An 1870 New York Times editorial proclaimed that the Roman Catholic Church had died. Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italy’s George Washington, in a nation-building bid to unify small Italian principalities, had just seized the Papal States. This was a several-thousand square mile piece of central and northern Italy governed by the popes since 750. It was a country just as surely as were the other kingdoms of Europe, complete with law courts, tax-collecting systems, police and all the other accoutrements of national government. One can even view its guillotine in the Vatican Museum. It had been used about 150 times. For his efforts, Garibaldi and his lieutenants were excommunicated by Pope Pius IX, who considered himself the prisoner of the Vatican.
But the church did not die. Because the concept of an earthly kingdom was so deeply entrenched in the thinking of church members, it seemed that such material pomp was imperative for Christ’s followers even if the constant intrigue to secure the papacy by powerful European families like the Borgias and the Medicis was a big reason for the Reformation. Christians thought they needed a territorial kingdom to stand tall against the Muslims and the many trading partners of Venice to the east. We Americans find it a bit bizarre, used to a worldwide church that raises its money by passing the collection basket. Pope John XXIII needed 16 instead of the usual eight porters to carry him in the sedan chair, the kind of thing European monarchs used as a matter of course.
So we American Catholics might see some hope in the gloom of clergy abuse prosecutions even though they have cost our national church about $3 billion. And should some court nail us with a RICO (Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations) conviction, the damages would quadruple. By that I mean we would appear and feel as destitute as did the post-1870 papacy, which settled with Mussolini in 1929 at a penny on the dollar for damages. It reduced the Vatican to 108.7 acres, with another 60 spread throughout the city of Rome. Yet believers in tune with the Lord’s word to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world,” say that this, in some ways, is the best thing that could have happened to us. We had no business being in the earthly kingdom business in the first place. Stripped of it, we could concentrate with fewer distractions on remaking the face of the earth into God’s kingdom.
When we read that the Philadelphia Archdiocese is selling its Ventnor mansion, used by retired priests for a week’s relaxation, we understand that this was a well intentioned luxury which Catholics can no longer afford. When we read that episcopal palaces across the country are going on the auction block, perhaps many of us who would like a week’s rest at the shore would say we had it coming with our misguided practice of hiding the offenses of the 5 percent of abusive clergy so as not to publicly humiliate the church, and so as to protect our financial resources. These, in the end, are the people’s, not the bishops’. Did not Vatican II 50 years ago teach us that the people, not just the bishops, are the church?
I do not doubt for a minute that since the 1985 exposing of a Louisiana priest abuser, life has been hard for us Catholics. Ask any priest. It has been traumatic. It is well described as the worst crisis of the American Church in its history. We are being stripped just as we were with the fall of the Papal States. My hope is that, long-term, it will be for our greater good. Most of the church’s wealth is in real estate, most of which is not seashore mansions but parishes that minister to people of all creeds. In the U.S., the American Catholic Church is the second largest provider of social services to the public at large. The only larger supplier is the U.S. government which, however, unlike the church, is tax-supported. We have earnestly tried to use our material wealth to benefit people, and not just our own people. If we can stanch the angry departure of disgusted members — which departures, by the way, are not as great as those of some other denominations — we can regroup as a stronger, humbler approximation of what the Lord intended for his little flock, his chosen garden, terms the New Testament uses to describe us in our infant state.
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