Catholics - did you go to church yesterday? Will you go tomorrow?

Right from the start, here is my full disclosure: I am not a Catholic. I do not intend this article to be offensive, so please do not take it as such. What I do want is to find out what Catholics (the congregants, not the clergy) are thinking regarding the current issues their Church is facing.

Unless you've been living under a rock the last few weeks, you will know the issues I am referring to. Still, I feel that I need to lay out the facts that are pertinent to my question, so here is a brief synopsis of what has happened so far:

In recent years there have been a number of allegations that certain priests and (less often) nuns employed by the Catholic Church had abused children. This abuse was both physical and sexual, with the latter becoming the focus of attention more recently. In the last few years, the Church has paid billions of dollars in compensation to victims of abuse, driving some diocese and one entire order into bankruptcy.

It has since emerged that the Church systematically moved offending priests around, transferring them from parish to parish, rarely defrocking them and almost always maintaining utmost secrecy as to what was happening. This was not the result of a few Bishops acting alone to protect a few priests - in 1962 the Vatican issued a document called Crimine solicitationies, which instructs clergy to treat cases of abuse with the 'strictest' secrecy. They are also instructed to get the victims to take an oath of secrecy. Anyone who speaks out is to be excommunicated. This document, bearing the seal of then-Pope John XXIII, was sent to every Bishop in the world.

The Catholic Church has made much of the claim that this document "has not been used for decades" (I am paraphrasing here). However, it later emerged that a much more recent document not only confirms the instructions of the 1962 decree, but takes it further. It claims that the Church has ultimate jurisdiction over such cases, and that "Cases of this kind are subject to the pontifical secret". The real bombshell, however, is that this was penned by none other than the head of the Church's Diocesan Council (Doctrine of the Faith), which deals in issues relating to especially grave sins, including child abuse. The Diocesan Council was headed by one Archbishop Ratzinger at the time, now Pope Benedict XVI.

In other words, orders to cover-up allegations of child abuse went right to the top of the Church hierarchy, were official doctrine, and anyone who spilled the beans would be excommunicated. For those who don't know, in Catholic terms excommunication means that you cannot go to heaven when you die.

It has since also emerged that a Reverend Lawrence C. Murphy was accused of molesting 200 boys at a school for the deaf in the period 1950 to 1974. In 1996 Cardinal Ratzinger (again as head of the Doctrine of the Faith) was made aware of these claims, but stopped the process when Rev. Murphy appealed directly to him, claiming to be ill (which he was), and to have repented (which he may have, but which should be irrelevant). Rev. Murphy died two years later, his victims never having received any official recognition of their suffering.

More recently, now that Archbishop Ratzinger is installed as Pope Benedict XVI, the Church has found it difficult to stop the tide. However, instead of stepping up, admitting sin and guilt, and starting a process of purging of abusive clergy and putting things in place to help the victims, the Church has gone on the attack. In a letter of apology to Irish Catholics (not the nation, not nationals of any land other than Ireland, and not Irish ex-Catholics who left the Church in disgust), Pope Benedict XVI blamed the secularisation of society for the abuses by priests. He alluded to "mistakes" rather than crimes, and no apology was made for his own or any others' involvement in the cover-up. Many Irish Catholics, and particularly the victims, were outraged.

Since then, various members of the clergy have sought to further deflect the Church's central role in the scandal. They have blamed the sexual revolution of the 60's, the secularisation of society and homosexuals for the Church's current woes. They blamed Satan for influencing the New York time to write articles critical of the Church. And, perhaps most repugnantly, the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa (the only Vatican official who can preach to the Pope) claimed that the current criticism of the Catholic Church reminded him of anti-Semitism. He read from a letter sent by a Jewish friend, which led the Vatican to quickly claim it was not an official Vatican statement, because it was Rev. Cantalamessa's own thoughts. The fact that it was part of his sermon to the Pope seems to be lost on them - if this sermon cannot be seen as coming from the Vatican, how can any sermon have any backing from the Vatican? How do Catholics now know what is Vatican doctrine? Further underscoring the absurdity of this claim, the official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, ran the remarks in its Saturday edition.

To its credit, the Catholic Church in Germany seems to be taking things a little more seriously. The head of the German Bishops Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, has admitted that clerics failed to help victims of abuse because of a "wrongly intended desire to protect the Church's reputation." And the Church there set up a hotline for victims of abuse to phone to try to get them help. However, the number of victims was massively under-estimated, with the hotline having to shut down after just 162 out of 4459 callers could be helped. And this was on the first day of operation.

Yesterday's Good Friday sermons, considered by many to be the most sacred day on the Christian calendar, were marked by congregations refusing to sit throughout Germany. While this may sound like a small act of defiance, it is a huge deal in an organisation where the hierarchy is so strictly elucidated and enforced. Young Catholics learn, through their catechism classes, that the male-dominated structures of the Church were put in place by God. To defy the structure of worship is a very big step, and illustrates the level of anger in the German Catholic community. It is this anger, no doubt, that has led to the concessions by the German Church while other nations have not see such admissions.

The entire debacle highlights the nature of the Catholic Church. The deflections of blame, the denials in the face of facts, the attempts to garner support by painting the Church as a victim, the cover-ups and the careful use of words like "mistake" and "mispoke" show the Church hierarchy for what they are: political animals. It all points to this being a political and commercial organisation, which will do everything in it can to protect those in power and its reputation. The fact that the Church has paid out such incredible sums in compensation, while good for the victims, begs the question of why a religious organisation has access to that sort of money. The tithes are paid over in good faith to further the aims of the Church, which is supposed to be helping the poor and spreading the gospel. The kind of money we are talking about would alleviate a large amount of suffering in areas where the poorest live, but instead the Church moves into those areas and takes their money as tithes. And to add insult to injury, this money is allowed to be collected tax free and whisked away to the Holy See. Not only does the country where the destitute are living not generate tax income to help its citizens, but much of the money is not used there by the Church either. It pays for art collections, buildings, opulent dinners and sex abuse victims in the wealthy countries. One wonders how much will be left to pay the victims of abuse in the third world when they start coming forward.

So, my questions to the Catholics who have read this far are: Did you go to your usual Good Friday service yesterday? As more and more comes out over the course of today, will you go to your usual Catholic service tomorrow? And for the women in particular: will you continue to listen to a group of celibate men, who have proved themselves disinterested in the welfare of others, when it comes to issues regarding your body and reproductive rights?

I have created a poll, but would like to hear further explanations to your answers in the comments below.

Links to various sources:

Vatican told bishops to cover up sex abuse

Crimine solicitationies

Pope 'obstructed' sex abuse inquiry

Did Archbishop Ratzinger Help Shield Perpetrator from Prosecution?

A ‘Pontifical Secret,’ Ratzinger’s 2001 Letter Ordered Bishops to be Quiet on Sex AbusePope accused of covering up US priest's abuse of 200 deaf boys

Pope releases letter and apologies aimed at the Irish

Papal letter fails to calm anger over Irish abuses

Catholic church hotline in meltdown over paedophile priests

Worshippers revolt in church as German Catholic leaders admit abuse

Pope's preacher says attacks on Catholics are like antisemitism

Pope’s priest: Abuse flak like anti-Semitism

Italian exorcist: Devil made NY Times attack Pope

Vatican Priest Likens Criticism Over Abuse to Anti-Semitism

Why Are Pedophilia-Hiding, Child-Abusing Church Fathers Allowed to Write Laws About Women's Bodies?

La preghiera sacerdotale
è un esame di coscienza per la Chiesa