Maybe It's All Bullshit

I was born a “member” of the Catholic Church. I went to Catholic schools all the way through college, then walked away for good. It was without rancor or bitterness. I just had had enough. Around that time the Beatles went to India to meditate, and that seemed more meaningful to me. I have been involved in the meditative arts in one way or the other ever since.

Though I left Catholicism permanently long ago, it hasn’t left me. Because most of my relatives are still at least nominal Catholics, I end up in Catholic churches from time-to-time for weddings and funerals. The Pope is in the news on a weekly basis. I get calls from my alma mater asking for money, though I haven’t given a penny ever. My high school used to ask for money, but finally gave up. When I would get their alumni newsletters it would be depressing, the fake cheeriness about being Catholics and what a “success” everyone was.

What comes back most often, though, is news about the ongoing molestation scandals involving priests, nuns, and the Church hierarchy. Even the Madison diocese has hired investigators to delve into past crimes. I have always found these stories wanting. They focus on periphery. Some priests (and nuns) molested children, mainly boys, and the Church covered up. On to the next story. It keeps happening, we keep hearing about it. No context, no depth, no explanation.

I can give some depth. When I was growing up we were told repeatedly that the Catholic Church is the one true religion, and that all others were false. At best their followers were going to “Limbo,” but most likely “Hell.” We were told not to be friends with Protestant kids for fear of being contaminated in some unspecified way. Led to “sin” was of course the fall-back threat.

Sin was the overarching menace that lurked everywhere in a Catholic adherent’s life. Conform to the proscribed behaviors or else. When you do sin, confess to a priest. The priest has the power, derived from “God,” to forgive these sins. The absurdity of this admonition is hard to write about, hard to believe anyone would believe it, but believe it we did, and continued on our merry way, sinning and confessing in succession for years, decades, most often for lifetimes.

So a priest, officially celibate, forbidden to have sexual gratification of any kind, is given the power from “God” to forgive sins – or not forgive – and also to baptize, give “Communion,” “confirm,” marry and send one off to “Heaven” with the “last rites” – Extreme Unction, which everyone pronounced “extry munction.”

Over the centuries as Catholicism grew, it became doctrinaire, authoritarian and patriarchal. It had to resort to severe measures to keep the faithful in line. The threat of eternal damnation was wielded often, and excommunication meant temporal damnation. Corporal punishment took an increasing role, going as far as imprisonment, torture, burning at the stake, beheading and starvation. Heresy – disagreeing with Church doctrine or authority in any way, was a very risky endeavor.

In my own experience I was hit on the front and back of the hand with thick wooden rulers, had my hair and ears pulled, was forced to kneel on my hands in front of a statue of the “Virgin Mary,” had my head repeatedly knocked against that of another boy, was slapped in the face and head, and had my arm squeezed almost to the bone with a nun’s fingers. A priest in my high school would punch boys in the face with a closed fist, sometimes breaking noses. I was lucky to not be one of them. He also was a molester. I again was lucky not to be one of his victims. All I suffered from him were insults, known these days as verbal abuse.

In Yoga terms it is all about the lower chakras. Or Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – the deficiency needs of sex, power and money. In spiritual growth, or growth as a human being in general, these are the hardest obstacles to overcome. Having enough material security, an integrated sex life, or at least having the energy under control, and mutual, symbiotic relationships with other people are all necessary for a meaningful existence. They are also preconditions to advancement to higher levels.

Of course, if you are God’s representative on Earth, and the gatekeeper for entry beyond the gates of “Heaven,” there is no need to progress through these lower levels. You already have reached an exalted level. The unexalted are below you. In such a context they are fair game. Control their “salvation” and you control their lives. Pulling their pants down is within your power to, hmm, minister.

The molesting priest in my high school was named James Beatty, CSV. He had been the Dean of Boys, but his violence was too much for the wealthier parents of teenage boys, so he was farmed-out to the library. I saw him punch a boy in the nose for coming in to study hall about two seconds after the bell. The guy had a clean white shirt on, and blood all over the front. “Father” Beatty also had some kind of ministry at a high school seminary in a nearby town, and the State of Illinois, which is looking into priestly sexual abuse, should look into what went on there. I knew a few likely victims. The most certain was a guy who drank himself to death at age 30.

I have a question for the priesthood. If Catholicism is the one, true faith, and you are the vicars of, umm, the Lord, why is that not enough? You have a ticket to Paradise. You’re in. You have it made. You don’t need anything else. I have never had the need to molest little boys. Why do you, God’s representative on Earth? Maybe you aren’t God’s representative on Earth. Maybe it’s all bullshit.

So, the Pope can clean up as much as he wants, but it’s too late with too little. These abuses didn’t just happen. One case would be an aberration. Two, a problem. But thousands upon thousands? It is something endemic. Systematic. Integral. Intrinsic. Incurable. Give people the power, they will abuse it. It is in the nature of an authoritarian system that authority will be abused. It’s human. Priests are humans. They do human things.

Does this mean that the problem will be “cured” by curtailing the power of priests? Hardly. It’s Catholicism. An authoritarian priesthood is part and parcel of the “faith.” Even if priestly power were to be reined-in, how about Catholicism being the one, true religion? Or true at all? What hold is there on the faithful? How do you keep them from straying? Without authority, what’s to keep people from becoming heretics?

Not much. Tradition. Culture. Identity. Friends. Family. Ritual. Pageantry. Words to live by. By themselves they aren’t enough in a complex and ever-changing mass system. The allure of pop culture, recreation, television, the Internet and other forms of excitement are threatening to any religion. To one that molests and threatens with eternal damnation the appeal can only wane. It was never the one, true faith in the first place. It’s just more obvious now.
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Two of the more famous heretics in Catholic history are Galileo Galilei and Giordano Bruno, both believers in the Copernican theory that the Earth rotates around the Sun. Galileo recanted, and avoided execution, but Bruno was not so lucky. His tongue was "imprisoned," he was hung upside down naked, then burned at the stake. Joan of Arc was another, wrongly convicted of heresy. A more recent heretic excommunicated was Fidel Castro. Burning at the stake was no longer an option. Here is a list of other famous excommunicated Catholics.

Here's a song. Here's another. Eddie Money. Joni Mitchell. John Prine. John Denver. More John Denver. Another from John Denver. Belinda Carlisle. AC/DC. Chubby Checker. Jimmy Cliff. Jerry Garcia and David Grisman. The String Cheese Incident. Santana and Everlast. The Grateful Dead. More from the Grateful Dead. Bob Marley. Nine Inch Nails. Frank Zappa.

Here are some songs written while the Beatles were in India: Across the Universe. Dear Prudence. Mother Nature's Son. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. Don't Pass Me By. Back in the U.S.S.R. Revolution. Why Don't We Do It in the Road?

Here's a story of the Beatles' time in India.

This song was inspired by the visit: While My Guitar Gently Weeps.