Wolseley -
I agree that Law made some very stupid moves; he acted on very bad advice, and did some very unwise things.
How much evidence does it take for you to change "Law made some very stupid moves... acted on very bad advice... did some very unwise things" to "Law is guilty of criminal negligence and attempting to pervert the course of justice"?
I mean, it's just so incredibly obvious.
The first thing to remember is that a Catholic prelate cannot just "resign". He cannot leave his position without the express permission of the Roman Pontiff. In other words, he can't resign unless the Pope says he can resign. The second thing to remember is that Law tried to resign last April, but the Pope requested that he go back to Boston and try to straighten out some of the mess he caused.
Well, this raises two questions:
- Why didn't the Pontiff feel that it was necessary for Law to resign last year? How much did he actually know about the situation?
- Why didn't Law "straighten out some of the mess he caused" in the first place?
The entire situation is completely mind-boggling. It reminds me of the Albino affair.
I submit that the Holy See moves at its own pace and has its own reasons, which many times do not coincide with the wishes or demands of the populace, and especially those of the media.
I submit that the Holy See does not move at the pace demanded by (a) Biblical principles, (b) Christ's own teachings, and (c) common decency. If she believes that she has some kind of God-given privilege which vindicates her decision to drag it out for as long as possible, then the onus is on her to prove it.
quote:
He has corrupted the dignity of his position
No argument there.
Fine.
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and destroyed the credibility of his Church
Not even close.
Oh, I'll grant you that the credibility of the undying faithful is unlikely to be eroded by
any act of omission or comission by the Church. But that's not really the point, is it? The point is that it becomes increasingly difficult to see the Church as a credible moral figure, when so much of her history (yes, even her
modern history) is rife with crime, theological machinations, and political intrigue.
With these factors in mind, the alleged infalibility of the Pope (which has been - if I rember correctly - so rarely exercised as to be effectively non-existent), becomes something of a theological redundancy.
If anything, he has destroyed his own credibility; and he has ironically helped to bring to light the major festering boil in the American Church, which is that of weak and unorthodox bishops who have failed to remain faithful to the orthodox teaching of the Catholic Faith, with the result that we have suffered under "Catholicism Lite" for the last 35 years---and the sex scandal is only one facet of that problem. IMHO, the scandal has done much to lance the boil, and things are likely to change for the better in the coming few decades.
I'll agree with all of this quite happily. No church is immune to the sinful, corruptible nature of man - which is precisely why no church is in a position to set herself up as the "Mother and Teacher", complete with an alleged representative of God on Earth.
I might also mention that if the Catholic Church can survive Nero, Diocletian, Arianism, Gnosticism, the barbarian invasions, 500 years of Dark Ages, feudalism, Albigensianism, the Reformation, the French Revolution, the Enlightenment, humanism, Darwin, Marx, Freud, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao-tse-Tung, then Bernard Law is rather small potatoes indeed; I rather suspect that the Church---and her credibility---will survive him just fine.
Three points:
- I see no evidence that your church even existed before the 900s.
- History records that the people who survived the earliest persecutions were just everyday Christians, rather than the impenetrable phalanx of theological bureaucrats upon whom your Church has come to rely.
- Countless other groups (much smaller than your own) have survived just as much persecution as that to which you refer (above.) Most of them were on the receiving end of the unGodly acts committed in the name of Christianity by Catholics and Reformed Protestants alike. So if you're going to make an argument for legitimacy on the basis of sheer "survival", you'll also have to include the Jews and the Unitarian Anabaptist tradition.
On the history of the Papacy and the gradual evolution of the Church, see the following, from an Australian ex-Jesuit priest who later became a history professor:
On the point the role of the Papacy in the conversion of Europe we need some background for, in the early Church prior to Toleration in AD 313, there had been no suggestion that the Bishop of Rome exercised any significant influence, much less authority, outside his own domain. However, when Constantines Edict of Toleration (AD 313) granted freedom of belief and worship to Christians, a completely new situation developed which necessitated a radical change in Church policy. For, from that time on, the emperors were Christians; and increasingly, they tended to rule the Church as a kind of Department of State, as if they rather than thee bishops were the successors of St Peter and the Apostles.
[..]
Gradually, over the next century or so, as the tension increased between the Caesar or Emperor in the East and the Pope or Bishop of Rome in the West, the Successors of Peter became ever more adamant in their insistence that they, rather than the eastern emperors, should be the arbiters of all Church affairs. So, in the mid 5th Century, we find Pope Leo I (440-461) calling himself the Vicar of Peter that is, the one who acts in the place of Peter. Not the Vicar of Christ the modern title which gained ascendancy only from the 11th Century onwards but the Vicar of Peter and the heir to his administration.
[...]
By the time of the Lombard campaigns in the mid 700s, another political factor was adding further prestige to the Papacy in spiritual rather than political terms. For, with the rapid expansion of Islam, all through the Middle East and right across North Africa in the century following Mohammeds death in 634, all the other Apostolic Sees (Jerusalem, Antioch and Ephesus), which had originally evangelized by one or other of the apostles, were now in Islamic hands; and this meant that the only surviving Apostolic See in Christendom was Rome. Hence, Romes present claim to the title, The Apostolic See.
Almost by chance, therefore, from the late 700s, not only did the popes claim spiritual authority over the whole of Christendom as Successors of Peter and bishop of the one and only surviving Apostolic See, but they were recognized as the political overlords of about one-fifth of Italy also this new status of the Papacy being confirmed in the papal coronation of Charlemagne in the year 800.
[
]
One of the clearest indications of the new role of the Papacy can be seen in the fact that, before the early 1100s, not a single General or Ecumenical Council of the Church had been summoned by a pope or even held in the capital West: from the early 12th Century onwards, however, there would be frequent Councils; all would be held in the West; and all would be summoned and directed by the pope.
R. W. Southern supplies the details in Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages, as follows: Between the seventh century and the early twelfth the Councils are few and, from a western point of view, insignificant. They are all held in Byzantine territory (one at Nicaea, in 787, and two in Constantinople, in 680 and 869), and there were no representatives from the West except the papal legates, who played a minor role in the proceedings. The whole picture therefore is one of western inertia and papal impotence.
Guthridge, Ian (1999), The Rise and Decline of the Christian Empire, pp. 77-80, 126.
We can discuss this if you're interested. I'm not simply here to bash the Catholic Church (believe it or not.)
"The gates of hell shall not prevail", and all that sort of thing, you know.
Sure.
The Church is in the business of forgiveness and rehabilitation instead of judgement and condemnation; and I suspect that this is what the Holy See was trying to do with Cardinal Law.
But why do we see so little in the way of punishment and adherence to legal procedures?
What concerns me is the Church's apparent lack of regard for the basic Christian principle of personal responsibility. I mean, just exactly how
does one go about "rehabilitating" a corrupt, 71-year old bureaucrat? At what point can we expect the Church to mete out a little of that good old-fashioned retribution for which she is historically known? Recalling the fact that she certainly didn't waste any time in burning the heretics of the "bad old days", I would venture to suggest that she can also discipline the members of her own hierarchy, instead of throwing out a constant stream of excuses for their unChristlike behaviour.
Quod erat demonstrandum. 
