Authority has more authority when it comes soaked in credibility.
If you were learning to drive, you wouldn’t want to be taught by someone with very limited experience of the road - someone who had only trundled up and down a straight piece of tarmac in a very limited and safe environment. You would hope that the person who was going to help you become responsible for your own life and others (not to mention an expensive vehicle) would have at least regularly driven through city traffic and on motorways and had experience of negotiating turns onto major roads at very tricky junctions.
A TV company recently took the concept of being taught by an authority without credibility and turned it into a humorous sketch. Unfortunately, the company was in Slovakia where around two-thirds of the country describe themselves as Roman Catholic, and the object of the joke were Roman Catholic priests.
Priests were “not the best experts” to give guidance on driving since the Vatican possessed “only two kilometres of highway and the last traffic accident was more than half a year ago,” the programme mocked. Last week, the commercial TV station, Joj’s, was fined two million koruna (60,000 euros, 88,400 dollars, 45,000 pounds) because it was not objective and abused religious sensibilities.
I have argued elsewhere that religion, like politics, is a matter of personal choice and therefore should not have automatic respect enshrined in law. Like any idea, it should have to earn respect on the basis of its own merit, and not be immune to challenge, satire, or ridicule. However, I don’t want to get side-tracked onto that topic again today. What interested me was the metaphor of inexperienced drivers teaching others to drive, and the increasing credibility gap between the Roman Catholic hierarchy and their flock.
How can a male and allegedly celibate hierarchy continue to presume to lay down the law about complicated matters relating to human sexuality about which they allegedly have no experience? Several recent studies are showing that that question is being asked in one way or another by an increasing percentage of the Catholic church.
Three quarters of Irish people now disagree with the Vatican on the morning after pill. A survey carried out by the Irish Pharmacy Union on a sample of 1,007 adults showed that 75 per cent are in favour of the morning-after pill (Emergency Hormonal Contraception) being available from the pharmacist without a prescription, following a consultation with the pharmacist on its safe use. Such a move was opposed by 19 per cent with the remainder not expressing an opinion. Those opposed to easy availability of the abortifacient are mainly over the age of 50. The result comes just two months after priests were ordered by the hierarchy to reiterate the Church’s profound opposition against all forms of abortion, including the morning-after pill.
Another recent poll in the UK shows that despite what the Catholic hierarchy would like the public to believe, a plurality of British Catholics has chosen to ignore the rhetoric, and instead follow their consciences when it comes to supporting access to abortion. They aren’t looking for bishops to lecture them, or for politicians to tie people’s hands.
The YouGov poll, conducted in November 2007, shows a majority of the sample to be more liberal than the 1967 UK law on abortion allows – even where participants were identified as belonging to a faith group. The 1967 Abortion Act does not allow UK women to end a pregnancy solely on the grounds of being unintended or unwanted. Results showed a broad support for legal abortion across all groups.
In response to the statement, “It should be legal for a woman to have an abortion when she has an unwanted pregnancy”, 63% of all respondents to the poll strongly agreed or agreed (14% disagreed or strongly disagreed); 58% of self-identified Protestants strongly agreed or agreed (19% disagreed or strongly disagreed); 43% of self-identified Catholics strongly agreed or agreed (27% disagreed or strongly disagreed).
Of special note in the current environment — wherein Catholic bishops have become more aggressively vocal in their efforts to restrict access to abortion — in response to the statement “Catholic bishops concentrate too much of their attention on abortion when there are other issues that also require their attention”, 64% of all respondents to the poll strongly agreed or agreed (8% disagreed or strongly disagreed); 68 % of self-identified Protestants strongly agreed or agreed (7% disagreed or strongly disagreed); 42% of self-identified Catholics strongly agreed or agreed (27% disagreed or strongly disagreed). The key figures above are that only 27% of Catholics support the bishops/Vatican line on abortion law and that nearly two thirds of the population think the bishops are too involved with abortion issues.
Even in the face of an AIDS epidemic that costs millions of lives, the Vatican has stubbornly refused to lift its ban on condoms. A new multinational poll, however, shows that Catholics the world over believe that using condoms is pro-life because it prevents the spread of HIV and AIDS.
According to the four-continent poll by Belden, Russonello & Stewart, Catholics in Ghana, Ireland, Mexico, the Philippines and the United States support condom use overwhelmingly. When asked if “using condoms is pro-life because it helps save lives by preventing the spread of AIDS,” 90% of Catholics in Mexico, 86% in Ireland, 79% in the US, 77% in the Philippines and 59% in Ghana agreed.
Unfortunately, the Catholic hierarchy’s position holds the most sway in the countries least able to deal economically and medically with the disease. Whereas Catholics in Ireland (79%), the US (63%) and Mexico (60%) overwhelmingly agreed that “the church’s position on condoms is wrong and should be changed,” the numbers for Catholics in the Philippines (47%) and Ghana (37%) were lower. When questioned about the church’s responsibility to help prevent the spread of AIDS in a health care context, 87% of Irish Catholics; 86% of Mexican Catholics; 73% of US Catholics; 65% of Filipino Catholics and 60% of Ghanaian Catholics believe “Catholic hospitals and clinics that the government funds should be required to include condoms as parts of AIDS prevention.”
Jon Brien, president of Catholics for Choice, commented: “From Mexico City to Manila and Accra to Los Angeles, Catholics know that using condoms is pro-life. More and more bishops and priests have been speaking out against the Vatican’s opposition to condoms. This is a battle with very high stakes. Every day, more people are infected and die. While Catholics recognize that the hierarchy’s position is wrong, it would help significantly if the Vatican came out and supported the use of condoms. There are substantial theological grounds — and even more humanitarian and compassionate grounds — to change this policy. It is high time for that change to happen.”
Whatever your personal views on the use of the morning after pill, abortion, and the use condoms, it is clear that there is a large rift becoming more obvious between the Catholic hierarchy and Catholics in the pews. Of course, if I were a member of the Catholic hierarchy, I may be unimpressed by these statistics and charges of lack of credibility. I would simply argue that it is the church’s job to provide leadership on moral matters and that it doesn’t have to court popularity. I could argue that you don’t have to experience ’sin’ in order to condemn it.
While I understand that line of argument, I can’t help thinking that if the Catholic hierarchy contained more younger men, and more women, and more married couples with families living in poverty or under the threat of AIDS, their views on what is immoral might be slightly different and would have more credibility. I also understand that the church doesn’t have to court popularity. However, today the church does have to carry its members with it in a way which it never had to in the past, and failure to do so will lead to even more decline.
In the past, the Roman Catholic church was able to take an unpopular line and rely on at least two things to keep the faithful in check and to maintain its influence. It existed in a culture where church attendance was considered the norm rather than the exception and it had various means at its disposal to threaten conformity (torture and punishment for heresy, exorcism, excommunication). In the West, at least, church attendance is the exception rather than the norm, and there are few frightening sanctions left to threaten the Catholic non-conformists.
When it comes to human sexuality, the Roman Catholic hierarchy are not the best experts, and it looks like millions of Catholics are now recognising that and are not afraid to ignore the church’s ‘expertise’.
See also: Structural and Moral Failure.
(Information source: The National Secular Society)
I think there are three groups of “victims” in this story:
1. Catholics who know that the policy of the Church on contraception and abortion is wrong and who disobey this policy and do the sensible thing.
2. Catholics who know that the policy of the Church on contraception and abortion is wrong but who feel impelled to follow the policy, whether because of religious belief or because they are being coerced.
3. Catholics who believe that the policy of the Church on contraception and abortion is right (Because they believe everything the Church tells them) and who follow the policy, no matter what it costs them.
The first group are hardly victims at all. They have the remedy in their own hands and the tragic disjunction between good sense and the Church’s teaching is slowly but surely driving a wedge between them and the Church as well as eroding the Church’s reputation in the world in general.
While I feel sorry for the second group, I don’t feel very sorry for them. They have to accept that it is within their own power to take control of their lives or to continue in servitude to inhumane policies. I accept that we can all fail to have the necessary courage at times, which is why I give them my sympathy, but the fact remains that they could wrest themselves free if they determined so to do.
It is the third group that receives all my sympathy. They are being enslaved, not merely by people with wrong ideas but by people who knowingly promulgate wrong ideas through deceit, misinformation and coercion. That is immoral and it is also criminal according to any decent standard of law.
I think enlightened nations and their governments ought to confront the Vatican directly on these issues. If we can have a “War on Terror” why can’t we have a “War on Doctrinal Oppression”? Unfortunately, the Vatican is powerful politically and financially and politics always gets in the way of doing the right thing. There are some signs that the tide is turning against the Vatican - particularly in Spain where the government is attacking its financial power - and we can only hope that this tide will continue to rise until it sweeps away the sandcastles of Catholic mystification.
In the meantime lives continue to be destroyed and people continue to be condemned to needless suffering. That the Catholic Church can continue through the centuries blithely oppressing its followers is a pretty good sign that God does not exist or, at least, that God in not good.
On this matter as on so many others, I am truly grateful that I am an atheist.
On a more humorous note, and with no disrespect intended to your driving analogy, it always amuses me when I hear about the strict standards required in learning to drive a car, fly and plane, etc. to reflect that there was a first person to drive a car and a first person to fly a plane, neither of whom had the benefit of driving or flying lessons.
This principle applies to practically all fields of human expertise: the techniques that are today part of training courses had to be learned by experience by people who discovered these things, often as a result of tragic accidents.
A young, hitherto inexperienced person embarking on his first sexual relationship might be a very good person to advise others because his discoveries are new and exciting and are not dulled by the boredom of routine.
This of course eliminates Roman Catholic priests who surely cannot advise on such matters as they have never had experience in this field.
Allegedly.
Leadership in authoritarian religious hierarchies has a habit of painting themselves into a corner. Their structures isolate them from the issues and stresses of everyday life. By the time they reach the top of their system they are often three to four decades removed from when they left the real world and socialization with average people for the cloister of the religious community. They have a filtered and skewed picture of the world. Those in leadership today stand apart from the world of their members making decisions within a framework of a society and church they knew in the 70s and early 80s. Even then most leaders are likely to have held then views even then that were more common twenty or more years before since authoritarian religious systems have a tendency of marginalizing or pushing out the young liberals. Those who are radical in their thinking when they leave the seminaries rarely advance in the first ten to fifteen years of ministry.
Further, complicating the picture is their holding onto the pronouncements made by their predecessors decades or even centuries before even when the context is long passed. Instead of defining faith afresh for their flocks in the present they live in the past. They fight major battles on issues that are side battles and should not consume their time, and in the end loose credibility on a host of daily life issues.
Thinking Man:Authority has more authority when it comes soaked in credibility…I have argued elsewhere that religion, like politics, is a matter of personal choice and therefore should not have automatic respect enshrined in law. Like any idea, it should have to earn respect on the basis of its own merit, and not be immune to challenge, satire, or ridicule.
QB: Agreed.
On your survey says material doesn’t prove your point at all. What it indicates that how great the inroads of relativism has made on society at large. It’s not an indicator nor a determination of what is or isn’t true. There are certain currents of modern thought have gone so far as to exalt freedom to such an extent that it becomes an absolute, which would then be the source of values. This is the direction taken by doctrines which have lost the sense of the transcendent or which are explicitly atheist.To the affirmation that one has a duty to follow one’s conscience is unduly added the affirmation that one’s moral judgment is true merely by the fact that it has its origin in the conscience. But in this way the inescapable claims of truth disappear, yielding their place to a criterion of sincerity, authenticity and “being at peace with oneself”, so much so that some have come to adopt a radically subjectivistic conception of moral judgment.
If we had numerous surveys that held that bloggers are evil and need to be imprisoned, doesn’t mean that the actions of blogging lends itself to doing evil, nor does it justify locking them up.
On your those who have no experience in the field should haven’t any say in the matter does hold either IMO. Apply this to say stroke victims or heart attacks, does one have to have experience before one is able to treat those conditions? Or perhaps more to the point can a male doctor treat a female since he’s never experienced being female (well lets say the all majority) never know what trans gendered doctors are doing these days:>)
TM: I can’t help thinking that if the Catholic hierarchy contained more younger men, and more women, and more married couples with families living in poverty or under the threat of AIDS, their views on what is immoral might be slightly different and would have more credibility.
QB: Can I ask if you believe that humans have a spirit? IOW is the person (you specifically) simply a material object, exclusively based on natural selection and randomly selected to live out your life with no regards to the spiritual?
Or is the person comprised of both material (body) and soul (spirit)? Without a doubt if you hold to the former then there’s no point in discussion all of your points would IMO hold true. However if the latter then actions of the person effect the spirit for good or evil- matter(pun intended).
TM: the Roman Catholic church was able to take an unpopular line and rely on at least two things to keep the faithful in check and to maintain its influence. It existed in a culture where church attendance was considered the norm rather than the exception and it had various means at its disposal to threaten conformity (torture and punishment for heresy, exorcism, excommunication).
QB: Well that’s half right, but off topic really.
TM:In the West, at least, church attendance is the exception rather than the norm, and there are few frightening sanctions left to threaten the Catholic non-conformists.
QB: Certainly in Europe this holds true, but it’s bottomed out at about 12% of the population. It’s breakeven in the USA, explosive growth in Africa and China, and declining in South America. Globally it’s a 1.5% yearly increase.
I think your comment about frightening & threatening is off the mark as if individuals who received the truth would reject the church’s teaching, that’s an assumption.
TM: When it comes to human sexuality, the Roman Catholic hierarchy are not the best experts, and it looks like millions of Catholics are now recognising that and are not afraid to ignore the church’s ‘expertise’.
QB: Well again this goes back to whether a human person is body only or body and spirit. If one holds to the latter statement then indeed the church is THE or AN expert.
The first point of the latter is sex outside of marriage is deadly to the spirit. So is child abuse by priests!
I am frankly surprised you didn’t specifically bring up the removal of children prior to birth because they would be deformed, or in object poverity.
That door has clearly been open and the brave new world of opinions as to who’s standards of deformed will play out. The question then will be will either of us be permitted to exist or are we both deformed.
quickbeamoffangorn: Thanks for your detailed response.
A lot of it felt to me that you were wanting to argue about contraception and abortion. My main interest in the posting was the growing divide between the Catholic Church leadership and the pews, between people professing a commitment and faith which is largely ignored in practice in certain areas.
I accept that it may be largely down to post-Enlightenment and educated Europe. In my view, America has not yet entered into that freedom. However, I suspect that the influence of the Catholic church in the developing counties will wane once education catches up - although I accept it may take hundreds of years.
We will differ on contraception and abortion as I do not accept your basic premises.
Another very detailed and interesting blog.
My answer is simple as I have got lost this time in the arguments today;finding it difficult to grasp, understand the meanings of particulary the last reply.
I am for contraception, as a basic human right and struggle with the Catholic stance on this. The use of condoms is vital in the prevention of AIDS and other STI’S.
In my own studies many maternal deaths could be avoided if people had basic access to contraception- denied to so many in our C21st world. That is pro-life to me- saving women from maternal death due to too many pregancies, too early on.
I can see the basis of your arguments and what this blog’s objectives were.
This subject of contraception, abortion and the relationship of the Catholic church with these issues will always be a tricky one to write about.
TM: My main interest in the posting was the growing divide between the Catholic Church leadership and the pews, between people professing a commitment and faith which is largely ignored in practice in certain areas….I accept that it may be largely down to post-Enlightenment and educated Europe. In my view, America has not yet entered into that freedom.
QB: Well I don’t think Europe will have that option to wait. Islam will overtake Europe in about 30 years based on Europe’s rejection of it’s Christian heritage. Secular humanism isn’t capable of withstanding dhimmitude & shiria law.
http://quickbeamoffangorn.wordpress.com/2008/01/06/islamization-of-england/
American is about 20 to 30 years behind Europe in the Islamic immigration issue, although just a week ago in Texas we apparently had an “Honor killing” of a muslim father killing his daughter for dating a non-muslim.
It’s my opinion that Europe will either rediscover it’s Catholic roots or it will be taken over by Islam in the next two generations. If by no other means then birth rates.
On the subjects of contraception and abortion, there are more than three groups of opinions (SilverTiger). For example, some Catholics, through their own reasoning, conclude that abortion is the killing of a living human being.
They do not believe that just because the Catholic Church says it’s so.
I suspect that even more people who consider themselves Catholics disagree and do not comply with the church’s ban on artificial conception.
Do any of them receive Communion at Mass?