The Grand Inquisitor Takes the Throne
Naturally, the
media treats the selection of the new pope, Benedict XVI, as a blessed
event. Unlike me, they want to be polite. I find I cannot regard Joseph
Ratzinger's elevation to the Cathedra of Peter as a benevolent thing.
Among the nonsense fogging the airwaves like sweet-smelling frankincense
from a swinging censer was the assurance of one Vatican spokesman that
the selection process would be no mere election among professionals
recognizing the gifts of one of their own. No, the Holy Spirit would
make his will known (though it might take him a few rounds of voting to
make his choice clear to the cardinals)! I find the idea fully as silly
as if he had said that the Holy Spirit would make his will known in the
choice of the next actor to play James Bond. Can they really be so
simpleminded? Or are such statements strictly for the consumption of the
masses to make them think they dare not disagree with the new pope?
Well, obviously. The classic statement about institutional religion and
the favor it seeks to do us by saving us the trouble of independent
thinking is Dostoyevsky's "Parable of the Grand Inquisitor" (part of his
massive novel The Brothers Karamazov but often printed by itself). In
it, Jesus reappears on the earth in medieval Spain and begins to heal
the sick and help the poor. Not for long though, because the Grand
Inquisitor hears of it and dispatches a goon squad to clap Jesus in a
local dungeon. The Inquisitor visits Jesus in prison to explain why his
ostensible successors have offered him so cold a shoulder. It seems that
they cannot forgive him for rocking the boat in those far-off days of
the first century. He had sought to burden the masses with the terrible
freedom/responsibility to think for themselves, not to allow the
authorities to cow them by the trickery of mystery, miracle, and
authority. But who wants such freedom? Who is equal to bearing such a
burden? After the Sanhedrin got rid of Jesus, its successors, the Lords
of the Catholic Church, continued its work by keeping the faithful in a
peaceful, dogmatic slumber, all answers provided, no troublesome
thinking to do, and of course, threats of hell for daring to choose
one's own conclusions (which is what heresy literally means: "choice").
Well, the Holy Office of the Inquisition is not about to allow Jesus to
stir up trouble all over again. So he must be burnt at the stake on the
morrow as the greatest heretic of all. Finally, for the sake of
nostalgia, the Grand Inquisitor lets Jesus go free into the night with a
warning to get out of town. What do you know? The Holy Office of the
Inquisition still exists (in 1965, it was renamed the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith), and it has rather famously set about
silencing Catholic mavericks like Hans Kung and Edward Schillebeeckx,
though it no longer has the power to put them to death. Guess who has
filled the role of the Grand Inquisitor for the last twenty-four years?
None other than the new pope, Joe Ratzinger, hard-line conservative and
enforcer of Catholic dogma. People have the right to swallow oppressive
dogmas if they want to, if they have been gulled all their lives by
Ratzinger and his ilk. But why do they do it? It is safe to say that
each of them has not made a conscious decision to trade in his or her
intellectual autonomy for unthinking submission to a party line. Few
even realize that this is what is at stake. But you'd think that, after
a while, believers would realize the cruelty of their ecclesiastical
masters and revolt. Mother Church tells them not to have sex without
having kids. No, no to birth control. This is cruel enough. But then
some poor couple wants nothing more than to have kids, whom they fully
intend to baptize, doing their duty to refill the ranks. And they want
to try artificial insemination. But what does the Church tell them? Too
bad! Can't use those newfangled methods! It's almost as if the curia
were trying to figure out how best to frustrate their hapless minions at
every turn. And the child-molestation scandal! Even Father Bruce Ritter,
founder of Covenant House, turned out to be a molester. The Church has
done little, and that only when forced by media attention, to discipline
pederast priests. Top church leaders never cared and still don't.
Consider Cardinal Bernard Law, finally pried loose from his Boston
episcopate for conducting an elaborate shell game, moving priestly
predators to new and unsuspecting sheepfolds instead of, say, turning
them over to the cops. What did his Vatican superiors do to him? They
kicked him upstairs to a higher position. They rubbed it in by having
Law celebrate a very public funeral mass for John Paul II (who, like
Ratzinger, dismissed the molestation scandal as media anti-Catholicism).
Further, his position gave him a major voice in choosing John Paul's
successor. This is an institution tolerating child abuse by its
representatives. And as long as the laity tolerate their leaders'
laxity, they are complicit in it. In The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan, he
who spins the parable of the Inquisitor, says he cannot in good
conscience be a Christian as long as it requires him to rubber-stamp
God's administration of the world, especially including the suffering of
innocent children. How can the poor Catholics retain any respect for
their leaders' "moral authority" at all? Why do they not simply abandon
this wicked and totalitarian institution? They are like the self-imposed
inmates of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. I make it a case of the
Stockholm Syndrome. This is what happens to prisoners who eventually
come to sympathize with their captors, not as a ruse to curry favor and
ease their torment but actually internalizing the oppressor's claims for
authority. You come to think you deserve what you're getting. As one
character says in Monty Python's Life of Brian: "Crucifixion? Best thing
the Romans ever did for us!" The Grand Inquisitor becomes pope? Best
thing the Roman Catholics ever did for us!
By Robert M.
Price