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Introduction

The Catholic Church is in crisis. Each day around the world we read of more and more cases of abuse. In the west numbers are in a slow but steady decline and except for Africa and Brazil, everywhere people are choosing different, alternative faiths and lifestyles. Integral to its politics, for nearly two millennia, the Church has dominated the thinking of the Western world.
But how much longer can it retain its grip when it is seen to be increasingly out of step with the rhythm of the modern world? And just how did a faith based around the ideals of self-denial and charity develop into the powerful, monolithic force we see today governing more than a sixth of the worlds population? To understand this more clearly we have to go back to a time before the church even existed.

The Beginning

Before Christ was born one of the popular religions around the Mediterranean basin was Mithraism. Originating in India and travelling through Persia, this faith worshipped the god Mithras and was particularly popular amongst the poor, soldiers and low born as it propagated the quite unique and modern notion that you didn’t have to be chosen or of a certain class or race to worship. If you believed and followed the basic tenants of kindliness and humility your soul could be saved and you would pass into heaven. Unfortunately not much else is known about the faith as the rules were a secret only to initiates and no written records were allowed or kept.

One of the recorded myths about the origin of Mithras predating Christ’s birth was that he was born of a virgin; his birth date was the 25th of December and his arrival was attended by shepherds. These similarities to the origins of Jesus Christ were no mere coincidence. At the time there were many faiths jostling for pre-eminence and any new religion had to adapt and take the most popularly held beliefs into account and make them their own.
Places of worship under old gods were built over and reused. In Rome the Vatican with St Peters was originally a temple to Mithras. St Paul’s’ in London and Notre Dame in Paris were temples to Diana. Religions were generally a hotchpotch of already established notions and beliefs. Even in its infancy Christianity showed a remarkably shrewd talent for survival.
Gnosticism was another belief system popular around the first few centuries of the first millennia. After the conversion of the Romans, Gnostics were suppressed with bloody force.

Saul (or St Paul) of Tarsus

Following the example set by St Peter and St Paul, early Christians travelled widely around the near East and Europe. After its initial persecution of the Christians, the Roman Empire accepted it as their one religion in 313 AD under the emperor Constantine.

Emperor Constantine

Adapting to the more military style of the Romans, Christianity set about a missionary campaign that aimed to convert the known world. Opposition was met with severe and bloody action and all rival faiths or variations of Christianity were banished or wiped out by the righteous sword.
By the fifth century AD, Christianity had very little resemblance to the peace loving, ascetic way of life practised by its founder. Around 500 AD, a Roman by the name of Benedict set up his own order. Sickened by the excess of his epicurean countrymen, he decided to bring things back to basics and live life as Jesus would have. Others agreed and their way of perceiving the world was to dominate Europe for the next five hundred years.
But as time passed and more monasteries were built, very often the only men of learning in an area were the monks who began to take on more and more clerical duties for the gentry such as book-keeping and accounting.
‘Thou shalt not kill’ was still one of the fundamental cornerstones of the faith, a rather inconvenient obstacle when fighting a war. Fortunately a knight could pay monks to pray for the forgiveness of his sins.



Ripe for abuse, the system soon led to the monasteries becoming obscenely wealthy and powerful. It is estimated that up to twenty five percent of all land and property in England were owned by the Church by the 13th Century. Now an integral part of the state and power structure, it would continue to show a heavy hand to anyone who criticized, opposed it or got in its way.

The Crusades

In 1054 the Eastern Church rejected the Papal claims to divine jurisdiction and broke away forming the Eastern Orthodox Church. Just forty-one years later, In the name of God and to deliver Jerusalem from the non-believers, Pope Urban II called for a holy war. The First Crusade began.

Since the fifth century the new religion of Allah had spread like fire uniting disparate tribes and nations around Arabia. Pope Urban II announced that it was no longer necessarily a sin to kill a non-believer and crusading became a penance in itself, dehumanizing hundreds of thousands of people at a stroke. Jesus’ pacifist teachings and the notion ‘to turn the other cheek’ were conveniently forgotten in the zeal to liberate the Holy Land. By 1099 and the storming of Jerusalem, a contemporary chronicler wrote the streets were awash with blood, knee high to the horses. The Holy city of three religions was that day the scene of a massacre. Young children were put to the sword and women were raped and butchered next to their families. All in the name of the Cross.
Before this, Jews, Muslims and Christians had all got along quite well living side by side with one another. The Crusades continued for another two hundred years and were to change the Holy Land forever, leaving scars in the area that still exist to this day.

Interview with Piers Paul Read author of ‘The Templers’

Back in Europe, the Church was growing stronger year by year. By wedding itself with the rituals of monarchy it became ever more synonymous to the average person as powerful and corrupt. The popular conception of monks and priests were that they were fat and indolent. The daily diet of the monks of Westminster in England was lavish compared to that of a Westerner today never mind a lay person at the time. It is thought they consumed up to seven thousand calories a day! A large percentage of which was alcohol.

Interview with Terry Jones author of ‘The Crusades’ and ‘England In the Middle Ages’

It was only in 1204 with the sack of Constantinople, by those noble Crusaders in their Fourth ride out, did the Churches of the East and West finally split, never to reunite.

The Inquisition and the Conquistadors

What has become known as the Inquisition is in reality a succession of Inquisitions from Rome, Portugal and Spain devised to weed out and punish heretics. Some Christian academics have suggested that the Inquisition was not born out of desire to crush diversity or oppress people; it was rather an attempt to stop unjust executions. The recent investigation into it instigated by Pope John Paul II in the year 2000 came to the conclusion, after extensive research, that only one percent of all people brought before them were tortured or killed. This figure is seriously questioned by other academics but the fact of the matter remains; what was a Church governed body doing torturing and killing people anyway?

Interview Henry Kamen author of ‘Spain, 1469-1714: A Society of Conflict’ (1991)

Nobody knows how many people died at the hands of the various Inquisitions in the four hundred or so years they existed. Estimate range from a few thousand to a hundred thousand.
While the Inquisition were busy imprisoning, torturing and killing anyone they chose to believe was a heretic, including Galileo in 1633 for suggesting the Earth wasn’t the centre of the universe; their cousins on the other side of the world were instigating a whole new form of persecution and oppression.


Hernán Cortés, Conquistador of the Aztec Empire

The Conquistadors in the New World were soldiers and sailors of God conquering and decimating whole populations under the Catholic banner with the blessing of the pope. The destruction of the Inca and Aztec civilisations was the work of ruthless, self-interested entrepreneurs and mercenaries who used their governing crowns and the Catholic Church as little more than a shield for their ambitions. Again, the defenders say the Church was not to blame, but they not only turned a blind eye to the ruthless activities, they positively sanctioned it. And once again, dehumanization was the key to victory and with God on their side; the murderers knew their cause was just. Most of the indigenous peoples died from small pox and diseases they had no natural immunity to. Still the holy conquerors marched on regardless, driven by greed for gold and a manic desire to convert the pagan natives.

The Reformation

From 1378 there were two, then three, rival Popes in Rome, Pisa and Avignon in France, all claiming legitimacy. This political power struggle divided Europe and did a great deal of harm to the reputation of the Church.
By the beginning of the sixteenth century opposition to the Church had reached unprecedented proportions. From Germany came the third schism after Martin Luther nailed his ‘Ninety-Five Theses on the Power Of Indulgences’ onto the doors of the church of Wittenberg.

Martin Luther

Many western Christians were troubled by what they saw as false doctrines and malpractices within the Church, particularly involving the teaching and sale of indulgences. Selling positions or posts, known as Simony, had become widespread and even the Pope was known to be corrupt. Many others besides Luther questioned the Pontiff’s divinity, that his very words were holy and unquestionable. Luther’s attempt to change the Church for the better with his notes on the church door is thought of as the symbolic start of the Protestant movement and he was excommunicated for his troubles. But he himself was no saint for on many occasions he recommended the burning of Jewish properties and that their wealth be appropiated. The Nazis were later to promote his views and actualize his ideals.
Over the next few hundred years the Church concentrated on missionary work and on the coat tails of Imperialism, spread far and wide. It found passages in the bible that condoned slavery just as today it finds passages that condemn it. Black slaves were said to have inherited ‘the curse of Ham’. That’s the wonder of such a large, ambiguios tract; anything can be read into it, anything can be justified.

The Second World War

As fascism took hold of Europe under Hitler and Mussolini the Church found it increasingly difficult to square the circle of their liberal beliefs with the totalitarian, un-Christian ruling governments. Controversy still rages over the stance the Church took towards the Nazis from the 1930’s onwards. In Germany there was an immense amount of pressure put on the Catholic Church to bow to the beliefs of the National Socialists.

Some have asked why didn’t they decamp en masse and resettle in another country. The Church has argued that only by remaining in Germany and Italy could it do any good and help those in need. Indeed there are documented cases of thousands of Jews being saved by Priests and Bishops in Germany and by Pope Pius XII himself in Rome.

"Only the Catholic Church protested against the Hitlerian onslaught on liberty. Up till then I had not been interested in the Church, but today I feel a great admiration for the Church, which alone has had the courage to struggle for spiritual truth and moral liberty."
Albert Einstein

Interview with John Cornwell author of ‘Hitler’s Pope’ about Pope Pius XII involvement with the Nazis

Interview with Rabbi David G Dalin author of ‘The Myth of Hitler’s Pope’

It is true that the Church disagreed with a number of Nazi policies but these were generally about politics or issues that fell within the remit of canonical law i.e. forced sterilization, which contradicts Catholic doctrine. At no point at the time, despite what’s been propagated, did they ever openly disagree with the imprisonment of the Jews or with the Holocaust. In fact it was only because of the deciding vote of the Zentrum, the German Catholic Church’s Central Party in parliament, that the National Socialists and Hitler seized absolute power. Only four months later, the Vatican and the Nazi government signed the Concordat, confirming the alliance between the Catholic Church and the Nazi state in July 1933.

Joseph Goebbels (far right)

‘…it cannot be denied that a certain insufficient resistance to this atrocity on the part of Christians can be explained by an inherited anti-Judaism present in the hearts of not a few Christians.'
Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI, April 2005)

Pope John Paul II hinted once that vast amounts of the Vatican’s gold was sold off during the war to stave off the execution of Jews. If this is the case why is there no proof of this today and just how did the Church regain its great wealth so soon afterwards.

Interview with Avro Manhatten author of ‘The Vatican’s Billions’

Contemporary issues

Since the start of the twentieth century, Feminism has been forcing the Church to reappraise its views towards the role of women. Less and less women are taking the Gospel as gospel, as issues seemingly fundamental to the faith are seen to be in direct opposition to the rights of women as defined by the United Nations Charter; self determination, the right to choose concerning reproduction or termination, etc.

As with slavery, passages and phrases were plucked from the Bible and emphasized to justify the domination of women; what they should wear, their role in the family, their overall behaviour, etc. Yet again, the Word was used to validate control. Specific phrases used instead of the general themes of the Bible; tolerance, love, equality and justice.

Interview with Marilyn French author of ‘The War on Women’

The Church’s refusal to allow men or women to use contraceptives has added to the world’s population increase. While the Catholic Church is mired in the middle ages, more progressive Christians have started to view the environmental crisis as a spiritual issue. While it seems each successive Pope canonizes the Pope one or two before him, each seems more afraid of contradicting the words of his predecessors. As the notion of papal infallibility segues into the words of a latter day saint, any suggestion of a challenge to the status quo grows ever more distant. What hope have we when the worlds leading religion can give no sound advice on one of the most important topics facing our species i.e. the over population of the planet and all the myriad problems that that will bring about.

‘Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.’
Environmental writer Edward Abbey

As well as over-population we have the threat of STDs such as Aids/HIV that a refusal to use contraceptives exacerbates. The Church says abstinence is enough. Well clearly it is not. AIDS is now pandemic and regarded as one of the most destructive epidemics in recorded history. Many Christian countries are very poor so if a couple have sex without contraceptives it might mean they bring another child into the world that cannot be fed. A man might have sex with a prostitute who is infected with the HIV virus. He passes this onto his wife and any other children born in the short time she has left on the planet. All over the world young girls get pregnant because of a lack of availability of condoms. Unwanted children are born that add to the financial burden of an already impoverished society. Reliance on abstinence-only sex education as the primary tool to reduce teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases looks increasingly foolish and indefensible. How much of this suffering could be alleviated by a change in policy by the Church?

43% of Roman Catholic Priests in the United Kingdom do not support the Church ban on contraception, while another 19% were unsure whether to support the policy or not.
25% disagreed with priest chastity.
21% think homosexuals should be allowed into the priesthood.

Pope Benedict XVI

Its views towards lesbians and gays have stayed the same for almost two millennia. Only recently has there been some thawing in its frosty attitude to what the Church still considers a sin. It refuses to admit there are any gays within the Church despite a plethora of examples and testimonials that state otherwise. Father Mychal Judge was a New York Fire Department Chaplain who died in the line of duty on September 11th 2001 at the Twin Towers. He was known to be gay.

Father Mychal Judge

Interview with his friend and gay spokesman Brendan Fay

The recent declaration of the Vatican representative, the Pope's spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls, didn’t help when he blamed gay priests for sexual abuse charges now rocking the Catholic Church. A charge most Catholics in repeated surveys in Ireland and the United States strongly disagree with.

Abuse

In the last twenty five years the Catholic Church has come under increasing criticism for the way it has dealt with abuses within the system. In the US alone 4,392 priests, about 4% of all priests, have been accused of sexually abusing children in their care. Many of these have already been settled out of court for large sums of money. Each year more cases are brought to the media’s attention.

Interview with Bishop Gumbleton who was kicked out of his ministry for speaking against the Church on behalf of a bill to expand the amount of time sex abuse victims have to file lawsuits. Also was abused as a child

Defenders of the faith have argued that the figures are about the same or marginally lower than those for public education. Most of the criticism though is aimed at the governing bodies in the Church that treated the cases as within the jurisdiction of Canonical Law rather than Criminal Law, meaning no offender was to be punished by the law of the land the abuses were committed in and the police authorities were not alerted. This meant many of the priests who thought of molestation as a ‘religious rite’ or a ‘rite of passage’ were merely moved to a different parish, some for only a few months. Nearly all of them were allowed to carry on working with children.

Interview with Gabriel Byrne

The Future

So which direction is the Church to take? One of its defining characteristics has been its immovability down through the centuries. The rock of the Church. No fundamental changes ever occur and any developments are gradual and tiny.

Interview with Richard Dawkins the evolutionary biologist and member of the Bright’s Movement

Despite a high proportion of its priests and lay people disagreeing with its antiquated ideals, it remains bullish and dogmatic. Moves to reintroduce woman as deacons into the church, allowing them to carry out sacramental duties such as serving communion, have been met with a wall of opposition. Even though this is just what they did for the first nine hundred years of Christianity’s existence.
Interview with Fr. Owen O’Sullivan an Irish Capuchin priest based in Belfast who wants reform in the Church including women priests

“Rome (has based) the exclusion of women priests on the idea that God is the father and Jesus is his son, there were only male disciples, etc. They are defending a patriarchal church with a patriarchal God. We must fight the patriarchal misunderstanding of God."
Hans Kung Christian theologian.

Organizations like ‘Call to Action’ have began to form with an aim to foster peace and justice in the Church and society. They believe ‘... that the Spirit of God is at work in the whole church, not just in its appointed leaders.’ and wish for more openness. They want to abandon priestly celibacy and allow women priests. The Women Priest organization wants similar action. Both are Catholic but disagree with its archaic doctrine. Many such reforming bodies exist within but at odds with the Church.

Can the Catholic Church modernize? It seems to have started relying on Third World countries for new advocates, like Tobacco companies, targeting growth areas while the numbers in the West decline.
On reform, the latest pontiff, Pope Benedict XII seems to take one step forward then two steps back. Joseph Ratzinger was voted in because he was a hard-liner. If this is the attitude the Church is taking when increasing numbers are turning their back on it and ever more believers question its authority, what hope does it really have?

END

Other possible interviewees:

Interview with Sinead O’Conner who was excommunicated for becoming a priest

Interview with Manuel Corral head of the Palmerian Catholic Church who has been excommunicated twice

Interview with Germaine Greer

Interview with Angus McLaren author of ‘A History of Contraception’

Interview with Susan George- political scientist

Interview with Randy Engel author of ‘Rite of Sodomy’

Interview with Rev. John p Beal, instigator of the Virtus program

Interview Andy Forest at Stonewall

Interview with author of ‘Mother Teresa-Truth’ Christopher Hitchens

© imaginary films Ltd 2006