Mary Ann Strain, C.P.
and internal conflict make these difficult times for the church. Where
did they come from? History tells us that church crisis and scandal
are nothing new. They have always been there, though we tend to forget
them. The church always has its human side.
example, look at the Roman church in the 3rd century, when St. Callistus,
born a slave, convicted as a thief, became a pope and a martyr. He was
put in charge of a bank by his Christian master, but lost money deposited
in it. He fled from Rome, was caught and sentenced to hard labor, then
released. While trying to collect debts from members of Rome's Jewish
community, he was arrested for brawling in a synagogue.
to the mines in Sardinia, Callistus was freed through the intervention
of Marcia, the Christian concubine of Emperor Commodus. (Remember Commodus
from the movie The Gladiator?) Then Pope Zephyrinus made him a deacon
and manager of an important Roman Christian burial place, now called
the Catacombs of Callistus.
years later Callistus was elected pope for a short controversial reign.
Some church leaders despised him for his lowly, suspicious origins.
Callistus died during a riot in 222.
a messy church! Christians own other Christians as slaves. A Christian
woman, Commodus' concubine, succeeds in getting Callistus and other
Christians out of prison. A church divided by class and social status.
A slave and ex-con becomes pope --- and a saint. There is always messiness
in the church.
Callistus I depicted in a detail of a mosaic by Pietro Cavallini in
the apse of the church Santa Maria in Trastevere, Rome.
will always be with us, Jesus said. There were scandalous popes during
the Renaissance, like Alexander VI and Julius II. Alexander fathered
nine children by three different women. Julius, the great patron of
Michelangelo, spent much of his papacy storming up and down the Italian
peninsula dressed in silver armor at the head of his own army warring
against his enemies. Study of Julius II by Raphael
only were there scandalous popes, but scandalous religious too. Listen
to the complaints of the medieval poet William Langland in his religious
allegory Piers the Plowman:
". . . friars followed folk that was rich
And folk that
was poor at little price they set,
And no corpse
on their kirkyard nor in their kirk was buryed
[unless while alive] he bequeathed
or should help pay their debts."
misconduct of priests was common in the Middle Ages. Some parishes made
their priests sign a contract promising to find their women elsewhere,
so as not to deplete the local supply of marriageable girls.
Learning from crises and scandals
and scandals will always be with us, but God's grace always triumphs.
Let's open some windows into the past that we may understand our church
today. We'll ask four questions:
- What happened and why?
- How did the church respond to the crisis?
- How has that historical response shaped us as a church?
- What can we learn for today?
Who can belong to the church? A first century challenge
earliest crisis facing the church was whether Gentiles could enter it.
What happened and why?
church at Antioch, inspired by the Holy Spirit, sent Paul and Barnabas
to preach throughout Asia Minor. In a number of towns, they preached
first to the Jews and then to Gentiles who accepted their message. Controversy
flared: should Gentiles become Jews before becoming Christians? Jewish-Christians
from Jerusalem went to Antioch demanding that Gentiles be circumcised
and obey Jewish purity laws in order to be Christian. Division deepened
and even Peter refused to eat with Gentile Christians for fear of becoming
'unclean." It got to the point where the two groups would not share
How did the church respond to this crisis? Paul, Barnabas
and other leaders of the Antioch church discussed the matter with the
apostles and elders at a meeting later called the Council of Jerusalem.
It was decided that Gentiles need not be circumcised or obey Jewish
dietary law; they had only to avoid meat from animals that had been
sacrificed to pagan gods and to avoid fornication. They also were to
be mindful of the poor. The Church made room for both Gentile and Jewish
did this historical response shape our church? It became inclusive and
yet diverse. What makes someone Christian is not race or legal practice,
but faith in Jesus Christ. right: ruins, Church of St Simeon in Antioch
we not learn from this today, when our church is so divided into liberal
and conservative factions? In time of crisis we are tempted to demand
absolute conformity, yet history shows how unsuccessful this course
is. The early church advises us to discuss our differences honestly
and respectfully, not condemning one another, but allowing as much diversity
as possible within the boundaries of our faith.
Choosing to forgive: a third century crisis
of the most divisive issues in the third century church was how to deal
with those who lapsed from the faith during periods of persecution.
What happened and why?
the year 250 the Roman emperor Decius launched a persecution of the
church by rounding up Christians and ordering them to sacrifice to the
Roman gods. Many Christians bravely gave their lives for the faith,
but others lined up at the pagan temples to offer sacrifice --- so many,
it is said, that overworked officials told some of them to come another
day. Even church leaders like Pope Marcellinus succumbed to the pressure
by surrendering copies of the scriptures and offering incense to the
valued suffering for the faith. In fact, the word martyr means 'witness;'
the death of the martyr was an ultimate witness to its truth. By contrast,
those who offered incense or turned over the church's holy books or
vessels were considered traitors.
the persecution ended, as many apostates sought re-admission into the
church, opinions differed about what to do with them. The church was
split. The Donatists, a hard-line party which believed that traitors
contaminated the church, formed a separatist group.
did the church respond? After the martyrdom of Pope Fabian (250) the
Roman church delayed electing his successor until the persecution eased.
There were two candidates: Novatian, a brilliant presbyter and leader
who wanted to exclude the lapsed, and Cornelius, a much less talented
man who favored receiving them back into the church after they had done
appropriate penance. Cornelius was elected.
How did this historical moment make us who we are? We
are a church that recognizes human weakness and receives back repentant
sinners. This is an important lesson for today when many feel disappointed
and betrayed by church leaders over the sexual scandal and its cover
up. Like many Christians of the 3rd century we may want a church that
is pure and perfect, but history shows that this is impossible. The
Donatists didn't prevail.
Certainly, we must insure justice and compensation for
victims of sexual abuse and reform the structures that permitted the
abuse; but we must still be a church that forgives. Forgiveness does
not deny that wrongdoing took place; in order to forgive, one must first
blame. Yet forgiveness recognizes the offender as human; it relinquishes
the right to vengeance and blesses the offender's future. Like the church
of the 3rd century, healing must be our goal.
way to reform? A 16th century question
the 16th century the church faced one of its greatest crises; the Protestant
happened and why? In 1517 Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the door
of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany setting in motion the Reformation.
years later Pope Paul III appointed a papal commission to investigate
its causes. All the cardinal appointees were men of integrity and scholarship
who called for church reform. The commission's report, presented to
the Pope in 1537, was blunt. It blamed the ills of the church, including
the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation, squarely on the papacy.
As evils, it listed: the papal sale of spiritual privileges, the practice
of allowing one bishop to control several dioceses, personally benefiting
from the income of them all, heretical or pagan teaching in universities,
the corruption of religious orders, the ignorance of ordinary parish
priests and poor spiritual direction in convents of women. The report
was unwelcome to the papal curia, which did its best to block it. A
copy became public, however, and the tide for reform ran strong.
How did the church respond? Everyone wanted reform, but
the reformers divided into two camps. One side believed that the way
to respond to the Protestant Reformation was to hunt down heretics and
eliminate them. This camp supported the establishment of the Roman Inquisition
with powers of arrest and scrutiny all over Europe.
other camp believed that the best course was to find common theological
and doctrinal ground with the Lutherans and work for reconciliation.
This side initially lost the argument and the Inquisition was established.
But in 1554 Pope Paul III, realizing that repression could not repair
the church, launched the Council of Trent to tackle doctrinal and practical
reform. In sessions on and off for eighteen years, the council grappled
with doctrinal issues contested by the Protestant reformers and formulated
clear and cogent statements on justification by faith, the seven sacraments,
transubstantiation and purgatory.
the practical side it promoted preaching and teaching, attacked abuses
and superstition, and insisted on more conscientious fulfillment of
episcopal and priestly duties. It started an entirely new system for
training the clergy in special colleges or seminaries designed to produce
a better-educated, more moral and professionally conscientious clergy.
did Trent shape our church? It produced a church better organized, better
staffed, more clerical, more vigilant --- and more repressive. It set
high standards for the clergy, so that by the nineteenth century it
was an unspoken assumption that a priest, bishop or pope should be a
perfect saint. Clerical sin became shocking and unthinkable.
the same time, the church came to see itself as an alternative society
attacked by the world around it. Its good name was to be protected at
all costs, and so the mindset developed: 'we never make mistakes."
"hospital for incurables"
can we learn now? Perhaps we need to temper the emphasis on perfection
inherited from the post-Trent church with wisdom from another time.
For example, the medieval church, which was profoundly influenced by
the thought of St. Augustine, was a realistic church. It preached holiness,
but realized that Christians, including the clergy, are sinners. It
saw the church itself as a 'hospital for incurables' as well as a school
of perfection. From this Augustinian model can we learn to be more truthful,
humble and resilient? After all, we carry the treasure of the gospel
in earthen vessels.
and conflicts will surely continue, but our church will always be holy
because Jesus Christ who calls us is perfectly holy and shares his holiness
with us. He is the ultimate and sure source of our life, who lifts us
when we fall and guides his church through uncertain times, till it
comes to that Kingdom where God reigns and we are delivered from evil.
He has promised to guide us to that moment.
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