Michael Kerrigan - Dark History of the Catholic Church: Schisms, Wars, Inquisitions, Witch Hunts, Scandals, Corruption

DARK HISTORY OF THE

CATHOLIC
CHURCH

SCHISMS, WARS, INQUISITIONS,
WITCH HUNTS, SCANDALS, CORRUPTION

MICHAEL KERRIGAN

This digital edition first published in 2014

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ISBN: 978-1-78274-178-7

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Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata commemorate the anniversary of their founders death. Mother Teresa exemplified Catholicism at its best and worst. More worldly than she seemed; more selective in her love, more ruthless in her actions, she nevertheless inspired a great many to good works.

When it comes to Catholicism, theres no shortage of material for a dark history some readers will wonder whether there is any other kind. An understandable reaction, perhaps even justifiable, but its not the business of this book to offer some sort of divine Last Judgment on the Church.

See the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.

D oes St Franciss Sermon to the Birds signify more than Pius IXs strictures against democracy? How would you weigh the Sistine Chapel against child abuse? Notre Dame against the crimes of the Crusaders? Which should matter more in the scheme of things: the incredible courage the Church inspired in its many martyred believers, or its wholesale torture and execution of its foes? What of those nuns and priests who played their part in saving Jewish families from destruction in the Holocaust? Can their heroism counterbalance the Vaticans reluctance to condemn? How, to take a more down-to-earth example from contemporary life, do you weigh the work of a nursing sister in an African hospice against the Churchs refusal to countenance the use of condoms in the fight against AIDS? And what would it matter, others may ask, if Catholicism had done no end of good, if the whole historical evidence is founded on a lie?

Were never going to agree. Mother Teresa has become a case in point, fast-tracked for sainthood by the Church to the bemusement of liberal sceptics for whom shes been exposed emphatically and repeatedly as a charlatan. Even if all the criticisms against her are true, it might be argued that the inspiration shes given others more than offsets any harm shes done or good shes failed to do. At the very least she was a walking, talking feel-good factor: in a famous 1988 study, Harvard students shown movie-footage of Mother Teresa ministering to the sick registered a measurable rise in IgA (Immunoglobulin A) levels. In other words, she did something beautiful for their immune systems a miracle of the psychological placebo effect, if not of God.

Christ sits in judgment, as imagined by an artist of the fourteenth-century School of Rimini. How would the Saviour think His Church has done? Feed my sheep, said Jesus (John 21: 17), but has the Catholic Church been a Good Shepherd or a self-serving institution?

The Church is too big and complex to be characterized as any one thing: the dogmatism with which it speaks is in this sense misleading. Roma locate est, causa finita est, said St Augustine, simply Rome has spoken, the case is closed but Rome itself is much more ambiguous than it seems. Its sheer size precludes straightforwardness. When they called it the Catholic (or universal) Church, they may have been exaggerating, but not by much. Its hard to think of any historic institution that can compare. The hegemony of Egypts pharaohs may have lasted several times longer, but it extended over only a relatively tiny patch of Earth. The U.S. presidency might surpass it now both in influence and reach, but the United States has been a world power for only a matter of decades, and a full-spectrum dominance for only a few years.

While in some ways it may seem absurd to judge a religion by the same standards as a secular state, Catholicism isnt just any religion; isnt just any world religion even. How many divisions has the Pope? asked a scornful Stalin. And he had a point well into the nineteenth century the Papal States had been a temporal realm, with a real army. Even since that time, through a century or so in which its authority has been merely spiritual, its had a major sometimes decisive role in world affairs.

And, as the Church is quick to remind us, its power isnt limited to this world. Whatever you bind on Earth shall be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on Earth shall be loosed in heaven, Christ told St Peter (Matthew 18: 18). Protestants may dispute the Churchs interpretation of the verse as carte blanche for world religious domination and atheists dispute the very premise on which its founded, but there is really no doubt that Catholicism is conceived on an unimaginably awe-inspiring scale. If its structures transcend our Earthly existence (or are at least supposed to), it claims as a community of souls to bring together not just the living but the righteous dead. Alongside the Church Militant, fighting the good fight in this world, theres the Church Suffering in purgatory, awaiting our prayers for their salvation, and the Church Triumphant with God and the saints in heaven. Covering an infinity of space and an eternity of time, and bringing together billions in its congregation, the Catholic Church is the vastest of institutions.

St Theresa of Lisieux, the Little Flower, has inspired and cheered millions with her simple faith and her down-to-earth approach to Christian life. But her childlike ingenuousness isnt an adequate basis for the building of a world religion: how is Catholicism to keep its innocence?

And yet, at the same time, its one that has touched the most intimate lives of its believers, for better and for worse, occupying their innermost psychic space with its spiritual assumptions and moral laws. While this has meant mystic ecstasy for some, for others its spelled sexual repression and an all but paralyzing sense of sinfulness. The idea of Catholic Guilt may be a clich, but can we be sure its without foundation? Any more than we can understand the (equally glib) contention that Catholicism can see women only as virgins or as whores? That one whos born a Catholic is scarred for life, his or her identity determined regardless of conscious theological (dis)beliefs may be an exaggeration, but is it really so completely devoid of truth?