Taking a Stand

Jesus told his followers to stop judging or condemning and forgive (Luke 6:37). Sometimes, though, you just have to take a stand.

Several weeks ago, the long-standing media fascination with allegations of sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests flared up again, this time with regard to the State of Pennsylvania and the countries of Australia and Ireland and what the Pope knew, did, or didn't do about the abuse of over a thousand students. The Pope responded with a letter expressing sorrow and shame and the need for and commitment to repentance within the Catholic Church. The very first words of this letter are, "If one member suffers, all suffer together with it." (I Corinthians 12:26)

The subject opened up a number of exceptionally painful old wounds for me personally. The Catholic Diocese of Davenport, where I grew up, was home to two notorious child molester priests, one of whom became a bishop. The diocese eventually underwent bankruptcy as a result of a $37 million settlement it paid to their victims.

Both of these priests were on the faculty of my high school, one when I was there. Fortunately, I escaped being his victim; I wasn't in any of his classes. But it was obvious that some of my instructor priests were having difficulty with their vows of chastity. I was a nerdy, pious, impressionable kid with my own pubescent moral struggles, exceptionally fresh meat for any predatory religious authority figure. I remember wondering why one of them was so hung up on talking or assigning reading about sexual subjects. Another priest refused to take a stand by simply telling me not to worry about it. After sixty years, I still shudder to think how close I came to utter destruction by men whom I had every reason to trust, and even admire. Pope Francis said, "We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them." I don't know if I qualified as a "little one" or not, but I certainly felt abandoned. Still do, as a matter of fact. Nobody ever took a stand for me!

To be fair, these were young men, some of whom I had known as seminarians, who were undergoing their own transitional identity crisis. Not having wives to confront them with their obvious faults, they themselves were victims of the immunity to fraternal correction that is an occupational hazard of representatives of God of every age and denomination throughout history. That is also true of their superiors who, for whatever reason, failed appropriately to take a stand. The extent of their personal guilt is not ours to judge.

I think, though, that society as a whole should examine its collective conscience regarding its lack of sensitivity to all the suffering of its children. That seems to be a universal social problem everywhere, in every age. The United States certainly appears not to give a damn about the suffering of the thousands innocent children who arrive here fleeing from suffering elsewhere!

Another instance of guilt not being ours to judge was the subject of a recent email from a friend of mine in California. She expressed the opinion that the individual who started the Holy Fire just outside her apartment complex, currently alleged to be one Forrest Gordon Clark, "may only go to prison but he will certainly pay in real hell in the next lifetime." I replied with a reminder of the reluctance to judge encouraged by the second church reading for the following Sunday, when our pastor was out of town, from Paul's letter to the Ephesians 4:30 to 5:2:

Brothers and sisters:
Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God,
with which you were sealed for the day of redemption.
All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling
must be removed from you, along with all malice.
And be kind to one another, compassionate,
forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ.

So be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love,
as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us
as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma.

My friend is a fairly new Christian, who apparently subscribes to the common Christian view of hell, no doubt strongly influenced by the first part of Dante Alighieri's 14th-century epic poem, The Divine Comedy, called Inferno. The Italian word actually means "down below," where Dante thought hell was. Thanks to him it has come to mean in English a place of raging fire as well.

Dante wrote at a time when the abuses of the Catholic Church were becoming so acute that they prompted the Protestant Reformation, which is probably the ancestor of my friend's congregation. Taking a stand against Church abuses seems to have been Dante's purpose in writing. His eighth level of Hell, for example, is reserved for those guilty of the sin of hypocrisy. That level contains hypocrite clerics who abused the authority of their office and are doomed as a result forever to wear crushing lead robes overlain by bright gold.

I don't know if this is a fit punishment for consecrated sexual predators or not, but, again, I'm not qualified to judge. My seventh grade teacher obviously thought that she was so qualified, however. Her stand against any evil she perceived was, "That's the work of the Devil!" Although she was a nun, she was such a self-acknowledged authority on the work of the Devil and punishments of hell that she might well have been born and raised there!

I suggested to my friend that it might be helpful to recognize that Mr. Clark, a person obviously in need of love and compassion about which Paul spoke to the Ephesians so eloquently, is not the only person responsible for the fire. Land mismanagement, ground water diversion, greenhouse gas emission, the rollback of environmental protection regulations, withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocols, relaxation of prohibitions against dirty coal pollution and demand for more and more fossil fueled power plants and vehicles have all contributed to the heat and dryness that have made wildfires in her area a virtual certainty. To the extent that any of us have participated in these assaults on our environment, or voted for others who have done so, we are all guilty, to a greater or lesser extent, for the devastation these fires have caused. Dante's fourth circle of hell was reserved for such as these. This is a disaster that threatens the survival of the human race, against which all of us certainly have an obligation to take a stand. Our response seems to be not to worry about it, just like all those child molesting priests!

Catholics, of course, believe in hell, because it is mentioned so many times in Scripture, as is the image of fire as an instrument of torture or cleansing. Catholics are OK with the image of hell as a place of torture of spirits who have rejected God, but we do not necessarily believe that there any human spirits there, or that the torture is other than eternal separation from God. (Jesus claimed that it was "prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matthew 25:41), not necessarily people.) We maintain that nobody is assured of either salvation or damnation until the moment of his death, when he will be individually judged by God, not by us. We claim that anyone, even the most notorious sinner, or somebody who hasn't even heard of "salvation through Jesus Christ," can repent and be saved. God Himself earnestly desires that, regardless of what we think is "just." (Incidentally, among the first saints recognized by the Church were the Holy Innocents, who, as it happened, were all pagan or Jewish infants! There is a famous painting of the event by Guido Reni, believed to have been completed in 1611, the same year the King James Version of the Bible was first published.)

The reason that our pastor missed the Sunday of the reading about removing all bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, reviling and malice by being kind, compassionate, and forgiving reportedly turned out to be that he was attending some kind of seminar about the influence of dark powers, for which there is surely a great deal of evidence in our society and government today. No doubt my seventh grade teacher, if she were still alive, would have been thrilled to attend. In honor of his return, somebody installed a statue of Michael the Archangel (taking a stand by) casting out Satan, shown on the left, above, next to the vestibule of our Church. Sister would have loved it! The statue somewhat resembles the famous painting by Guido Reni, shown on the right, painted 25 years after the one about the Holy Innocents.

Piled around the base of the statue are free pamphlets entitled "Spiritual Warfare Prayers," published by Valentine Publishing House of Denver, Colorado. They contain prayers with titles like, "Breaking Curses," "Prayer against Evil," "Denouncing the Occult," "Prayer against Malefice," "Prayer for a Spiritual Canopy," "Prayer Against Trafficking Witches," "Binding Evil Spirits," "Removing Demonic Influence," "Healing Your Family Lineage" and "Renouncing Lodges and Secret Societies," among others. The pastor's subsequent homilies the following week reflected his fascination with the alleged role of Satan in human affairs. He seems to be a special champion of Saint Michael; his is the only Catholic church I have attended since Vatican II that regularly recites the famous 1886 Leonine Prayer to him.

If one looks closely at Reni's painting, it is clear that Michael is a young, red-headed Caucasian, surely a vision of supernatural peculiarity in a society of dark-haired Italians. Satan is a more Mediterranean Caucasian, but old enough to be balding. The image of a serpent's tail is seen in the darkness beyond, suggesting that the lower part of Satan, at least, is that of a snake or dragon. This is no doubt an allusion to Michael and Satan in Revelation 12:7-9:

Then war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels battled against the dragon. The dragon and its angels fought back,
but they did not prevail and there was no longer any place for them in heaven.
The huge dragon, the ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, who deceived the whole world, was thrown down to earth, and its angels were thrown down with it.

Which leads me to the image of Satan in the statue...

I submit that, whatever its intent, this is a portrayal of a big, powerful white guy abusing a little naked black guy, not unlike the priests who were abusing all those students that nobody cared about. I was told that the devil is black because he's burnt, but I wonder if that's the way the little black kids who come to church on Friday morning take it. I've spoken to a few of my fellow parishioners about this, and their response has generally been not to worry about it... not unlike the people who knew about those priests who were abusing all those students that nobody cared about. Nobody but me seems to have wanted to take a stand. My subsequent experience shows the wisdom of their forbearance; no good deed ever goes unpunished!

I think we should care plenty! Somebody has to take a stand! Suggesting to even one of our children that angels look like white people and devils look like black people has absolutely NO place whatever in any Christian message! Frankly, I can't see any reason why any image of Satan is appropriate in a Christian house of worship. My personal opinion is that time spent rejecting Satan would be better spent embracing God, but, again, I'm not the one to judge. Nobody asked me anyway.

To be sure, the ethnic distribution of Catholics in our church is not at all representative of our Southern Mississippi population as a whole. Less than one percent of the individuals pictured in the parish family yearbook are noticeably black. Nobody seems to be taking a stand to reach out to them as a group. There are no black people shown in the altar society, or the Saint Vincent de Paul Society, or the church adult choir, or the church youth choir, or the Knights of Columbus, or the ladies' auxiliary or the Catholic school staff. There are, however, black kids in the congregation of the Friday morning school mass. Will they stay with the Church, or will they eventually feel unwelcome, as I do, and leave, never to return? "If one member suffers, all suffer together with it."

In a series of famous experiments, African-American psychologists Kenneth Bancroft Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark took a stand by demonstrating conclusively that segregated black children in the United States tended to regard the color they were as being "not as good as" lighter color children. These findings were so well documented that they were the basis for the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated schools were unconstitutional. The dichotomy between the treatment of black and white students had a negative impact on the black children's sense of identity and self worth, depriving them of the "equal protection of the law."

In an attempt, as Confucius said, "to light one candle rather than to curse the darkness," I offered to pay for repainting the statue. I even bought some brushes and paints, a tan "ethnically neutral" skin color for Michael and a "glowing red" traditional color for Satan.

My pastor was not encouraging, to say no more. He accused me of political motivation and working for Satan. (To what political party does Satan belong, do you suppose?) He semed to be condemning my taking a stand for showing care for the little ones rather than abandoning them. Frankly, I consider it a compliment. Confucius was right, it is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness. But if you light a candle among people dedicated to darkness, they will not only gang up to blow out your candle, they'll pee on your matches as well!

Apparently our pastor relented somewhat, because the color of Satan was changed to a fly ash gray color. I didn't hear if anyone cared to ask our few black congregants what they thought of it.

Influenced by all this discussion of hell, I reread Inferno by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. This is either a parody of or an allegory to Dante's work. In it, the protagonist is a sci-fi writer named Allen Carpenter (named, obviously, after the profession of Jesus), who is in hell because he drunkenly, but accidentally, caused his own death. He doesn't know precisely where in hell he belongs, so he is guided through hell by Benito Mussolini instead of Dante's Virgil. At the end, Mussolini, having repented of his own outrageous crimes, is allowed to leave hell. Carpenter remains, hoping to expiate his own sins by leading out others who repent and choose to go. In a sequel, Escape from Hell, he finds that few even consider the offer, because they realize that they belong in hell!

Even as damned souls, they take a stand!

John Lindorfer