By Stephen Hand
Now that I have rounded that terrible corner of 50 years, I think I have some right---maybe even an obligation--- to make a few uncomfortable observations, for perspective's sake, about the Church as I knew her from the dawning of my consciousness. This is not easy because I must say up front that I have always loved her, the Church, that is, even when I was wandering far, far away from her. I loved her from my youth because of Jesus Christ, crucified for us, because of the Gospel, God’s revelation of Himself to all humankind. I loved her because of the revealed and objective Truth she proffered for a fallen, confused and hurting world, even if I knew these things only hazily then. I loved her because of her works of mercy, her hospitals and orphanages, her work among the lepers and all whom she brought under her sheltering arms from all over the earth. I loved her because, whatever her human weaknesses, she spoke for Life, from conception to the natural grave, and for her proclamation of the received Promise that, in the end, every tear would be wiped away, every injustice righted, and that the God who gave us being would not finish us in the grave, as witness the empty tomb of Jesus, the Word made Flesh (Jn 1:14).
Today there is so much talk of abuse. Some of it, alas, is true. I was never altogether “abused” by the church (*) as the world counts abuse today, though I abused her often enough, even into my maturity as an adult. The picture is more complex. I always knew that I had the promise of eternal forgiveness, and that everyone, Pope, bishops, priests, and fools like myself could make a sincere Act of Contrition, find the Confessional door ever open, and we could walk out of it in a state of grace, fresh as the fallen snow, though our sins be as red as scarlet when we entered it.
I loved her for the crucifixes I saw in hospital rooms where I worked as a teenager, the theology of the cross, which reminded me of the God who not only revealed Himself, but who suffered for and with us, the God who did not remain in his high heaven, aloof in his awesome transcendence as we poor humans walked the gauntlet of life below.
I loved her for the glimpses I saw so often of my grandmother, Anna, with her rosary in front of the sacred art and Heart she had everywhere, offering to remember any sufferings we had, little or great, in the praying of those beads. I loved her also in the glimpses of selfless, loving, nuns stealing a few moments quiet before the Blessed Sacrament in adoration and vicarious atonement, through Him, with Him and in Him (Col 1:24).
How I could go on…
But I must be completely objective and truthful….
I have to smile when I hear convert-integrists and other over-zealous converts who confuse Bing Crosby and The Bells of Saint Mary with the whole picture in some protracted romantic daydream. There is much truth in that movie. But not the whole truth. Not by a long shot. I knew such saintly priests and nuns. But there were also those---not a few--- whom we feared more than loved, those who made little or no effort to understand our dysfunctions, our confusions, or the process, whether psychological or spiritual, which is almost always involved in any path toward wholeness / holiness. Some of the priests I knew when I was young were more like guards in a watchtower, sour keepers of the gates, than doors and windows into heaven. One only let down one’s guard in front of them at what seemed like great risk indeed. It was hard to love them. One did not feel particularly loved by them. They seemed cold, distant, sometimes even cruel, wardens of the crime and punishment regime. Even if one had to go home to a severe, alcoholic father, as not a few of my friends did, there was little sympathy, and the threat of a bash in the face or insult from a priest, nun, or brother, and then being sent precisely there for more, lingered thick in the air around such priests.
Catholic schools in our city were considered prizes for the rich, trophies for the very intelligent. I spent one year in such a Catholic High School----barely passing the terrible and frightening entrance exam----- but only one year, because I was not considered smart enough to continue. My anxiety about being among the fearsome elite probably didn’t help me any.
I remember, as my integrist convert friends cannot, the rushed, mostly mumbled Masses said by too many stoic priests, all of it in an alien tongue, where there was little obvious connection to the Last Supper of the Gospels except for the Cup and Host (critical I admit, but who knew then?). The Baltimore Catechism----so dear to traditionalists today, and even somewhat to me (now that I am 50 and can read a little)---represented a cold and fearful act of memorization and recitation which only added to the intimidation many of us felt. There was little human warmth in it except at the sub-verbal level through its beautiful pictures where not a few of us learned what little theology we garnered (never underestimate the power of sacred art). And I remember how overjoyed we teenage altar boys were when the Mass changed after the Council, so we could finally understand it, and when priests began to take developmental process into consideration in our spiritual / psychological development.
If some went too far in that direction---as many most surely did, we all know---I cannot see how that is the fault of the Council with its remarkable, even superhuman balance and discernment.
Let me say I never knew anyone---anyone!----who in our very Catholic part of the country was sexually abused by priests or nuns. And God knows we wouldn’t have kept it secret from our friends, at least, with our ever-wagging tongues if any of us had been. And more than once, I assure you, we were drunker than Boston flatfoots at the teen dances we attended every Friday for years, and so were vulnerable, I suppose, to such things.
Compared to the incredible, sheer numbers of us baby-boomers, I suspect only a relative handfull were in any way sexually abused, though the media would make you think we all were! But many of us, before the Council, were "abused" (*) in other ways---though I hesitate to use that word.
We were considered mere scamps too often, guilty of all the things young people are notorious for---though not much more. So we paid for it. Too many of us grew up in fear, seeing God as the ultimate Cop, a divine J. Edgar Hoover. Only the equally powerful crucifix saved us from such a false notion altogether (along with the truly Christ-like priests and nuns who, it must be repeated, helped balance the picture). How many of us ended up with rattled nerves, anxious, depressed, or even in the bottle due to the Watch Guard conspiracy which seemed to our untrained eyes to exist between home and church I can only imagine. Even today, at my age, I hear from people whose distaste for the Church has lingered very long, to this very day, because of the elitist, hard hearted ethos which too many of us knew before the Council. I have very close friends and even relatives who think I’m kooky to even want to differentiate those days from the actual teachings of the Church. With them I must speak in the opposite direction and remind them that it was not ALL bad. Indeed that some of it---much of it---was beautiful, sublime…
Believe me, the Second Vatican Council was indeed a breath of fresh air, even if many of us, unused to this fresh shot of Gospel love and a measure of responsible freedom, grew disoriented by such an opening of the Gospel door (in place of the gates) and, with our loins on fire, didn’t hang around long enough to savor it.
For too long Catholicism had existed in a defensive, Tridentine-polemical ghetto warring with Protestants, atheists, and doubters of all sorts. That defensiveness took a toll on the institutional Church. Many knew it. Many called for responsible renewal because of it. The Church had to step back, look again at the Gospels, as it ever must, and find the fullness of His face again, repent of its human failures, give thanks for its triumphs, and go out to the weary masses of people all over the earth, heavily laden with so many troubles, with a renewed vitality and love in the Truth (Eph:4:15). And even if some people were going to get all dizzy and kooky over it, it had to be done. Time alone will help us to see what a precious gift the Second Vatican Council was and is, even as we work to tweak parts of it here and there.
(*)I am speaking here, of course, of the human element in the Church, not of the Mystical Body Herself in her supernatural reality.