Reaping the whirlwind

I am writing this from Spain, a country deep in the throes of Semana Santa, which affects some parts more than others. Two nights in Zaragoza, the capital of Aragon and staying in a hotel on the square where the church that hosts the main processions is situated, were quite an experience, especially as the processions start at 9 p.m. and end at 3 a.m.! They are anything but silent as battalions of drummers wearing rather sinister conical masks belonging to the various brotherhoods hammer out a tightly disciplined explosion of synchronised percussion called a tamborada that render the combined murtali (petards) of Gudja and Għaxaq something rather second rate! Unlike us in Malta, the Spanish processions start on Palm Sunday and reach their apogee on Good Friday.

There is a sombre splendour to these processions that is lacking in Malta; a sophisticated stylisation that recalls the Inquisition in a country torn apart by so many tragedies starting with the Napoleonic invasion, the Carlist rebellion and the Spanish civil war, events that all but flattened the part of Spain that I am in and left terrible psychological scars which, after 35 years of King Juan Carlos's open and benign brand of democracy are only just being healed.

This is the Spain that Pedro Almodovar depicts in his films, which mercilessly reveal the hypocrisy of the Franco dictatorship and the violent swing to the opposite direction; a swing at times too violent to be contained. Spain and Malta are very similar.

I feel that in both countries the days of our outward signs of inward grace are numbered as the Catholic Church faces crisis after crisis many, sadly, of its own making. One would have thought a few years ago that the paedophilia reports that had rocked the Church were over but, today, they have reached monumental proportions and have implicated the Holy Father himself.

Catholics are perplexed and upset and with good reason. The tragedy is that the innocent suffer with the guilty and, because of these reports, all the good that the Church does as an institution pales into insignificance and all those hundreds of thousands of good priests that are a credit to the cloth are regarded with suspicion. It is impossible to surmise just how extensive this terrible malaise was and still is. It looks as if there's more to come.

Therefore, the decision to smother and hide paedophilia reports and attempt to shield paedophile priests was in the long run a horrible mistake that has forever tarnished the Church whatever anyone says.

People are angry. Some are angry because they have been directly affected. Others are angry because of the hypocrisy of it all. Thus, when these priests were laying down the law from the pulpits and meting out penances in the confessional they were guilty of that same crime that Jesus himself said was so unforgivable that it would be better had the sinner tie a millstone around his neck and drown himself. Still more are angry with the Church hierarchy for allowing the situation to develop into this irreversibly damaging one.

Many are not angry but very disillusioned, especially those who, like myself, have been targeted so many times in this Papacy as being "intrinsically evil" for having been born homosexual. Many feel that this continual bombardment was a sorry attempt to divert the attention of the world from the true evil at large. Paedophilia and homosexuality are two different kettles of fish. Confusing one with the other is criminal. If the Church has done so deliberately it is simply because it knew that, sooner or later, he who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind. The implications are horrendous and I for one wish to make my disassociation quite clear and unequivocal.

Unless the Church moves forward and renews itself it is putting both itself and its followers in grave danger as there are many other beliefs that are just waiting in the wings to dismember and devour what remains of the Catholic Church as it implodes.

Do not be fooled by the vast concourses that follow the processions of Our Lady of Sorrows or by the fanaticism of those who prepare for the annual festa as of their life depended on it. That is tradition and has little or nothing to do with faith. The Church today competes with an information technology that has left it high and dry. The Church can hide very little else apart from those documents reputedly held in some secret vault in the Vatican library, which have been the cause of ridiculous speculation for hundreds of years.

So why does the Church insist on fossilising itself and going against the trends set down by Pope Paul VI?

Why cannot celibacy of the clergy not be considered? Up to the 9th century I believe it was common for lay priests to marry while only those who joined religious orders had to take the vow of chastity. I have not got either the inclination or the space to examine the vagaries and contradictions of Papal history but take it from me a lot of it is pretty unedifying. Why cannot the Church accept the fact that it is pitifully unable to control the intimate lives of its followers anymore by laying down sexual regulations when many members of its own ministry have transgressed them so gravely?

Short of calling a Vatican Council, I really cannot imagine what choice the Pope has to save the Church from a trial more dire than the persecutions of Nero and Diocletian. God save us all.