Schisms of Theology Run Silent, Run Deep
By Michael Valpy, Religion and Ethics Reporter
Originally published in the The Globe and Mail, July 25, 2002
As Archbishop George Pell of Sydney told 500 young Roman Catholics yesterday that abortion is a worse moral scandal than priests sexually abusing young people, it became clear why the church is heading in two different directions.
The archbishop, known to his critics as the Pell Pot of Australian Catholicism, was conducting a catechesis—instruction in the faith—at a parish in the city of Brampton for Catholic delegates to World Youth Day. That is what bishops were doing in more than 100 churches across Greater Toronto.
Archbishop Pell taught his listeners about a Jesus who promises punishment for those who stray from the church's teachings on premarital sex, abortion and euthanasia—as well as on social justice and looking after the poor.
"Jesus offers punishment and consequences. It's right through the Gospels."
He taught them: "It's important for you to defend Catholic tradition as coming to us from Christ and the apostles."
He taught them: "The function of the Pope is to protect that tradition, to say this belongs to Catholic tradition and this doesn't."
He taught them: "We are not free to decide for ourselves what is right and wrong. Our conscience can be wrong."
He taught them everything that growing numbers of liberal progressive Catholics, mainly in the West, are rebelling against—from papal authoritarianism to the church's rejection of birth control and the ordination of women. Several theologians have called the increasingly fractious dissent a silent schism, a reference to the millions who have left the church because they can't accept its teachings.
The archbishop received a standing ovation from his audience.
World Youth Day is not just a sunny gathering for a couple of hundred thousand kids to sing and join hands and let their spirits soar.
It's also a time for promulgation of the official line, the papal philosophy of Pope John Paul and those members of the church hierarchy who are of one mind with him.
Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic, the Archbishop of Toronto, finished his homily at WYD's opening mass with these words, "We must refuse to feign the politically correct tolerance which imagines that all religions and convictions and values are equally valid."
Or, as Archbishop Pell told the international Catholic newspaper Tablet earlier this year, liberalism has run its course and has nothing to offer the church.
He is in Toronto, teaching young Catholics, presumably because he speaks the correct message.
Archbishop Pell made the comparison between abortion and priestly sex abuse in response to a question from Kentucky youth minister Greg Rickert, who wanted to know what Catholics should say when someone asks them about the sex scandal currently afflicting the church in the United States.
I asked the archbishop afterward what he meant by saying abortion is a worse moral scandal.
"Because it's always a destruction of human life," he said.
Then he said: "I'm not in any way attempting to downplay abuse. I'm saying there's been a lot of attention on sexual abuse, but not on other things. That's all I'm trying to say."
Which is not what he did say.
The archbishop, a pub owner's son described by an Australian journalist as "a blokey chap who enjoys Australian Rules Football," continues to have his own problems with sexually abusive priests and the Australian public.
He has been accused of hearing complaints of sexual molestation and having done nothing and of agreeing to payments to victims on condition they not speak out—accusations that he has denied.
There have been demands he resign.
He has apologized publicly for accompanying one accused priest to court in a show of "priestly solidarity" and he and Australia's second-ranking Roman Catholic cleric, the Archbishop of Melbourne, have apologized for all sex-abuse cases.
He has refused to give communion to Catholic homosexuals belonging to an organization called Rainbow Sash. He has said, "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve."
At his installation as Archbishop of Sydney, gay activists chanted, "George Pell, go to hell."
Thomas Keneally, probably Australia's best-known author, wrote a New Yorker article a couple of months ago saying he had left the church because of priests such as Archbishop Pell.
"I have long since abandoned any expectation that the institutional church will begin to listen to its people . . ." Mr. Keneally wrote. "With such men in charge [as Archbishop Pell], men who wield their authority as an instrument of exclusion, I cannot return to the generous mystery of my boyhood faith."
Anyway, the archbishop was in Toronto yesterday, instructing the young.
He told one questioner that if someone says the church oppresses women, "I would unpack it and say, 'Is that your real issue or just your presenting issue?'"
The real issue, said the archbishop, is that the church stands for the one true God and Jesus Christ as the Son of God.
