Reforming the Institution

Institutions grow out of a common goal or belief shared by enough people to establish a recognizable group. Before long they write or agree on a constitution, or a document, or a story to which they pledge allegiance, normally celebrated through a ritual that is re-enacted on a regular basis. As time goes on, the bonds become firmer when the group grows and attains its goals. More stories arise, some of which conform to reality, some are pure fantasy. The group eventually establishes the rules of orthodoxy.

Once it reaches that stage the institution takes on its own character or personality. It exists in its own right. At that juncture its preservation can supersede even the original intent of those who started it. In no time, the institution is taken over by people who use it to further their own personal ends, and the institution then attracts ambitious, acquisitive, greedy, powerful individuals. Fear of the loss of power becomes a dominant theme. They surround themselves with sycophantic bureaucrats who do what they are told without question. These individuals soon find a way to feed the top people the information that serves their own interests.

Within a short time these individuals exploit even their own adherents. They marginalize all outsiders and spread fear of rejection and excommunication within the institution. The leaders and the institutional bureaucracy become oppressive, arrogant, and intolerant.

The bigger the institution grows, the more powerful it becomes, the more sacred its claim, the harder it is to reform it. Sooner or later corruption becomes so widespread that it produces a groundswell of discontent. Opposition begins to appear, organizes its forces, and a revolution occurs. The institutions that survive are the ones which go back to their original objectives, discard the most obvious accretions and change just enough to satisfy the discontented.

Historically nothing is so conservative as a sudden successful revolution, particularly if led by firebrands who are not afraid to use violence to achieve the quick dissolution of what they identify as an unjust tyranny. The French put it this way: the more things change, the more they stay the same. The only real change is the names of those in power.

When religion is institutionalized it can become vicious, intolerant, abusive, unjust, oppressive. It attracts to its leadership a large number of people who use it to further their own personal ambitions, their own proclivities, both honourable and dishonourable. It creates a system that makes internal dissent into treachery, heresy, unfaithfulness. It enslaves the common person who is in need of comfort, who needs reassurance against irrational fears, who looks to leaders for guidance in thought and morality. Under the guise of enlightenment the institution blinds its leaders and followers alike.

When I apply this theory of institutional development to the Roman Catholic Church I come to the great reforming attempt of Vatican II convened by John XXIII in the 1960’s.   The council came as no surprise to those who had for almost a century been advocating an about-face from the ultra-conservative stands of the nineteenth century. The bishops assembled in Rome agreed almost to a man that changes were needed.

At the heart of the reform was a profound change in the liturgy, at the centre of which was a shift to vernacular languages and later a complete overhaul of the lectionary. Sunday mass is for Catholics the most intimate connection to their faith. When they see changes there, changes which they do not understand, they become unsettled. The most serious failure of the reform was the ignorance of ill-prepared parish priests. Silly, idiosyncratic innovations flourished. Sloppy habits replaced stately rituals. The majority of priests failed to appreciate the value and meaning of the messages in the readings in their homilies. Inappropriate music replaced the traditional Gregorian chants. Although many welcomed the changes, many other Catholics no longer recognized the church of their youth. Countless members drifted away.

The Vatican lost no time in reasserting the old ways. Paul VI’s vacillating pusillanimity gave way to ultra conservatives John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who filled all the vacancies in the episcopate with conservatives and came down hard on any liberal expressions. Beginning in the late 1960’s well over 100,000 priests all over the world, many of them the brightest and best, left their posts. No one knows how many nuns left their convents. The dreams of Vatican II evaporated.

What happened? Vatican II, despite some remarkable changes, was just another brief and futile attempt to reform the Catholic Church from the top. That never works. Particularly in an institution as huge and diverse as the Catholic Church, it is impossible to organize the laity and parish priests to understand and demand reform.

Unlike most other institutions and empires, the Catholic Church has an incredible ability to rid itself of the worst of the accretions and change just enough to satisfy those who have stayed in. Reform attempts have often enough strengthened the hold of Roman authority.

I have come to believe that it all boils down to one word: woman. The Roman church has survived because it has kept its women praying and paying. Face it, most men would not go to church on Sunday or put a dime in the collection plate if their wives quit going and paying. Every attempt on the part of women to gain entry into the power structure of the Catholic Church has failed quickly and miserably.

And so the exclusively male clerical hierarchy, claiming infallibility, can continue to pray, “O God, grant that we may always be right for thou knowest that we will never change our minds.”