogma which absolutely prohibits ordination of women to the priesthood, notwithstanding the present opposition in the church hierarchy who rule the physical manifestation of the Church on earth.
There are many issues that beset the Church today. Faith in the religions dogmas should not be affected by true believers. But beware those who twist the actual dogma into versions that are merely wishful thinking.
1
In The Politics of God and the Politics of Man, Jacques Ellul explains more clearly than anyone the complicated way the Biblical God works through and despite corrupt leaders and peoples. It is an account of history that is relevant even to non-believers. Its insight into how human agency does and doesn't work in history is more complicated than most of what's on offer today--on any side.
The difference here, though, is that we are not talking about corrupt leaders or a corrupt people. We are talking about an institutionalization of corruption that has a made a place where evil can be protected and where it thrives. I pity the Catholic faithful and the way they have been betrayed. I am in sorrow for the victims. For Catholics, there is a case for staying and a case for leaving. There is no good outcome, though, unless there really is a God who is going to grant grace to the Catholic Church. But that grace will not be cheap.
4
Ross, with this article, you just gave me the biggest Christmas present of all with this incredibly insightful explanation of the mystery of our faith--which is sort of "when the going gets rough, God gets rougher and tougher." It's also been my experience that God also gets down and dirty when needed--meeting the sinner in the spiritual mud-fest battle for the salvation of that sinner's soul in the moment of total crisis. And He (Jesus) promised: "I will never reject anyone who comes to me."
And that's why I'm hanging in and hanging on to the RCC. We who stay are hanging on, praying and serving our Lord, working to cleanse and reform. We are confident that He will save the day once again. St. Augustine must have thought it was all curtains with the Fall of Rome, and yet all his works were ultimately saved and preserved, because God wanted the repository of the faith preserved. Merry Christmas to you and yours, Ross! Thanks for the wonderful article.
36
“The case for remaining Catholic in this moment, then, is basically that all this has happened before and will happen again” Simply stating that ‘it happened before and it will happen again’ is a poor reason for one to remain Catholic. Indeed, why not just turn to another religion or no religion?
15
The Hebrew Bible is not about being "chosen" to demonstrate that no matter the sins of the Jewish kings God will always see you as part of a messianic line because God doesn't change sides. The story of the Jewish people comes from a history that wrestles with ethics, law, and repairing the world that we currently live in, as the true measure of salvation, not a messianic lineage. The great moment in Jewish theological thinking is being chosen by a God who values freeing the slave and the marginalized and those who cry out to God from out of their pain and suffering. And the figure we look towards is Moses the great law-giver, the great prophet, the great teacher and the revelation at Mt. Sinai.
8
Thank you, David from Chicago, for your important comment. Ross and other Christians: Take Note.
3
Lovely. But not a word about possible positive transformational change were Roman Catholic Priests allowed to marry as they were in the early Church and are today in the Orthodox Church.
9
My problem with Catholicism and Christianity in general is that they absolve abhorrent behavior of current leaders by pointing to many instances in the Bible where people who definitely did not lead their lives in accordance with God’s laws became or begot great leaders and instruments of God’s will.
10
@NM
But isn't this the point that Ross made in his original essay?
1
@NM Protest
I really don't care very much whether folks sever ties with their religious institutions, practices, and beliefs in light of clear evidence of widespread and gross malfeasance associated with them. If I did, I'd never live a sane moment in Utah.
But please, once you've acknowledged the awful deeds associated with those religions, quit lording them over the rest of us.
Sort of relevantly - and I tried without success to make this point when Douthat wrote a column about Paganism - Christians can cheerfully admit that they "borrowed" a goodly portion of the festivities and traditions associated with Christmas from those whom they used to refer to as Pagans and lighten up about the holiday. (see below-linkes article).
So, pour yourself some eggnog, sing a hearty Oh Tannenbaum with a fellow practicing Pagan (most of us are during this season), and get your own religious house in order before you suggest that the rest of us who aren't particularly religious either enter or even respect it.
https://www.livescience.com/25779-christmas-traditions-history-paganism.html
11
A case for staying Catholic? How about starting with helping the Assyrian Christians in the Middle East, you know, those people who were Christians two centuries before it arrived in Europe? And the people whom your "president" just wrote off, with his reckless directive to withdraw from Syria, where tens of thousands of them live?
My grandparents, Assyrian Christians from northwest Iran, managed to escape the slaughter of the Armenian Genocide. (That slaughter saw the mass murder of 500,000 Pontic Greeks and 750,000 Assyrian Christians, among them many of my ancestors.)
In 1918, my grandparents were extremely fortunate, after having fled on foot from Urmia, Iran, to the safety of a British refugee camp in Baquba, Iraq, several hundred miles away. The U.S. Presbyterian Church assisted in sponsoring their immigration to the United States, where they were able to re-settle as young adults, and begin productive lives. My father and uncles fought in WWII, for the country that gladly took them in. My brother is a disabled Viet Nam veteran, again, proud that he served the country that took in his grandparents.
And what of these Christians you laud so much now, Mr. Douthat? They turn their backs on Middle Eastern Christians for only one reason -- skin color. Had Assyrian Christians been English or Swedish, you would have written countless columns about their plight.
Return to Catholicism? How about practicing Christianity for a start?
17
I have been hearing about these scandals on a regular basis for at least 30 years. Same exact thing. Widespread abuse and coverup. It's a broken record with the only difference being that the scandal is apparently larger than previously thought, which makes sense since it is ongoing and therefore growing.
Strange that anyone would find any sense of novelty in the recent revelations of child abuse by clergy.
3
A case for staying Catholic? How about starting with helping the Assyrian Christians in the Middle East, you know, those people who were Christians two centuries before it arrived in Europe? And the people whom your "president" just wrote off, with his reckless directive to withdraw from Syria, where tens of thousands of them live?
My grandparents, Assyrian Christians from northwest Iran, managed to escape the slaughter of the Armenian Genocide. (That slaughter saw the mass murder of 500,000 Pontic Greeks and 750,000 Assyrian Christians, among them many of my ancestors.) In 1918, my grandparents were extremely fortunate, after having fled on foot from Urmia, Iran, to the safety of a British refugee camp in Baquba, Iraq, several hundred miles away.
The U.S. Presbyterian Church assisted in sponsoring their immigration to the United States, where they were able to re-settle as young adults, and begin productive lives. My father and uncles fought in WWII, for the country that gladly took them in. My brother is a disabled Viet Nam veteran, again, proud that he served the country that took in his grandparents.
And what of these Christians you laud so much now, Mr. Douthat? They turn their backs on Middle Eastern Christians for only one reason -- skin color. Had Assyrian Christians been English or Swedish, you would have written countless columns about their plight. Return to Catholicism? How about practicing Christianity for a start?
4
Altar boy, Notre Dame grad, physician, I am grateful for my Catholic Faith.
I try carefully to discern what God expects of me, asking Jesus to strengthen me for these endeavors. It seems revealed in moments of clarity, as when awakening from a good night’s sleep still feeling the deeper meaning of a heartfelt, poignant dream; but it does not need sleep, or a dream.
An inner guidance, whirling like a gyroscope, suspended within interlocking spinning gimbals of faith, hope and love.
Jesus said, pray together.
But Micah said, walk humbly with your God.
And who am I, to say how God chooses to reveal Himself to others? Who am I, to put words into God’s mouth?
Jesus said, by their works, you will know them.
Who is our Samaritan today?
And couldn’t God’s will be done on earth as much through a government, as by a Church? Who am I to say how Jesus does His work?
Visiting Paris, after a yellow vest protest, and a vigil at Notre Dame Cathedral, I ride the metro, mingling with all faiths, colors, tongues, countries, sexual orientations, genders. We sit and stand, respectfully, wait in lines, allow mothers with children to pass.
France is criticized: too liberal, too much welfare, not taking care of its own.
But I see the Holy Spirit, even as the government, carefully, tries to remain secular, not out of pride, but humility.
Respect everyone’s faith, while striving to follow the word God speaks to you.
This is what Peace, Goodwill toward Men and Women, looks like, on the Paris metro.
6
I am a fan ("believer"?) of Enlightenment humanism. I think basic morality is just plain common sense. I think organized religion shows a pattern of corrupting, good sense--twisting poetic texts into pretzels of un-reason by way of justifying political goals related to authoritarian power and of course, money. Ultimately, in this way, organized religion provides an ongoing get-out-of-jail-free card of means to those it needs in facilitating its ends...of authority (AKA: power and money).
6
Mr. Douthat, I respect your right to worship as you please. However, I believe you are in denial. Just turning your head away from the debauchery within the Catholic Church will not make it go away. Trying to twist yourself into a pretzel citing Jesus's ancestors as not being without sin, cannot wash away the moral corruption of the Church through the ages that is ongoing.
How can you stay in a Church which has visited such misery upon people for eons - literally? How can you turn head away from the thousands and thousands of children who have suffered unconscionable abuse at the hands of those who were trusted to be their spiritual counselors? Nothing can excuse that, If you believe in the Divine, then surely you must believe that the Divine is in you, and if so why do you need an intermediary between yourself and your God?
Just as some prominent Republicans have recently had an epiphany about their political Party, I would hope you might ''have the scales fall from your eyes" about both your Church and political Party. Think about it.
5
I miss going to mass, it was so personal, so compassionate, I miss getting that blessing...so loving and kind. Nevertheless, I will not set foot in a Catholic Church again. It is an institution that has protected the most vile kind of animal.It lacks the very courage and decency Christ showed on his way to a most brutal,and vicious execution. My mass so to speak will have to come in other forms. A peaceful walk with my dog, a nice time with my family, watching my football players exceed their own personal expectations or doubts. Those humane experiences are as holy to me as any and have the peace of Christ in all of them. Merry Christmas, may you all find your own blessings, in your own way.
13
This has an appeal, so far as it goes, but it shouldn't become an argument for lack of reform- true, institutional, hard reform, even to the point of breaking the corrosive hierarchy itself.
And to use Jewish forebears as examples is disingenuous when Jesus himself was (for Christians who accept the teachings of Paul) a radical break with Judaism. If we stay within the Jewish tradition instead: Judaism had to drastically remake itself in the wake of the destructions of the temple. It's a history of amazing dynamism and change, not acceptance of a corrupt status quo.
2
As the comments corroborate, it is simply not possible for seculars and the religious to co-exist in a climate of tolerance. The framers conceptualized the first amendment when an overwhelming percentage of the population was white, European, Protestant. This just doesn’t work now because people don’t want it to.
1
@JDL
And . . . ? Where you goin' with this JDL? Don't give nut cases, whether they be "seculars" or religious, any more encouragement to throw up their hands and attack folks who don't agree with them.
And, though I might be mistaken, I think the whole idea for including the establishment and free-exercise clauses in the first amendment was to create a climate of religious tolerance.
1
Hey Ross. I have a recommendation for you, Robert Stone's "Damascus Gate." But, in the meantime, am I reading the interregnum correctly? Just because early Christian communities didn't own the luxury of writing history --therefore leaving little behind -- doesn't mean that their lineages were any cleaner than those of their direct forebears.
,
2
Mr Douthat laments the current state of a church (again) besieged by sinful scandals and shameful convictions leading to doubts and dwindling numbers. He ultimately argues that “staying the course” is best, given the inevitable infallibility of humans and the longevity of the church. But how is it that the so-called word of god in the Bible is so flawed? Jesus is explicitly stated to be directly descended from King David on his father Joseph’s side, but how can he be if he was born of a virgin? How does a church with historical claims to exclusive divine powers get things so wrong, so often, for so long? Surely an institution with god truly on its side can do without tax exemption and so much public patronage and money? In an age in which cellphones are in every pocket why have all the miracles suddenly dried up? I am aware of the irony that it was another religion and drink company involved but ... Don’t drink the Kool-aid!
1
I'm an American Catholic and I don't need to be reborn. I have walked the righteous path all along. I was on the right side when it came to racial, gender, marital and human rights. I have no problem commingling my religion with my politics or with my moral upbringing. They are the same. Can you say that?
Everyone I knew was Catholic when I was a child. We attended Catholic schools, youth groups and spent many hours at church. We were taught we were the only ones who would go to heaven and not to trust non Catholics. I was excommunicated when I married a non Catholic and they would not allow me to be married in the church. Yet Catholics who paid enough money could have marriages annulled.
The demise of the Catholic Church is because of stories like mine. People who were sexually abused and saw their perpetrator hidden and transferred to a new set of victims. People who realized it does not matter which god you believe in, but rather your deeds and actions that make you a good person. People who are tired of the constant drumbeat of give us more money, while not necessarily helping those who need it the most. Power and money, the ultimate corrupters.
This morning I am off to a Methodist church, one of many religions who believe that it’s all about doing Gods’ work, not imposing beliefs on others. Accepting our brothers and sisters, regardless of faith, skin color, sexual orientation or wealth. A place of Joy, love and acceptance and good deeds. I have never looked back.
9
Even as a 'recovering Catholic,' I read this thinking as much of the United States of America as of the Catholic Church - with everything insidiously reversed.
We have a past that is checkered if not completely stained by genocide and racism, yet we've also had many heroic and good people, both unknown and famous leaders, including Lincoln and ML King at the pinnacles of righteousness, and too many thousands of fallen infantry troops. We can (sometimes and selectively) be kind beyond measure to those in need. We CAN be and often are a good and decent people.
Despite our struggles to be better - or, arguably, because of them - we now have the Anti-Christ sitting in the president's chair, representing and acting out our most negative attributes, like a walking advertisement for the Seven Deadly Sins.
As hard as it is in the face of this, we need to somehow 'keep the faith' in our Democracy, continuing to speak and work in ways that it may be "improbably reborn."
Can we do it? Will it happen? I'm neither a seer of the future nor a betting person, so I don't know the answer.
I only know that almost everything about the nature of our future world depends on both the USA and Catholic Church somehow finding the strength to act in accord with our "better angels," and thoroughly reversing our dangerous dalliances with the Devil.
I pray, in my own agnostic way, that both we and the church succeed in our attempts to right ourselves.
4
Douthat is off base with this attempt at apology and justification for Catholicism as practiced today. What those men of the Church have done is not limited to personal sexual sin. Those bishops and cardinals of the Church placed the institution of Catholicism on a higher plane than human beings. No where in the Bible is that suggested. It is the institution that once again became corrupt; it must be abandoned unless reformed in a major way. Today, it is not being reformed.
3
Perhaps the faith can redeem itself. Perhaps it cannot.
In any case, until the Church can reckon with its own sins and become a force for good in the world, a force for change, then there is nothing that this exile can do but keep clear of the temple, with its money-changers, it's touts, and its corrupt priesthood, and wander the desert, were the only voices to be heard are ones that matter: your own conscience and (perhaps maybe) that of some higher power.
2
Thanks for this. But there's more: See Gail Godwin's "Gemology and Grace" (1999). Matthew remembers ALL the outcast women (including Ruth the Moabite!) in Jesus DNA. And, just out of the birth canal, Jesus, according to Matthew, was a baby refugee fleeing across the (unwalled) border to Egypt. Anyway, Jesus female ancestors (thanks, Matthew) lived on the margins. The promise is always given to the most unpromising (see Mary's song in Luke 1).
I did not find Douthat's rguement compelling and very disjointed.
He could have said I remain a Catholic in spite of centuries of corruption, misogyny and venality in the hierarchy.
He could have said I remain Catholic because I need to. If the rest of you do not feel the need go in peace.
3
It's schism time.
It makes no sense to try to redeem a faith -- no, make that "political institution" -- that is corrupt and happy to remain so as long as it retains power.
It's schism time.
2
This is what happens when someone counts on someone else for their own holiness. No other person can grant or imbue any degree of righteousness in or to your life. Trusting righteousness from any other person is bound to fail because they are as dependent on God as any other person.
1
Here's the problem - based on this history, and the current scandals - why should anyone look to the leaders of the church to tell them how to live their lives, how to vote, etc.?
Why does anyone still believe these people have a direct line to any supposed god?
You can follow the teachings of Jesus without supporting the massive business the church has become.
All you need to do is treat others as you would want to be treated. Religion does the opposite - it makes the rules more important than the people.
3
Mr. Douthat, the bottom line here is state attorneys general are finally making inroads at holding the Catholic church accountable with, of all things, RICO laws. That is, treating the Catholic church for what it is: an organized crime syndicate. And, the crimes here are of such a nature as to make old school Mafia men look like principled angels.
3
Organized religion is dead, and no matter how many thinly veiled columns on our current state of politics will bring it back. ( '' includes a few decent men but also a collection of tyrants, child-murderers and worse, none of them remotely pious and many actively at war ... '' )
Praying or preying is no longer tolerable in our growing age of disparity and lechery. (especially in subsidizing via tax dollars religious organizations that are anything but)
I still have faith in me fellow man, woman or other, but look forward to a day (truly) where religion no longer divides us, or even rules over us >
5
keep the faith, skip "the church"
know that cathedrals, if a dedicated space is one's preference, belong to the faithful and the clergy can be left to keeping them clean and in good repair...light a candle, say a prayer but concede nothing in the way of spiritual authority to agents of the corrupt institution that has hijacked the faith and seeks to control the faithful by its post-jesus doctrinal invention and sanctions that are, essentially, threats.
1
This is the best case you can make? Then the Catholic Church should do what it should have done years ago- shut its doors, sell its assets, give its gold to those it has harmed, and minister from strip malls and vacant lots unless and until its word resonates again
4
'Its that the divine chooses to act constantly amid not just ordinary fallibility but real depravity...'
How 'bout a lesson in Catholic theology, Mister Douthat so you don't go misinforming others any further than you have:
Like the US Constitution the Trinity consists of equal parts to the whole of one deity. The Holy Spirit (previously the Holy Ghost) supposedly is the god-entity of the Trinity that inspires us to behave in a moral, wisdom-filled way that helps assure our souls a proper place in heaven.
The reprehensibile behavior of thousand of priests and other denominations who have taken moral, emotional and sexual advantage of those most vulnerable would conclude in my humble judgment that one-third of the mystery referred to as one God as being lax at best or none existent at worst in doing what he is supposed to do
.
If the Holy Spirit were doing his? job, there would be no depravity amongst those one would expect should know better.
1
"...but the truth is...". I doubt it. In matters of religion just the opposite is almost universally the case.
2
The column ends with the suggestion that the reader follow a "testable hypothesis." This is the only actually useful part of the piece.
Organized religion is dead, and no matter how many thinly veiled columns on our current state of politics will bring it back. ( '' includes a few decent men but also a collection of tyrants, child-murderers and worse, none of them remotely pious and many actively at war ... '' )
Praying or preying is no longer tolerable in our growing age of disparity and lechery. (especially in subsidizing via tax dollars religious organizations that are anything but)
I still have faith in me fellow man, woman or other, but look forward to a day (truly) where religion no longer divides us, or even rules over us !
1
Catholics don’t have the corner on the market for immoral leaders, Protestants endure the likes of young Graham and Jeffess who apparently have never read the Bible and use their position to justify craven greed. It’s hard to decide which is worse - sexual immorality or craven immoral greed. But probably they are 2 manifestations of the same thing.
What Christians need to remember this Christmas is that Jesus never asked us to worship or praise him, he never asked us to gaze lovingly at a baby or a tortured man on a cross. He asked us to follow him, to follow his unambiguous instructions of feed the hungry, protect the vulnerable, welcome the stranger, heal the sick, treat others as we wish to be treated, embody the ‘fruits of the spirit’. Everything else will follow when we obey the instructions.
And, everything else that we see today will follow when we don’t. It really is that simple.
8
@organic farmer
Well said. Thank you.
1
My lifelong search for truth about religion, has led me to some startling conclusions.
Wading through superstition, delusion, etc., to find manipulation and trickery at its source.
For instance, "Peace on Earth and Goodwill",etc. , sounds great at first, when it's something else entirely.
It is meant to defuse. It is throwing cold water on people who have every right to be hot-headed over injustices done to the them, to prevent them from taking action.
You can turn the other cheek so many times, that your head will fall off, if you buy into for this manipulation.
"You can fool most of the people most of the time, but you can't fool all of the people, all of the time".
4
As I am not a Catholic but follow Evangelical Christianity, I am an outsider to your faith. What this newspaper in its Editorial even today, and all the zealots miss is that the Roman Catholic church thinks in terms of centuries, not years, nor newspaper scoops. In addition, as a NY lawyer I observe facts, and as the decades pass the evidence is clear the zealots pursue your Church with Puritan zeal over the sins and crimes of specific human actors. While I do not gainsay it's important, in the overall this shall pass. Left untouched are the reasons any true believer has for 'staying Catholic at Christmas...' As a member of a group hated by many in our society even today, I am humbled by the humanity of individual Catholics to me as a human being over decades, a direct result that for two thousand years, this institution has gained total knowledge of the dreadful yet wondrous human condition, saved by Christ's appearance for us on this earth.
After 2000 years of the God of the gaps, we no longer need religion to explain the physical world. With nothing left, Christians cling to relevance on the moral sphere, but here they fail as well. Remind me, what do we need religion for?
3
I might have missed it, who begat Seinfeld?
1
The flaws of the Hebrew leaders are the flaws that any person might have regardless of who he is or what people he comes from. But the flaw in the Catholic priesthood is structural: Catholicism requires its leadership to swear to maintain an unrealistic and unnatural state of celibacy - and it does so largely on the basis of Augustinian misconceptions of sex and Pope Gregory's concerns over episcopal nepotism. Prior to Gregory's ban on married clergy in 1073, priests were generally married, and bishops often promoted their "nephews" to high church positions. But demands for clerical celibacy only drove sex underground. (In 1525, a Toledo priest preached a sermon asking priests' mistresses to please dress more modestly when they came to church.)
If you want to reform the church, insist that it stop thinking and talking of sex as something sinful, dirty, something no good priest would stoop to. Stop making impossible demands on priests; they are, after all, only human.
2
@Dan Kohanski
A reasonable response to a vexing problem.
The church has implemented a policy where candidates for the priesthood are screened for homosexual tendencies and if suspected, refusal of the candidates application. (They have a glut on priestly candidates? I think not)
The inconsistency and hypocrisy of this position can be exposed by this simple precept, Celibacy (right or wrong) is Celibacy, it matters not the gender of the offended party.
But then logic, consistency, and morality; as is so often the case, take a back seat to power, wealth and influence. Look at Washington today.
Nuns also are required to live without part of what it is to be human.
What most drives me crazy is my willingness to forget that nothing is wrong: this is who we are and the way we have always been. The very premise that any one faith is the hub and the wheel is to be rejected; it always leads to circular thinking :-) And is a clear indication that a person is more interested in joining a club or being soothed and supported or otherwise emotionally propped up than engaging in the worship of God. (All of which I reject by the way including the smiley face.)
Organized religion is dead, and no matter how many thinly veiled columns on our current state of politics will bring it back. ( '' includes a few decent men but also a collection of tyrants, child-murderers and worse, none of them remotely pious and many actively at war ... '' )
Praying or preying is no longer tolerable in our growing age of disparity and lechery. (especially in subsidizing via tax dollars religious organizations that are anything but)
I still have faith in me fellow man, woman or other, but look forward to a day (truly) where religion no longer divides us, or even rules over us <
1
The evil of clerical sexual abuse is a direct result of the structure of the Catholic church and has persisted because of ts unwillingmess to change. Instead of recognizing that the priesthood offers a shelter for the sexually dysfunctional, the church invokes human weakness in order not to have to change. Why would one continue to blindly bind oneself to a structurally dysfunctional institution?
The church is contributing to dystopic future of the human race through its unwillingness to recognize that the earth has now past full with our species. Despite what metaphoric value christianity holds for human ontology, which has been co-opted from pre-existing human values, its leadership is blind to the fast approaching collapse of supporting biogeochemical processes. Its moral values will be superceded by nature's "wisdom" Gallileo knew.
1
I am 63, cradle Catholic, suffered years ago personally seeking counsel at hands of deviant priest actually boastful of his sexual perversion and a hierarchy seemingly looking the other way. Yet I remain, more devout than ever, with a 13 year old son equally devout with yearnings to be a priest. My approach, like Ross', is from Scripture -
"Laying aside every encumbrance and the sin that so easily entangles, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross and the shame..." (Hebrews 12;1-2)
My son and I also, while not disregarding the bad ones, fix our eyes and our support on the good, faithful holy priests and bishops which are many and majority. Recently transferred our parish affiliation back to a small mission parish where our tithes are very meaningful and needed, and our additional anonymous offerings especially at this season help our struggling, poor fellow Catholic brothers and sisters.
May our Lord bless you and our Lady keep you safe in her loving arms.
3
A good insight, Mr. Douthat.
While the revelations of the perversions of Catholic priests is appalling, it is important to put it in some perspective: almost all of these criminal acts occurred 20 or 30 years ago. True, the current Church leaders were wrong in hiding the facts and protecting the criminal priests (and those leaders should be removed), but it is a slander against the many, many good priests whose lives are above reproach. When those good men are attacked, the anti-Catholic prejudices in our society (which lie dormant) are again being given voice.
By way of comparison, when sexual abuse is uncovered in Hollywood and among our politicians, the impulse -- correctly -- is to clean house and condemn the guilty. But not to say that we should all never go to the movies again, or never vote for anyone.
1
But, sir, insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Pope Francis is the most liberal, compassionate Pope of our time - and you don't support him. You've favored returning to far stricter interpretations - sending the church back into the dark ages, yet somehow imagining the church could be washed clean and new, with an improbable rebirth.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant - and the church changing its dogma about birth control in these modern times of overpopulation, fighting climate change, allowing priests to marry, allowing women priests, blessing people instead of obsessing about their sexuality - that's how you eradicate the moldy, clammy back rooms of Catholicism. That's how you make a rebirth probable.
4
Good one, Ross. I rarely agree with you but you hit the nail on the head here.
If you believe good can follow depravity “then you’re close to the case for remaining Catholic at a time when the corruption of the church is driving a number of very public defections from the faith.”
Of course, there is this possibility, but will it arrive? Ross hopes so, but is his hope well founded?
The future will tell in this case, but the past of the Catholic Church is replete with missteps.
1
Being a former protestant and now atheist, I doubt I have any appreciation here. However, science has opened to me more awe and humility than religion ever did. You can argue all you want that science is fallible: of course it is, it is a human invention. But I will tell you this, if there were data to refute such esteem pillars as F=ma, E=mc^2, there would be much squabbling and gnashing of teeth, but in the end, science would re-build on the new insights. Ask yourself this, what other philosophical institution has propelled the human race to the level of knowledge, longevity, and wealth in a short 300 years.
What has religion accomplished in the last 5000 years. Spare me the brief insights during the Chinese, Arabic, , Renaissance Christian, Greek and other periods. Only the Greeks have an argument to stand on.
BTW, I really miss signing in the choir and playing hand bells. I love the pageantry.
1
Now I understand how some people calling themselves Christians voted for and continue to support Trump.
4
I'm glad, I guess, that you have confidence the Church will survive the evil men who have damaged so many children, shielded so many abusers, and conspired to protect the Vatican's wealth from restitution. As a Catholic (born, at least) and product of Catholic schools, I still hew to Christ's teachings, but have moved away from the Princes and institutionalists who have spat on his teachings in every meaningful way.
1
Mr. Douthat, I think it would be more germane to our current problems to read the new translation of the New Testament by David Bentley Hart than fixating on some arcane genealogy.
I've never understood why a rich man, like yourself, would want to call himself a follower of Christ. Just take the Christmas story; it's about the indigent and the oppressed. The Catholic church, with it's enormous wealth and men dressing in dresses has NOTHING to do with the foundational concepts of Christianity.
To try and explain the behavior of the church towards priests who molest children by linking them to some mythical line of ancestors shows that you are not and never will be in a state of grace.
1
Organized religion is dead, and no matter how many thinly veiled columns on our current state of politics will bring it back. ( '' includes a few decent men but also a collection of tyrants, child-murderers and worse, none of them remotely pious and many actively at war ... '' )
Praying or preying is no longer tolerable in our growing age of disparity and lechery. (especially in subsidizing via tax dollars religious organizations that are anything but)
I still have faith in me fellow man, woman or other, but look forward to a day (truly) where religion no longer divides us, or even rules over us <
1
I personally find it hypocritical to remain Catholic in view of the systemic immoral corruption within the church. I wouldn't be able to attend Christmas Mass this year without wondering about the past of the priest officiating at the mass, or why the Church protected abusive clerics and errant Bishops for decades. They took advantage of faithful followers in ways we never imagined. In my mind, their sins reflect the position of the Dark Angels that fell from grace and embraced Satan.
The purpose of the genealogy in Matthew was not to show Jesus connection with squalidity of Jewish history but to show him as a descendent of David. One Messianic idea in Israel was that the Messiah would re-establish Israel as it was in its glory days under King David. (The other was that the Messiah would be the "Son of Man" who would come from heaven to establish the direct rule of God in the world.) It is interesting to note that the author of Matthew traces Jesus descent from David through Joseph whom he goes on to tell us was not Jesus father.
Religion and science, theism and atheism, both attempt to answer the fundamental question: What is real? What is reality?
Both fail. Religion won’t cure sepsis. Science won’t comfort a mourning husband at his wife’s funeral. But hearing “Faith of Our Fathers” song aloud to a thunderous pipe organ might.
We are left with questioning over and over. Each age offers new answers. None better than the ones before. Unless, of course, a new answer helps us to be more kind.
1
May it be reborn as an organization without tax exemption. It’s long past time for taxpayers to stop subsidizing religions.
4
Don’t confuse the message with the messenger....
My early post with quote of Scripture was done from 63 year old memory - and no coffee yet. Forgive me. The fuller quote, even more helpful I pray -
"...Laying aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles, let us run with endurance the race that lies before us. Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross and the shame... For consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest we be wearied and faint in our minds".
(Hebrews 12;1-3)
Best of luck.
If you decide to throw in the towel there are lots of other religions to choose from, some much more ancient than Catholicism and still very much alive, such as Hinduism.
There are also some interesting "dead" religions that could bear reviving. Take Isis for example. The worship of Isis lasted for many thousands of years, also longer than the existence of the Catholic Church.
Poor Ross. He tries and tries to make his case for his chosen religion and just misses the mark. Okay, misses it by a country mile. Mumbo-Jumbo indeed. First off, "chosen people?" Would a God (and I capitalize it because the assumption here is there is only one God to which is assigned all loving, all knowing attributes) actually "choose" some of his creatures over others? Does that sound kind and loving? Real dilemma here, right? So why can't we all just get along, as Rodney King advised lo these many years ago? Can't we all just sing, give presents, honor the solstice, love one another and be done with it? Doesn't religion just get in the way? I became a Unitarian years ago after leaving the Catholic Church and UU's are as fallible as anyone. However, they don't preach a creed that separates one from another. Hooray for that. And they sing praises for all. It's good. Ross should try it! What is it about a news columnist that wants to separate folks rather than bring them together??
Having been raised Catholic, I was taught that the priest was the embodiment of Christ on Earth. And because of this, he is divine.
So how does one reconcile that the man up there performing a familiar ritual wrapped in piety, is also the man who raped your cousin, your son, or your neighbor? And further, the systems in place only buried the evidence?
I believe there is a point to faith, but can no longer assist an organization that wants me to blind myself to one fact, while they pretend to hold the other to be true.
I guess the writer can, I can't any longer.
3
I find it remarkable that so much religious anxiety seems to hinge on preserving the ritual concepts that justify a righteous way of life, instead of just living a righteous way of life.
This leads to the insight that believers are so frequently susceptible to hypocrite preachers (child molesters, etc.), because spouting religious sentiment is assumed to indicate religious character.
Dig further, and you conclude that the core difference is between belief as an obligatory conformity system ("thou shalt," "Thou shalt not," etc.), and belief as a judgment of good taste.
My atheism doesn't make me immoral, because crime and predation (molester priests) strike me as deeply unsavory and, well, ugly acts. I don't do such things not because they are "wrong," but because they are inherently repulsive, like the prospect of eating offal.
I follow no rule that says I must not eat offal, God never told me not to eat offal, but if you offer it to me as my christmas dinner, I will gladly spend the day fasting.
Believers strike me as people with appalling bad taste, in their proscriptions and in the book of goatherder tales they quote so often -- no different in that respect from people who think kitsch is great literature. Religion as bad taste: thank you, Nietzsche.
I don't understand their fascination with superstition and kitschy art, but the key is I don't want to. As beliefs go ... I'd rather fast.
1
'If you don’t find that message credible, well, I understand.'
I don't find it the least bit credible and the institution of the Church is absolutely morally bankrupt. There are so many better ways to practice Christ teachings than within increasingly shameful confines of Catholicism.
Merry Christmas to you all the same.
"Staying Catholic" seems to suggest (to paraphrase) "willfully remaining in a cult that perpetuates and conceals abhorrent abuses across a broad spectrum of vulnerable demographies". And a rational, compassionate human being would "stay catholic" because why, again?
The Roman Catholic Church has been a reeking shambles at various points in it's history, in a variety of ways...and here we are, again. Yet here we remain, trudging off to Mass every Sunday morning (the high point of my week, actually) and the odd Holy Day.
Good column. Merry Christmas to all, and a Happy New Year.
Not to worry, Mr Douthat. The Church can still unite around its homophobia and LGBT scapegoating.
2
To all the naysayers: I will pray for you and your unbelief. At the end of time, I pray that you will be pleasantly surprised & humbled, and graciously accept the love of God.
Ross what about the other 75% of people that claim to be religious but are not Catholic? Is there a God for them?
1
All very interesting, but undercut by the fact that the “begat” lineup leads to Joseph, who by the Catholic faith was not related to Jesus. Do we have a lineup leading to Mary, his mother. Genealogically speaking, that would be the relevant one, not that of “House of David” Joseph.
Ross,
If human beings experience even a glimpse of the divine, then it is also true that the divine is present in societies whose leaders are a mix of murderers, cheats, cowards, adulterers, liars and decent people. All known societies in human history have had this heartbreaking mix.
Your next argument is where you go off the rails: essentially, that one is validly a present-day Catholic if one finds it "credible" that Catholics are "the chosen people of the one true God".
The idea that Catholics or devotees of any other group have God's exclusive blessing is not only wrong, it is has been a driving force of many of the worst atrocities in human history.
This most tragic "belief" of fundamentalists of all faiths is based on an egotistic, hubris-filled projection: that God believes exactly what they believe. It follows that God is therefore on their side and against adherents of all competing faiths. (The Crusades and The Inquisition are but two of the entirely logical initiatives of Catholic adherents of this view...)
The clash of civilizations, and all modern knowledge leave only one rational view for those of us who believe that humans can experience the divine: God is equally available to all persons, regardless of club membership. It also follows that insisting that humans become a member of a specific club "to receive God" is evidence of human hubris and corruption, and has nothing whatsoever to do with God.
Simply put: God is for all, or there is no God.
1
The key issues before the Catholic Church remain resolving the place/opportunities of women and gays within it.
1
Mr Douthat's uncovering all sorts of rogue biblical and presenting it as another reason to leave the Catholic Church is just piling on at Christmas time. My generation of being a Catholic is sort of surviving the rituals as a kid, ducking the missiles thrown by nuns and the brothers at us and carrying around that guilt imposed on us. Do you really think that we would leave the Catholic church after experiencing such a gauntlet and join what? What you may not have noticed is many Catholics kids and adults have been abused sexually, women Catholics are discriminated against as well as a whole host of indignities of discrimination and fraud. So we are all toughened by this and ultimately identify as Catholics by birth, unless we marry or have been victimized why go to another religion at all? If you are poor, need severe guidance than perhaps go join who ever feeds you and provides services. But to join another religion just to get kicked around and look for your offering each week? We Catholics survive well enough from the basic tenets we have learned to go about our lives to respect and do good onto others.
1
Isn't the whole point of Catholicism to aspire to a higher standard of behavior? To confess your sins, repent, seek absolution, and try to be a better person? Is Ross an apologist now, creating a false equivalency by saying because many of Jesus' ancestors were some pretty awful people, we shouldn't turn our backs now on the Catholic Church because of its history of pedophilia, corruption, and cover-ups, practiced by some pretty awful people who represent Jesus' spiritual descendants?
Talk about setting the bar low. No wonder more and more people are turning away from organized religion and exploring other paths to spiritual enlightenment.
94
@hdtvpete
Defending institutional pederasty with a hypothetical genealogy is morally indefensible. However, the argument is rather besides the point. The central theological question of any religion operates independently from the organized religion and their misdeeds. I honestly think Jesus' lineage is irrelevant to the question as well.
You need to come from a place where you believe in god or the conversation is rather pointless. What good does joining the Episcopalian Church or pursuing spirituality individually do if you're still tied to a basically Christian understanding of morality?
We broached this philosophical question in an archaeology class once. Ultimately we determined any religion can be moral. However, religious observers are fundamentally unethical. The moral code is prescribed to them and interpreted by the institution rather than the individual.
By believing in a god at all, particularly a Christian god but any god, you are in fact surrendering your free will to choose between right and wrong. Thou shalt... and so on. As a member of a worshiping faith, organized or otherwise, you don't have the freedom to judge pederasty one way or the other.
Your faith renders that judgement above your pay grade.
10
Christmas is a seasonal festival to celebrate the return of the light. Spend it with people you love and enjoy the invisible ties that hold you together and try to extend that light and love to the rest of humanity. No need for "begats."
2
An excellent and encouraging Op-Ed from Ross Douthat. What he has actually articulated is not just a reason for staying Catholic, but a reason for staying Christian. God sent a Savior, not because we were saints, but because we were sinners, and God's grace is intended precisely for the 'sin-sick soul,' as the old spiritual would have it. Or as that famous ex-Catholic, Martin Luther, expressed it, "we are justified by faith." Merry Christmas, Ross! "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders." It certainly does take some faith - but that, indeed, is exactly the point.
4
@Tom Wolpert
""What he has actually articulated is not just a reason for staying Catholic, but a reason for staying Christian."
One can worship Christ without caving in to a corrupt institution that continues to protect child molesters, and fails to protect children.
In fact, I'm pretty sure Christ would prefer it.
1
Week after week, year after year, Ross Douthat presents his Roman Catholic beliefs and his conservative views to NYT readers, a community of largely like-minded people. The commentators, week after week, year after year then respond overwhelmingly with their critiques and disapproval, counting their up-votes. How many of us can understand what this must be like? Still, Douthat continues, week after week, year after year, to post his unpopular columns with a cheerful stubbornness that truly impresses me. So thanks for this thoughtful piece about the ironies of Christian history, Ross. And Merry Christmas!
6
As I grow older, I find that "keeping the faith" is more about hope than confidence in my own righteousness or the righteousness of faith leaders. Regardless of the next horrendous church scandal, I quietly and reverently hold onto my "longing for God". That is about all I can say right now. I don't have a intellectual justification for my beliefs. But I find that my spiritual hope has little to do with what is going on in the formal church these days.
6
I have not been a practicing Catholic for many many years, but it seems to me that the criminal abuse, especially of children, is so widespread and so systematically hidden and protected that we can assume it is as much a part of the Church as the sacraments. The idea that the “reputation” of the Church had to be protected at all costs became doctrine for a significant reason, and it had nothing to do with the occasional spontaneous sin, and by sin I mean crime.
12
The bible - all of it - and other "religious" publications were written by men for men to get power over others.
"We’re the chosen people of the one true God, and to prove it to you here’s a long story about how awful and promiscuous and murderous and fallible we are, how terrible our leaders often turned out to be, and how we deserved every exile and punishment we received."
So what? Repent and everything is okay? Say your hail marys and you are forgiven? Say you're "sorry" and get a pat on the head and be sent on your way like a good little boy?
As you attempt to suppress women and keep them pumping out fodder for your demented wars?
I feel very sorry for people who depend on their catholic community for support but it's time to decide if you think it's Socially Responsible to take all you can get from OUR government, build monuments to yourselves tax free and try to control the rest of the population.
It's not okay with me or my higher power - which the catholic church has tried to co-opt. I do not need anyone in the middle to communicate with my higher power.
Neither to you.
14
Sir, this is disingeneous. Of course there are vile apples throughout church history and history overall. There are vile apples amongst us now. The bigger problem with your church isn't that there are some vile apples, but in the sanctioning and enabling of these apples from within. In fact, it became a safe haven for them. There is no defence of that whatsoever.
27
I often (usually) disagree with you. Today, this liberal catholic says, "thanks, I needed that."
7
A well written article that is good reading for any Christian denomination. Catholics don’t have a monopoly on scandals in the church.
6
But there is one woman the Catholic church admires, respects and prays to.
That is the woman that bore Jesus, a virgin (probably not) and she herself was born "miraculously" without sin, so she would be worthy to bear the Savior of the World.
Look at the picture of the blessed Mary being worshiped.
And yet somehow all other women are evil and tempt priests. It seems little boys also tempt priests. It's never the priest's fault.
11
So the point is - the leaders are corrupt and sinful, but let's not worry about it or argue because we're the chosen people and it will eventually work out? What a sad comment on the Catholic faith as practiced by cultural conservatives. Not "I believe in this, I will protect this," but "how can I make myself feel better about submitting to people I know are not following the rule of Christ or having my way of looking at the world challenged." Would you rather save the dogma of the conservative branch of Catholic Church, or save the core teachings of Christ? Preserve the tradition of priestly power, but spit in the face of the popular traditions of the body of the Church?
So sad, the "church militant" gang are the first to say this is a great analysis - they are the first to judge the "liberal" or the poor, but the last to judge a Catholic in a position of power, either sacred or secular (unless it happens to be a reformer).
And by the way - Catholics are not the Chosen people. That would be the Jews. The New Testament opens God's grace to all people.
6
Lots of reasons why I no longer practice Catholicism, but number one is my now strongly held belief that the very idea of a “chosen people” is not merely misguided, it’s inherently evil. Truly, think about it. It’s a Trumpian idea!
10
@mancuroc To your list of mean, vindictive right-wing Catholics, I'm sure it was a temporary lapse that you did not include the archetype of that category Newt Gingrich.
9
Ah well, we can sympathize with Ross’ personal struggle to grasp value from Catholicism. There is value there, but like rot in an apple, some has to be cut away. Unfortunately, I believe, Ross will have much difficulty in this process, in part because he cannot clearly identify what is rotten.
9
Wonderful column. The miracle of “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” is that God loves each of us personally and intimately, despite our sometimes terrible failings. And speaking of terrible failings: King David, Israel’s great hero to whom Jesus’ lineage is traced, raped Bathsheba and sent her husband Uriah to the battlefield front, ensuring his death.
It seems to me you overlook inconvenient facts. Most of your coreligionists (unlike you) were born into your church. "Cradle Catholics" I believe you call them. Their grasp of your church's dogma is often weak to non-existent, particularly the "difficult" stuff. If pressed to explain their own beliefs, they often sound more like high church Protestants.
Ergo, why should you insist they stay? R.C. abort and practice contraception, at least in the developed world at about the same rates as other denominations as well as secularists. They often believe that wafer of bread is either a symbol only or Real Presence is spiritual/sacramental and not pulpy flesh
magically veiled from squeamish eyes as they are required to believe.
Then we come to the claim of exclusivity and infallibility. Many RC now have non-RC stepchildren, sons in law or daughter in law or grandkids of other Christian denominations or non-Christian faiths or no faith. They are required to believe these people are in great spiritual trouble, have defective faith, and no guarantees after death except perhaps eternal suffering. Do you really want persons who blanch at what your church actually wants them to believe, to stay, or is it enough to go through the motions and be a "cultural" Catholic? Don't conservative RC object to cultural Catholics?
1
This article appears to "normalize" evil behavior. It's all happened before, and it will happen again, so just keep on keeping on? No. Decency doesn't tolerate indecency in its midst. The abuse is not only physical but also systematic oppression. Jail the abusers. Junk the sooth-sayers. Toss the crutch. Accept the dignity of freedom. If you like, consider the moral leadership of Jesus, along with others, but reject the greedy, power-seeking and misguided who co-opt it into a meal ticket, power base, and avenue of abuse.
7
"simply picking up what his own people, the Jewish people, already said about themselves: We’re the chosen people of the one true God, and to prove it to you here’s a long story about how awful and promiscuous and murderous and fallible we are, how terrible our leaders often turned out to be, and how we deserved every exile and punishment we received."
Huh?? Please, Ross, be very, very careful that you don't, in an effort to corral your Catholic sisters and brothers back into church, provide fodder to an already anti-Semitic leaning group of Americans and others, who have become increasingly bold in their expressions of hatred and resentment and are always looking for more reasons and ways to denigrate and accuse and justify their abuse of Jewish people.
I think you are referring to the book of Prophets and some of the hyperbolic handwringing and condemnation therein. But the way you present it in your piece is too easily lifted from context, too easy for Jew-haters (or even Jew-sorta-dislikes) to ignorantly repeat and promote.
It reminds me of how generations of Jewish people used to brace themselves, especially pre-Vatican II, for the onslaught of violence and vitriol directed at them after Easter Mass. Please don't be a part of that kind of resurrection.
6
Of course the point of the genealogy is not that they were sinners but that they were selected, blessed, chosen of God, through the line of David and Solomon, and thus that Jesus was chosen, selected, and blessed. It was Luke, not Matthew, who emphasized the outsider-hood of Jesus, through the line of David to Nathan, not Solomon, and going back to Adam, not just Abraham.
That Jesus' ancestry includes adulterers and murders doesn't persuade me to remain loyal to a modern-day institution unable to curb child abuse within its ranks. Loyalty to such an institution could arguably make me complicit in child abuse. Others of course feel differently for deep-seated reasons, and I respect that.
4
Christians in general and Roman Catholics in particular need to stop referring to sexuality as squalid, and especially when discussing sexual abuse. Sexuality is not squalid, but a beautiful gift of God through which we can know another human being in a deeply holy way. Most often a twisted exercise of domination, sexual abuse perverts that gift. The sad moral history of treating sexuality as dirty has laid the groundwork for the multigenerational abuse crisis rampant in the Roman Catholic Church. Like Nineveh, the Roman Catholic Church has a way forward. Repentance.
5
Merry Christmas to you. And Happy New Year to you and me.
1
The promise is in Christ, not in any of the human trappings around which the "church" is constructed. May the hope of a newborn child bring us to positive action.
2
The of citing Jesus’s genealogy in the Gospel accounts confirms his earthly lineage in the line of David and the tribe of Judah on both Joseph's and Mary's side . This was promised from God and communicated by the inspired Bible prophets.
1
I am not Catholic, and looking from the outside, I just don’t understand how decent Catholics allow this to continue.
What percentage do the 500 priests in Illinois, similar amounts in NY and Pa comprise? Why would anyone Bring their child near a Catholic Church? How can the honorable priests not revolt against this? We’re this a tech or car company, it would have been shut down at the very first u earthing of these crimes.
I simply dont understand.
5
@Harry Kaufman "decent Catholics" are not in power in the RC Church; they are in the pews. Other than refusing donations, they have no leverage.
1
And now the pope has called for child abusers to come forth and identify themselves. Talk about faith! I’m holding my breath until that happens.
1
“important Catholic Twitter account”
There is a dissonance to that phrase that is so of the moment.
4
If you need to defend your faith in writing, maybe it’s not worth defending.
1
All those begats produced Joseph, the guy who supposedly did NOT beget Jesus. So what is the point of listing them anyway?
8
I grew up with the Baltimore Catechism. Hundreds of wretched rules to live by. I failed puberty trying to do just that. It affected me all my life. It didn't take a molesting priest for the Church to really mess up young minds. Intellectually I saw through it by the age of 16. I have no idea how any intelligent person can take this Church seriously. I never found it philosophical, uplifting or inspiring in any way.
7
And there is the rub. “Reborn” as what. It is the institutional Church that is in crisis, a church which has gotten into the habit of canonizing the very leaders who have closed their eyes to the scandal beneath them. It is arguable that that scandal is a consequence of a historic near misogyny, Mother Mary notwithstanding. If we can hope for a purifying future, it is hard to see how it happens without a new liturgical structure. There is no evidence this is in the making.
1
Today, the catholic "church" must first be spoken of as the organization that continues to look the other way when it's leaders rape children, not turning those rapists over to police immediately, but instead merely taking away their priestly privileges and telling them to pray and to turn themselves in.
This recent expansion to calling for turning one's self in has come only after decades of shielding these monsters from justice.
All of this being the case, is there really anything else that can and should be said about this corrupt, criminal artifice?
The pope--until he gets on the phone to police every time he hears about another sex abuser in his midst--remains just another enabler, and thus just another criminal.
1
Enough. Enough justification of an indefensible institution that has elevated itself for decades at the cost of its faithful and most tragically its children. If any other organization had one tenth of the predatory effect that the Catholic Church has had the American public would be storming its buildings to burn them down. The sole reason I am not a personal victim is because my parish priest, for whom I served mass many dozens of times, only preyed on boys and I was a girl. Enough.
5
Its not only the horrific priest scandal that shakes my faith to the core but the fact the church is telling the flock to vote for the culture of corruption GOP by demanding abortion be kept into politics. Abortion is wrong but God will deal with those people killing babies. I have known staunch Catholics who believe this way and I do to. You think Russias interference in our 2016 election is a injustice so is this topic the churches keep forcing their people to support. Our constitution specifically says don't mix religion and politics and the GOP have given them yearly tax breaks . The rotten to the core GOP are anti-life by all the wars they get us into ,support the gun industry who daily in America cause mass murders and climate deniers who brought coal pollution back in full force to finally wipe us out with sea level rise. Wake up Catholics the GOP are evil and you will reap what you sow.
2
There is no point in any religion at all, including Catholicism, if it doesn't prevent supposedly civilized people from starving a little girl in Yemen to death. Take a look at her picture again, right there on the front page of the NYT. And we're religious, are we? What good is our religion, in that case?
12
"....and what rough beast, it's time come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born." W.B. Yeats. ("The Second Coming" - 1923. How prescient.
Isn't it time for Christians to acknowledge the reality of a Divine Shadow? That the Creation itself is grounded in predatory Nature? That there cannot be a Christian archetype without it's opposite - the archetype of the Anti-Christ? And isn't it time we Christians grow up, become adults and take on the responsibility of working it out FOR the Divine Self?
Hugh M. McElyea
Howey in the Hills, Fl
2
What bothers me isn't that so many sex abuse cases were ignored by the catholic hierarchy. What concerns me is the higher levels of political corruption in states that are Catholic dominated. Maryland (three governors convicted), Illinois (at least two governors wearing institutional pajamas), Louisiana (don't get me started), New Jersey (Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha). I could go on.
3
Reborn, yes. Reborn in the form of a hot yoga class on Christmas Eve. Reborn in the form of a walk in the woods on Christmas day. Reborn in the form of dancing and drinking with family and friends till 3am later that night. There will be a rebirth of ritual and tradition around Christmas. But it won't be in a church. And it won't be around a superstitious, misogynistic, homophobic, irrational belief system that aims to cement patriarchy, control women, marginalize gay people, exclude transgender people, and brainwash kids. Perhaps the rebirth will be around Jesus the real person. The real person who attacked corruption, told truth to power, protested greed, created inclusive communities, helped those on the fringes, and helped people find their courage, their voice. Not Jesus the God. Jesus the man. The man who was tortured for standing up for the least among us, pushing back, protesting, marching, striving to make communities more fair.
21
Why? I was raised Catholic and basically from about 10 years old on I knew it was a sham. I left as soon as I could, almost 50 years ago, and haven't missed it one bit. In my opinion if Christianity fell off the face of the earth tomorrow, along with Judaism and Islam, we'd all be immeasurably better off.
8
Oh please! I tire of people clinging to their "faith," whatever it is. It's childish. Why need the imposed illusion of "religion" to maintain faith? Must we be so weak?
6
Is this a joke? The begetting in Matthew is a list of patriarchical parentage down to the lowly Joseph (who is not really involved - he's the foster parent of Jesus). Yes, Joseph, just like all of us, has saints and sinners, princes and skeletons in the closet. But in Judaism it is Mom who matters, not Daddy. Heritage comes from the mother's side of the family. Where is her lineage and what does it matter?
The only reason for quoting the House of David is to connect the human Jesus with the prophecy in Isaiah. It's called "branding." Matthew is the adman who touts the Messiah claim up front.
Yet, Jesus has a very different beginniing from all other humans - he is born of an unsuspecting maiden and a wily spirit who magically impregnates her without permission and then sends a friend to tell her how wonderful that is.
If you're gonna tell the story, get the facts straight.
Faith is believing against all odds that something totally crazy is not only true, but it provides meaning for your life. If that helps you, fine. Be whatever religious zealot you want to be.
If, however, it causes you to hurt others, to take power where it is not warranted, then leave the rest of us alone. Jesus never said, "Build me a big, honkin' church full of power-hungry bureaucrats." Catholics and most other Christians might think long and hard about that.
Jesus said, help others, act as you would want others to act toward you. And he chased the money-grubbers out of the temple.
15
“The case for remaining Catholic in this moment, then, is basically that all this has happened before and will happen again...”
Are you seriously offering this as an argument to remain in a church that has been molesting children for god knows how long? Ross, you continually amaze me with your convoluted ‘reasoning’ seeking to justify the unjustifiable.
The only way to make the Roman Catholic Church take notice is for parishioners to stop attending and stop giving it money. Perhaps when it’s finances show a negative balance it will finally clean up it's act or even better go the way of the dinosaurs.
8
“Testable hypothesis” — wha? The only doctrines that have ever kept the Church afloat are the ones relating to the mourning of the dead. All those stories about a Good Sky Chief welcoming the faithful (the baptized) to a better realm has comforted the grieving loved ones left behind throughout the ages and even now. It is this wing of Church theater that has kept its coffers healthy, not its stand on birth control or sex control. Its own sex transgressions could end up draining those coffers dry, but they haven’t yet — and might never. Death is awesome.
People are pretty good at compartmentalizing their psychological needs. But Douthat is a mystical kinda guy.
3
These days?
Whatever gets you through the night.
1
My life has been plagued by ugly events at Holiday Seasons. Deaths illnesses Tragedies and the never ending commercialization just make this time longer. I’m also deeply troubled by fools like Ross, who say believe like me and you’ll be free. Just join the seminary and wait for your rewards.
4
I think that you understated the evil of the Israelites and overstated the severity of the punishments that befell them. An example of the genocides they practiced: the Danites needed some land. They found a peaceful people and slaughtered them. They didn’t even bother with the justification that the people were evil. On the other hand, when the Israelites were defeated, they were enslaved or whatever for a while. If others treated the Israelites the way the Israelites treated others, they would have been wiped off the face of the earth.
The genocides were endorsed by G-d, because it was he who granted the Danites the land. Given that, it’s not clear whether what seems evil to us is to be viewed was evil in the eyes of G-d.
Combining my view with the view of this piece’s author, we see that G-d is evil.
1
The Catholic Church is a very human institution that claims divine power for a heirarchy headed by men who are supposed to remain celibate. What could possibly go wrong? (And why should women and children ever expect that they are in any way a priority once they exit the womb?)
8
Let's see: the selection of one particular tribe, on one obscure planet, orbiting one of a billion stars in one of a quintillion galaxies, six billion years after that planet's formation, by an invisible magician inhabiting everywhere and nowhere, should be deemed a supremely divine intervention in planetary civilization precisely because the chosen tribe responsible for inventing the magician is self-admittedly unworthy of his preference.
Couldn't imagine what sort of audience such a message might be intended for until reading the comments below. So it's for those who find comfort and solace in lifelong ritual. Very well, very harmless, continue in peace. Just don't come around bearing truth claims, or threatening sectarian infiltration of the secular law, and expect to escape unscathed by deeming yourselves self-appointed agents of some supernatural will.
Must be a seasonal perquisite for those enjoying the platform of a NYT column. When your comfy little Jesus-week is over, please try harder to address the rest of us.
5
The Bible is not a true story ask any real historian.
6
I honestly don't understand why the New York Times continues to publish this man's half-baked justifications for belonging to a church of any sort, much less the Roman Catholic one. His is a faith based on his memories of how an institution made him feel in the distant past. His faith journey is not newsworthy, fact-based or in any way instructive of how the world might be made into a better place. If the decision has been made to give space to ruminations on faith, how about asking a different person every month who has accomplished something good in the world to discuss their experience, strength and hope?
10
December 25, in Chicago just another cold winter day mister Douithat, just another tuesday.
1
It seems to me that the best reason to remain or be Catholic is if you get excited by vacuous, pompous ceremonies and magic.
8
How about an end to sacerdotal celibacy? We're Catholic priests illegitimate before 1100 AD? Does the Catholic Church not accept the sacremental.power of Anglican priests?
2
Good. Then all of us who've proudly retained our membership cards in the Crips, Bloods or Hell's Angels can still feel good about our organizations and our loyalty to them. After all, we're all human.
7
I have incontrovertible evidence and I fervently believe that the Tooth Fairy is the son of god, and not Jesus.
Ross Douthat and the Catholic Church has not one scrap of evidence that my belief is wrong.
My fairy tale is just as good as yours Ross.
2
@Bernie Both you and Ross are wrong. It's the Flying Spaghetti Monster
2
If the people claiming to be Catholic behaved in a manner that Christ would not object to, we would be living in a beautiful world.
Instead this is what we have.
3
It’s probably less of a stretch to advocate remaining Catholic if you ignore the church’s complicity in decades of child sexual abuse that destroyed tens of thousands of young lives while protecting priests who should have been in prison. Although I was spared that particular horror, in 11 years of parochial school I was slapped, punched and kicked - beginning in first grade - by a series of nuns, brothers and priests who who were so routinely vicious that Ibelieved I must have deserved it. Why anyone would defile themselves via an association with such a criminal o enterprise has baffled me for decades. I left before I finished high school and I’m glad I did. I would NEVER consider going back. Happy winter solstice.
4
@walt amsesI more than agree with this comment. I too found mistreatment so routine that I felt it must have been deserved. Actually, once my parents complained about a ruler slap across my face and were solemnly told that the abusive nun had a very good reason. She had previously warned me about standing pigeon-toed in Church.
Good piece, Ross. This convert is going nowhere.
1
Great argument, Ross. In religion there is always an excuse for=or everything. How about the church and its leaders taking good old personal responsibility? Ugh. The Catholic Church is the cockroach of religion; it will never die.
2
Ross, repeating the same rationalizations about the "specialness" of religion and expecting a different future than the past is truly the definition of insanity.
Your obsession with religion is the worship of authoritarian power. That is your one true God. And your only religion.
Good luck with that. But keep away from the rest of us
5
Oh, I remain a Catholic. I’m just not a Roman Catholic anymore.
1
If Joseph wasn't really the father of Jesus (as stated by the Church) then who really cares about the guy's genealogy? It's irrelevant.
3
What an utter load of gobbeldygook, Ross. Honest to God. What does any of this even mean? "All this has happened and will happen again," so...what? Shrug and carry on? In the face of to-the-core corruption? In the face of the decades-long, systematic abuse of children? In the face of terminal dysfunction, of a bone-deep cillness so pervasive it sickens all of us, even if we can't quite name it? One's connection with God requires none of the nonsense, phony wisdom and empty threats of the Catholic church. Its rotten essence and moral bankruptcy has been laid bare. Like so may others, I'm walking away with utter clarity and no less of a relationship with Christ, and will, happily, never belong to a church again. Enough with the contortions and lame rationalization. Let it all fall down.
2
The story of Judah and Tamar is much more complex and really amazing than portrayed in this article. I realize this isn't the point Ross is making, but there are lessons to learn from the actual story.
"Tamar... saw that, though Shelah had now grown up, she had not been given to him as his wife. When Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face. Not realizing that she was his daughter-in-law, he went over to her by the roadside and said, “Come now, let me sleep with you.”“I’ll send you a young goat from my flock,” he said.“Will you give me something as a pledge until you send it?” she asked. He said, “What pledge should I give you?” “Your seal and its cord, and the staff in your hand,” she answered. So he gave them to her and slept with her, and she became pregnant by him. About three months later Judah was told, “Your daughter-in-law Tamar is guilty of prostitution, and as a result she is now pregnant.”Judah said, “Bring her out and have her burned to death!” As she was being brought out, she sent a message to her father-in-law. “I am pregnant by the man who owns these,” she said. And she added, “See if you recognize whose seal and cord and staff these are.” Judah recognized them and said, “She is more righteous than I, since I wouldn’t give her to my son Shelah.”
1
So what is to be done with an organization that has clearly lost its way? An organization that has gone from being merely ineffective to actively criminal? An organization who chief, in response to criminal acts within that organization, refuses to take definitive action to clean house, but instead calls upon those who are guilty to turn themselves in?
My preference would be to shutter that organization and jail its officers. Unfortunately, that is unlikely to happen. As an alternative I would propose to strip its tax exempt status as a way of providing an incentive to change. I would then impose conditions required to regain their tax exempt status:
No priest will every be alone with a young person.
Women and married priests will be allowed in all church offices.
The entire seminary system will be shutdown and rebuilt with new staff and curriculum.
The church will disgorge its assets for counseling and succor of its victims.
The priests who did the crime, the bishops who covered it up, the cardinals who authorized the policy, and the pope who presided over the whole criminal enterprise will be brought to justice.
2
If you could convince the Church that the teachings of Jesus are extraordinary in their insight and actually worth following, no matter how inconvenient for the Church itself, then I would join.
2
The only thing miraculous about the Catholic Church is that it is a human institution that has survived almost two thousand years in spite of the intolerance, deep corruption, immorality and hypocrisy of many of its leaders (the Inquisition and Renaissance popes come to mind). It will be even more miraculously if it survives another thousand given its inflexibility, its stubborn patriarchal hierarchy, opposition to birth control and clergy celibacy (the latter is likely closely linked to the pervert infestation in the clergy).
2
Takeaway: You need to make an incredibly elliptical argument to justify to yourself supporting an institution that has mastered systematic child sexual abuse.
Ask yourself:
1) how many of the priests people will hear read read out the “begats” will have sexually abused someone this year? We know it’s a big number.
2) Is the priest reading that gospel secretly laughing at the suckers who continue to turn up to mass? The abusers laugh at all of you and belittle you to themselves. They invent cruel pet names for the “pious” grandmothers who sit up the front and can’t imagine that the priest is sizing up the alter boys as he speaks. The “innocent” priests who are covering up someone else’s abuse laugh less, but wonder why you are still there.
You vote with your feet. Going to mass is a vote of support for child abuse. When priests abuse children (even sick kids in hospital beds) they bet people like Ross with invent far-fetched arguments to justify looking the other way. It looks like they aren’t wrong to do so.
2
@Baldwin
Except that, they are not all abusers. And that is also a problem. Ross fails to offer a solution to an institutional cancer hoping, apparently for some kind of Divine mystical intervention to save the day.
1
Anyone who believes in religious doctrine after high school, or at best, college, has a brain glitch. They are welcome to it as long as they don't inflict it on me!
5
It is an unpleasant fact, but none the less, quite evident, that historically, homosexual men and women have considered the Catholic Church a place of sanctuary. The same Catholic Church that condemns homosexuality is also an organization widely staffed by homosexuals.
The first thing the Catholic Church needs to do is reverse its position on homosexuality.
2
So you’ve put the case for remaining Christian, Mr Doubthat. But that’s hardly an argument for staying in the Church of Rome. Protestant faiths do not claim mysterious ministerial powers for their clergy. With them, the Jews realize (as they always have) their leaders are fallible human beings. It is your own Church, with its sanctified officials, saints, and miracles, that’s a bit fuzzy about where the line between human and divine is drawn.
1
Uplifting twattle.
2
Well, Mr. Douthat, I happen to be a Presbyterian. And I know you are yourself not only Catholic but conservative Catholic. So I just finished reading your piece and I want to say--
--thank you! Thank you! A thousands thank you's.
That was splendid, sir! Simply splendid.
I know your Church is beset by scandal and corruption right now. To say nothing of policemen and magistrates fixing an angry eye upon abuse and cover-up's and abuse and cover-up's and abuse and. . . . . .
. . . and what?
And that's what we ARE, Mr. Douthat, isn't it. That' s what we ARE.
You speak as a Catholic, Mr. Douthat. But you were also speaking as a Christian. And so am I. And this time of year--and every time of year--the wonder simply grows and grows:
Why--in God's name--WHY--
--did the Son of God EVER choose to come into such a world?
Inexplicable!
Dominicans are by no means the only people to point out: the lineage of Jesus Christ is crowded with infamy. Sin. Failure. Lust. More sin. More failure. More lust.
"He abhorred not the Virgin's womb." Amen and amen.
The point is: He DID come. He DID come. He lived. He suffered. He died.
And by His death, He brought us life. Or, to quote Isaiah--
--"By His stripes we are healed."
I am writing this with a brimming heart, Mr. Douthat. And brimming eyes. Thank you again, sir. Thank you. And hey--
--Merry Christmas!
(And God bless you.)
2
But Joseph wasn't the father of Jesus, and Mary was the Immaculate Conception, so there was no sinfulness in Jesus' lineage. Jesus never knew what it was like to be a sinner, and never knew what it means to receive forgiveness.
Don’t hold your breath for reformation, Ross. Asking pedophile priests to remove themselves (as the Pope is doing now) is ludicrous and weak. I’ll believe a transformed Catholic Church can rise from the ashes when the Pope holds every complicit Cardinal and Bishop accountable, and tosses them out on their cassocked rear ends, and not a moment before.
1
It appears believing in God provides the excuse for people to harm others. Horrible crimes are sanitized by God's forgiveness leading to a weakling morality.
Catholics hostility to homosexuality, to the right of women to have an abortion, and to wearing contraceptives that also protect against lethal diseases to mention three cause widespread human suffering. Human suffering justified in the name of some god.
3
There is a big difference between the faith and the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy of the Church otherwise known as the hierarchy is what people leave. They can’t stand the constant harping of the bishops upon how women shouldn’t do this or that or that women shouldn’t be priests or the state should enforce what the bishops want people to do or not do while all along the bishops are engaging in massive coverups and fraudulent conveyances to protect their tax free money.
The bishops and the rest are anxious to boot out good priests more readily that pedophiles! If a priest is too good, a good pastor who focuses on the needs of his parish, he is very likely to be replaced by the bishop’s cyber who will eschew the title of pastor for the title of Adminsitrator. The bishops are without compassion when it counts. They use their money to lobby to cover their holy wallets and to make sure women know their place. That’s what people are leaving, Ross.
As to the stories of dissolute Jewish kings and the rest, it’s not about how the Jews deserved what they got (although I can understand how that might resonate with you and your followers) it’s about the unlimited and universal mercy of God!
2
It always amazes me that some people, like Ross, allow mythology and superstition to control their lives. Most bible tales have as much validity as stories about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Yet people are brainwashed into believing them by a power-hungry clergy that requires the adulation and money their tall tales deliver.
4
So how is it that Jesus born of this lusty, sensual, all too human ancestral line is written as a pure, celibate figure? Perhaps if the Church recognized the fallacy of this portrayal the priests wouldn't have to pretend to be "holier than thou".
Oh, and where are the women (other than temptresses and prostitutes).
1
Bravo from an agnostic former Christian.
1
Mr. Douthat, your choice of synopsis of the story of Judah and Tamar is warped. You, of all people, who used the esoteric term “onanism” in a recent column. Tamar was the wife of Judah’s eldest son. He was “wicked in the Lord’s eyes” so the Lord killed him; before she had any children. Judah told his second son Onan to sleep with Tamar and give her sons to raise up to her dead husband; as this was the custom. Instead Onan spilled his seed on the ground in order to deny her children. This was also wicked in the Lord’s eyes, and the Lord killed Onan. Judah promised Tamar she would be given as wife to Judah’s youngest son, but the years went by and it did not happen. So Tamar disguised herself, met Judah, negotiated with him, and slept with him. When she was sentenced to death for prostitution, she confronted Judah with his failure to provide a husband for her as promised. Judah himself pronounced her as “more righteous than I”. Tamar did not cheat Judah; on the contrary, Judah attempted to cheat her. Why do you twist the story? It still serves your ends: Judah is a heel. Perhaps you, and all of us Catholics, both lay and cleric, should take to heart the advice of Oliver Cromwell and “think it possible that you may be mistaken”. More repentance, more humility is what we as a church need. Not twisting stories to suit your opinions.
5
So one shouldn’t support a candidate who supports or is indifferent to abortion but one should stay in a church that has tolerated and hidden so much abuse of the young. Each time I attend mass I wonder if the priest is a pedophile. Distracts me. The religion is fine, but as for this Church, I am done.
2
An op-ed I suspect my brother Jesus might endorse.
Hannukah is long passed, but it a holiday celebrated where we the Hellenized Jews are the arch villains and the most Hellenized among us the 18th century Haredi are the most zealous among us in the condemnation of we ourselves.
Sometimes you must drink the Hemlock to keep yourself alive.
1
What a desperate case of fiction-based rationalization. When you have nothing meaningful to say, just make things up! This is not a successful strategy to an existential crisis, but a delusional “Hail Mary”.
How can you believe what any of the priests say? By their complicity each one is tarnished with the filth of abuse and its coverup. The same thinking of belonging to the Church “tribe” is what allows Republicans to get behind the Trump wagon. Belonging is more important than critical thinking.
1
Ross rallies the faithful to attend to a long-standing convention of the addled, let's say a spiritual Comicon, with emphasis on the con.
Yet more rambling, disingenuous obfuscation, bolstered by the usual essentially irrelevant references to all sorts of sources, to no real point at all?
Essentially another tale of sound and furious obfuscation, told by a columnist with apparently little to say, signifying nothing.
2
I have learned to not confuse the ecclesiastical machinery of the Roman Catholic Church with the holy catholic church of the Apostles Creed.
2
You have made a case for continuing to have faith, not for remaining Catholic. Belief in God and being Catholic are not always one and the same thing. Were I to tell you that an institution was responsible for the rape and molestation of well over 10,000 children, would you call that institution a "church," or a "criminal enterprise"?
This column is a rosary of pablum.
As Shaquille O'Neal once said to Kobe Bryant,
"Just stop rapin' !"
2
Lest we forget:
The Catholic Church, dating I suppose from St. Augustine's time, gave "us," [read, "European society, along with it's own, 'geographic' offshoots"] a stable, well organized and practical religion, that has provided divine guidance, admonition and comfort, to kings, queens, princes, paupers, and everyone in-between, for 1600+ years.
--
...You're right. There's no sense in bailing out now...
2
Wait, what's particularly Catholic about any of this?
Douthat brings up his Catholicism in the headline, a new record! It's usually the second or third paragraph before we get a reminder.
It's gonna be awkward in the afterlife. Jesus is like, "I love ya...couldn't do it without the fans...but maybe tone it down. Even my dad takes a day off after a long week."
1
Ross is weaving a dangerous lie. Matthew's purpose was to tie Jesus to David and, by association, the chain of heredity found in the Hebrew Bible back to Adam. He was writing to a Jewish audience whose tradition expected this and he even went a little overboard in ascribing prophecies as fulfilled in Christ to cement the connection. The lack of moral character and outright evil behavior of many in this chain is currently used by Trump's evangelical base to justify voting for the amoral sexual predator they elected. Douthat is giving them cover and is also trying to liken the sexual abuse of children by priests and coverups by cardinals to this same thread of nonsense. No Virgina, there is no Santa Claus. Every child molester needs to face his day in court as the pope called for - the very pope Ross would like to replace.
5
Catholicism was pretty impossible to swallow even before the clergy sex scandals broke. But, if you can look at the current GOP and still be a Republican, I guess you can look at the 2000 year account of the insanely hierarchical Catholic Church and still be a Catholic. Doesn't mean you are somehow bad, just that you are a true believer in miracles and selective blindness.
1
Give me the "religion" of the inhabitants of this land before the white Man brought his big "G" god to these shores and shoved it down the throats of the continent's rightful "owners" in order to save their "souls."
Take me back to the days when every creature from the lowly tumblebug in the dung pile, to the magnificent elk in the mountains, to the awesome beauty of the eagle high over the tallest mountain peak had its own spirit. Each being's spirit was its own past, its present and its future, and it was forever; death did not end the spirit. From the tumblebug to the eagle, all was right with the world. Not just once a year, but every day of every year.
On Christmas day, I will be seated at a table, surrounded by and enjoying the company of dozens of Catholics. My spirit will be in wild where it has always been and always will be.
3
Is there an ICD-10 code yet for religious delusion? Subtype = Catholicism. Ross, your devotion to the utter absurdity of this zany fiction is impressive.
2
If Jesus was not Joseph's biological child, why does his genealogy matter?
2
Merry Christmas from one of the remaining Catholics out of 2B Christians. I have my personal reasons for believing in God.
If people born in poverty and from sin can transcend their lineage to become presidents, (DEFINITELY not talking about that creature in our WH), scientists, humanitarians, etc. why not Jesus? It was ordained. The father of Jesus is God, you can't get any better than that.
My Christmas present from Pope Francis is his recent news declaring condemnation of the sexual predators that are in our church. He wants them to be subjected to criminal prosecution, and their atonement and possible redemption will be between them and God. As it should be.
I have more hope that he has sifted the wheat from the chaff or identified those members of the hierarchy who were lying to him about their roles in these heinous crimes against children. He must have had a 'hell of a time' trying to find the truth and the truthsayers.
"...how we deserved every exile and punishment we received."
What Jew ever said this?
This message is neither credible nor compelling. And it underlies every act of anti-semitism, every pogrom, inflicted upon the Jews, especially during your high holy days, Christmas and Easter.
Your saints may be missing, but don't look to us for the cause. Look in the mirror.
5
I have always found the message of the Old Testament to be basically, the Jews can be as bad as possible but are still the "Chosen People." That's not a message of accountability. The 10 Commandments proposed rules for how Jews should treat other Jews. They were never intended to be rules for Gentiles, a fact that escapes most Gentiles and isn't taught in churches. The New Testament bears almost no resemblance to the Old Testament. The only part worth reading is the gospels, because they are the story of an extraordinary person. The rest is boring and drivel. I believe in reading the Bible, but understand what you read. Otherwise you will continue to be blinded by evil...perhaps as Mr. Douthat is??
4
Sheep to the right. Goats to the left, please. We’re on a tight schedule here.
12
Nice try, Ross.
But I'm done.
9
As a then child / now adult who went to Masses regularly, received Sacraments, former Alter Boy, 12 years Parochial school in a City vicinity dominated by Churches ... I'm so disgusted with Priestly Perversion there is no moral reason to remain Catholic.
What calling did these seminarians / priests hear ... that they knew there would be have an endless supply of boys to abuse?
They can wear their Collars in prison.
7
Uhh, why is the NYT wasting valuable space by publishing an op-ed trying to seriously discuss superstitious mumbo-jumbo? What's next, Haitian voodoo? Viking gods? Sure, as anthropology or sociology, these are interesting topics. But it's pathetic and intellectually ridiculous to treat the gospels, Thor, or black magic as if they're somehow part of historical or physical reality.
12
Hey Ross,
Listen buddy, you’re DECADES late to this debate. Your lectures are now t at all helpful.
4
Chill out, Ross - the pope just told all those pederast priests to turn themselves in to law enforcement. Easy peasy! What a stroke of genius! I can’t believe nobody ever thought of this before. Everything’s going to be just fine in Catholic-land now.
9
Why is this important?
4
Every time I read Douthat, I thank God that I’m atheist.
15
Ross writes about Hebraic fallible lineage "If you don’t find that message credible, well, I understand".
Yet, as a Catholic, he must believe an even less credible message: that the creator of the vast universe bypassed the usual biology and impregnated a married teenage jewish woman and then had their son tortured to death so that good people will be happy after they're dead.
7
@Steve M Mary was unmarried. She was betrothed to Joseph when impregnated. And I'm not certain that it is written that she was a teenager. She may have been younger than that.
1
@Debra Merryweather
Thanks for the clarification: betrothed but not yet married. Got it. So technically not adultery. Just an instance of "droit de seigneur".
But younger than a teen? That would make the creator of the universe a pedophile!
1
@Steve M Luke's gospel provides no references to "droit de seigneur." Reality suggests that naïve young girls and women are not necessarily safe anywhere - then or now. Luke mentions no age for Mary. I am not a believer in the virgin birth and therefore, not a believer that any power behind our universe is ever a pedophile. (It is biological fact that female fertility generally commences prior to the teen years.) Reality says a lot about a lot.
1
Am I to believe in in the Catholic religion with all its abuses towards children?
5
Thanks for the opportunity to once again declare that the Abrahamic religions, Catholicism particularly, are the worst thing ever to afflict the human race or the Earth.
5
As my late Irish Catholic Mother In Law would have said “What a load of hay”.
6
Earth to Ross: Trying to make sense of Christianity is a mug's game because Christianity makes no sense at all. Like Judaism and Islam and all other supernaturalism.
Here's a better option: Listen to some Burl Ives, watch some James Stewart, open some presents, eat some cookies and ham, drink some wine, then move on to the bowl games. Heck, you can even to go Mass if you want. Your neighbors will be dressed nicely.
Now isn't that better?
But taking this religion stuff seriously?
Fuggedaboudit.
4
Can a woman be pope?
4
An interesting argument, Bro. Ross, tortuous, convoluted, Scholastic, fully worthy of our neo-Medieval times. Merry Christmas, TG
3
How about just being a good person? Isn't that really what Jesus was all about?
6
@theresa Jesus was all about being good. That was his message. Merry Christmas.
1
I'd say leave the Catholic Church but stay Christian.
2
Thank you, Ross.
3
"Never let your religion interfere with your relationship with God."
Father Mychal Fallon Judge
6
You actually believe this stuff?
5
Thank you for writing this Me. Douthat.
2
Apparently "staying Catholic" means looking the other way. I would no sooner belong to the Roman Catholic church than I would belong to the mafia--and frankly I think the church should be treated as a criminal organization operated for the benefit of child predators.
5
Merry Christmas!
3
ALL religious organizations are lead by greedy abusive leaders who thrive on abusing their "flocks." Jesus held up the lowly sheep as his model of good human behavior...because he knew that most humans are no smarter than sheep.
5
Best opening lyrics of the best album ever, "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine".
By placing myself inside a Catholic Church ever again, only condones pedophilia, corruption and absolute disregard for damage inflicted upon the rape victims by every level of authority in their church. Additionally Newt Gingrich is the United States Ambassador to the Vatican; yeah, Newt Gingrich, another icon of morality and family values.
Happy Birthday Jesus!
7
Staying Catholic is like staying in the Mafia, keep quiet about the crimes and you get a reward. Until the Pope ships all the rapists he has working in the Vatican home to face their victims and their punishment the Catholic church s just another criminal organization protecting their own.
Or just protecting their money? Each trial of a priest costs the church millions and that is what really motivates the Catholic leadership.
9
"But it is the season’s promise, and in the long run its testable hypothesis, that those who stay and pray and fight will see it improbably reborn."
This, right here, is how someone like Douthat can devote a career to defending things that are indefensible. All of it, one way or another, in service to the same idol. Because he's never the one who suffers its depredations and he honestly believes that one day he will be richly rewarded.
4
The "begats" litany is a weak case for Catholicism.
A better case: it's a congregation of believers who gather together, form community, celebrate shared traditions, keep learning, try to follow a better path and help each other through the ups and downs of life.
3
I am Catholic and I have struggled with the child abuse scandals since they first came to light. But this year I finally lost my faith because of the continued cover ups which go all the way to Francis. The Church is the laity and not the corrupt bishops and I think the laity should be in control as in most Protestant churches. Perhaps we need a second reformation because the Vatican doesn’t realize the mortal wound that it has suffered and will continue to suffer until this crisis is dealt with.
7
If the story of the "people of God" never changes for the better, one has to question the efficacy, and even the existence, of such a God. The Buddhist approach that suffering exists in the world, and it is our task as human beings to act to reduce that suffering, is much more realistic and believable.
6
Corporations and Catholics are global institutions that manage
the time and talent of humanity. In 2019 corporations and Catholics (and every spiritual based community) need to lead and manage our earth's resources systematically and effectively with the lessons learned (innovation and technology available to get the work done).
Personally, as said, Catholics and other faith-based groups bring light and hope where darkness once prevailed. Pray. Meditate. Love.
1
Yes, that list of names shows that 'all this has happened before and will happen again'...But it's possible to remain Christian without closing one's eyes to the way in which sexual abusers have used the Catholic Church (and other churches) as a way to get access to what they want...Children, mostly. This is a problem which is far more than 'a few bad apples'. Take a look at what happened in the Catholic Church in Belgium, Ireland...
I doubt if the Catholic Church is dying. Whether its problems are fixable depends on its willingness to embrace fundamental change - including its attitude towards women other than the Virgin Mary. With a Pope elected by a College of Cardinals packed with conservatives by the last two popes, real change is unlikely to come from the top. If most ordinary Catholics voted with their feet, it might happen.
7
Please know that the world is growing weary of these laborious, tail chasing arguments about the value of remaining Catholic.
Like the roaches that will survive a nuclear holocast, the Catholic Church will endure forever. However, it will be the insular, self serving cabal envisioned by former pope Benedict.
19
The tedious geneology of Jesus ‘ ancesters was an attempt to “prove” that he was a descendant of King David, whom God promised would rule over Israel forever. (See I Kings 2.4). The proper ancestral line I.e., from David, was very important if the Jews were to accept him as the chosen messiah to free them from the yoke of Rome. And, of course, they did not believe that the promised king would be divine, just of the correct human lineage.
6
Ongoing support for child rape and abuse. What more is there to say about those who continue to support the Catholic Church at this point.
20
@Jacquie - my support for the Catholic Church has ended but my faith has not. I never did believe all of what I was taught at home or in the 12 years of Catholic School. Even when I was young (I am 82 yrs) there was too much pomp and circumstance outside the basic belief that I could not accept the reason for it.
Even with Pope Frances, in whom the church and many of the individual Catholics placed to much faith and hope, I have been disappointed in what he has done, or not done, to bring those whom we interact with under control. The result more and more evidence of pedophilia, corruption.
Get off you back and on your knees and stand tall with and for the good and glory of the (very good) Catholic Church.
3
The Story Of All Religion: 'Dude, just pick your preferred delusion, and stick with it; persecute or kill all those who disagree with you; if you get killed in such an event, obviously you chose the wrong delusion'.
9
As one of the countless number of people who was viciously sexually assaulted as a young child by a Catholic priest (and a nun and “friend” of the priest) in a Catholic Church by a widely known and enabled predator. And with all the recent headlines of 1000 priests here and 500 priests there and coverup and collusion with politicians and judges and captains of industry to keep this useful fraud going I have one thing to say:
Give it up.
Your words: “The case for remaining Catholic in this moment, then, is basically that all this has happened before and will happen again”
Ross I understand that you like your catholic boot you live under and that the sadist-masochist sexual identity of Catholic teaching gives you a comfort and place. However this is a sick and destructive identity.
This has happened before yes, this never stopped happening this deranged Roman zombie death cult has murdered raped and tortured children from its inception and its time to put it down along with its cousin superstitions before they end human civilization on earth out of pure stupidity.
22
@Robert Houllahan: About 4% of men have serious sexual issues that result in child abuse - in and outside the church.
The Planned Parenthood philosophy has ranged from keeping child abuse quiet (in a misguided effort to protect the child) to pretending that children of any age have a right to explore their sexuality with anyone (let's play doctor).
In my school district, a sixth-grade teacher pretended to answer anonymous questions from students written on cards as a way of describing all manner of sexually deviant activities which were well beyond the approved curriculum. [Sean Hannity publicized the event]. This was done in two classes and my daughter mentioned it at the dinner table that evening. More importantly, after dozens of calls to other parents, I learned that none of the other students in the class mentioned it to their parents. This silence about sexual matters enables Planned Parenthood and sexual deviants to enable abuse.
Child victims should not be silent. Children need to be educated and need to be comfortable in talking about sexual matters with their parents, other trusted adults, and each other. For many children, the long-term guilt of their participation can be far worse than any isolated sexual contact. Adult women are just learning to speak up (#MeToo) and children must be taught to be comfortable speaking about the birds and bees and all those outrageous begets. Biblical sexuality 101 may also help with a lot of childhood sexual dysphoria.
2
Give Douthat an A for effort, an F for persuasion.
12
Excuses, excuses, excuses.
17
Once again, the obsession with sex. Maybe therapy would help.
11
After years of making excuses for his Church, why should Douthat stop now?
6
Douthat says:
Take a line like “Judah begat Perez and Zerah of Tamar.” Just a typical nuclear family, right? Here’s McCabe with the real story: “Judah slept … by mistake, with his daughter-in-law Tamar: She had cheated him by disguising herself and dressing up as a prostitute … [When] Judah heard that his daughter-in-law had prostituted herself and become pregnant, he ordered her to be burnt alive. He was disconcerted when he discovered that he himself had been the client and that the child, Perez, was his.”
"Judah begat Perez and Zerah of Tamar." Was Zerah Perez's Twin?
Was Judah "disconcerted " because his order to burn Tamar alive
had been carried out before he found out the truth? It sounds as if Tamar survived to have a second child. What disguise did she use the second time? Or did he have his son "burnt" alive so that he could marry his daughter-in-law so she could forgo the subterfuge?
Ross the Exegete, I want answers!
4
@Paul Connah: The answers you seek (in Genesis 38) are concisely summarized in Wikipedia,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamar_(Genesis).
The original is concise, too, and may be found readily online.
Yes, Tamar survived, and Perez and Zerah were twins. You should read the story: it's gripping and fascinating, independent of any connection to religion.
1
I don't know about the Gospel, but here is what Martin Luther's non-expunged version of "Table Talk" has to say about the matter.
“The Pope is the devil incarnate.” “The Devil is the false god ( Abgott ) of the Pope.” “The Devil founded the Papacy.” “The Papacy is the Devil’s church.” “The Devil rules throughout the entire Papacy.” “The Papacy is Satan’s highest head and greatest power.” “The Pope is Satanissimus .”
M. Luther
3
Asked if he believed in God, Bertrand Russell replied that he had no cosmic anxiety.
It's well known Russell was scathing in his denunciation of religion in general and Christianity in particular.
He was fascinated by the Christian depiction of Hell and sinners condemned to everlasting suffering in the name of a God that oozes compassion, justice, and redemption. It takes faith as the suspension of disbelief to reconcile the landlord for heaven also being the slumlord for hell.
But Russell's biggest cannons were aimed at how superstition, fear, willful ignorance, irrationality of religion, undermine the advance of science and truth-seeking and rends the social fabric and political fiber that democracy is woven from.
If Speaking in Tongues is the baseline standard for authentic knowledge, then the rational worldview that's prerequisite to an informed democracy based on equality, freedom and progress is unsustainable and unstable.
I was Catholic for the first quarter of my life, graduated from a Jesuit high school and ranked at the top of my class for Catechism/Theology (5 years of What Would A Catholic Jesus Do?). My cosmic anxiety was jolted from me when a United Farmworker protest march got blocked by ranchers. A priest on their side stepped forward and warned protestors they were imperiling their souls if they didn't stand down. We mustered a group of nuns who knelt and prayed.
I didn't get a god that doesn't get right or wrong.
14
Douthat is like Trump.
He's alone and terrified that his " Roy Cohn " is dying.
5
What Douthat reveals the foundation of Catholicism: Judaism. Jesus was a Jewish reformer, not just a Messiah. His mother and father and relatives and friends and neighbors and disciples were all Jewish. The “begat” intro in Matthew is never preached as a lesson in genealogy, which it was. Until Paul, a Helenized Pharisee, all followers of Jesus were Jews. Paul introduced sexual continence, hell, and intolerance among Christians, while he claimed Roman citizenship to avoid crucifixion. Whoops.
Ask a Jewish scholar about hell, sin, resurrection, sexual continence,
Historically, the Roman census did not occur. Jesus was likely born in March.
Catholics must shred the hierarchy. Women were really equals even within the 4 gospels written by men. Jesus never addressed birth control, abortion, or homosexuality but he did condemn wealthy hypocrites and damned those who deprived those in need “the least of these” to hell. That creates a fundamental problem for the advocates of greed, who take food and healthcare away, and tear babies from their mother’s arms are Republicans and “conservatives”. Ayn Rand and Jesus are enemies, not just incompatible.
Catholics and Evangelicals have turned away from the biblical ensoulment in Genesis 2:7” And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” The “ensoulment” of fetuses has tricked Catholics and Evangelicals to support an otherwise anti Christian.
6
To me, this is repellent.
Utterly repellent. You are offering an apologia for child molestation - offering to us that everyone sins, it's nothing new.
Sickening.
24
Father Doubt That, have you sworn off of palace intrigue for Christmas?
Where are your dubias, your endorsements of accusations that Francis covered up sexual abuse, despite only five years in Rome? Was it given to Abrahamic sacrificial flames by the revelation that the Church hierarchy in Illinois alone hid 500 predatory priests in its midst, long before anyone had heard of Jorge Bergoglio?
Are you suddenly no longer allied with Steve Bannon? Or did you finally recognize him for the Pharisee that he is?
2
I guess the failure of the catholic church to stop the holocaust in WW2 was just a tiny fleeting aberration.
And the historic role of the church in antisemitism .... so tiny....
And then it helped the nazis to escape to south america.
And now the pederasty and the 500 child molesters, in roles the church "forgot" to put on the list..
I guess if you forget enough you are left with a bit of good that resembles what jesus may have done.....
I guess we can't pin the trumpian evangelicals on the catholics
Vietnam Vet
11
"But it is the season’s promise, and in the long run its testable hypothesis, that those who stay and pray and fight will see it improbably reborn."
But really, to what purpose - other than it's own perpetration?
Like all religions, it is after all, mythology. As inevitable and/or indispensable as they may have been, all these ponderously freighted ancient myths might well be outliving their times. Maybe the pedophelia and it's instititional cover-ups are sign-posts of a sort-of decrepit anachronism.
Modern times might work better with modern mythos. Scientific knowledge and human-kindness, could form the building blocks of an open-ended "wonder and decency"
type of spiritual paradigm.
Old-timey, hide-bound faiths have become (to say the least) problematic as "hell", all over the world.
Read (or watch) Joseph Campbell's, The Power of Myth, for a profoundly learned, thoughtful, and scholarly approach to all this.
1
That "pack of egregious sinners" are also called Hebrews aka Jews.
2
The case for remaining Catholic at this moment is the same as it’s been for 2000 years, namely that if you don’t you will burn in Hell. Or is it Purgatory? I can’t remember if you burn in Purgatory or not. In any case, you certainly won’t be going to Heaven, at least if you don’t remain some kind of Christian, yes?
But if you do, you will! Sexual molestation, murder, who cares, your ticket to Heaven is stamped as long as you continue to believe, and that is truly the best reason there is for remaining Catholic.
5
I have accepted the fact that all humans seek out some form of philosophical/mystical/ system to make meaning out of our lives---why are we here? And the fact, that believing is a deity greater than human understandings and behavior in one form of satisfying this deep yearning to see meaning in one's life and in the hereafter. Having said that, when these yearnings become institutionalized---in formal church structures---or in more informal personalities---that search for meaning is derailed by institutional norms and practices that instead of raising our eyes to heaven force our eyes into civil systems revealing an institution who spiritual hierarchy perpetuated a pattern of deep criminality.
6
Well said. Power corrupts as always. Look at any structure of power. CBS , the government , the gymnastics. Too many to mention.
As a cradle Catholic, I treasure that genealogy of Matthew for the same reason. Perfect morality is not needed for love and goodness to flow. And yet, there’s a difference here.
The people named acted as individuals, whose choices reflected personal needs, fears and desires. The sin of the institutional church is a systematic sin, one perpetrated to protect the institution in spite of the suffering it imposed on individuals, including children. That reality belies a key tenant of Catholic social teaching: An institution exists to serve people; people do not exist to serve an institution.
Therefore, even though I am Catholic to my core, and deeply grieve the loss of all received and lived through the sacraments, I can no longer support such an institution. The suffering imposed on all of us in the name of an institution is just to much.
18
2000 years of christianity gave us Donald Trump.For all the short term power the so-called "evangelicals" have gotten, they have caused great harm to their brand in the long run.
I remember the NYTimes called the catholic church, about twenty years ago, to be "waning". I took it as a polite word for dying.
Like it or not, we're in a New Age, and religion is part of the old.
4
I hope your right but people are so easily mislead and have no critical thinking skills. You want to believe in god, fine but why the man made dogma that goes along with it.
1
The salient similarity is that all of those "begats" begat despots. This is what sets Judaism, Christianity, Islam and their related Middle Eastern ideologies in stark contrast to the Western values of democracy, transparency, reason and the endless quest for better understanding not only of the physical world but of the moral sphere. The despotic Bible (both testaments) and its little sister the Koran assume to have all the final answers, which ridiculous claim has always been buttressed by force ever since the Christians invaded and conquered Western civilization in the 4th century, an invasion from which the superior values of the West are only recently leading a recovery after a millennial long dark age.
Like Harry Potter, the Bible remains worth studying for the lessons it teaches, especially the lessons in what is wrong with a simplistic command theory of ethics where right and wrong are capriciously dictated by a god who is in fact a dictator and whose representatives on Earth have displayed in turn the characteristics of self-indulgent dictators ever since those begattings began. Harry Potter teaches more wholesome lessons, but if you value Western civilization, start with Homer and work forward until the Christians destroyed the great library of Alexandria in their bishops' (naturally) efforts to obliterate the better ideals.
The healthy way to understand that promise of Christmas is that we can choose to be reborn into superior cultural and personal values.
6
Raised Catholic, I will always love the nuns who hugged me and wacked me at a 4:1 ratio when I was a boy. I will always love the priests who constantly gave strength to others while receiving no material returns. And I will always recognize the Church as a pillar of love. I converted to another religion after a period of waywardness - the mature me couldn't reclaim spirituality through the path of my youth. No matter. It is still a great religion. To Catholics today I would say that you are respected and admired by most non-Catholics. For us, I ask that you stay, pray, and fight.
3
I was raised Catholic and was influenced by revolutionary theology. I admired the priest Camilo Torres who fought for social and economic justice and was killed by the military. I also remember father O’Bryan and many other fathers and nuns I met. They were open-minded and caring people. They were good examples of a life of giving and helping fellow human beings. So a few bad apples doesn’t mean that the largest religion on earth is all corrupt and immoral.
My parents and sister are Catholics, and they are good people. So is The Pope. I am not a practicing Catholic, but I noticed all the good the church does with hospitals, homeless shelters, helping single mothers, food for the hungry, etc. I don’t see other religions doing as much. Catholicism is about helping the poor and giving selflessly. I don’t believe anyone should quit because there is a lot of good in it. Is it perfect. No! But the Church is made out of humans.
5
Altar boy, Notre Dame grad, physician, I am grateful for my Catholic Faith.
I try carefully to discern what God expects of me, asking Jesus to strengthen me for these endeavors. It seems revealed in moments of clarity, as when awakening from a good night’s sleep still feeling the deeper meaning of a heartfelt, poignant dream; but it does not need sleep, or a dream.
An inner guidance, whirling like a gyroscope, suspended within interlocking spinning gimbals of faith, hope and love.
Jesus said, pray together.
But Micah said, walk humbly with your God.
And who am I, to say how God chooses to reveal Himself to others? Who am I, to put words into God’s mouth?
Jesus said, by their works, you will know them.
Who is our Samaritan today?
And couldn’t God’s will be done on earth as much through a government, as by a Church? Who am I to say how Jesus does His work?
Visiting Paris, after a yellow vest protest, and a vigil at Notre Dame Cathedral, I ride the metro, mingling with all faiths, colors, tongues, countries, genders. We sit and stand, respectfully, wait in lines, allow mothers with children to pass.
France is criticized: too liberal, too much welfare, not taking care of its own.
But I see the Holy Spirit, even as the government, humbly, tries to remain secular, not out of pride but humility.
Respect everyone’s faith, while striving to follow the word God speaks to you.
This is what Peace, Goodwill toward Men and Women, looks like, on the Paris metro.
10
Many of us who have left the church cannot abide the teachings that oppress women and reject those who live life out of sync with church standards. Until these somehow change and the church finally comes to grips with the sexual abuse by its priests and the coverup of the hierarchy, people will continue to leave in droves. I pray for a welcoming and loving church that treats people as Christ did.
10
"This has happened before and will happen again. "
Sorry to disagree but my sense is that the verb tenses are all wrong here. This has been going on for over 2, 000 years and just continues.
7
Tired. Briefly, I pray at home this Christmas. I see deeply inside myself. Don't judge. I have hard work to do today. Yes, I pray and give myself to my relatives. And yes, I pray again. Father...
When Catholics leave their church for so many good reasons they all too often leave the Christian religion altogether. This seems to be the case of most of the Quebeckers that I know in the country that became my home forty-one years ago. Twice this year friends told me that they were dying and asked for my advice. I told them to read the Psalms. They told me that they had never read the Bible and did not even have one. This is the big difference between Catholics and Protestants.
1
Doctrine or Biblical proof text means nothing unless it is in relationship with actual practices. It is there that the so-called universal church has failed and failed miserably and yet refuses to admit to this as a first step to forgiveness.
2
Ross, I’m not sure what to think after reading your column. I believe you are using biblical narratives to encourage Catholics whose faith may be wavering. Does that mean you believe the biblical tales are true? Judah slept with his daughter-in-law by mistake because he could not recognize her through her disguise? Hey, let me try that one.
There’s no dispute that Jesus lived, but that does not mean the Bible can be used as a documentary. And if you’re going to cite it, you might want to pick some more credible stories from it.
Most of us understand that science negates much of what relgion was and is based on. The Bible is best viewed as literature these days. After reading your column, im not sure if you agree with that.
6
All of which simply points out why God sent Jesus to us in that stable in Bethlehem to begin with Ross. If we were not all terribly fallible, weak, and sinful; there would have been no point of Christ coming into the world and eventually dieing for our sins. We have all fallen far short of what God desires; so we needed a Messiah to do what we have never done; fulfill the demand of God for righteousness; forgiveness; love; and to be faithful no matter what. Even when we fail; which is everyone. The people who walked in darkness have seen a Great Light...Merry Christmas!
1
All so true Ross. It is on the fertilizer of corruption that the Catholic faith grows, dies and is reborn--- over and over again. What it all shows that our faith must be in God and not in people.
Today the Catholic Church has become corrupt by becoming worldly and political--especially since Vatican II where Man become the focal point of the Church's attention and Jesus became a Homeless Christ excluded from His own Church.
This Christmas as Catholics we should recognize that what has happened in the Church--it's sinfulness and corruption--is a reflection, to some extent, of our own lives. So let us not cast the first stone but pray for our's and the Church's salvation.
2
It is not only a scandal , Mr. Douthat , but a heinous crime of world wide proportions.
The Catholic Church has besmirched every country in its orbit with repetitive themes of child sodomy and abuse which negates every other facet of its existence.
Any other institution that exhibited behavior of this type would be instantly disbanded and bombarded with both criminal and civil lawsuits as the perpetrators were being handed stiff prison sentences or worse for such abhorrent criminal behavior.
Regardless of how the Church characterizes itself , it is an institution that should be examined by the FBI in terms of the Rico statutes.
The Church is a multi billion dollar organization that enjoys a tax exempt status and uses its parishioner's donations to satisfy the multitude of civil cash damages ensuing from the cases of priests found to have sexually savaged the children entrusted to their care.
Why is that ? Why is this shameful , criminally responsible institution still on the public stage ?
12
What's so absurd about the tracing of Jesus' lineage in two of the gospels is that it is traced through Joseph, who wasn't even his father. Duh! The other oddity: in the two accounts Joseph has different fathers. Should that not be a tip off to those fundamentalists who consider every word of the Bible to be true? That being said, I consider Jesus to be one of the geniuses of our known world--right up there with Luther, Galileo, Darwin, Einstein and, of course, Donald Trump. Don't forget Donald Trump. If you don't believe it, well, just ask him!
3
Your case for remaining Catholic is weak.
Last Sunday I stopped by St. Patrick's to see how Advent would be celebrated. The procession builds at the back of the church where perhaps 50 men line up .....old white males, young Africans and young Asians. They will look to the 4 corners of the map for possible men to fill this role rather than to allow 1 qualified woman walk in this procession. And then Cardinal Dolan starts down the isle - dressed like a king and waving like a queen. This picture is sad and disturbing. The Church cannot recognize the most basic of all religious tenets ......we are all created equal. I am a female and equal to Cardinal Dolan and his procession of men. After 55 years nothing has changed. Women can find a welcoming home in so many other great churches, if a church is what they are after. As for me, I find more spiritual inspiration in the words of my yoga instructors.
18
While Mr. Douthat doesn't come out and say it, we all know the "corruption" he's referring to here is that of the many priests who have defiled the children of their unsuspecting and loyal congregations. What must be added to are the massive coverups of this debauchery by the Vatican, which, were it not for some very brave souls, might have continued forever. And, I fear, is likely still going on.
I commend anyone for a pursuit of worship and a spiritual life. In fact, I believe the loss of these connections is a big reason this country's in such turmoil today. But if the Catholic Church intends to provide spiritual guidance and comfort, more than just addressing the child abuse as it comes out needs to take place. The Vatican needs to do its own investigations and clean house before they're made to from the outside. And we need to know about it, all of it, or this church will not survive, much less flourish again. Some things are just too terrible to overlook.
Before long, hypocrisy will kill off all Christianity if we let it. The new generations coming along are smart enough to see it, and will rightly have none of it. We owe them, and Christ, better.
Christ said, "Suffer the little children to come unto me"
2
@woodswoman
Yes, I am getting tired of the words "corruption" and "scandal" (and "sin") being used as glosses for "child rape" and "systemic sadism."
That the Catholic church continues to exist in 2018 is stupefying. Not a good endorsement of the human ability to tell truth from fiction, much less right from wrong. It has zero moral authority, and thus zero right to lead anyone. That people continue to be a part of it makes me realize our species will never rise above itself, never perfect our nature. If we ever do, it won't be any thanks to the Catholic church.
10
Maybe Ross, you should consider your personal beliefs as something other than how you earn your living as a point of personal religiosity.
I gave up as an teenager having seen the hypocrisy, the evil and the occasional good things that had very little to do with the reality of my life and existence, much less others.
It is uncomfortable for some more than others, but without hiding behind religious sect, following or designatie god,it's just not that easy.
For as long as we live, there will always be those who undermine our gelief in a hgigher creator who hasn't a clueft about the thieves among us.
'Thank you, Ross, for a column that would serve as a homily this Christmas. Wishing you grace and joy.
Dear Mr Douthat,
As you know from our debates, I do not understand how anyone alive during the past 300 years can be anything other than atheist. But I sincerely wish you the best of luck. Merry Christmas!
5
Organized religion is dead, and no matter how many thinly veiled columns on our current state of politics will bring it back. ( '' includes a few decent men but also a collection of tyrants, child-murderers and worse, none of them remotely pious and many actively at war ... '' )
Praying or preying is no longer tolerable in our growing age of disparity and lechery. (especially in subsidizing via tax dollars religious organizations that are anything but)
I still have faith in me fellow man, woman or other, but look forward to a day (truly) where religion no longer divides us, or even rules over us...
7
The best definition I ever heard for the church is that it's a hospital for sinners. It continues to enrich me despite all of the scandals. Yes, they should be acknowledged, the victims cared for and the guilty punished, but the church is about more than that.
I never fail to be taken aback by all the comments from people who view religion as a quaint cultural residue from a less informed age, something that no one with half a brain would cling to. For me, I can't get over how ridiculously improbable it was for the obscure Jewish sect known as Christianity to move from total obscurity to then become the official religion of the Roman Empire, and then become the dominant religion and cultural force in the western world for 2,000 years, against overwhelming odds. A religion that preaches love thy neighbor, and turn the other cheek, and so many other teachings which are so at odds with our basest impulses. It still seems foolish to bet against it.
@Frank
It only requires CERTAIN PEOPLE to turn the other cheek - its victims.
Very interesting comments on a convoluted, obtuse article. However, bottom line for me is that I have never been able to understand how anyone could follow the dictates of an organization that has perpetrated as much evil on the planet and caused as much personal damage and as many deaths as the Catholic church has. And continues to do even now. It took centuries for a Pope to finally come around to a zero tolerance policy for sexual assault by the priesthood. Not to mention the lack of tolerance for the LGBT community and women who want to control their own reproductive rights. There is a huge discontinuity between what Douthat thinks the Catholic church should be and what it actually is.
10
@MB - Fascinating thoughts - thank you. As a recovering catholic I view the zero tolerance policy as so much lip service. The church is doing nothing of real substance to put an end to the suffering of children at its hands. The pope, with a list of his criminals in hand, must call 911 to have any real effect.
Organized religion is dead, and no matter how many thinly veiled columns on our current state of politics will bring it back. ( '' includes a few decent men but also a collection of tyrants, child-murderers and worse, none of them remotely pious and many actively at war ... '' )
Praying or preying is no longer tolerable in our growing age of disparity and lechery. (especially in subsidizing via tax dollars religious organizations that are anything but)
I still have faith in me fellow man, woman or other, but look forward to a day (truly) where religion no longer divides us, or even rules over us.
1
Organized religion is dying, and no matter how many thinly veiled columns on our current state of politics will bring it back. ( '' includes a few decent men but also a collection of tyrants, child-murderers and worse, none of them remotely pious and many actively at war ... '' )
Praying or preying is no longer tolerable in our growing age of disparity and lechery. (especially in subsidizing via tax dollars religious organizations that are anything but)
I still have faith in me fellow man, woman or other, but look forward to a day (truly) where religion no longer divides us, or even rules over us.
1
What do all those begats have in common? The salient similarity is that despot begat despot right back to the start, to Yahweh himself. This is what sets Judaism, Christianity, Islam and related Middle Eastern ideologies in stark contrast to the Western values of democracy, transparency, reason and the endless quest for better understanding not only of the physical world but of the moral sphere. The Bible and its little sister the Koran presume to give all final answers, which monstrous claim has been buttressed by force since the Christians invaded Western civilization in the 4th century, an invasion from which the values of the West are only recently leading a recovery after a millennial long dark age.
The Bible remains worth studying for the lessons it teaches in what is wrong with a simplistic command theory of ethics, with right and wrong capriciously dictated by a god whose representatives on Earth have displayed in turn the characteristics of the self-indulgent dictator ever since the begats began. Harry Potter teaches equally wholesome lessons, but if you value Western civilization, start with Homer and read forward until the Christians destroyed the great library of Alexandria in their bishops' efforts to obliterate Western culture. Then resume reading after the Enlightment, starting with Lucretius's reborn "de rerum natura."
The healthy way to understand the promise of Christmas is that we can choose to be reborn into better cultural and personal values.
4
@Felix Qui Some personal background: I was raised a Catholic in an Italian family in Australia, with nuns and brothers all the way through school and mass every Sunday. I was not physically abused by the local priests, but the teachings of the well-intentioned nuns, brother, priests, bishops and others inflicted massive damage from which it took decades to recover. Teaching innocent children that their developing sexual desires, especially when for the same sex, are evil is itself morally repugnant evil. Whether the clergy are physically evil or not, the official church teachings are morally evil and do great harm. They are inexcusable under any decent moral standard.
2
History destroyed my faith in the Catholic Church of my youth, any organized religion, really. Popes riding into battle to enlarge the Papal States is finely wrought armor paid for by indulgences bought by tyrannical lords trying to buy their way into heaven. How can any thinking human, with a wish to emulate Jesus, be associated with such a history? Protestants seem no better (think Cromwell).
The acknowledgement of depravity as the human condition implied by Mathew's linking Jesus to the mess that is humanity is a compelling idea. It will help me when discussing Catholicism with my mother who has never ceased practicing and is distraught over the recent revelations of the horribleness that men as priests have visited upon their supposed flocks. Her cherished parish pastor has admitted to being equally distraught, but has not offered such an excellent intellectual rationalization as a reason to continue tithing to the organization.
At this point, I realize the years of arguing with her over whether or not supporting organized religion only perpetuates much misery in human culture are beside the point for her. This will give her some peace and allow her to get close to Jesus in her chosen way when she meets her god.
As for me, the uncanny ability of Catholicism to be reborn and to continue their depravities after successive historical crises remains one of the reasons I hope that this one finally kills it off.
4
@Gowan McAvity - I’m with you.
It's very easy for me to separate the church from the people who work there. I do the same with the public school system and Congress, both of which have harbored sexual abusers. Gosh just this week there was another story of a female teacher abusing a middle school student.
None of these recent events have anything to do with the mission of the church. For years and years the church has been condemning sex outside of marriage as well as many other acts that destroy our society. Yes, many don't listen, but hey many more do. Maybe we should give them credit for pouring a glass that's 99% full?
I remain Catholic despite the horrible abuse by the clergy exacted on children. I remain Catholic in the same way that I remain American despite the abuses of our current president. I am able to separate the misdeeds of each from the ideals of each. I focus on the ideals that Jesus taught, as laid out in the beatitudes, just as I focus on the ideals laid out in the American declaration of independence and constitution, with the realization that, being human, we will never be able to perfectly attain either set of ideals, but must strive to get ever closer.
1
Organized religion is dead, and no matter how many thinly veiled columns on our current state of politics will bring it back. ( '' includes a few decent men but also a collection of tyrants, child-murderers and worse, none of them remotely pious and many actively at war ... '' )
Praying or preying is no longer tolerable in our growing age of disparity and lechery. (especially in subsidizing via tax dollars religious organizations that are anything but)
I still have faith in me fellow man, woman or other, but look forward to a day (truly) where religion no longer divides us, or even rules over us .
Well said. That the Christian church has survived two thousand plus years in spite of human weakness is significant.
@Juststox Christianity has survived by ruthless extermination of competing values whenever it had the power to do so. This began when the Christian bishops egged on their followers to destroy the Western culture of Greece and Rome from the 4th century on. The vicious abuses have only stopped recently as more wholesome secular values were re-established following the Englightenment and Renaissance's rediscovery of our Western heritage that the Christians had suppressed.
Now lacking the ability to subvert the force of the state to its ends, Christianity is in a happy decline as the West recovers from it.
2
Organized religion is dead, and no matter how many thinly veiled columns on our current state of politics will bring it back. ( '' includes a few decent men but also a collection of tyrants, child-murderers and worse, none of them remotely pious and many actively at war ... '' )
Praying or preying is no longer tolerable in our growing age of disparity and lechery. (especially in subsidizing via tax dollars religious organizations that are anything but)
I still have faith in me fellow man, woman or other, but look forward to a day (truly) where religion no longer divides us, or even rules over us ...
We make it more likely that such disgusting events "will happen again" when we don't shed light on good 'ole boys networks like the Catholic Church.
If the political structure that is the Catholic Church will not open itself up to meaningful lay oversight, the best thing Catholics can do to prevent that which they claim is immoral is to stop putting money in the Church's coffers.
5
That was a less than enthusiastic endorsement. The Catholic Church is an insular, hidebound, patriarchal institution and like the First Century temple which deployed a complicated set of rules to exclude anyone not subservient to its purposes, it is time for a leader who like Christ says there is but one rule: love. You can sit in the pew, drop your envelope in the collection plate and hope for change, but hope is not a strategy. You have, albeit inadvertently, made the argument for leaving the Church not remaining Catholic. As in the First Century, change only happens when people vote with their feet.
5
@G James - Well stated.
The word and concepts of Jesus, a man who walked the earth and transcended into heaven. The frailty of humankind comes as no surprise to anyone who has ever lived. I am not Catholic to walk among perfection, but to strive for good, to be present, and to praise. Humankind will always taint the purity of all it touches. It is saddening. But the teachings are in place to move forward with compassion and forgiveness. Humbled. Glorious.
1
@Jason Sypher
For the victims of abuse, it is a bit more than "saddening." Nice for you to feel humbled and glorious, if yours is not one of the lives destroyed.
All Christians, whether Catholic or Protestant, have a catholic interest in the survival of Catholic Church.
As Christians we must remember that Christianity is a religion that is collective and collegial. Christians understand their beliefs and values when they can discuss their values with others. You have written about your values and heard the responses of others. I respect that even though I often disagree.
Merry Chistmas, Ross and I hope to continue reading your columns.
1
A truly inspirational column that ought to be affixed to the door of every church, mosque and synagogue. It lifts the soul and gives credence to those who will not be dissuaded from the path of revelation by those who are crippled in spirit. May they, the fallen, be redeemed if not in their lifetimes than by the arch of history for whom their waywardness was the spur toward the light.
There is obviously something seriously wrong with the organization and management of the Church. I will never leave the Church because I need the spirituality in my life. But the Church is flawed and needs to change. Time to give women a greater role role and allow married priests.
9
@Janice Crum You can have what you're looking for and more as an Episcopalian. Even many former Catholic priests have joyously made the switch.
1
@Janice Crum Janice, you hit the nail on the head! I'm 88, a retired attorney having represented among others a family including a son who was abused by a trusted priest. I've also served on the Board of Trustees of a Catholic College where many of the other Board members were Catholic nuns. Celibacy makes no sense, especially when trying to tell young couples in love how to behave physically. It was introduced at the Council of Trent because much of Church property was winding up in the hands of wives and children of priests. And those nuns were among the finest minds I have ever met. Can you imagine any woman, nurturers by nature, not being outraged and taking steps when confronting a sexual abuser of a child or teenager?
Those Octogenarian celibates in Rome need to make a choice.
Eliminate celibacy and allow women priests or face ultimate insignificance of the Roman Catholic Church.
Is it OK to be Catholic (or Christian) at Christmas because some religious people have done really bad things in the Bible thousands of years ago? That makes no sense at all. What angers lapsed Catholics is the lack of contrition in real time, not Biblical history. The idea behind this holiday is reinvention and rebirth, but we live with a Catholic Church (and many Christian Churches, too) that do not seem to be looking for moral evolution, but for the life of the "flesh" (to be biblical): sex, money, power, institutional misogyny and so on. What kind of Church will worshipers see on the 25? A Church that devalues women and marriage by the nature of its leadership, a Church that does not support programs for the poor, a Church obsessed with abortion, a Church that accepts pollution as inevitable. The list goes on. Who took Christ out of Christmas? Too many Priests and Clergyman did. Lapsed Catholics are frustrated by the sins of their Church at a time when we really, really need morality. Priests (and Ministers) can do much, much better. Lapsed Catholics will flock back to Church when real change is made. Perhaps that might be the Christmas miracle.
19
@et.al.nyc - interesting points. I have concluded that the devaluation of women and marriage within the church helps to propagate predatory clergy of all stripes.
Because I am a woman, am married, and have two vulnerable children, I will never set foot in a catholic church of my own volition. If I need to attend a service such as a funeral, I go alone with eyes wide open. Too much of my childhood was wasted as I dutifully tried to be catholic in a blindly catholic family.
1
@et.al.nyc "A Church that does not support programs for the poor?" Really? That is simply not true.
AMEN, Ross! Thanks for this excellent article. This Catholic isn't going anywhere. Anyone who has a knowledge of church history knows the current scandals are nothing new. God continues to work through it all! Merry Christmas!
4
@Brian
God may be working through it all, but Brian if you choose to stay in an institution that sodomizes, molests and rapes children you are in a real sense condoning it and providing an environment for it to occur. After all, your weekly donations go to sustain the church. Your presence is a tacit acknowledgement of it is ok, much like the town that comes out to give acceptance of lynchings. Hate to pop your bubble, but by remaining you have put yourself in the role of supporter of the sexual crimes.
7
I always appreciate another view on the issue of "God".
My spiritual experience is an all-Catholic primary grade education, starting Ireland, then Canada and eventually, the USA. Two of my father's sisters are Catholic nuns and there are many other Catholic clergy in my family.
I have been inspired by many good Catholic people in my life. Alas, the church itself has failed me.
Just as Jesus cleansed the temple by casting out the moneychangers, I have cast off Catholicism.
And so I am left with a question relating to God that many of us have: "How did everything begin?
If there is no "god", where did all the stuff in the universe come from? Including space itself? How was it created? What existed before the Big Bang? If the answer is that all that "stuff" in the universe have always been here, then how does one scientifically measure this in terms of time?
Of maybe "God" is just a simpler answer?
I have found my best answers to these questions by joining a progressive Presbyterian church. We have great conversations about these "touchy" spiritual questions.....plus Presbyterians love to feed each other with great meals. If there is no "god", then at least I'm getting fed well. And if there IS a "God", he/she/it already knows about my doubts, so there's no use in faking any pious behaviour.
I wish Mr. Douthat some comfort in his spiritual mission and I wish all others a joyous holiday in whatever manner you choose to observe it!
17
Mr Douthat, here, mostly makes the case that chosen people are self-chosen. Someone or some group decides that they have heard from god and sets out to achieve a purity of purpose, but always fails. Stating that "the divine chooses to act constantly amid not just ordinary fallibility but real depravity," Mr Douthat fails to identify the divine acts that could be said to define a chosen people.
Of course, one can make the argument not to abandon any religion regardless how depraved its leaders, but shouldn't start with with an argument why to choose any religion. Yes, I understand that some find some kind of solace in religion and generally choose the religion that they grew up with. But, that doesn't answer the question of which of the religions that are constantly at war with each other is actually the "chose" one based on divine blessing.
1
To this non-Catholic Christian, the institutional Catholic Church now looks more like a business enterprise with a strong criminal element than a ministry. I find the message of Jesus incredibly compelling and relevant after 2000 years, but that message of forgiveness and love long seemed lost in Catholicism's obsession with and condemnation of sexual sin. Then, the revelation that the obsession masked entrenched sexual sin within the Church itself. Douthat is correct that the Biblical history of Christianity is a history of God working through people of all kinds, including the sinful and even criminal. But Catholicism built a church on rejection or marginalization of large groups of people -- gay people, women, divorced people --rather than welcoming those people. If Douthat is one of the conservative Catholics aghast at Pope Francis' modest efforts to reach out to divorced Catholics, the irony is complete.
18
It's "all in the family" is my reaction to Douthat column...my devout parents celebrated their 50th at a mass ministered by the parish priest who subsequently got serious prison time for the collection money he took to support his private life...they continued to practice their faith. Neither of my children attend a church, and don't have an interest in bringing up their children in a faith. I try to pass on my faith to my grandchildren as a Catholic Christian by simple gestures like a blessing when I put them on their school bus.
8
Great thoughts for the Christmas Season especially this year.
1
The religion gene doesn't go away, just as our tribalism gene doesn't go away.
The religion itself merely evolves. A now-unrecognizable form of Christianity was adopted by Rome, then twisted and bent into a whole new Rome-friendly religion through endless heresy state-sponsored persecutions, followed by the popes' 1500 year delusion that it was the Empire after Rome fell ... and even after the church itself split in two because the part of the empire that went on until 1453 wanted its own religion.
Religion never goes away. Nor does it ever remain the same.
8
Supposedly, Gandhi was given a copy of the New Testament. He said that he really liked the teachings of Christ, but he wasnt sure he could get along with His followers.
I remain Catholic because I love the teachings of Christ, but look around and wonder what Bible these people are reading. I remain a practicing Catholic with an ever growing distrust of the hierarchy of the church. It may have been a "few bad apples" , but there were many many more who concealed , protected and enabled them to continue their unspeakable behavior.
Among the very conservative branch of the Catholic church, any reporting of abuse and coverup is an attack on the church, except when it can be used for their purposes. They are seizing on Pope Francis' mishandling of charges of abuse as a reason he should step down; he is too liberal for them and they have found a point to harp on
21
Sorry Ross, but I can’t follow you on your message and I reject the platform that you are delivering it through. As a born and raised Catholic with 12 years of official schooling to go along with it, I left this church decades ago when this story broke. And for me it wasn’t a remote story as the principal of my former high school became part of the saga. For the Pope to now step forward and state that the “Church” will no longer tolerate the sexual predators that it has housed for over 50 years, is way too little and late and is purely business. I am sure that his holiness sees the numbers. This is a spiritual General Electric story.
Merry Christmas to all reading this and please accept a message of hope and faith for the new year but I convey this far and away from the failed institution that is today’s Catholic Church.
24
@Chris D
Fifty years?! Why in the world do people think this started only fifty years ago. Open your eyes.
Your case for remaining Catholic is really one and the same for remaining Christian. It is the essential implication of a faith based on incarnation. I would suggest that there are many saints out there, but they are not institutional leaders so highly visible. They are on the front lines in serving the less fortunate, consoling those who suffer, raising their families in culturally and economically troubling times, seeking and practicing forgiveness, and doing so with a fundamental humility. Happy Christmas.
31
Sorry, as one who still attends mass, though no with the frequency of childhood, can we not acknowledge that the "good news" is neither new nor especially helpful to those in attendance.
I still hew to the lessons in Jesus' sayings and still respond viscerally to the majesty of the ceremonies, but we are not a group of poor Jews in the Roman Empire looking for a Savior.
My son has no connection to the church and neither do his cousin, all raised in devout homes.
7
I was happy to see G. K. Chesterton make his appearance, as he was bound to do somewhere in an essay on the rebirth of Catholicism.
Chesterton’s own story is an example of that rebirth on the individual level — hardly an example that anyone is likely to duplicate, but as astonishing as his subsequent intellectual activity was brilliant. Here is an excerpt from the blurb on the back of his landmark opus Orthodoxy (Ignatius paperback):
“A pagan at twelve and totally agnostic by sixteen, Chesterton had the remarkable experience of developing a personal, positive philosophy that turned out to be orthodox Christianity.”
He went from being a Catholic, only not in name, to being one in name as well.
I’m not Catholic myself, but I found Orthodoxy immensely engaging. It’s a lively book which I can recommend to all lively minds.
4
I am glad that Mr. Douthat loves the Catholic Church and writes of his faith and hope. As he makes the case for remaining a Catholic, I hope he'll open his heart to those who have suffered at its hands: the faithful in Illinois who were abused by nearly 700 priests; the members in Pennsylvania who were abused by nearly 500 priests--and on it goes, in state after state. Please listen to the victims. Listen to those who loved the Church and served the Church and have paid dearly. Surely if the Church is to be reborn-- a commitment to a public airing of these crimes must happen--backed by financial settlements, counseling, prison sentences, and Church reforms.
31
My father was a Colombia Phd trained Plant Physiologist who came from an Amish background. His religious training was a mixture of what his mother's faith raised him with and what he decided to do with it after adulthood opened his mind to looking at faith from a widened spectrum of religious beliefs. He liked to ask when someone quoted the bible to him and he would ask "which Bible" . He was familiar with the Christian bible with its Jewish roots and went on to the encompass four others. He was fond of the faith of the people of the Eastern World with their beliefs about an Elephant Deity, etc. He was not an atheist however but did not ascribe to any particular church. Thus it was that his children (me and my four sisters) grew up with our eyes wide open. One of my sisters was turned off by the story of Jesus' walking on water at her first trip to Sunday School. With my family's scientific up bringing she knew that was not physically possible and that ended her views of religion. She dedicated herself to medicine so that one can see what her value system was even without a particular religion. Dance with psycho patients as a student at Belleview for example. My Dad told me once that every dirty trick known to man could be found in the bible, which echoes this column today.
31
The Church, and the rest of us, need a prophet. This prophet will not be popular with the authorities, and many died as a result of their subversion of orthodoxy. This prophet will preach that the earth is a very large spaceship whose water and heat management systems keep it hospitable to us, and that now that we are numerous and powerful enough to effect these systems, it is up to us to know and manage these effects. If we do not do this, our numbers will crash and many of the survivors will live short and brutish lives with much terror and worry about the earth and each other.
The prophet will preach that just as we have gained understanding and control over our health, we must also begin to exercise control over our fertility and our numbers. Since we have rendered inoperable the standard controls on population -- famine, disease, and war -- we have to develop and implement substitutes or the standard ways will reemerge.
The prophet will preach that the earth is our garden, and that the curse of labor that was laid on us when we were expelled is no longer operable. Machines and robots will free us from labor and enable us to bring back something like the old Garden of Eden, but only if we use our intelligence wisely. The diminishing role of labor will require us to invent a new economic system, in which we will be gentlemen and gentlewomen who do what we want rather than working for a living, which will be left to AI.
The prophet will be excommunicated.
13
The one, true, holy, and apostolic Church is the way the Catholic Church always was presented to us youngsters by the good Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet and our reverently faithful parish priests in Catholic elementary schools during the post-WWII reawakening.
Imagine then the realization of a suppressed Judeo-Christian heritage during that period, to say nothing of the sins of the flesh raved against but nevertheless, as it turns out, too-often clandestinely practiced by an officially celibate clergy. Douthat proclaims David as the greatest King of Israel, but wouldn't The Donald beg to differ and assign that title to Israel's contemporary King Bibi?
Speaking of The Donald, Douthat's proposition that "the divine chooses to act constantly amid not just ordinary fallibility but real depravity" at least at first glance appears to offer a splendid explanation of the elusive rise, and inevitable fall, of The Donald.
All told, Douthat has a valid point. As America likely will do with Trump and his alt-right heresy, Catholicism likely will survive the conservative schisms, the deviant behaviors, and the outright corruption of key members of its officialdom. After all, it has in the past. Witness the early break between the Eastern and Roman Catholic Churches, the Inquisition, the inconvenient arrangements of mutual convenience between medieval monarchies and popes, the modern Vatican Bank, or the secret sexual lives of several medieval popes.
Need we continue this litany?
8
@Peter G Brabeck
It did survive before - before the internet.
@Peter G Brabeck
The church is thoroughly corrupt, as well as sadistic. It torments children. I don't understand why it is so hard for so many to see this, and so many rationalizations are offered. There is no comparison between the sexual lives of medieval popes and the current "revelations" (although they aren't actually revelations, we knew all of this at least 20 years ago) of ongoing, systematic abuse of children.
1
I invite and encourage the author and his readers to explore the different telling and understandings of what happened between Tamar and Yehuda, and why they happened. Hint: It may have been she who was wronged, not him.
9
Ross, this was a fine sermon. The message I take from it is that grace is bestowed on all - don't not let our current troubles turn us away from the true path.
Of course, NY Times readers are a tough audience. It's unfortunate that spiritual discussions always hinge on whether a virgin birth was possible, or whether a man can live for days in the belly of a great fish.
Stories of supernatural powers are boring. We see them all the time in comic books and movies. They don't make us better people. What is exciting is a new way to look at our existence - where human relationships are at the center, and we can let go of fear, envy and greed. That simple message from Jesus changes lives.
I don't know if people should leave a dying church. But I think that we should all listen for the spirit of the season and find that spark of hope inside us.
38
@Rob S
Well said Rob, thank you and may you and all readers enjoy and listen to the spirit of the season.
6
"Matthew announced the birth of the son of God by linking him to a pack of egregious sinners."
Not really.
If Mary mother of Jesus was virgin, and delivered a virgin birth after direct action of the Holy Spirit, then the lineage of Joseph had nothing to do with Jesus. Joseph raised Jesus, but was not his father. The Father was father.
So is Douthat telling us here that Mary was not Virgin, and Jesus was not a virgin birth? I doubt that.
Hence, this entire column, and the lineage list given, are total nonsense.
63
@Mark Thomason Raymond Brown's work, The Birth of the Messiah is a detailed look at the two infancy narratives of Jesus (the other is from the gospel of Luke). There you will find the reason why Matthew linked Jesus to Joseph. Joseph is from the line of David, David is the king to whom God had promised a line of kings, Joseph's accepting Jesus as his son fulfills the promise to David. The evangelists were far subtler writers than many people think.
2
Nonetheless it was consequential that Christ be of David's lineage, even if the Virgin birth invalidates the genetic relevance of such a relation. Messianic prophecy required Christ to be born in Bethlehem, which is unlikely to have occurred had not Joseph's Davidic lineage required him to return to Bethlehem for the census imposed at the time of Christ's birth. Regardless, these are peripheral facts to the content engaged in the column, but it seemed silly for an entire opinion column to be disregarded due to a misunderstanding of the factual references used to structure the content of the argument. Commenting that this column is "complete nonsense" because your disagreement about the "linking of the Son of God to a pack of egregious sinners" via Joseph's lineage also seems like a fruitless way to disregard the column anyway as there are plenty of other ways that Christ distinctly and explicitly chose to relate to "egregious sinners" by his own action. Prostitutes, lepers, and tax collectors, Christ went out of his way to voice that it was not our perception of other's character that would structure his own divine ability to shape people, history, or his very own church. As much as I hate the things the Catholic Church struggles with at this time, it does not have any bearing on God's character, nature, or the truths of who he is. It only speaks to who we are as human beings, which has always been the case anyway.
2
@Mark Thomason I'm sure a modern DNA test would reveal Mary's connections -- albeit distant -- to the sinners mentioned here.
2
I love being Catholic, and am looking forward to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. Joy comes thru my religion. I am very secular in many ways, but at the core, the most room, for the most joy still comes from the values in the church, and a relationship with something greater than only that which we can see, touch, hear, smell, or feel.
17
@Chloe Hilton But only imagine.
Ross, I agree that Catholicism will reinvent itself in one form or another. We can debate whether than will prove a good or bad thing for humanity, especially if this new church refuses to change its stance on the virtues of contraception in an era of climate chance and overpopulation.
I'm comfortable arguing that the authentic teachings of the historical Jesus have continuing evolutionary relevance in our era of climate change meets capitalism / globalism run amok. I mean, I'd much prefer Americans taking their cues from the historical Jesus than Trump, Murdoch, or the Koch Brothers.
But I truly fear that the "mysteries" of Catholicism are the stuff of overwrought imaginations.
Transubstantiation? Do I dare go there? Catholic critics accuse secularists of promoting a culture of death, and yet the doctrine of transubstantiation is essentially endorsing a form of cannibalism. When Catholics partake in the Eucharist, they are taught that they are partaking in the literal body and blood of Christ. Sounds pretty kinky to me.
And don't get me started on the Stations of the Cross and Holy Week commemorations. I mean, Jesus had 18 bad hours on earth, whereas the victims of Vatican (and Protestant) persecution were often tortured for many days before going to equally horrible deaths. And yet no tears are ever encouraged for the victims of Catholic / Protestant savagery.
Ross, let me suggest that before the Church can rise again, it will need to get over itself.
40
@Matthew Carnicelli I'm sure that Hannibal Lector has no problem with the ineffable mystery as dictated of transubstantiation, but if you prefer a more authentic human follower of that traditional Christian practice, there are the Jeffrey Dahmers who combine their regular consumption of human flesh (the real stuff, none of that symbolic effeteness) with other known characteristics of the Catholic hierarchy through the ages.
@Matthew Carnicelli I predict that within my lifetime there will be a minor schism resulting in a Western or American Catholic Church that allows for married priests and eliminates the separation imposed by divorce from the Church. Just the turmoil over the continued atrocities covered up by Church hierarchy in Rome is enough dynamite to do it.
1
@Matthew Carnicelli
It is not cannibalism, but simply Jesus giving
all that He is for us - demonstrating that if we
gather to eat the Bread of Salvation and the Wine
of Forgiveness as a community we cannot deny
our brothers and sisters the food they need to live on.
No one, not you, not me, not a single person would have
suffered as Jesus did for us.
Talk to the Bishops as to why they did not due their
duty to be faithful pastors of all within their diocese.
2
Lovely essay, I hope others are inspired as I was by it. The church militant is deeply flawed because we are flawed, but we have a better chance within it than on our own.
6
I don't remember everything I learned about Catholicism in elementary school--nor do I care to try. But I do remember Jesus' saying, "Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me."
Given the actions of Paul Ryan and Supreme Court justices such as Alito, Thomas and the late (and insufferable) Scalia, I'd suggest to Mr. Douthat the scandal involving priests, bishops and cardinals in the Catholic church is not much different than the scandal of governmental Catholic lifers of the political right. For too long they've shamelessly used the power of their religious affiliation to suggest their form of devotion to the Church of Rome makes them better Americans than those of us who don't preach--or adhere to--the prosperity gospel.
163
Spot on! You can live a happy and fulfilled life with just two sayings - The Jesus quote cited here and the equally radical theme by the prophets John and Paul “All you need is love”!
4
Good insights. Times up on that self-serving myth that professed believers in any organized religion are intrinsically more moral and ethical than non-believers. Now if we can continue to stop taking Republican politicians seriously who use their professed religious affiliation as unquestionable proof of their instrinsic morality and ethical goodness we might actually elect good, and selfless, politicians dedicated to serving the real practical needs of the greater good and the planet we inhabit.
28
When there is room is the Church for all, those who without regret, have divorced and remarried, have had an abortion, are gay or trans or queer, even agnostic, when the church accepts married priest and women clergy, then there will be a renewal of the church. I miss the pageantry and beauty of the church and the liturgy, but not the institutional order, the prejudice and rejection I still feel at 70 years old. Some will say I am not familiar with the new church. But my experience of that church just papers over the old church, still alive and well in the darkest shadows.
97
@deborah
When the "Spirit of Vatican II' was sweeping through the
Church in the mid-1960's, my Mother asked:
If we are, indeed,
the 'People of God'
why were we not consulted about all these changes ?
It is time for Bishops to stop being autocrats and accept
that Catholics - Clerics/Religious/Laity all should have a
voice in the Church.
11
@deborah Yesterday I was at a high mass funeral for an 88 year old woman who attended mass nearly every day of her life, raised 6 children, two of whom were adopted. I was struck by how exclusionary the service was. A large part was the Eucharist. The priest made it abundantly clear that the only people who should take part were those who were baptized Catholics. He also was the only one to drink the wine. Contrast that with my humble church which is open to all including many former Catholics, no questions asked. And, one of our pastors is a woman.
24
@John Brown
Good luck with that.
4
The religious impulse is biochemical. An artifact of complexity; not godly at all. We, too, are artifacts, as is love.
Because we can, some prefer to believe the unbelievable to make life more interesting by layering on complexity, often aligning their "selves" with mass societal programming. When a module becomes unnecessary we simplify our code.
Such is the simulated life of a sentient robot. We think we're human, but that's just an artificial containment structure, a meta-belief. It only lasts until we wear out.
Mr. Douthat has been well programmed to defend his programming (with self-correcting code), but has no clue. The catholic church even designs programs for when your simulation ends, or so they say.
12
@Fourteen
Should you be an unbeliever in your so-called self as mere robotic simulation, that is not allowed according to George Smoot, Nobel-laureate astrophysicist, because there is no reality with a higher probability. A belief in god has a much lower probability.
@Fourteen Meh. We're not robots.
@Fourteen
Well, this belief is easily understandable at this place in time, however, your certainty is itself little more than a variant sort of self-deception. A better truth is this: you don't know.
",,,,, those who stay and pray and fight will see it improbably reborn." I guess one could make the same claim about human civilization as a whole. But there are times when one can't be blamed for being tempted by Twain's less confident profession that "Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat."
16
@vcbowie
Twain also observed :
" The navies of the world could float in spacious comfort in the oceans of blood spilled in the name of Christianity. "
2
The 8% bad apple rate has held pretty constant ever since my son picked the first twelve apostles.
23
@God
Then you and I are cousins !
Which planet do you control ?
@God...It's your 1 percent that continuously harbors, manipulates bankruptcies to avoid righteous settlements, orders the flock to remain silent and allows sexual abuse to repeat it's cycle within your church.
Fantastic. :)
Ross-
There are undoubtedly many good priests, bishops and cardinals, but the RCC has failed in its form of governance as an institution. It is clear that it is rotten from top to bottom in its administration and policies and has been for years -- starting, in my opinion, with the belief of infallibility of the Pope.
There are many churches with similar beliefs and values with much more decentralized governance--you certainly don't make the case for why should I stay Catholic in that context.
32
Of course the idea that Dec 25 is the birth of Christ is ridiculous; an arbitrary designation that was mostly an effort to appropriate existing pagan celebrations of the solstice in order to recruit pagans to Christianity.
I prefer to refer to the holiday as a celebration of the return to longer days and Spring, the rebirth. The rest is all ideological propaganda to gain recruits to the cult.
The approach to the rebirth of life; a time to reflect upon our humanity, to consider the potential of the Human Spirit. That's aways what "Christmas" has meant to me. Something real and really essential to our being.
22
@MassBear
I like this a lot.
@MassBear
Jesus had to be born on some day, why not
December 25th ?
Your belief in the theory that it usurps a pagan holiday
is not proven, a very good argument against it has been
made.
2
When as a child I asked my mother if I could become an alter boy at church she sternly told me in her gravest voice, "Don't ever let yourself be alone with one of "those men" in a room." That was maybe 1964 or so. I had no idea why but she was mightily upset at the thought. So lets see it "improbably reborn" without non profit status. Trumps non profit is toast over shenanigans that pale by comparison to the systemic abuse of children and the decades long coverup engaged in by the "Catholic Church" The period of a ban from having non profit status should last at least as long as the abuse and coverup.
35
@Joseph
And what would taxing the Church accomplish? It would take money that is used to:
* feed and clothe the homeless;
* pay for church maintenance;
* support retired priests and nuns;
* support missionaries who work with the poor and sick in third world countries; and
* support Catholic schools;
and give it to the Trump administration.
Taxing the Church might make some people feel that the Church is finally being punished for the bad acts of some clergy -- that some sort of rough justice is being administered. But all you would really be doing is taking money that is used for good and giving it to the Pentagon to spend on bombs and missiles.
1
@Joseph
"The period of a ban from having non profit status should last at least as long as the abuse and coverup. "
So a couple thousand years.
3
@HEJ
I have an idea. People could then give their money to real charities. Ones that do all the good you list. But without all the baggage and dare I say all the expensive and useless overhead associated with the church.
2
To this day it confounds me why people tell one another strange fairy tales and conjure up ridiculous myths, then divide themselves into groups that have fought with one another over who is somehow "superior." No, I am not talking about the NFL and ESPN, it is religion. It would seem rather simple and easy for us all to behave morally and live by the golden rule absent the fire and brimstone and ludicrous rituals. Perhaps the science of evolution is more a study of that has happened, as it is a predictor for the future. We adapt or we die,............... the religious among us may be pursuing the path to extinction. Eternity is a very long time,.............. so don't buy the hype.
20
The Catholic Church is supposed to be an institution that provides for the Holy Eucharist, the source and summit of the faith, the sacrament that turns people into the body of Christ, and dismisses them unto the world to act with the compassion of Christ. The ritual sends a deep message to act as Christ.
During periods of scandal and pederasty, the foundation of the church is vitiated, and thus the sacraments attenuated.
However, the Catholic Church is not the whole of Christendom. As Jean-Paul Belmondo pointed out in the film "Léon Morin, Priest," the church is actually composed of "the society of good men and women." (sic)
Hence, we celebrate Christmas and the virgin birth as metaphorical of the opening of the human heart. The Church is not requisite for this, but certainly could be an asset in furthering the compassion of Christ, and not a liability that turns people away.
7
OK. We get that people are fallible. That is what the Redemption is all about.
But the ongoing suppression of and excuses for the legions of abuse amongst the clergy is getting a little over the top.
In my (Episcopal) church, we had a case of abuse that was dispatched forthwith, along with the abuser. I guess there is more readiness and sensitivity to confront such things when you can trace your church's founding to the philandering and divorce of Henry VIII. No secrets.
As I said, we get that people are fallible. As I also said, that is what the Redemption is all about.
11
@Padonna Good points, but remember, Christianity
came to England around 100 A.D. They observed a 'God in the daily' practice. Roman soldiers arrived around 273, Saint Augustine was sent by Pope Gregory in 597 to evangelize the Anglo-Saxons. Many English, not just Henry VII, were not happy with the Roman Church in England.
1
Mr. Douthat is making an argument for the "improbable" survival of Christianity. There is nothing here that supports the continuation of the Catholic variety specifically.
In fact, the Catholic church seems not to just be a collection of Old Testament bad actors, but to have institutionalized those actions. There's less New Testament in evidence.
11
As an atheist I find the entire faith enterprise rather odd.
Douthat has it exactly backwards. He writes as if the Catholic religion will be "improbably reborn" because, in part, the abuse and other scandals are a fleeting aberration.
I think the abuse and other scandals are the inevitable consequence of religion, not an aberration.
Submitting to unquestioned authority is what makes boys vulnerable. Brandishing the garb and garble of religious authority is what makes priests entitled and invulnerable. Religion demands the suspension of rationality and free will.
As long as a system of belief requires subservience, there will be men (usually) who exert "power over" as a matter of doctrine. Most do this without sexually abusing children, but even they relish the unearned respect and assumption of wisdom that others ascribe to them by virtue of socialization and training that starts in infancy.
Catholicism and other Christian sects socialize and train children through well-crafted techniques, including fear, that are not fundamentally different than any other cult. It just has respectability by virtue of longevity.
Merry Christmas!
64
@Barking Doggerel
Best comment yet! This applies to most religions, Christianity among them.
3
@Barking Doggerel
Yep, and the "scale" that longevity built.
1
I could see the appeal of Catholicism as I got older: sin as much as you want, repent periodically and all is ok with your spiritual life.
But if your religion does nothing to culture your moral life, and fails to deliver the kind of spiritual experiences that create true wholeness ("holiness"), then it is failing in its most important elements. Sure, religion's rituals can give order to life, provide a community of fellow believers and help to give meaning to life's vicissitudes, but frankly, if that's all you want, any old religion will do. If any will do, then choosing the one you were raised with is ok, so long as you don't come to the foolish conclusion that it is the "right" one for everyone.
13
A case well made. But easier said than done. I would be dishonest if I did not admit to the fact that I am weary of and disheartened by the sins of my church. From Baptism through marriage, I had been faithful to the sacraments. Our children were raised like each of their parents. Yet at an early age they observed what we did not...the hypocrisy and fragility of this "one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church." I believe it is okay not to support a faith which has gone awry. As human beings, we are subject to a universal moral law, far more powerful and crucial to our souls than any organized religion. We are subject to God - if we are believers - not to man or his man-made laws.
That being said, will I go to Mass on Christmas day? Probably, just as I do many Sundays out of the month. But it is not about blind faith. For me it is about connection with my loved ones now gone, with my Italian-Catholic roots. The warmth I sense while sitting upon a wooden pew is not so much from the readings and homily, but rather from the connection with my present and past communities.
27
@Kathy Lollock I have spent two years wondering at the vast number of Christians supporting Trump and following their leaders, such as Ralph Reed, Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell JR. Though I am a protestant in the Presbyterian USA I share your feelings, seeing my adult children fail to attend church and fail to take their children to church, and understanding why one would be critical. Yet life without, as you put it, the connections of our past, seems to have something missing. So I too will be in church on Christmas Eve and will even read from the Scripture.
8
@Kathy Lollock I'm an "adult child" who abandoned Catholicism, along with my two siblings. But at 67 I'm a rather superannuated adult child. My father died in 2017 at 96, baffled as to why his three children rejected Catholicism. We had been raised like each of our parents. My father came from Irish-Catholic roots. And I have to admit, the American-Irish-Catholic culture has a lot of emotional appeal. But the truth is, it's fading away. It was rooted in a new immigrant culture where the Catholic Church in America held the only keys to salvation. No one, and I mean, no one, including the Pope, now believes that salvation comes only through the Catholic Church. This mindset just cannot be revived. And without that foundational belief, how do you justify choosing to co-operate with an institution so profoundly flawed? My siblings could not. I was a bit surprised at their instant visceral response of rejection to the Church at the horrible revelations of pederasty. I had rejected belief in any god long ago, and was hardly shocked at the revelations. For my siblings I guess it was--last straw? welcome excuse? shocking revelation? I don't know. Clearly the Church is moving on to focus on Africa and South America. I wonder if I'll live long enough to read about the sex crimes perpetrated by priests those locations. You know it's going to happen.
5
One thing puzzles me. I don't think its my imagination, but there seems to be a disproportionate number of Catholics among our most extreme politicians and pundits. For all its faults, and they are many, the Church has important teachings about how we should treat our fellow human beings, and I don't understand how the Paul Ryans, Sean Hannitys, the Bill O'Reillys, the Steve Doucys, the Steve Bannons, the Mike Pences (OK, he's an ex-Catholic who found a niche elsewhere) can be pious in Church and then emerge to preach the very opposite of the golden rule.
Paul Ryan claimed Ayn Rand as his inspiration until it was pointed out she was an atheist. Then he turned on a dime to adopt Thomas Aquinas. He was more honest the first time.
128
@mancuroc, I think it all has to come down to not judging others, a key precept of our faith. We don't really know what is in their souls and we never will. All we can do is pray for them.
3
@Amy-"By their acts, ye shall know them."
Given their crimes against democracy, decency, and humanity-- a damn sight more than prayers would seem in order.
29
@mancuroc I am bothered by every religion's claims of monopoly on the right way to be kind honest and generous. I am not even an atheist (too dogmatic) yet I didn't find it too difficult to help my children discern inside themselves the forces of compassion and empathy. All we had to do was watch nature shows on TV, lions and gazelles, and start talking about how we -- the humans -- should be different from them.
2
Interesting to read the comments of true believers in religion and true believers in modernity here. I suggest that both need to spend a little more time looking beyond the world they've constructed for themselves.
When I ponder the tiny speck that earth represents in the vast cosmos, the strongest response it brings in me is modesty about the ability of me or any human being or tradition, whether theistic or atheistic, to pontificate about what it's all about.
Religion helps me interact with the mystery of it all and I am sad that religious institutions have handled themselves so badly that most people today are put off from even approaching the riches they offer.
Much as I value religion, if there's anything that's clear in history of religions, when you add power over others into the mix, religion becomes tyranny. That was one of the primary insights of the radical rabbi who started the movement later dubbed Christianity.
I don't think followers of any religious frameworks, no matter how faithful, are likely to experience sustainable rebirth until they deal with the inevitably corrosive dynamics of power concentrated in the hands of a few.
27
@Ron Kraybill
Jesus was the embodiment of love, sacrifice and forgiveness.
He said "He who hath sent me will come after me."
It has happened Sai Ram
1
It has been widely observed that converts are often the most zealous proponents of orthodoxy. Ross has frequently weighed in on questions of Catholicism. I'd like to hear his personal explanation of why (or whether) that observation rings true.
7
@jess He's a convert.
@jess
Having grown up in the church, I can confirm that it is always the converts who go gung-ho. Those of us who have been around the block are less so.
1
Ross,
Thanks for your thoughts during a trying time for all practicing Catholics. I believe that you have not mentioned the most important reason to remain inside the faith...sharing life and love with your fellow parishioners. In the end, WE are the church. Many mistakes have been made by broken men with corrupted hearts. However, we should never forget that we are the faith of reconciliation and that forgiveness is the heart of our mission as a servant of Christ.
Thanks for sharing, and have a blessed Christmas season.
28
Bravo Mr. Dourthat, and kudos as well for appropriately citing Rev. McCabe salient observation that, in Mathew's recounting of the genealogy of Jesus, it's very much a collection of sinners as much as saints. In other words, entirely human. Yes, absolutely there are significant parts of the current Church that have strayed mightily, but the fundamental message, then as now, is one of grace and redemption. I can go to Church for that.
10
The basic message of Christianity is universal love and salvation --
If certain groups of people decide to pervert that message beyond all recognition - that does not negate the original ideal of that concept -
If 99% of the people who owned a Stradivarius violin were alt-right Trump-loving Republicans -- would that somehow call into question the artistry, beauty and quality of one of the great intruments of all time --?
Also -
Most scholars agree that Jesus was born in the Spring --
In its campaign to attract converts - the medieval Catholic Church sought to replace the Pagan holidays and rituals observed and celebrated by the peasants with those which could serve its purpose --
Thus - instead of the very popular Winter Solstice - which is still observed by many people world-wide - we were given Christmas -- which worked perfectly --
Catholicism -- like all other sects and denominations -- is a human construct - each with its own agenda -- convoluted even more when the elements of money and polotics are added as pollutants -
Universal love and salvation - is a basic human ideal - one to which we are all encouraged to aspire towards --
And yes -- one can be Catholic (or any other "religion") - and still hold to that ideal...
26
@Howard G
"The basic message of Christianity is universal love and salvation --"
No. For as long as the Church--and the Pope-- continue to do anything other than immediately turn over those accused of sex crimes to police, the basic message of the Church is that it is OK to abuse children, because we will protect you, in order to protect our own wealth and power.
3
@Howard G And now we have commercialism, the world of Mammom, exploiting the birth of Christ for its lucrative ends!
Those of us who have true faith in God know that He never disappoints, but humanity always does. The evils of this world (including those within the Catholic church) are due to the failings of human beings and that includes failure to hold evil-doers accountable (complacency=complicity). The simplest and most important teaching by Jesus Christ, the Jewish Rabbi, was/is--Love God and love thy neighbor as thyself. Doing so (that second part) requires compassion, forgiveness, and humility. The Catholic Church brought me to to Christ and to that important teaching. I also learned that God gives us free will. That includes the freedom to question the Church, speak out against its evil, and form our own conscience. I love the liturgy of the Church and its music. It's where I hear God's voice the loudest. If my own church were to be complicit in evil, I would leave. But it isn't as far as I can tell so I speak the truth always, even if my voice shakes, and I continue to attend church and pray for better times.
19
Douthat excells at writing things that are convoluted and utimately unreadable. If he wanted to say that all religions share the problem of clergy abuse, he would have to recognize that the central problem is thrusting moral authority on people (uaully young men) at an early age and doing it in a system that cloisters people and thrusts this authority on unworldy people who don't know themselves or the world. A clergy that seeks worldy people will not entirely solve this problem, but it might attract people at an age where they are not willing to simply go along with the dictates of authority.
37
@Rich
"A clergy that seeks worldy people will not entirely solve this problem, but it might attract people at an age where they are not willing to simply go along with the dictates of authority."
But then there would be no point. This is systemic; it's MEANT to work this way. It never ceases to amaze me, the logic pretzels will twist in their minds to rationalize the depravity and evil that is the Catholic church.
2
@Rich I couldn't agree more. I read this piece twice, thinking, "What? Huh?" It was gobbledygook.
And you can love Jesus, and Mary, and God, but that doesn't mean you have to stay Catholic, part of an organization that through the centuries has been corrupt, its most recent episode these repugnant pedophilia cases and the church's inexcusable response (or lack thereof) to do anything about them. How can I take moral guidance from such despicable people?
3
@Rich. The rabbis recognized the danger of sexual abuse and tried to mitigate it by requiring that ordained clergy be married.
1
Excellent column. And true. However, my answer to those who choose to leave the church because of the scandals is this: the church is not about the people who run it; it is about the one true savior, Jesus Christ, who lived and died to rescue us from our sins. Period.
19
@Cynthia Starks
One can, and should, follow Christ without capitulating to an institution that protects child molesters.
2
@Cynthia Starks
Would Jesus support a church that protected clergy who raped children?
1
@Cynthia Starks
Very convenient! That excuses absolutely everything. Problem solved - now and forever.
What Ross has described is known as biblical realism. In contrast to most peoples who idealize their histories, ancient Israel presented it warts and all. The idea was that in this mess God was fulfilling His promise to Abraham to make of his descendants a great nation through which all the nations of the world would be blessed. Faith is trust that in this mess God is fulfilling His promise to restore the original goodness of the creation. Faith is affirmation of the mess that is human life. So, loosen up people and have a little faith.
5
@JamesEric - Many of us can affirm the mess of human life without faith.
Brother Douthat lofts yet another Hail Mary pass into the end zone as he desperately tries to win the 2018 Easter Bunny Bowl and bring home the Jesus H. Christ trophy for religious storytelling and fake life insurance.
How long can you possibly expect a modern rational society to fall for religious claptrap given the reality of human evolution, the long overdue dismantling of medieval patriarchies and the advanced communication age ?
In the old days, communications and fact-checking were limited, so it was much easier for people to fall for religious fantasy and fiction, especially when children were consistently hit over the head with Bibles, Torahs and Korans from a young age.
But it's 2018, and religious fables are simply just too preposterous, implausible and farcical for sentient beings to take seriously.
Add in the fake Christians that form America's fake Bible Belt and the Republican Party, and the world's radically conservative Muslims maintaining 5th-class citizenship status for their women while tearing apart the Middle East with internecine warfare when not bombing non-believers to death, and it turns out that organized religion has run its useful course as the world's oldest affinity scam.
“After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche
“Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.”
- Christopher Hitchens
Don't be so scared of life and death, Ross.
Counseling is available.
346
Merry Christmas@Socrates
8
@Socrates great first paragraph!
9
@Socrates
Napoleon also has a great quote: Religion is what keep the poor from murdering the rich.
Which he saw first hand during the French revolution.
18
I have l liberated myself from religion to celebrate Christmas this year. I have a loving family, great friends, a job I love and my beloved pets. I have an animal advent calendar and lots of paperwhites and indoor greenery including the tree. Absent is the manger and the judeo-Christian ethic. I am feeling the spirit of the holiday with clear eyes and an open heart. It is time to discount these cults that cause so much hate and so much harm. I am thankful for my world and my place in it.
65
@Tara Hunter wise decision. I think trump has clarified that the phrase Merry Christmas really means get lost, people from different faiths. The holiday is about finding joy in the darkness and anticipating the return of light to the world. No crèches necssary.
25
You know, Ross, it’s not that adherents to the Catholic religion have done evil in the past, most human beings have. It’s that not only do the leaders continue to do evil, but they are not actively seeking out opportunities to promote Jesus’ mission. I’m afraid you can’t count proselytizing against contraception, LGBT’S and abortion as carrying out his mission. Nor was his mission the empowerment of a hierarchy of high living church officials.
122
@Nancy The Roman Catholic Church has taken
some very sad pathways, but there is a certain beauty in many, many of its saintly parishioners and priests. As a non Roman Catholic I have been and continue to be blessed by Catholic family members, friends and teachers.
9
As someone who was molested by her brother at 5 yrs. old when he was 15, I prayed and prayed to make me feel less guilty. Only Paxil took away my guilt at age 50. God, if he exists, doesn't care much for the pain and suffering of his "children". I do wonder why I never got an answer to my prayers even though I was at church(Southern Baptist) every time the doors opened. I was the church organist during my teens. Played piano for so many revivals and was made to feel even guiltier by those sermons. Went to a Baptist college. What kind of prayers or sacrifices was I failing to do in order to feel better. Maybe it would have helped if I had been Catholic and had gone to confession. Still, now we know that some priests were just as bad as my brother had been.
58
@gredwine My heart goes out to you. To have your innocence stolen at age 5 by someone who was supposed to protect you must be so painful. I hope you find peace for your broken heart.
6
@gredwine I am so sorry for your pain and I'm glad you've finally gotten help. While I am officially a Lapsed Catholic, I don't leave God behind with the Church. And to believe in God, you must also believe that Evil exists and God is its only counter. What your brother did was evil and wrong and the product of a kind of evil that too often infects young men. Your brother acted on impulses knowing it was wrong. Until we stop allowing people to think they can do whatever they want, with whomever they want, this will continue. I hope you got counseling and I hope he did as well.
1
Be good.
Do good.
It doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that.
119
@Sharon Fratepietro. When a Roman soldier ordered Rabbi Akiva to explain Judaism to him while standing on one leg, Akiva replied “Do not do to another what is hateful to yourself. The rest is commentary.”
5
@Sharon Fratepietro And even if you aren't good, do good.
1
@Sharon Fratepietro
And don't be evil. Or do evil.
Because to proscribe the bad can be just as important as encouraging the good. (Doing good ain't always enough.)
1
This desperation to be (self-)assigned the status of "the chosen" is a telling revelation of the frail human ego - and the collective tribal ego - at work. It is a perversion of the natural search for meaning in human life on this planet. Instead of a positive, healthy exploration and wonder, it becomes a striving for competitive supremacy and dominance that necessarily excludes if not vanquishes others and is at the root of the great evil behind religion, the seduction of power and greed.
26
@Rocky, The concept of the Jews as "The Chosen People" has always been more of a burden than 'a (self-)assigned status symbol of the frail human ego". The traditional Jewish concept has been that the Jews were "chosen" to introduce the message of God into the world. If this is so, it ain't been easy. Have a merry, holy and joyous Christmas!
2
Mr. Douthat’s honestly cribbed exposition of the genealogy in Matthew is interesting and certainly makes the case for the utter humanity of Jesus of Nazareth. And, as told, Jesus spent most of his time with lowlifes and was accused of being a party animal. I used to teach this stuff back when I was an evangelical in a university ministry, along with the trope that the “church is not a museum of saints but a hospital for sinners” so OF COURSE you find one example after another of depravity therein.
What finally drove me away from religious faith was not the church’s sociology but rather its theology—along with every other of the thousands of religions—of asserting direct access to extremely high stakes Truth, as in an eternal life of meaning versus eternal damnation. I used to teach apologetics, too, and finally realized that, if the integrated patchwork of dogma and doctrine were really True that it shouldn’t be so hard to defend it. For if there are ideas of eternal pith and moment that we MUST have in our minds in order to enter heaven then the Almighty Whoever has done a horrible job of communicating those ideas in ways that are clear to the vast majority of humanity. Occam’s Razor ultimately drove me to conclude that it made more sense to consider the whole shebang a crazy-quilt human creation.
So I take the life and words ascribed to Jesus, whoever he was, very seriously as personal guidelines for living a loving life, but not as divinely revealed and enforced Truth.
41
@Michael Evans-Layng, PhD, Thanks and amen for your deeply considered post.
2
Religion is just identity politics written on papyrus or better, etched on stained glass. It matters not a bit to the adherents that their story is demonstrably bunk. It is, after all, their story, and even the most broad minded of them never tire of telling us that it is the best story, teaching truths which can be found nowhere else. Except, of course, that they are.
24
... Or perhaps you're over thinking things.
I've been reading a lot of Norse mythology lately. You'll find similar elements of depravity and injustice same as the venerated Israelite ancestors. Gods were human and vice versa. To this day, humans have a tendency to plant themselves on a pedestal apart from all other creation.
However, all religions celebrate in cycles. The birth of Christ is related to the winter equinox. Name one religion that hasn't ritualized the winter equinox. If you can find one, they must live near the equator. For the Norse, even the destruction of the world was in fact a rebirth. That's not coincidence.
With Catholicism, or most Christianity, you need to start from a place where there is an omnipotent exterior force. Christ is a means to connect to the exterior to the material same as the more traditional gods. But you need that faith in the exterior first. Otherwise, the academic debate is rather pointless.
Christ is the same is any other religion. His lineage to ancient sins is infinitely more fable than fact. A cynic would probably label the perpetuation political as well. Matthew is criticizing Jewish heritage as much as he is setting Christ apart. That's not a mistake either.
In the end, I don't see how joining or leaving the Catholic church over poor leadership makes any difference. Either you have that faith or you don't. How does switching religions change anything? Sexual abuse is not ultimately the deciding factor in Christianity.
5
@Andy, You ask, Name one religion that hasn't ritualized the winter equinox." Actually it is Judaism, which celebrates the holiday of Chanukah as a well-documented historic event that took place on the 25th Day of the Hebrew month of Kislev (according to the Hebrew lunar calendar). This almost always takes place in December and sometimes coincides with Christmas. It is generally considered a "minor" holiday as defined by the fact that it not mentioned within the 5 books of the Torah. But it has been given more emphasis to make it compete with the other celebrations around the winter equinox and we all need more lights and joy around this darkest time of the year. I am not familiar enough with Christian sources to know whether Jesus actually celebrated Chanukah but I would be surprised if he didn't celebrate this Festival of Lights.
5
I attended my last Christmas Mass in the early nineties with my daughter home from college. When I pointed out to her that a girl carried the cross up the aisle and sat on the alter boy bench, I leaned over and whispered, “See they finally allowed girls to be on the alter”! She replied, “Yeah, but she can’t ring the bell”. That did it for me.
27
@Jeanne hutton At my uncle's funeral yesterday, a girl server rang the bell. Just fyi.
Mr. Douthat writes:
"The idea that biblical religion has always proposed is emphatically not that you can tell whether a people is chosen by the virtue of their leaders. It’s that the divine chooses to act constantly amid not just ordinary fallibility but real depravity — that strong temptations as well as great sanctity are concentrated where God wants to work "
This sounds like a powerful argument against an institutional Church, especially one that purports to be all-encompassing (i.e. "Catholic")
If God works amid the mundane messiness of the world, He doesn't need all that hierarchy to enforce His rules.
16
@RO LO
The triumph of logic over rationalisation.
Game. Set. Match.
Nicely done!
One is not an agnostic Catholic because the Church is at least as power-oriented as it is soul saving-oriented. One is an agnostic because suddenly one realizes that man makes his gods at least as much as gods-- or God -- make man.
The only choice left is to embrace doubt. If you choose faith, the sins of the Church are neither here nor there.
8
@Luisa
Well sure - as long as that "faith" doesn't mean you enable/support/rationalise/make excuses for, "the Church" - otherwise how would you not be complicit?
You know, like the evangelicals in this country who support our criminal/liar/anti-American/anti-Constitution, POTUS.
They all worship at the Church of Trump - because obviously that's God's righteous plan, isn't it?
A warm Winter Solstice greeting to all my fellow NY Times readers. This is the true birth of the new year, the darkest day, and yet, also the day that marks the turning point, when the sun gradually returns, bringing with it life giving light. It is celebrated throughout many cultures as a festival of light or through the honoring of evergreen trees, which maintain their foliage perpetually, reaffirming life at the darkest, coldest time.
85
Yes, the God of the Testaments, Old and New, is steadfast and forgiving, and it's nice to find that thought in a Christmas column by a conservative.
But the shepherd abides with the flock, and is not contained by an institution that can be feckless -- and has been reckless -- in drawing human beings toward the divine.
An argument can be made that leaving the church is the more faithful course, that following the model of a shepherd God, and heading the all to protect, might require it.
8
What I want to know is who it was in the House of David that had sex with Mary? Because virgins don't give birth.
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@Vanessa Hall
Doncha love how Catholics twist themselves into knots trying to explain away the inconvenient references in Mark and Mathew to brothers and sisters in Jesus’ family? Catholics are supposed to believe that Mary was a virgin her whole life. But . . . “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us?” (Mark 6:3). And: “Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas (Matthew 13:55-56). Whoops!
8
@Vanessa Hall … when you let the Spirit guide you to understanding you realize that "virgin" was meant to define "pure in spirit" not physically virginal.
@Vanessa Hall Of course that is one of the non-too-fine points of hypocrisy. If Jesus was begotten by the Holy Spirit, and Mary was not from the Davidian lineage, how could he be a descendant of David? But I am sure Ross and Co. already have an answer to twist scientific logic even when it comes to DNA.
5
To make a long story short, Douthat is saying that pedophilia and the institutional cover up is business as usual, not just for Catholicism but all religions. That's the important message for Catholics at Christmas, that's the reason to stay in the church?
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@MEM
I don't think this is quite what Mr. Douthat was suggesting. My take is more like: institutions that were founded with good intentions can fall into bad ways, but because their raison d'etre was essentially good, they can be returned to goodly ways---purified and reborn, if you like.
I say "institutions" here intentionally, 'cause it ain't just the Catholic church. We need look no further than the US government to see another institution that was founded with good intentions that has fallen into a parlous state... so if you have any hopes for the purification and resurrection of the USA, you'd better hope that Mr. Douthat is right.
5
Exactly!
Why bother?
A derivative, Bronze Age religion populated with unsavory pedophiles, corrupt to the hilt: it deserves the RICO statute treatment. If it turns out that the hierarchy was complicit then throw the book at them. Jail terms for all who were complicit.
God will surely show them the mercy they deserve in the next life. We shouldn’t.
13
There is another way to look at participation in religious services. It can be seen as comforting make-believe, enjoyed in the company of others like ourselves. Of course those stories are myth, but perhaps brief escapes into myth is healthy, the preferred analgesic for some when feeling overcome with painful awareness of cruel mortal reality.
Of course, it is silly to pretend, beyond the length of the service, that officiating clergy are magically connecting us with some protective, divine power. It is that any different, however, from losing ourselves for brief periods in any other form of distracting theatrical entertainment?
33
I have to agree. It seems so illogical to believe in the make-believe in general. And throw in the going narrative of atrocities... and It's beyond me I how any thinking human stays in the club. But life isn't easy and anything that gives a person comfort, fine by me. Just keep it to yourself please.
5
@Penseur
Yes that is a reasonable if cynical way to chariature 'myths' but it seems that all cultures, including all religions, have been forced to use myths or the equivalent to point in the direction of truths that are too subtle or too profound and vast to be easily articulated. Often, those that open their eyes to look - see. Or something like that?
And then, there is: "Make America Great Again." What to do??????????????
@Penseur That's fine, until the officiating clergy browbeat and guilt-trip you into following a bunch of made-up rules and internalizing a bunch of made-up beliefs outside the weekly showtimes.
Or worse yet, visiting violence on other people based on these rules and beliefs.
1
Just because it happened before and the faith remains the faith doesn’t give the leadership a pass.
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We have sinned and not sought forgiveness: depending on the ideology or popular thought, politics generally rejects the impact and presence of evil on prosperity, distribution, regulation, legislation, beliefs and narratives.
Studies of the dark side, the negative factors of bias and prejudice, systemic hate and institutional violence, personal immorality and evil have fallen off since the 1950s. The irony is the dark side has grown and dominates our politics more and more.
This dark side has its own rules and processes. Its continuum follows the way to evil. Its material features grow clearer and more complex when power is added. Witness the idea that $5 billion can be spent on a wall (a false icon). Where’s the plan? It’s not even a public works project to retrain new and displaced workers!
Close readings of the inner workings of darkness go a long way to catalogue new insights about leaders who combine darkness and power. The knowledge is important. Darkness and power has influenced every society’s political economy, its process of class and division, its sharing and greed, its survivors and its privileged, its freedoms and pain.
Know this: the dark side always rejects that we share the earth! It rejects the process of sharing. It puts fear above goodwill. Ownership above communal. Law above Love. The dark side destroys as it promises the opposite.
Remember the season: Angels don’t sing in fear or lock the gates.
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@walterhett
Amen.
8
@Rima Regas
aka Amen-Ra.
This piece by Douthat comes across as convoluted and disingenuous defense of the church leadership. In the enactment of “truth and reconciliation,” the truth has to be recounted first and then only a reconciliation is possible. It is not just a simple act of forgetting and forgiving, but every aspect of the truth being transparently discussed and thereupon having appropriate policies in place for what has happened to never recur, and then alone a true reconciliation through mercy and grace is possible.
Until now, there is no unilateral effort of transparency on behalf of the Catholic church, and all we know about the issue of child sex abuse is through the victims who have come forward and the prosecutors who have been brave enough to pry open the closely guarded vaults of many of the dioceses.
Moreover, the vast majority of the church leadership would never take a pause to consider the life issues involved in human sexuality and the challenges involved in sustaining a marriage are real. Most in the leadership still do not consider that people of different sexual orientations and those who had to have a divorce for very many reasons deserve and need communion. Yet, many of these same people in the leadership who had always been eager to excommunicate all those in need, were adept and eager enough to protect the predatory priests and to constantly present them with fresh opportunities to continue their rummaging and ruining of young lives.
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@Eskay
As for protecting the predatory priests, I have to admit that when I read the recent call from the pope for all those guilty to step forward, I imagined an unwieldy stampede.
1
Tis the season.
I gave up on Santa Clause around the age of 4. And I like to think I was wise enough to give up on "God" before that. But I don't remember.
Can we all get past the 14th Century and save what we really, truly have, and can see and touch, feel and experience? Namely this beautiful plant and its absolutely amazing and interesting creatures (including some humans).
Merry Christmas!
149
@Will. Ah, plant or planet?
2
@CARL E
Planet, of course. :)
2
'Those who stay and pray and "fight" will see it "improbably" reborn'. Mr. Douthat, this Catholic celebrant of Christmas would be more inspired by the words "believe", and the joy of "renewal and resurrection".
You appear to be leaning at the beginning of this litany of names on The Old Testament and the brutal love of God. Ask yourself what is the most memorable Catholic Christmas you remember. It may not have taken place in a church.
In this December year, it is 'The Caravan' arrested at our border, more powerful, real, symbolic and meaningful than any carol sung, any mass attended on the Eve of Christmas, any funds we donate to our church.
Therein rests the heart of darkness where a child abandoned holds a lantern for those of us who have lost our way, and reminds us that he will wait, Infant Christ in the Manger, but that a wall will prevent our reaching him.
In the midst of our praying, there will be wailing this season and promises broken that He would cast aside, shunning the idolatry of the Tower of Babel and its vultures at midnight.
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@Miss Ley
“ Tower of Babel “. Very Sly, Ms. Ley.
Happy Holidays.
@Miss Ley
Well, we could let the Caravan in, and all others like it — the way we have for generations now (when you figure the 90% of all those in the catch and release program who don’t show up for their court dates).
Me, my Christmas spirit will be directed to those who’ve lost livelihoods to masses of cheap labor they can’t afford to compete with. (Eg, see many black folks on construction sites in LA?)
1
@DD
Like you, Ross doesn't think much of the parable of the good Samaritan.
1
I seem to recall that Mother Church proclaimed "seven" as the "age of reason," the point in our intellectual and spiritual development where we become responsible for our "sins" and, presumably, also for our thinking. Call me a "slow learner," but I continued to give credence to the Church's fairy tales for another full year, until I turned eight, in third grade.
By that time, I had a keen interest in aircraft carriers (dad a Navy man), and I had witnessed a neighbor fail miserably in his attempt to build a boat in his backyard, despite having a full compliment of state-of-the-art power tools.
It dawned on me that Noah did not build an aircraft carrier in his backyard--which is pretty much what you'd need for "two of each"--and even if he had, how'd he come across a pair of kangaroos?
In my little recidivist-heathen mind, I thought, 'If they're lying to me about this--and clearly they are--I'm not going for the rest of it.'
Never looked back.
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@Tom Sullivan
Third grade is when my enlightenment occurred as well. We were learning about the scientific method and I simply could not comprehend why I should believe in any god in the total absence of any objective evidence. I'm not sure how it goes these days but back then (1968) third-graders stayed with the same teacher all day. I just couldn't wrap my head around the fact that Sr. Mary Eileen could tell us that we needed to base our beliefs on observation, measurement, and experiment in one class and then tell us fairy tales which we were supposed to believe in because of "faith" in the next hour. So I questioned her. Hard. In front of the rest of the class. She had no answers. And she was not the nicest person to begin with. Needless to say, not only the rest of that day but also the rest of my third-grade year did not go well for me.
I'm still guided by those principles which saved me not only from Catholicism but from all religion.
26
@pedigrees
"So I questioned her. Hard. In front of the rest of the class. She had no answers. And she was not the nicest person to begin with."
This cracked me up. Thanks.
14
@Tom Sullivan
I was about the same age when I grilled my Sunday School teacher about why drinking alcohol was morally wrong according to our Presbyterian teachings but Jesus' fist miracle was to turn water into wine at a wedding. Her explanation was that the water in the Holy Land was not drinkable. So why didn't Jesus just make the water drinkable if wine was forbidden? I never got an answer to that question.
23
Ross is it wrong to develop a moral compass based on the accumulated knowledge of human history? Something inspiring to ALL the diverse peoples of the world? Or is it preferable to look only at the events of the Iron Age and try to force people to face moral quandaries using only knowledge that was available then? And try to force people into an ancient vision of spirituality that couldn’t possibly have imagined the evolutionary track our species has taken. It’s the twenty-first century now. Time to move on from Iron Age superstition.
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@Mike
A lot has changed over the last 2000 years, I grant you that. But humanity has not changed, has not evolved, in any way that ultimately matters. There is still a hole in all of our hearts that can only be filled through the love and grace of God, try as we might to deny it.
@Mike
Those who follow the Catholic Church must first find a way to overlook the corruption that allows priests and nuns to simply be reassigned to new parishes or at worst give up their religious jobs.
Even the pope is part of the corruption that continues not to immediately turn over accused rapists to police, but merely to call on the accused to turn themselves in. The pop--and all in power in the church who fail to contact police immediately--are complicit in the crimes of the rapists and molesters. They are thus criminals themselves.
That is the institution the faithful are supporting.
5
@Mike
Good points. My children took comparative religions at their Quaker high school, giving them a broad appreciation of the many beliefs of the world, and helping them realize there was not "one true way".
2
Without picking apart scripture word for word (which is futile if one seeks any coherent message), how about looking at the biblical Christmas story in its most basic form: those in need had been turned away. Does that not have applications to today's world? And how can we make miracles for others? That is the essence of Christmas.
117
"And it is all-too-understandable that people would choose to leave a dying church....But it is the season’s promise, and in the long run its testable hypothesis, that those who stay and pray and fight will see it improbably reborn."
Ross, you give us a compelling column. While I often disagree with you, this week I don't, so I thank you.
Younail it in the lines I quoted. That yes, God moves in mysterious ways, and in the words of Paul, "we look through a glass but darkly."
Religious themes across all times and faiths always seem to come round to this simple thought, that when things get bad enough, they change for the better. That out of great despair rises hope, then victory. The phoenix rising from ashes.
I know many posters here disdain all religion and critique those of us who have faith. Many Catholics have left the church for good, or joined Protestant faiths.
I'm not sure I could follow any of the above options. They say, once a Catholic..... yada yada. But I do know how much I've changed following periods of estrangement from the formal Church, as well as enriching interactions with men and women of my faith.
Merry Christmas one and all--or holiday greetings if that's your choice.
34
@ChristineMcM
About 70% of physical reality is a force we call dark energy. While another 25% of physical reality is a mass we call dark matter. And the 5% of reality that we "know"is separated by two theories of the tiny and the big that currently can't be reconciled.
Faith and science both arise from human curiosity about the mysterious nature of our reality. Some things can't be certain nor naturally proven nor known and understood. Some things may resemble magic and rely on faith in order to understand.
The methodology and canon of faith and science both have strengths and weaknesses. Costs and benefits aka precautions aka side effects.
7
@ChristineMcM compelling?
@Blackmamba
"God is the fire in every cell, the energy in every rock."
How's that for a unified field theory?
1
Christmas has nothing to do with faith any more. Not here in the US and this attitude is spreading to the rest of the world (known to me).
It is an occasion that ensures that the last 1/12th of the year supports a rising GDP here and that China can sell its useless junk and also grow its GDP.
Has anyone noticed how every occasion (Valentines, Easter, etc) has turned stores into hubs for pushing Chinese junk onto the willing and accepting US population?
In 50-100 years historians will look back and analyze this when they try to figure out how the West declined and China took over the world. They will likely conclude that all that was good for the soul was systematically replaced by obsessive buying of junk that came from that one single country.
We have a chance to save our souls and it will require some drastic steps, such as no more presents except for kids who still believe in Santa. Everyone else gets nothing.
And no more Christmas "parties" with alcohol flowing, etc, because that has zero to do with Christmas.
31
Seems you’re complaining about the needless products from China. And you’re connecting this with Christmas. Is it OK to purchase needless Chinese stuff the other 364 days of the year? I agree that the purchasing is more heightened during “holiday” seasons and the focus has been lost on what that holiday is about. And purchasing for children who still believe only perpetuates what your complaint is. Stop the buying. Start the giving. Giving service, donating time and money to the many agencies that help those less fortunate. All year long.
14
@supereks I wish you a merry Christmas.
@supereks
I was with you until the alcohol part. Christmas without wine is like, well, awful.
3
Starting Christmas Eve and ending Christmas Day our Catholic Church here in Atlanta will serve 12 Masses. And all will be overflowing. Each Mass can hold 700, so about 8,400 will attend. On a normal Sunday outside the holiday period, there are 13 Masses, all full. It’s like that week in week out, month after month.
I’m sure someone will say something like, these parishioners have turned a blind eye, but I don’t see it that way. They well aware and are horrified, but their faith, they pray, will carry them and the church through this crisis.
Time will tell.
39
@cherrylog754
Time has ALREADY told. If you just look at it honestly you will see.
2
@cherrylog754
I, alas, do not see it your way.
I think rather that to continue to support an institution that protects its rapist clergy and--most of all--to protect its own power and wealth at the expense of children is to contribute to ongoing abuse of more children.
10
@cherrylog754 … sorry but the reality is that without their support the church would be forced to change … they make it easier for it not too.
4
I am Catholic all year round as are many others. I love Christmas and have many fond memories of growing up in Boston (Belmont) and going to Mass on Christmas morning while the priest said the Mass in Latin. It was a beautiful service with many in attendance. I long for those glorious days.
I will always be a Catholic as I love the faith, the rituals such as the rosary, the devotional prayers and novenas to the saints. As a priest said once during his excellent homily many years ago at a very well known and beautiful Catholic Church In Manhattan, they can take away everything from us but our faith. How true this has been for me. I have been blessed and thank God every day for his graces and good fortune. He has been very kind to me and I will never take my faith for granted. Merry Christmas.
62
@WPLMMT Not a thought for the Church's millions of victims, even during Christmas? Wow.
8
Staying good all year:
Teach your children early about inappropriate touching.
Teach your children early about authority and who really has it over them.
Teach your children, and yourself if needed, that being good comes from within and there are many ways to achieve it.
Teach your children, and yourself, that the pursuit of goodness starts with critical thought about what is good.
Keep philosophy texts around, always. They're good for the soul.
Goodness is a universal virtue.
---
https://www.rimaregas.com/?s=philosophy
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@Rima Regas
Thanks for this reminder about why I find your comments so compelling.
6
If, as Douthat says, all of this has happened before and will happen again, what then is the point of any of it?
Wouldn't it be far better to abandon this insistently diabolical belief in fairy tales of split seas and virgin births and use our collective (but weak) humanity towards a more secular and useful purpose?
Religion served a purpose. Perhaps it still has a purpose as our civilization, such as it is, grows older. But the ongoing elevation of faith over science is costing us years of bad decisions under bad and worse leaders who harness our faith to their own purposes.
365
@Lkf Some examples bad decisions resulting from "the ongoing elevation of faith over science" would be useful here.
Faith and science are not necessarily in conflict. As the chief rabbi of London said not long ago on the PBS program "Religion and Ethics News Weekly":
"Science takes things apart to see how they work; religion puts things together to see what they mean."
3
@Lkf Right now, scientism, another word for the attempt to make science the proof and explanation of everything, is on hard times. For those who take the time to follow a small but growing tsunami that will one day take it down, go to "Evolution News" and watch the discoveries of science that have led to an argument for Intelligent Design. Atheism is going to have a hard time arguing with all the information necessary for the formation of a cell. As far as we know, the only source for information comes from a mind. Not such a leap from there to God.
3
@EB
That's not really true. Religions purport to already know what things mean.
And when new evidence contradicts old dogma, all hell usually ensues.
9
People who wear God goggles can see the hand of God everywhere they look. They see it in the sacrifice of ordinary people who do extraordinary things. They see it in the tainted blood lines of their brutal forbears. It’s almost as though removing God from the equation doesn’t affect the result one iota.
True believers can see a reason to redouble their faith even as they cringe at the child rape that has been going on for centuries. They see it in the soaring marble cathedrals with altars of gold where the faithful kneel to pray for the poor. They see it when God saves a kitten, and when He lets a plane crash. There is no cognitive dissonance that can drown out the heavenly choir.
That’s the problem with religion. It pretends that we can’t be good without believing in the irrational. It’s the insistence that we're not temporary blobs of protoplasmic goo that will die just like ever one of the quadrillion other creatures have died ever since that first molecule made a copy of itself that was a little better at surviving the vicissitudes of an uncaring planet.
Religions form institutions that rob the poor and condemn gays and marginalize women and abuse children all for a promise that invisible sky people will let us live in glory forever, with the bonus that we’ll get a glimpse of people we don’t like burning in Hell.
It’s times like these that I thank God I’m an atheist.
617
@gemli
Religions, political parties (especially when they've been commandeered) are the means by which individualism is stifled by imposed conformity.
I too thank the Almighty for having given me the strength to question what I am told.
134
@gemli
Well said.
In light of the continuing exposure of predatory clergy ( and in my local paper today, a nun), it seems we are still being urged to follow the prescribed path to salvation offered by the church as it’s superior to the voice inside that discerns right and wrong.
Well my inner voice tells me that such proselytizing trivializes the harm inflicted by trusted authority figures in the church and that is a wrong that cannot be made right.
137
@gemli
Yet again, you seem to entirely miss the difference between religion and religious experience, the desire of the personal to connect with the divine. It has been a vital part of human history for as long as we know. All you do is trash the idea of it and its faithful adherents. William James wrote about the "varieties of religious experience" almost a century ago. As a psychologist and scientist he ventured into the field of religion with great respect and curiosity. He still makes excellent reading today.
31
The more I see the weakness, vices and sins of the human race the more I run to church. If society teaches us anything is that all of us are in search of truth. All of us want peace and love. I believe all of these are found in a loving God, who let's us choose our own path. In the end we will see where in finishes. Merry Christmas to all. Oh, and Peace be with you.
43
@MiguelM
You run to the church to get away from the weakness, vices and sins of the human race? Are there no humans in your church? Only peaceful loving beings searching for truth? Which church is that? It can't be the one with all the child molesters and obviously false dogmas like the Genesis story, parthenogenesis, transubstantiation and personal survival of brain death. I sincerely hope you find those truths that you're looking for and have a happy solstice celebration.
7
You see the “weakness, vices, and sins of the human race” and you run to church!? It’s one of the most corrupt and corrupting institutions on the planet. And perhaps it’s time to refocus your view of the human race and see the goodness and love there, much of it not touched or informed by institutional religion. On balance, fallible as we are, I see more good than evil at work in the world and overall data from the UN backs it up.
7