Why to remain a Catholic

[Mathew Moothasseril]

Why I cannot even think about leaving the Catholic Church We do not
know what kind of Church there will be after this abuse crisis, but we
must assume that it will probably get worse before it gets better
Massimo Faggioli
United States September 24, 2018

I am one of those Roman Catholics who had never heard or imagined that
there were abusive priests sexually preying on children.Neither could
I have imagined a clerical system that protected abusive priests
rather than their victims; a system that perpetuated the suffering of
those abused.Before moving to the United States in 2008, I spent more
than 30 years of parish life in the mid-sized city of Ferrara in
northern Italy. My Catholic experience there had been remarkably
healthy and happy, despite the usual tensions with this or that
particular priest or bishop.I started to become aware of the epidemic
of sexual abuses committed by clergy only in 2002, thanks to the
investigative reporting of the Boston Globe.Now as the parent of small
children who attend a Catholic school in the Philadelphia area (one of
the epicenters of the abuse crisis in the USA), I have been further
educated about what happened and how to prevent it from happening
again.The sex abuse crisis is the greatest scandal in modern Church
history, and we do not know yet what kind of Church will survive this
protracted moment of public shame.This crisis has understandably
caused many to question whether they can stay in the Catholic Church.
A number of Catholics known for engaging in public issues have written
articles to explain why they remain. No question, it’s becoming harder
to justify the reasons why. But despite the shock and disgust over the
revelations of historic cases of abuse – and revelations that will
continue to arise for a long time – I have never thought about leaving
the Church and I cannot think about leaving it now. It’s not because I
am a theologian, for whom the Catholic Church is not just another
social phenomenon to be studied like others or whose relevance changes
according to the Zeitgeist.It’s not just the sacramental argument –
that baptism made of me a member of the Church and that I need the
sacraments of the Church in my life. It’s not even the ecclesiological
argument – the Church has always been made up of both saints and
sinners.There is, on the one hand, a fundamental difference between
the historical experience of Catholics living in a young Church in a
social and political environment that assumed some degree of freedom
and democracy (as in the United States), and those Catholics who are
the descendants of a Church that has survived other crisis.There was
not only the scandalous behavior of Renaissance cardinals and popes,
which shook believers like Martin Luther in 16th century.Think also of
the Church in the 20th century as it allied with Fascism, Nazism and
other dictatorial regimes. And then there was the Catholic Church that
had many of its members who were indifferent or even instrumental to
the Holocaust and the persecution of the Jews.The long history of
confrontation and alliance between Church and political power (from
the Roman Empire to the nationalisms of the last century) has
disabused European Catholics from any illusion about the purity of the
institutional Church.It has made them more capable to separate human
failings from the true nature of what the Church is about. This is a
factor in the gap between the different perceptions of the abuse
scandal in different areas of the world.Catholicism’s center of
gravity has shifted in recent years from Europe towards North America.
It has coincided chronologically with the explosion of the abuse
crisis whose epicenter is in the United States. This geo-religious
shift, together with the abuse scandal, has re-centered Catholicism in
a cultural system in which religious belonging is more pluralistic and
more subject to shifts.Compared to Christians in most other countries,
Americans tend to be more inclined to move from one Church to another
or formally leave the Church and renounce their faith altogether.
Elsewhere, being Catholic is not always measured by Mass attendance
and participation in the life of the Church.And, yet, Catholic
identity seems to be culturally more resilient, even though in a
disguised and almost subconscious way. This is the type of Catholicism
I grew up in and it is one of the reasons I never thought about
leaving the Church.But there is also something more personal to
explain why I stay. I mean no disrespect towards those who feel it is
impossible to remain in a Church devastated by the abuse scandal or
those who feel the need to justify why they do not leave. But this is
not my experience. In fact, the opposite happened to me in a certain
sense.My Catholic faith has become stronger since moving to the United
States. While some people have experienced cosmopolitanism as a grave
threat to their religious roots and identity, this has not been true
in my case.I still have Italian citizenship, but I no longer live in
Italy; I live in the United States but I am not yet a U.S.
citizen.Being a “resident alien” with a green card is a limited form
of belonging that makes other identities stronger. I started to see my
Catholicism as a form of insurance against other de-humanizing aspects
of the American and cosmopolitan way of life.Catholicism keeps a lot
of elements in my life in check. It balances the secular and religious
parts of my identity. It helps me avoid the temptation to become
mono-dimensional and fall into the trap of a certain kind of
secularism where one owes nothing to no one and is tethered only by
his or her own personal past.It is about keeping certain bonds that
are bigger and deeper, as Robert Bellarmine identified five centuries
ago, as essential for being Catholic -- common profession of faith,
communion in the sacraments and bond to ecclesiastical authority.It is
Catholicism that helps me avoid the temptation to reduce Christian
faith to politics, to personal or political morality, or to social
issues. It is not about joining a cause or becoming a cause. The
Church is not a cause or an agenda.It is Catholicism that helps me
find and make room for freedom from social control, including the
social control that has been for centuries (and in some sense still
is) typical of Roman Catholicism.The Church is not a club I decided to
join. Nor is it something I can decide to leave. In some sense, I feel
that not even the institutional Church can decide that I should leave
or that I have left. Certainly, I do not leave to the institutional
Church the power to define everything that the Church is.It is a
Church that I cannot even think about leaving because I refuse to
accept the risk of becoming a consumer of the sacred.The Church makes
me a citizen in a culture that is being shaped more and more by
tourists and sightseers of the soul, in a world where – in the words
of Italian author and essayist Roberto Calasso — religion is
identified between the Scylla of visiting tourists and the Charybdis
of religious terrorists.I definitely feel myself to be pilgrim, but
not a tourist of the sacred. I feel I am a native of the Church and
not a tourist that feels safe only while visiting protective compounds
and resorts.I am a cosmopolitan and globalized Catholic who tries not
to look for safe havens from the paradoxes of religious faith.The
entire Catholic Church is my land, and no extraterritoriality is
possible. I do not feel like (and do not want to be) a special kind of
Catholic. I am simply part of the Church as a people of peoples.My
spirituality is not narrowly defined by one author, one book, one
place or one Church movement. It strives to be the spirituality of the
Church. To quote my friend David Gibson’s Twitter bio, I am too
tempted to call myself “religious but not spiritual.”I also see my
remaining in the Church as a remedy from the virtualization of the
world and from the illusions of “enhanced reality,” which often shapes
our dreams and expectations of the Catholic Church.I need mediation,
and the flaws in the various forms of ecclesial and ecclesiastical
mediation remind me of my own flaws – the ones I know and the ones I
do not even want to know. The abuse crisis is pushing us to rethink
many aspects in the life of the Church, and even our theology. This is
a difficult and, often, terrible time to be a Catholic theologian in
the public square.It reminds me of the words of Italy’s late prime
minister Alcide de Gasperi at the Paris Peace Conference in 1946. As
the representative of a country that had lost the Second World War it
helped start as an ally of Adolf Hitler, he said: “I feel that
everything, except your personal kindness, is against me.”In the abuse
crisis we have discovered a cancer in the Church. It is up to us to
find a cure for it and do everything possible for the victims and
survivors. We do not know what kind of Church there will be after
this, but we must assume that it will probably get worse before it
gets better. Still, I am not among those who are torn over whether to
leave or stay in the Church. I do not stay because I have decided to
stay in the Church. It’s the Church that stays in me.Follow me on
Twitter @MassimoFaggioli

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*GATHER THE SCATTERED*

Fr Mathew Moothasseril
Sant Thoma Bhavan
Post Box 306
RAMAN MALA
Kolhapur,416 003
Maharashtra
INDIA