Quit Circling the Wagons, PLEASE!

I received this note in response to someone who was pushing folks to "defend to the death" (so to speak) the behavior of the Catholic Church in lieu of the most recent flap... enjoy.
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This is so unbelievably awful, I can't even begin to figure out how to respond -- but hey, I'll just start and see what comes out.

I would REALLY LIKE a Church that the world hates -- but I have a suspicion that MY hated-by-the-world Church might be different from yours:

I would like a Church that takes the American flag out of its sanctuary and stops pledging its allegiance to the political leaders of the day (and stops singing "America the Beautiful" on the Fourth of July).

I would like a Church that actually doesn't believe that we are the Promised People living in the Promised Land, and God is on our side no matter what we do.

I would like a Church that reminds us regularly that riches are not the goal of our lives and challenges us constantly to "sell what we own and give it to the poor" .. And I would like a Church that actually lives as if it believes that message.

I would like to have had a Church strong enough to stand in the pulpit and preach peace when everyone was yelling "Time to go to war in Iraq" -- I didn't hear very many of those voices; how many did you hear? a Church that reiterates that the end doesn't justify the means (wow! we could have used THAT message before we invaded Iraq) ...

And I don't hear Church voices now on the morality/immorality of sending drones into foreign countries that kill innocent bystanders, or using mercenary soldiers to carry out military missions because they can do so without answering to anyone except themselves, or carving out military programs that have carte blanche permission to assassinate people.

I would like to hear more Church voices talking about Guantanamo and the use of torture, and how this good "(supposedly) Christian" nation should at least not be using interrogation techniques on fellow human beings that rival those used on Jesus. And how maybe our policy of "rendition" is just unbelievably evil.

I would have liked to have had a Church standing up strongly for the health care bill that passed recently; where were those voices (except for the nuns -- who took flak from the bishops for speaking out)?

I would like now to hear more Church voices speaking out for the poor, the disenfranchised (that would include gay people), the immigrants (legal and not), the homeless, the hungry and all those people who are in our prisons for very little reason at all.

And I would like to hear more Church voices speaking out on behalf of those who are not Christian -- yes, even Muslims! -- acknowledging that they too have a place at God's table.

I would like to hear more Church voices reminding us that we as Christians are into community-building more than individualism, that there needs to be more "we" and less "me" in our goal orientation.

Yeah, I would like a Church that the world hates. But in fact, I think we have exactly the opposite problem; we use the Church to defend our country, our way of life, our wants .. to define God the way WE want God to be, to exclude those WE don't like, to excuse ourselves for turning our backs on those WE don't want to share with. And the Church, generally, lets us do it.

So the Church is just way too OK with the world, and it will stay that way unless and until we realize that if we want to follow Jesus, we need to challenge the powers-that-be, we need to put ourselves out there on a limb and know that it's going to be sawed off under us.

In those places where the Church IS hated -- say, parts of South America where priests, religious and lay people are standing side-by-side with the poor -- it's usually because the Church isn't aligned with the political/social/economic rulers of the country. And in those places, there is a REAL threat, and believers can and do lose their lives.

But the Pope? Give me a break.

As far as the abuse is concerned -- Well, I'm a senior citizen; I lived through the years when all of us inside the Catholic community ignored Father So-and-So when he came to the altar on Sunday morning absolutely drunk ... He was just ill, poor Father, and we didn't talk about his problem back then.

I lived through the years when we knew that at least some of the good Fathers' housekeepers were more than that, but we didn't talk about it, because that isn't what you did back then.

And I lived through the years when we didn't talk about sexual abuse either, because that wasn't what you did back then. And Church leaders thought that if priests were sent off to rehabilitation, they could erase their desire to have sex with the altar boys (maybe it was fortunate we didn't have altar girls in those days). Still, it seems like after two or three or four rounds of rehabilitation, bishops would have sort of gotten the drift that it wasn't working really well, or that Father wasn't listening to the Holy Spirit (or whoever it was we thought would transform him) -- and maybe they would have given Father a desk job where he couldn't even come in contact with kids.

But now we know better, don't we? And now these "kids" -- who aren't kids any more and who are, many of them, still suffering from the trauma of their experiences -- are saying they want more honesty, and the most we can come up with is that our poor Holy Father is being attacked???

Why can't Benedict come out in public and say what I just said? "We knew (well, some of us knew, and he was one of them) it was going on, and in the context of the society at the time, we did what we believed would be helpful. The truth is, it didn't work, and lots of kids (and their families) suffered. We cannot undo that, and we cannot erase what happened. What we CAN do now is recognize the reality of this problem and change how we deal with it -- and that is what we are trying to do."

If he would just be honest about what happened and his part in what happened -- why he did what he did, and I think there IS a reason -- people would be able to forgive. Instead, he and all the other hierarchical leaders circle the wagons, deny any culpability, put the onus of evil on the victims and act as if they are somehow reliving the passion of Jesus. NOT!!

It's very hard for the victims to confront what they have gone through, and being able to forgive is a big part of that -- But how can they feel the power of their forgiveness when the person on the other side is denying they ever did anything wrong?

Sitting inside a bubble and talking about this as if it is an attack on the Pope is not helpful at all -- not to him, not to ourselves, not to the Church in general.