Le Monde , March 20, 2009.
The Catholic Church is experiencing a crisis of unprecedented magnitude in decades. This crisis is all the more profound because its credibility is being undermined across the board: among non-Catholics, cultural Catholics, and practicing Catholics. The Church is not the victim of external aggression: the causes of its current woes do not lie with the "enemies of the faith" or anticlericals. Two serious cases, which fall under the responsibility of its hierarchy, have brutally exposed its contradictions: the lifting of the excommunication of four traditionalist bishops, one of whom holds Holocaust denial views, and the almost simultaneous excommunication by the Archbishop of Recife of a mother and a medical team who performed an abortion on a nine-year-old girl pregnant with twins, a victim of rape, whose life was in danger.
Added to this are the remarks made by Benedict XVI on the plane to Africa, the continent most affected by the AIDS pandemic: "We cannot solve the problem of AIDS by distributing condoms; on the contrary, their use aggravates the problem." The first case caused outrage primarily because of the odious Holocaust denial remarks of Bishop Williamson and the Vatican's triple failing: failing to inform the Pope of statements known to informed circles since November 2008; promulgating the decree on January 24th, even though these remarks had been making headlines worldwide since January 22nd; and finally, the slowness of their condemnation.
But this lifting of the excommunication “without conditions,” a prelude to a process of reintegration into the Church, has also deeply troubled many Catholics attached to the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and its values of religious freedom and dialogue with other religions, values constantly denied by fundamentalists. In the letter to the bishops made public on March 12, the Pope acknowledges errors in the handling of the Williamson case and attempts to justify the lifting of the excommunication by using the argument of mercy: “Whoever proclaims God as love taken ‘to the very end’ must bear witness to love: to dedicate themselves with love to those who suffer.”
One can understand that, in the name of the Gospel message, the Pope might want to forgive and give a second chance to those who have been spouting extremist and intolerant rhetoric for years. But then why does the Church continue to forbid communion to divorced and remarried Catholics? Why does it so harshly condemn the relatives of a raped girl who saved her life by having her have an abortion? Should mercy only be extended to fundamentalists? And how can the rape of a child be considered less serious than an abortion, especially one performed for vital reasons?
The scandal is so great that several French bishops have spoken out to condemn an unjust decision that contradicts not only common morality but also the Gospel message. Suffice it to cite the episode where Jesus refuses to condemn an adulterous woman, who, according to the law, must be stoned, and instead declares to the ultra-legalists of the time: “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” (John 8). He himself transgressed religious law on several occasions. Dostoevsky imagined that if Jesus had returned to Torquemada's Spain, he would have been condemned to the stake for preaching freedom of conscience. In the Church of Benedict XVI, one wonders if he might not be excommunicated for advocating that love transcend the law
No one is asking the Church to renounce its convictions. But what is unacceptable is the theoretical and sometimes brutal way the hierarchy reaffirms the norm, when all that exists are concrete, unique, and complex situations. As Bishop Yves Patenôtre, Bishop of the Mission of France, pointed out, the excommunication pronounced by the Archbishop of Recife, confirmed by Rome, "disregards the traditional pastoral practice of the Catholic Church, which is to listen to people in difficulty, to accompany them, and, in matters of morality, to consider the 'lesser evil.'" The same can be said for the fight against AIDS. While the use of condoms is certainly not the ideal solution, it remains, in fact, the best defense against the spread of the epidemic for all those who struggle to live the abstinence and fidelity advocated by the Church. African priests know something about this.
The history of the Church is marked by this permanent tension between fidelity to the message of compassion towards each person of its founder and the attitude of its leaders who often end up losing sight of this message to prioritize the interest of the institution – which has become an end in itself – or to lock themselves into a meticulous, absurd and dehumanizing legalism.
The pontificate of John Paul II was marked by profound ambiguity: uncompromising and traditionalist on moral and doctrinal matters, he was also a man of dialogue and compassion, making numerous powerful gestures toward the humble and other religions. Benedict XVI inherited only the conservative side of his predecessor. And the Church no longer has figures like Abbé Pierre or Sister Emmanuelle, those "believable believers," to speak out against dehumanizing dogmatic decisions, thus playing a cathartic role and serving as invaluable mediators between the faithful and the institution.
A silent schism threatens the Church on its left, far more serious than that of the traditionalists. Benedict XVI intended to re-evangelize Europe. He may have succeeded only in winning back a handful of fundamentalists, at the cost of losing many faithful attached to Gospel values and individuals searching for meaning to whom Rome seems to offer nothing but dogma and rigid rules.