Catholic Church on the nose: contraception, divorce, celibacy

The Catholic Church is accustomed to fighting losing battles. Its recent history is littered with various popes insisting on hardline stances on a range of issues that put the church firmly out of step with the great majority of its adherents.

I can vividly recall my time as an articled clerk for a solicitor in 1969-70. This solicitor was signed up to a scheme to assist impoverished women get access to the courts to get a divorce.

“Poor peoples’ divorces”, as they were called at the time, became part of my duties. I have never been able to forget the case of one good Catholic woman who had given birth to six children with a man who was a violent drunk who abused her for decades.

This poor wretched, frightened woman had remained with this mongrel because her local priest had convinced her that it was “God’s will” that she stayed.

The threat of eternal damnation was very real to her and hung like the sword of Damocles over her head.

If she got a divorce then that sword would fall on her and she would be denied the comforts and sacraments of the church she had spent a lifetime attending and following and believing.

I am proud that I could convince her that no benevolent supreme being would damn her to the living hell she and her children had been unable to escape.

She went ahead with the divorce but, sadly, her local priest continued to damn her to an eternity of hellfire.

This was but one of a host of such cases I was to deal with that filled me with disgust at the way decent women were put under enormous pressure. “Catholic guilt” was used as a weapon against these women. They were being blackmailed into conforming to a system guaranteed to grind them down and crush them.

It is not too long ago that we witnessed a pope travelling to ­Africa to preach against the use of condoms. In a way this was even more cruel than the treatment of the women to whom I have just ­referred.

The AIDS epidemic that swept Africa devastated the continent. There were orphans everywhere whose parents had died from AIDS, but the Catholic Church put tradition ahead of compassion. Just how the pope could ignore the suffering everywhere around him I really don’t know.

Apart from AIDS, in so many countries in Africa overpopulation has meant, and still means, that large numbers of babies die from malnutrition soon after birth or in the first five years of life.

Meanwhile, in other parts of the world today, Catholics — as with people of other religions, agnostics and atheists — like to choose the number of children they wish to have.

I just can’t imagine a God turning his back on anyone because they have had a vasectomy, use a condom or take a contraceptive pill. So many people turned away from the church on this issue, yet the church stubbornly clings to its tenets. Hypocrisy reigns supreme, though, because many priests still give communion to the divorced and to those who have admitted to the terrible sin of using some form of contraception.

As it reels from the revelations about pedophilia that have emerged from inquiries across the globe, the church’s power is diminishing at a rapid rate.

Even in Ireland, formerly the bedrock of hardline Catholicism, recent referendums on divorce and abortion have been passed with majorities.

If the church fails to listen to its congregation and to acknowledge that today’s world is vastly different from the one its Saviour walked on, it will just keep losing relevance.

In the light of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Australia, there is one recommendation that was inevitable.

The sanctity of the confessional and the absolute right of priests to refuse to divulge anything they are told by sinners intent on seeking God’s forgiveness was never going to survive intact. The church has immediately come up with its usual atavistic response. No matter what the royal commission may recommend, the Catholic Church will refuse to budge.

Again, this will damage the church’s standing. Just how a priest can justify refusing to name a pedophile is beyond me completely. Pedophiles are recidivists. Like serial killers, they are drawn to doing the unspeakable over and over again. It may be somewhat doubtful that Pope Francis will ever see this piece, but I hope someone, somewhere, asks him to consider the children whose innocence will be violently taken off them and who will suffer for the rest of their lives with nightmares and flashbacks.

I don’t know how he could ever justify the silence of his priests, weighed against the safety and goodwill of those whose trust in the church is so firm. If priests refuse to reveal everything else bar the most serious crimes, I would not argue. I know victims of priestly rapes and I know firsthand its devastating effect. If there is room for love and for caring in the church, there is room for change.

Contraception, divorce, celibacy and the sanctity of the confessional are all in need of a courageous pope.

I wish we had one.