Warily, of course.
But let me start on a cheerful note. Wasting time after a certain lunch, I dipped into Gone with the Wind at the Vatican, published under the pseudonym Milenari at Kaos Editzioni in Milan around 1999. It’s perhaps the most interesting of the Catholic muckraking books, because it’s written by an insider. Being in a somewhat despairing frame of mind that afternoon, I thought that even my great hero, Angelo Roncalli, in later life Pope John XXIII, would be exposed as a venal fool. But no! Milenari recounts the well known story of Roncalli’s appointment as Papal ambassador to post-Liberation Paris, adding a few details that at least to me were news. Here's the scoop according to Milenari: in his capacity as the hastily appointed Nuncio, Roncalli delivered a nuanced, thoughtful New Year's address, to the deep approval of the assembled ambassadorial audience. Where did he get his eloquence? Roncalli, short of time and experience, had prudently befriended the particular Soviet representative who would (such were the inflexible regulations of diplomatic protocol in 1940s Paris) have taken the podium had the Holy See unwisely continued to spite Charles de Gaulle by leaving the office of Nuncio vacant. What Roncalli delivered was the Soviet ambassador's speech. The anecdote is cheering, as I say, since it suggests a certain truth and goodness in the diplomatic representative of the bloody butcher Stalin, and of course shows both humility and a talent for friendship in Roncalli.
So light and peace can be found in recent Church history. If we need further examples, we may (as I’ve stressed in my Utopia 2184) consider Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. Thérèse said of Christ, “I try to be nowise concerned about myself, and to abandon unreservedly to Him the work He deigns to accomplish in my soul.” And she helpfully added, “Should we attempt great things, even under pretext of zeal, He deserts us.” Or again, we may recall John Henry Cardinal Newman, who is said to have proposed the toast “The Truth first, the Pope second.” It has been suggested (and I believe it) that Newman himself struggled with homosexual inclinations.
Light is not lacking. But, as I say, there's plenty of darkness too, and we have to live with that.
We can perhaps laugh off the really amazing debauchery in the Church, like the orgy of Pope Alexander VI. He brought girlz in to his big party, then distributed prizes such as cloaks, silk tunics, boots, and caps to those guys who showed the greatest stamina. I gather, anyway, from the Internet, that that's how the sorry spectacle is written up in a certain Renaissance-Rome Diarium by a certain Burchard.
Really painful, really hard to laugh off, is some of the amazing theology. The article on Hell in the old circa-1910 Catholic Encyclopedia has lately been dissected by physicist-theologian Stephen Lovatt at http://www.geocities.com/pharsea/. It's a chilling read. The Encyclopedia author basically represents God as capable of bringing the damned to repentance, yet choosing, monstrously, not to, preferring in the interest of “justice” to have them burn. (The truth must be, as Dr Lovatt remarks, that if any of the dead are damned, then they deliberately distance themselves from God in spite of all that God, who is omnipotent, and what is more is in no sense proud, can do for them. For my part, I’d ask us to recall, in appraising the doctrine of Hell, what we’ve been taught about God in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Does the father in the story wait for the youngest son to knock on the door? No: he goes out on the road to meet him, spying him when is is “still far off.” And what about the pharisaical elder son, who mopes outside when the welcoming feast is in progress? Does the father send out servants to make him see reason? No. Mindless of his dignity, he goes outside himself to plead.)
As a second piece of amazing theology, we might take the
Instruction of 1866 June 20, issued by the Holy See in
answer to a request for
moral guidance after the United States passed the Thirteenth
Amendment to its Constitution, outlawing slavery:
Slavery itself, considered as such in its essential nature, is not at
all contrary to the natural and divine law, and there can be several
just titles of slavery and these are referred to by approved theologians
and commentators of the sacred canons. It is not contrary to the natural
and divine law for a slave to be sold, bought, exchanged or given. The
purchaser should carefully examine whether the slave who is put up for
sale has been justly or unjustly deprived of his liberty, and ... the
vendor should do nothing which might endanger the life, virtue, or
Catholic faith of the slave.
My source for that quote is, again, Dr Stephen Lovatt’s
http://www.geocities.com/pharsea/.
No doubt the toxic Instruction is a dead letter. But what does its promulgation tell us about the reliability of the teaching Church, a scant five generations ago?