Medicine for the Catholic Church

     Medicine for the Catholic Church

        Some philosophical doctoring

 

          1. A Question of Motive

          I write about the troubles of the Catholic Church, and offer three diagnoses and two prescriptions. The remedies I prescribe are powerful and effective but safe and convenient; and I offer them free of charge.

          But first, a question of motive. Why should I help the Catholic Church? I’m not Catholic; but I help out of neighborliness, and also self-interest. If you were walking down the street and noticed that your neighbors were pennying in their fuses, then you might advise them to get some real fuses; for if their house catches on fire, then a few sparks may land on your own roof.

 

          2. Triple Diagnosis    

          The Church’s troubles are three layers deep. On the surface, the problem is psychosexual; below that problem is a managerial/political debacle; and causing that is a persistent cybernetic malfunction.

          The surface psychosexual problem is obvious; priestly sexual ‘abuse’ of minors. (The word ‘abuse’ is a euphemism for rape.) This problem is not unique to the RCC; abusive sex is statistically not zero whenever adults supervise adolescents. Nurses, teachers, counselors, coaches… note Penn State. Pedophilia happens often enough that I suspect the practice has ancient evolutionary roots.

          But civilization is organized to control people’s urges, usually. Turning in pedophile employees to the police is part of management’s function; which brings us to the Church’s managerial/political debacle.

The bishops failed to protect the children; the hierarchy put its needs above the parishioners. So goes the usual charge; but forgive me for not being shocked by normal bureaucratic behavior. That the bishops were incompetent is simply the Peter Principle; that their incompetence nonetheless served corrupt institutional needs is standard opportunism.

In this imperfect world of trial and error, most people don’t mind corrupt incompetence, being that way themselves; but they do object to incompetent corruption. If you’re going to do wrong, then you’d better do wrong right!

The bishops were incompetently corrupt. They hid facts, and moved priests, in order to end scandal; but the facts re-emerged, and the priests re-offended, and the scandal worsened. The more they tried to silence dissent, the louder dissent got.

Why? How come this failure of control? I see it as a cybernetic glitch; a breakdown of the operating system due to faulty programming. The bishops were attempting the mathematically impossible; faultlessness.

To the bishops, the Church could do no wrong; therefore, when it did wrong anyhow, the Church had to seem to have done no wrong; even though creating that false seeming itself involved more wrong-doing. It’s a positive feedback loop, naturally culminating in system crash.

Beneath the sexual dysfunction and the incompetent corruption is nothing less than the sin of Hubris. It is excessive pride; the belief in impunity.

Of course all of this leads back to the Catholic Church’s doctrine of papal infallibility. A church with an infallible pope is bound to believe itself infallible; but infallibilism always backfires.

The Catholic Church proclaims papal infallibility with great solemnity, but solemnity is not wisdom. They use this power rarely, as if it were radioactive; and rightly so. They say that the Pope has been infallible only twice; but that’s twice too often.

Infallibilism is Hubris, which brings on Nemesis. The Greek goddess of retribution fights dirty; she humiliated the celibate church with a sex scandal.

 

3. Double Prescription.

The Catholic Church suffers, on the surface, from a sexual dysfunction; beneath that, from incompetent corruption; and beneath that, from a fatal system error; infallibilism.

The incompetent corruption will probably solve itself by ordinary bureaucratic infighting. The bishops responsible will be kicked upstairs or sideways into useless posts; normal attrition will do the rest. Since clerics have no children, there are no family lines to defend. In a few decades turnover will be 100%, with all posts re-filled from the laity.

That is the great virtue of clerical childlessness; it prevents the rise of a priestly caste. If clerics reproduce, as they do in other faiths, then there will be clerical families; these rise and fall, like all aristocracies. This causes little harm in decentralized faiths; but the church has a Papacy, which it dare not let some falling dynasty’s idiot heir capture and drag down. Hence no bishop’s sons; enforced so far by clerical celibacy; but clerical celibacy causes other problems.

I therefore propose that the Catholic Church replace clerical celibacy with clerical sterility. Let there be vasectomies for all priests, tube-tying for all nuns, and sterilization also for their spouses. Let them marry but have no children; this will give them personal experience with married life, but will prevent nepotism.

Clerical sterility, as opposed to clerical celibacy, has all the benefits of the old system (no priestly castes) and none of its defects (sexual alienation, recruitment shortfalls). It is safe and simple; less a reform than a tweak.

But no change, however helpful, can happen unless the Church can change at all. Infallibilism opposes change. Infallibilism is the denial of error; but denying error is not the same as correcting it. In fact infallibilism is the opposite of error-correction; it is error-accumulation.

I therefore propose that the Catholic Church replace the doctrine of papal infallibility with its opposite; a doctrine of papal corrigibility. Such a pope is unavoidable, for the Church to continue to be what it is; and is in that sense necessary.

An infallible pope is never wrong; but nobody else can live up to that standard; so an infallible pope is not a guide. Whereas a necessary pope is Catholic by definition; anyone in disagreement with him can go find another church. Thus a necessary pope is stronger within the Church than an infallible one; but in return a necessary pope must submit to the necessity of corrigibility.

A corrigible pope can error-correct. He needn’t be impeccable; his job is not to make no mistakes, for mistakes are inevitable. His job is to unmake mistakes, both his own and those of previous necessary Popes. This makes adaptation possible.

In sum:

 

Diagnosis of the Roman Catholic Church:

Psychosexual dysfunction, uncontrolled due to incompetent managerial corruption; this in turn aggravated by hubristic error accumulation.

 

Prescription:

For the bad sex: replace clerical celibacy with clerical sterility.

For the incompetent corruption: this will purge itself.

For the hubris: replace papal infallibility with papal corrigibility.

 

Fee:

Free. This is pro bono philosophy-doctoring.

 

Signed,

Nathaniel Hellerstein, Doctor of Philosophy