Reflections on Institutional Catholic-ism: A Critical Perspective

By Harry Gael Michaels

Many Catholics, today, struggle with issues of faith in the Church and yet, as children, have been intimidated from questioning the “sacred dogma” for fear of jeopardizing their “immortal soul”. To a child growing up Catholic the unquestioned authority of priests pre-dispose children to the seductive influences of this ki

• Language: English
• Publisher: TOPLINK PUBLISHING, LLC
• Release date: Mar 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781948779388

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Reflections

on Institutional Catholic-ism

A Critical Perspective

Harry Gael Michaels

Copyright © 2018 by Harry Gael Michaels.

Paperback: 978-1-948779-37-1

eBook: 978-1-948779-38-8

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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Contents

Prologue

Introduction

The Critique—Part I

The Mission—Part II

The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

Epilogue

Reading Material

Prologue

For the past several years one after another revelation has seen the light of day of priests sexually abusing children along with their abetting bishops and, indeed, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. For the past several centuries there has been an entrenchment and fortification of Papal mentality that has held a secretive motif among the hierarchy. One wonders if the Church can, or ought to, survive with such rigid and closed attitudes toward its own sins or whether it must yield to the evolution of humanity and do an honest assessment of its abuses of power and clean house for future generations who wish to cultivate the treasures of its essential Spirit. It can be alleged that the Church’s systemic or institutional problems began during the time of its investiture of temporal/political and magisterial authority, through the Donation of Constantine in the 4 th century AD---a document that was later demonstrated to be a for gery.

Introduction

During the time of Emperor Constantine, I (272-337 AD) there was a dispute as to the temporal authority of the Roman Church. Before he died it was alleged that Constantine (as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire) granted popes, as inheritors of St. Peter, and referred to as the Donation of Constantine, dominion over lands in Judea, Greece, Asia, Thrace, Africa and the entire Western Roman Empire, while leaving Constantine with imperial authority in the Eastern Roman Empire as an attempt toward consolidation of his own Christian Empire---even though it was later determined that this document was a forgery, however, it has been used by the Church since the 11th century to support the temporal power of the Church. Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457), a priest and traveling professor who Alfonso V of Aragon had appointed as his secretary, was charged to investigate the document as to its validity. Alfonso had been involved in frequent wars in Europe over the unsettled question of who ruled where in dispute with the Papal States. He was, therefore, interested in revealing the document as a fraud. Valla did some historical work and found the document using words that did not exist during the time of Constantine but it wasn’t until Feb. 11, 1929 that the Vatican was recognized as a sovereign State by Benito Mussolini on behalf of King Victor Emmanuel III. Lorenzo Vallla’s essay had begun circulating as far back as 1440 but was mightily rejected by the Church. Since that time the Roman Church, as led by the Vatican, has been regarded as a sovereign State with absolute religious and moral authority over its faithful. (Macro History & World Re port)

In October of 2012 in Ireland, Savita Halappanavar died of an infection associated with a miscarriage. She was a 31year old married woman, four months pregnant. She could easily have been saved if the already doomed fetus had been aborted. Instead, her doctors did nothing, explaining that, this is a Catholic country, and left her to suffer in agony for days.

Savila’s death is just the latest in a long line of tragedies directly attributable to the doctrines and beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church. As a former, Jesuit educated Catholic, myself, I am aware of the many good, progressive Catholics, that make up the body of the Church, but the problem is that the Church is not a democracy, and those who have a desire to hold the institution accountable for its errors have no voice or vote in its governance. The Church is a rigid oligarchy, a dictatorship like the medieval monarchies it once existed alongside, and it remains an institution run by a small circle of conservative, rigidly ideological old men who make all the decisions and choose their own successors. Part of the problem that Catholics are having in modern times is that whatever individual Catholics may do, the resources of the Church as an institution are dedicated toward opposing evolutionary progress and enlightened change all over the world.

When the devastating exposure of sexual perversion and exploitation of children as perpetrated by priests and bishops broke in the news I felt compelled to write a letter to the local Archbishop of San Francisco as follows:

Jan. 2009

Your Eminence:

I felt I must respond to the recent apology of the Pope Benedict XVI for the latest heinous behavior of priests in Ireland and Germany and elsewhere----not to mention in the United States. I wonder if the Pope is aware that such utterances on the part of the Catholic Papacy are becoming a subject of ridicule and derision because of the