Scandals in the Church as generational corruption?

[OLD1953]

John,

It seems fairly evident that much of the scandal currently rocking the church is due to immoral and unprincipled GenX members taking advantage of stupid and reluctant to act Boomers, much as the scandals in the financial world have played out. Have you mentioned this before and I missed it or have you been passing over it for more obvious evidence for generational theory? In any event, it's apparent the Catholic Church is moving into a crisis and regeneration period, due to generational forces.

[Felix34]

I think it's been going on for centuries, the whole idea of being a Catholic priest is that you must celibate. (before the 12th century, it was all right to have a wife and kids, a lot of this led to a hierarchical/royal rule in a way, and thus rebellion. Imagine if a Bishop's son were just entering the church at the time, but you worked hard to get to where you were. Who do you think would succeed him? So naturally there was a rebellion due to corruption and this idea came into play. It was also seen as more modest.) Can you imagine the types of people that must draw in? You might as well just shove a bunch of kids in the same prison cell as a pedophile and leave them unmonitored.

I do think the whole idea of it being a lie can be attributed to both the silent and boomer generation. The depression era kids are supposedly the "artist" archetype, so naturally they must be indecisive about it and troubled by it. The Boomer generation, imo, is just oblivious, so no surprise that they had no idea what was going on.

Also, there are more people in the boomer generation? So perhaps there's a bit more of it than there has been in decades?

[John]

> It seems fairly evident that much of the scandal currently rocking
> the church is due to immoral and unprincipled GenX members taking
> advantage of stupid and reluctant to act Boomers, much as the
> scandals in the financial world have played out. Have you
> mentioned this before and I missed it or have you been passing
> over it for more obvious evidence for generational theory? In any
> event, it's apparent the Catholic Church is moving into a crisis
> and regeneration period, due to generational forces.

I've never really focused much on the internals of the Catholic Church
itself, probably for reasons related to Stalin's famous quote, "How
many divisions does the Pope command?" In other words, the Catholic
Church is important to Generational Dynamics for how it affects other
nations, rather than what happens internally.

However, there's no doubt that the same generational considerations
apply to the Church itself. The Church was wracked by World War II
and the necessity of picking sides. Those effects are still visible
today in the questions about whether the Pope supported the Nazis.

Because of its strict hierarchical structure, it's not easy for young
members of the hierarchy to oppose any Church doctrine. However, it
would not surprise me to learn that many post-war doctrines have
unraveled in subtle ways in the last couple of decades, and these
would include financial doctrines.

John

[robfromraleigh]

I believe there is one other problem in trying to apply generational theory to the Catholic Church: it's size. By that, I mean it operates in well over 100 countries, of which there are some in each one of the four turnings. The Pope himself is likely to be influenced by the turnings within southern Europe (mainly Italy), especially if he was originally from Europe. But the Pope usually won't try to get very involved in the happenings in the Church's hierarchy in a particular country, and when he does so, it is usually to apologize and bring healing, not condemn.

Thus, the reactions (or lack thereof) of scandals of any type within the Catholic Church are going to based on the timeline of the country it occurs in. You'll hear stories of child abuse during unraveling and crisis periods, but not so much during recovery/high periods. Does that mean the abuse is not occurring? No--it just means it is swept under the rug by the parents and media within the country for the sake of maintaining the recovery/high. Note that the Pope has nothing to do with this, and frankly, probably does not even know anything at all about it. Well, not until it blows up in the media, especially during crisis periods when those who were abused years ago will also come forward (since the climate is more receptive to their stores). We are hearing so much about it now because so many countries are in the crisis era currently.

This is further compounded by the fact that Church traditions are so strong that even a strong, activist Pope would have a major battle on his hands if he pushed for change. Thus, the Pope does not have much incentive to fight for change, especially since it is an appointment for life and there is no worries about running for re-election to the office (there's good and bad to this, I'm obviously focusing on the bad at the moment). This lack of incentive is what allows scandals of all types to occur that really could have been prevented.

[thomasglee]

John,

It seems fairly evident that much of the scandal currently rocking the church is due to immoral and unprincipled GenX members taking advantage of stupid and reluctant to act Boomers, much as the scandals in the financial world have played out. Have you mentioned this before and I missed it or have you been passing over it for more obvious evidence for generational theory? In any event, it's apparent the Catholic Church is moving into a crisis and regeneration period, due to generational forces.

I think you have it reversed.... it was primarily boomers taking advantage of gen-exers. Wasn't it?

[John]

> I believe there is one other problem in trying to apply
> generational theory to the Catholic Church: it's size. By that, I
> mean it operates in well over 100 countries, of which there are
> some in each one of the four turnings. The Pope himself is likely
> to be influenced by the turnings within southern Europe (mainly
> Italy), especially if he was originally from Europe. But the Pope
> usually won't try to get very involved in the happenings in the
> Church's hierarchy in a particular country, and when he does so,
> it is usually to apologize and bring healing, not condemn.

This is a good point. What I was thinking of is that most of the
policy-making organs of the Church are on the WW II timeline, along
with Europe and the US.

What's interesting is that when you hear about Catholic Church
doctrines being discussed in Africa, for example, especially the
regions that had liberation wars in the 60s and 70s, they seem to be a
lot more conservative than the Europeans.

John

[robfromraleigh]

That is interesting. Are you saying this is the case despite of the fact that those countries should be well into awakening periods now? Or are you saying that the high/recovery period should be about to close, brining on some of the new more liberal attitudes that awakening periods generally bring?

Or could something else be in play? Is it possible that there is a selection problem here? By that, I mean that if 99% of the population is religion A and only 1% is religion B, it would seem natural that the 1% minority be very strong in those beliefs and be able to defend them vigorously in a debate. In order words, the tiny minority has been selected to be more conservative in their application of their beliefs than a more mainstream person would be. Since I do not know to which countries you refer, I do not know what percentage of the populace there consider themselves Catholic.

This sounds like it could merit more study from a Generational Dynamics framework...isn't is amazing how many things Generational Theory can be applied to?

[xakzen]

That is interesting. Are you saying this is the case despite of the fact that those countries should be well into awakening periods now? Or are you saying that the high/recovery period should be about to close, brining on some of the new more liberal attitudes that awakening periods generally bring?

...

Just because our most recent Awakening period in the West was a mostly liberal one doesn't mean that that is the norm. One could hardly argue that the Purtians were liberal in either their political or religious views or that the First Great Awakening in colonial America was anything but a return to those Puritan values. True the Transcendentals were more liberal, but then the Missionaries brought us Prohibition. Even today most of the younger Boomers I know are more likely to be Born Again Christians than Anarchistic Hippies.

[richard5za]

John,

It seems fairly evident that much of the scandal currently rocking the church is due to immoral and unprincipled GenX members taking advantage of stupid and reluctant to act Boomers, much as the scandals in the financial world have played out. Have you mentioned this before and I missed it or have you been passing over it for more obvious evidence for generational theory? In any event, it's apparent the Catholic Church is moving into a crisis and regeneration period, due to generational forces.

You can't be an active Catholic, as I am, without feeling seriously "impacted" by the sex scandals within the Church. I have asked the question "How on earth could this happen" so many times.

Research shows that the sex scandal goes back to at least the 60's and has included clergy from the silent generation, boomers and GenX. It may go back a very long way. To give the Vatican some credit they wrote to the USA Catholic Church in the 60's along the lines of "you guys are getting lax in your selection of priests and there is going to be trouble". Yes, there has been trouble. But serious problems have also emerged in Europe, and perhaps will emerge in other parts of the world too.

A very high percentage of the sexual abusers are same sex attraction (homosexual) and one wonders if they went into the priesthood as a way to hide rather than as a calling to go and do God's love. Crime tends to be rationalised (a form of moral blindness) and no doubt they all rationalised their sexual abuse, perhaps along the lines of just "a little thing"

There is no doubt that the Church is in crisis. Its difficult to forecast what this means or how the Church may change, although I will give you my personal views. An intelligent, well researched, well thought out article along the lines of "The future of the Church and the Church of the future" doesn't seem to exist anywhere!

Major changes within the Church take much longer than generational cycles. If you look at the 2000 year history, the early Church was a church of the laity, meeting mostly in private homes rather than church buildings with minimal numbers of clergy. The growth in church buildings and clergy happened after AD 313 when Christianity was legalised. Then came the dark ages and the faith was kept alive in the monastries of Europe. Then in the middle ages came the great evangelists of Europe who revitalised the faith and started a large number of religious orders: Francis in Italy (Franciscans) Dominique in France (Dominicans) Inigo de Loyola (Jesuits) etc, etc It was the age of the clergy. European clergy then evangelised the world. Then at Vatican II in the 1960's the bishops created mechanisms for the laity to play a much larger role, but this has been slow to take off.

Its a huge world wide church; nearly 1 in 5 people on this planet are Catholic and the Church has rapid growth rates in Asia and Africa. But it has the same rules in every geographical area. I suspect that this is what will break down first. For instance, the USA and Europe may be ready for women priests, but they repesent only 10% of Catholics, and most of the Church are not ready for woman priests. etc

My own prediction is that the next Pope will be the last. After that there will be some sort of union of Catholic Churches, and the way will be open for a significant re-unification of Christianity. There is already a Catholic / Lutheran agreement, and an offer to Anglicans, and first steps will probably be to also include Greek and Russian Orthodox. In this sort of union, Methodists would be an easy fit, and over 30 to 50 years the Church could account for 80% of Christians.

My other prediction is that it will more and more become a church of the laity, as was the early Church.

Now coming to the generational element: It's there OK, because different generations look at things differently which influences both spirituality and expression. I see this a lot because I run programmes helping adults of all ages to explore the basics of the Christian message. The different generations can react very strongly to "small differences in expression and/or spirituality". For instance people over 65 can be feel totally alienated by the the guitars, drums and clapping during the singing of an enthusiatic Youth Mass; alienated enough to stop going to church! But the major issues within the Church seem much bigger than generational influences.

Regards. Richard

[The Grey Badger]

But hasn't the Youth Mass as you describe it been going on for something like 40 years? One should think people would have had time to get used to it by now. And aren't traditional masses also available, often at a different time on the same day?

Interesting that you picked "over 65" - i.e. "pre-Boomer", as we are so often called. In the Episcopal Church, it was about 40 years ago that a modern-language prayer book was given us as a replacement for the old, lovely cadences of the one that has served us from the Reformation on, which would have hit the same generational dividing line. Yet - while 19th Century people apparently had no problems with Elizabethan language (as note how popular Shakespeare was out in the mining camps of Colorado in the late 19th!) 20th's Century people seemed to have had increasing difficulties, many of the late Silent were treating it like Latin. "Lovely, and I should know what it means, and I think I have a rough idea ...."

You do have your finger on something, but I think it is a major cultural break - and if you ask me, a linguistic change as big as the change from Middle to Early Modern English - that took place in the 20th Century. Musical forms, which had been changing for 70 years, too - and they were finally ratified, locked in, around 1970.

When was the Latin Mass abolished?