THE CHURCH VERSUS THE GOSPEL OF LOVE
Jerry Harkins

It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to capture the historical Jesus. He was an itinerant teacher but we know what he taught only in rough outline. You sense his message was sophisticated and innovative but not radical. Much of what we think he said seems enigmatic (the first shall be last), perplexing (to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding), counterintuitive (turn the other cheek) or simply illogical (anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress). Part of the problem is that, by the time the books of the New Testament were written down, the sources were at best second and third hand memories. In many important passages what we have are historical memories in the process of becoming myths. The Bible was written by parties with different vested interests. The orthodox position is that the scriptures were “inspired” by God, but the evangelists remind one of the blind philosophers trying to describe an elephant to the king. For example, the four accounts of the central event of Christianity, the resurrection, are different in many respects. When whoever came to the tomb on the first Easter morning (there are at least six candidates in four configurations), did they find the door open or shut? Mark (16:4), Luke (24:2) and John (20:1) say open; Mathew (28:2) says closed. And whom did they meet when they got there. Matthew (28:2-5) says one angel, John (20:12) says two, Mark (16:5) says one young man, while Luke (24:4) says two men. Paul is another problem. He claimed to have received his teachings by direct revelation, but he never met or even saw Jesus in the flesh. In fact, Paul’s idea of the Christian message was fundamentally at odds with that of Jesus. He invented the fantastical notion of original sin which went on to become the lynchpin of all subsequent Christian theology.

One thing, however, is clear: the God whose personality evolves from Genesis through Job and the prophets to the gospels is, in the end, a god of love, a god who needs to love and be loved by his own creation. The story doesn’t start that way. The God of Abraham and Isaac, of Sodom and Gomorrah, of Job is something of a psychopath. As he says, “ I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.” The God of the Torah is a law giver. He gives the Jews ten commandments and 613 mitzvot in which love plays only a minor part. Love God (No. 4). Love both your fellow Jews (No. 13) and those who convert to Judaism (14). Jesus is only a bit more expansive—he adds your neighbor—when he tells the scribe about the great commandment, but love is the essence of his teaching and the consistent example of his life. “Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” And later, “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.” God is love. These are the first words (and thus the title) of Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical.

At the Last Supper Jesus said, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Later he said, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” These lines are part of a lengthy and remarkable homily that might be taken as a constitution establishing the universal church as a manifestation and messenger of God’s love. It is, therefore, reasonable to ask, “What happened?”

Love as an abstraction has been a consistent teaching. In practice, however, there has been at least as much hatred in the history of the church. Indeed, the church rejects entirely any manifestation of sexual love outside its own extremely limited definition. Gay love is an abomination. Heterosexual love is tolerable only in the narrowest of circumstances. At various times, it has been perfectly acceptable to slaughter infidels and heretics, to mutilate eunuchs, to burn witches, to practice slavery, to promote tyranny and even to wage war. Christianity is not the only religion that has done all these things but it is the only one that has done them in the name of a loving God or, since God is love, in the name of love.

The problem is that love challenges power whether it is the infinite love of a God who has no need to browbeat his creatures, no need to torment them with the fear of hell, or the love of sexual partners who, being swept up in ecstasy, have no need for the preaching of dour priests.

The power of the church is based on the assertion that the Pope and the bishops are the “successors” of the apostles, and that the Pope is the Vicar of Christ on earth. The church believes, without biblical or historical support, that Peter was the first Bishop of Rome and all subsequent members of the hierarchy have descended from him in unbroken succession through the laying on of hands. Unlike so many other parts of the “sacred tradition,” apostolic succession is a truly ancient belief tracing back at least to 90 CE or, in other words, no later than two generations after the death of Christ. There were still living witnesses to his preaching and death.

The church’s reasoning begins with Christ’s charge to Peter as reported by Matthew 16:18-19: “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” This may be coupled with his final words before the Ascension: “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” We are dealing, then, with three clauses: build, whatever and always.

It is notable that this grant of seemingly absolute power appears only in the gospel of Matthew even though Mark (8:27-30) reports the same occasion. Mark was the first gospel written. It is thought to be dated about 64 CE written by a companion of Peter and based on Peter’s sermons. It may seem strange that one of the most important statements in the life of the church escaped such a well-placed evangelist. Matthew, on the other hand, wrote around 90 CE about an event at which he had not been present. It seems clear that he had access to Mark’s account but he made many additions and changes. His also contradicts the others in fairly important respects. For example, Matthew says Jesus was born during Herod’s reign which means no later than 4 BCE. Luke, on the other hand, says Jesus was born when Quirinius was the governor of Syria which was between 6 and 9 CE.

Regarding the build clause, whatever you believe about Matthew, there is no indication that Peter was told to pass his authority to a successor. Nor is it anywhere said that Rome was to be the seat of the church or that the Bishop of Rome was to be supreme. Indeed, the Council of Nicaea in 325 said there were three primacies: Rome, Alexandria and Antioch. This was twelve years after Constantine had issued the Edict of Milan which legalized Christianity in the Empire and made the Emperor, who was still a pagan, the de facto head of the church. It was, in fact, Constantine who called and presided over the Council of Nicaea. And, while he did not proclaim doctrine, he did try to force doctrinal conformity throughout the realm, not through the Bishop of Rome, but through his Council. In the early church, the title of Pope was given to any bishop and it was not until the sixth century that it began being reserved to the Bishop of Rome.

The whatever clause is more interesting still. First, Peter did not or could not impose his views on the others. Even the non-apostle Paul engaged him on the most serious matters and won every time. The modern church is much more the church of Paul than of Peter. But the real problem is that the church invokes the whatever clause when it is convenient but denies it when it is not. Thus, in a letter to the world’s bishops, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, given on May 22, 1994, Pope John Paul II said, “…in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.”

No authority! So much for whatever you bind. The historian Garry Wills titled his 2000 book Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit by which he referred to the persistent lying employed by the Popes as basic strategy. A perfect example of this is John Paul’s claim to Peter’s mission of “confirming the brethren.” He propounds a deliberate distortion of Luke 22:32. It is the famous scene near the end of the Last Supper. Jesus says, "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers." But he replied, ‘Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.’ Jesus answered, ‘I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me."

The Pope wants his readers to believe that because Jesus told Peter to reassure his terrified colleagues, he, John Paul, has the right to declare definitively that women cannot be priests. That is obviously not what Jesus meant. The Pope is proclaiming an absurdity on the basis of an absurd claim of authority unless, of course, one assumes that the doctrine of infallibility can transform an absurdity into an eternal verity. Sadly such miraculous mutations are often the sum and substance of papal logic. Virtually all proclamations are infused with beatific love for that which is being denounced. Thus, you will read that the church loves and respects homosexuals, women, heretics and sinners of every description. “Hate the sin, love the sinner” is pretty much the official mantra even though it has no correlation with actual actions of the church. Indeed, when it was abandoning such malefactors as Joan of Arc to the stake, it prayed the formula Rogando eam ut cum velit mite agere, that the executioners should treat her with gentleness. Burn her alive but do it gently.

There have also been formulas for less sedate occasions. On July 22, 1209, the crusaders of Pope Innocent III invested the town of Beziers in what is now southwestern France. The knights asked Papal Legate and Cistercian monk Arnold Amaury how to distinguish friend from foe. Arnie replied, "Caedite eos! Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius!" Slaughter them all! God will know his own! And they did, all 20,000 men, women and children according to Arnold himself in his report to the Pope. The dead included a thousand women and children huddled in the Church of Saint Mary Magdalene. The bones of these martyrs were uncovered in 1840. As Stephen O’Shea wrote about the massacre, “In the days before gunpowder, to kill that many people in so short a time required a savage single-mindedness that beggars the imagination.”

Some may think that the fully documented stories of the Cathars and Joan of Arc represent not the rule but the exception in church history. Of their kind, they are certainly egregious but their kind is not at all uncommon. It is also true that from the beginning the church has been blessed with adherents who were kind and loving, wise, gentle and courageous. But it has rarely admired these virtues and has often persecuted their practitioners. Consider Saint Francis of Assisi and his followers. During his life (1181-1226), he was generally accepted and even venerated as a holy man and a man of peace. He founded his order on the basis of the rule of poverty in Christ’s mandate to the apostles, “Do not take along any gold or silver or copper in your belts; take no bag for the journey, or extra tunic, or sandals or a staff; for the worker is worth his keep.” He and his followers preached the holiness of poverty and opposed the ostentation of the papal court and the Italian hierarchy. Francis was canonized by Gregory IX two years after his death but during the following decades, the Franciscans and the papacy became estranged over the issue of poverty. A group of Franciscans led by Umbertino of Casale (1259-1330), William of Ockham (1288-1348) and Michael of Cesena (1270-1342) mounted a strong opposition to the papal court which, by this time, had fled to Avignon. Michael was excommunicated as a schismatic and sent to prison for the rest of his life. He was rehabilitated twenty-one years after his death. William was excommunicated for reasons that were never made clear. Umbertino ultimately escaped being tried for heresy by fleeing to Germany. The Pope, John XXII, lived a life of extreme luxury and was opposed to evangelical poverty because he felt he needed to impress his competitors, the electors of the Holy Roman Empire, whom he regarded as his spiritual and temporal vassals.

The lust for power, like other lusts, feeds on itself and seeks as many outlets as are available. Princes and prelates acquired vast art collections, for example, not because they were expressing their esthetic sensibilities but because the ostentatious display of wealth was a metaphor for their power that was obvious to friends and foes alike. The church nearly bankrupted itself in the building of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and, in the process, had to resort to extortionate tactics to raise money, tactics that ultimately cost it Germany. St. Peter’s is not beautiful. It is not an expression of the faith and hope that inspired the builders of Chartres. It is, in fact, ugly but it is big, boasting the largest interior of any church in Christendom. By far. It dominates Rome. It inspires awe as it was meant to.

The same forces translate easily to the parish level. Until very recently, they protected clergy engaged in the most odious, depraved sexual crimes against children. The church purports to see no relationship between the psychosexual pathology characteristic of the enterprise and the fierce historical misogyny and self-destructive insistence on a celibate all-male priesthood. What must be protected at all costs is the power. If anything frightens them, it is not the slippage in sacramental observance or mass attendance but the exposure of the church as Oz-like. The wizard of Vatican City is a small, frightened man with a megaphone hiding behind the elaborate façade of a Potemkin village. Popes like John XXIII and John Paul I are regarded as mistakes. This explains why Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae with all its embarrassing theology and fraudulent history. He was persuaded that to change the teaching on contraception would erode his own power and that of his successors.

Power, red in tooth and claw, is the sum and substance of papal ambition. The God preached by these men is a God of fear not love, of Genesis, not John. The “faithful” must be taught that it is virtually impossible to gain entrance into heaven and that only the hierarchs hold the keys to the kingdom. Only they can commune with the divinity and only their blessing can counteract man’s natural wickedness. They invented the idea of original sin: the sin of Adam passed on to his descendents so that every human being except the Virgin Mary is born in a state of degradation, of alienation from God. In the words of the official Catechism of the Catholic Church, there is an, “…overwhelming misery which oppresses men and their inclination towards evil and death cannot be understood apart from their connection with Adam's sin and the fact that he has transmitted to us a sin with which we are all born afflicted, a sin which is the ‘death of the soul.’” Baptism cleanses the soul but, “After that first sin, the world is virtually inundated by sin…Scripture and the Church's Tradition continually recall the presence and universality of sin in man's history.”

This is the logic of the Red Queen. It is not biblical. The Catechism itself claims that it is a “mystery” but even that is absurd. There is nothing mysterious about it. It is exegesis in the service of a political ideology. The church is interpreting a perfectly conventional creation myth, that of Genesis, to support the centralization of absolute power in its own hands. And the church’s interpretation is incompatible with the gospel of love.

Imagine a religion based on the notion that God is love. This would be a religion that understands its mission to be promoting love of all kinds by helping people find their way—their own way—to lives of love. Now think of the leadership of this religion. Is there a central figure who sits on a gilded throne wearing a huge crown and an elaborate costume? Does he affect red patent leather shoes made for him by Prada? Do its legions of celibate bureaucrats and canon lawyers spend their lives promulgating detailed instructions on the sexual behavior of members and non-members? Does it profess the inferiority of the female half of the species because of a warped understanding of the myth of Eden?

On December 7, 1965, Pope Paul VI promulgated Gaudium et Spes, the final major document of the second Vatican Council. Its first sentence declared, “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ.” Yes. Gaudium et Spes is a revolutionary declaration. In language that is diplomatic but perfectly clear, it affirms that the church must always change to address the needs of a changing world. It has many themes, among them the notion that the church is the servant of the “people of God.” It embraces human freedom, the “dignity of conscience,” the high estate of marriage and, most importantly, the dignity of the human person. It is not without compromise as the council tried to accommodate its critics, notably Joseph Ratzinger who was otherwise regarded as a progressive (and is, of course, now Pope Benedict XVI). But aside from the gospel of love preached by Jesus himself, it is the only document in the history of the church that might serve as the creed of a church based on the notion that God is love.

Gaudium et Spes was sabotaged, deliberately and with malice aforethought, by the Holy Roman Curia which saw it, correctly, as a challenge to its power. The opposition was led by Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, perhaps the most conservative prelate of the twentieth century. Taking advantage of Paul VI’s indecisiveness, the curia practiced the politics of delay and obfuscation, ultimately convincing the Pope to issue the birth control encyclical, Humanae Vitae, which halted the momentum of the council and then reversed it. That single document came close to destroying Roman Catholicism as priests abandoned the ministry by the thousands and lay people first ignored it and then stopped going to church. Ten years later, the curia engineered the election of Karol Józef Wojtyła as Pope John Paul II. There is little doubt that they knew that their preferred candidate Giuseppe Siri of Genoa could not prevail and that they were worried that the liberal Giovanni Benelli of Florence could. They then seized upon the suggestion of the progressive Franz König of Vienna, knowing as apparently König did not, that Wojtyła would be reliably ultraconservative on the issues that mattered most to them, most importantly, the power of the Vatican. Thirty-two years later, it is clear that the church is more conservative than it has been at any time since the death of Pius IX. The gospel of love survives only as a talking point to be trotted out occasionally to disguise the latest corruption of the good news. Love is dead and the church is dying.