Understanding the Infidels
Nov 14, 2024 | 804 words | Politics, Religion
When no one from my side of the church took communion at our nuptial mass a few weeks ago it was a stark reminder that Mother Church has lost her hold on the hearts and minds of a generation. Or maybe two.
The priest sex abuse scandal is often cited as a root cause, but that just constitutes the last nail in the coffin, if you ask me. I see the rejection of religion as an unintended consequence of the upward mobility so many of us have enjoyed over the last half century or so.
Material prosperity has emboldened us to ‘stand on our own two feet’ intellectually speaking, and distance ourselves from the belief system that sustained our parents and grandparents. As we have found and fallen in love with the good life we have ceased to dream of eternity, as someone once wrote.
Visiting Rome for the first time this week has given me a new perspective on how this wholesale defection began, about 500 years ago. I mean, I always knew there was lots of medieval plotting and palace intrigue, lots of jockeying for power and political corruption in the Catholic Church’s hierarchy.
But reading about it and coming face-to-face with the physical manifestations in the form of so many ornate cathedrals and impressive works of art paid for by powerful banking families who were “Catholic-in-name-only,” and commissioned by Popes with mistresses and illegitimate children, with the sordid details of all the scheming and power-grabs spelled out by tour guides steeped in this history, is a different thing entirely.
My first reaction has been a new-found empathy for none other than Martin Luther (1483-1546), an historical figure I had previously dismissed as a well-intentioned reformer who got carried away and threw the baby out with the bath water.
I did some quick research from my hotel room and learned a little more about this rebel who upset the apple cart of Catholicism. Luther was an Augustinian friar who had been dispatched to Rome in 1510 to settle a dispute involving the Augustinian order in Germany. He not only saw the Holy City as the pinnacle of his spiritual aspirations, but was hoping the trip would shore up what had been his failing spirituality.
While in Rome he made a point to visit every relic he could find, in the hope of availing himself of every ounce of grace that homage to such an object might offer. But these supposedly sacred sites were at odds with the corruption surrounding them. He saw firsthand how the Church had thoroughly monetized the grace of God.
Confronted with so much vice and debauchery, so much blatant disregard for foundational Christian teaching, the man was possessed of enough devotional integrity to ask himself: “Holy cow, is everybody in this town on the take?”
Luther’s much anticipated 1510 trip to Rome ended in disillusionment and confusion, resulting in the 1517 publication of his Ninety-Five Theses we are all familiar with. After only a few days here myself I now see him in a completely different light, and think of him as having given this attempt at a major overhaul his best shot. I admire him for his effort.
In the same way, I don’t blame my side of the church for not taking communion at our nuptial mass, and understand that doing so would have been intellectually dishonest for many of them. I also, by the way, do not consider any of the abstainers to be ‘infidels’ in any sense of the term. In fact, the concept of ‘infidel’ does not have any purchase in my understanding of human nature.
That this word appears in my title is meant as a gentle tweak of those who think it does have currency, who think of their preferred belief system as providing them with a lock on the truth. (And by the way, this charge of intellectual smugness extends to all my atheist friends as well, who seem to think of their skepticism as the ultimate trump card.)
It’s good to be certain of something, but in my experience real hardcore certainty is hard to come by. There are so many layers to the truth, so much nuance to discover in every story.
I think it boils down to our all being on a lifelong journey to try and understand ourselves, and understand this world we have found ourselves in. If that journey involves forsaking religion for ‘reason,’ or adhering to a religious tradition other than the one I have chosen to embrace, I am not inclined to condemn you.
Quite the opposite. By virtue of the way I was raised and educated, I am predisposed to see the dignity, or what some call the Imago Dei, in every person I encounter, or even read about in the news.
Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.
bobcavjr@gmail.com