Can a good and godly man produce evil?
Hanna Arendt famously stated "the face of evil is banal". Which is to say ordinary people can perform the most unbelievable anti-human acts with the assistance of circumstance, ignorance and fear. In effect, no one can really say how they might behave in the face of dramatic events over which they feel they have no control. But human beings can envision choices and they are more than capable of understanding the outcome of their choices, be they for good or ill.How much more difficult to understand what could motivate someone who responds to circumstances sans ignorance and without fear, and their response results in countless deaths and dreadful human misery. One might think that chosing to make decisions based on their outcome would predispose any humane person, (let alone one set high on a spiritual pedestal as an intercessor to god) to select a favourable outcome for as many of humankind as might be possible. You would do that, would you not?
Think, then, of the late, earnestly universally lamented Pope John-Paul. This man, who deliberately chose to do god's will, (in other words to do only good) and to entreat others to do likewise, made choices ultinately inimical to vast tracts of human society. By refusing to move away from traditional church doctrine he did this, and the outcome will be felt throughout the world for a very long time. Roman Catholicism has carved a great niche for itself in the developing (third) world. The dreadful epidemic that AIDs represents continues to take a terrible toll throughout these societies. Pope John-Paul's steadfast refusal to countenance the use of condoms as a first-line defence against the transmission of AIDs and HIV, in the face of what we know to be happening worldwide, is indefensible.
This great and sensitive man, who suffered for his flock, refused to permit marriage within the church, demanding that its priests practise strict celibacy in obeisance to what he believed was god's demand and in severe contravention of the first order of any of nature's organism's requirements: survival. The urge to procreate stems from the code of survival; men and women share sexual relations as a means of sharing life on earth. Simply put, whether for purposes of procreation or 'recreation' it is a means of attaining emotional fulfilment. Denying this to the priesthood is a guarantee of moral malfeasance, so we have the dreadful spectre of priests preying on children in their care. The church, in its wisdom, traditionally concealed this uncomfortable reality, going so far as to transfer such transgressors to different locales where their pasttimes were unknown, until they began again. Protecting the identities and the lives of the priests, not the protection of the innocent, resulted in children's lives being ruined. Peculiar way to serve god, to be sure.
The ordination of half of the aspirants to the role of shepherd of god's flock has been denied simply because the Roman Catholic Church sees itself as the masculine responding to the needs of the faithful. Women are regarded as inappropriate to the role of shepherd to the masses so one might ask: does this church view them as less worthy of the role because they lack traits males have in abundance? Does the spiritual behaviour and values of countless women within the church over the ages not prove otherwise?
Medical science has laid to rest the old belief that Homosexuality is a 'disease' of the soul. It is a genetic endowment in some individuals, and to be accepted as such. Individuals who discover their place and comfort in society to be with those whose gender reflects their own deserve the same respect from society at large as those who seek out those of the opposite gender. Just as there are humanist, secularists, agnostics who are fully capable of practising all the virtues of humankind which religious 'believers' take unto themselves exclusively, so there are Homosexuals who are fully capable of fulfilling the humane obligations of priesthood.
All these have been denied by the late lamented Pope, John Paul.
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, April 09, 2005
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