You Gotta Have Pope...

Since (a) I'm writing a blog under the heading "The Doubting Thomas Chronicles", and (b) I'm a recovering Catholic, I can't resist using the occasion of the pope's visit to talk about the Catholic Church.

My relationship to the Catholic Church has roughly followed this arc:

0-6 yrs old: unaware of it. Overall view of the Church: N/A

7-13 yrs old: went along with it willingly without really understanding it. Overall view of the Church: naively positive

14-18 yrs old: actively rebelled against the idea of it, as I was going through an atheist phase that occurred largely as a result of attending a Jesuit all boys high school where religion was forced upon you and where I was something of a social misfit. Overall view of the Church: uniformly negative

19-26 yrs old: actively ignored it, as I was no longer atheist, but was convinced of the Church's utter irrelevance to the lives of actual people. Overall view of the Church: totally irrelevant

27-34 yrs old: attended church intermittently, typically going regularly for a few months at a time, and then not going for a few years at a time. This occasional need to attend church regularly, typically at times where I was experiencing great change in my life, I assured myself was due solely to the comfort provided by going back to a routine that had been drilled into me for years 0-18. Overall view of the Church: mixed, but on balance negative

35-present: attending church extremely intermittently. Overall view of the Church: decidedly mixed, but on balance closer to neutral.

Basically, my views on the Church have been very much in flux over much of my life, but they are, I think, starting to stabilize as I have entered what I presume to be the middle third of my life (this despite all the responses I got to the Why I Love Half Moon Bay post, which seemed to more or less uniformly predict that I would be dead soon, if not already).

Note that throughout this discussion I am referring to the Church as a social/political/religious institution; I am not talking about theological Catholicism. These 2 things, while related, are nevertheless distinct, but yet are often blurred in actual discussions. For the record, on a theological basis I'm a pretty lousy excuse for a Catholic, since I'm agnostic on most of the issues that are considered non-negotiable and skeptical to outright rejecting of the rest. Here are my positions on a few of the fundamentals, which should show you why I'm going to have a hard time achieving one of my longshot life goals: being pope myself.

Belief in one God: yes. For the record, it was physics which brought me back from the land of atheism. Does this mean I think Hindus, for example, have it all wrong? No. It's certainly possible to me that what Hindus define as many gods are simply different aspects of the same one God. Who knows? Answer: not me.

Existence of a historical Christ: yes. It seems unlikely to me that you could found a 2000 year old religion of the scope of Christianity on someone who never existed at all. On the other hand, Scientology is bogus crap and it's doing fine, so who knows? But still, I fall down on the "yes" side.

Divinity of Christ: Depends. Yes, but I also believe that all life carries within it some aspect of the divine. Do I believe that the historical Christ was any more divine than you, or me, or any other human that every lived, or will live? I dunno. But what I do know is that most of what I believe that Catholicism has to offer people does not depend on the answer to that question being "yes".

Immaculate Conception: Most likely baloney. For sure the most important stuff that Catholicism has to offer does not depend on the answer to that question being "yes".

Papal infallibility: total baloney. Period.

God as Trinity: agnostic. Again, I don't feel a particular need for the answer to this question to be "yes" to feel I can get something useful from Catholicism.

Resurrection of Christ: agnostic. See "God as Trinity" above.

Transubstantiation: in a physically literal sense- no. (And eww, BTW). In the sense of representing something being shared over 2000 years of history, sure.

So, as you can see (if you also went through many years of Catholic schooling), I'm guilty of multiple heresies worthy of sudden, instant, and immediate excommunication from the Church. Fortunately, Church authorities don't know I exist, so I haven't been kicked out of the club yet.

At several points above, I referenced what I think the Church has to offer. In fact, I have come around to the point where I think it actually serves a useful purpose (remember, I'm talking about the institution). Society is in a period of rapid evolution, partly as a result of rapid changes in our scientific knowledge of the world. As a result of this rapid evolution, we are being confronted by the need to consider a lot of important questions as human beings, which I'm not going to try and list here in this post, but are principally organized at the macro level around issues of whether/how much to control our environment and our biology.

I think that over the next 25-50 years, as the Boomer generation, which is the wealthiest and most self-obsessed generation in history, enters its twilight years, it will lead to a tremendous focusing of research dollars on developing new capabilities that will lead to even more questions about whether/how much to control our environment and our biology. But every time we develop a new capability that allows us to say "Yes we can!", there ought to be a reasoned discussion before we decide "Yes we should!"

And that to me is one of the sources of added value of the Church today- since its answer to the question "Should we?" for basically any new capability is pretty reflexively "no", it serves what I believe to be a useful function in articulating the arguments why not to do things. In the end, I think it's much more responsible and powerful to make a decision to do something after carefully considering a lot of reasoned, impassioned arguments not to do it than it is to simply plow forward all the time.

One example of this is embryonic stem cells. I fully support the idea of stem cell research. But when stem cells first started getting serious attention as a path toward significant advances in human health, the primary way of getting them was extracting them from viable human embryos. Now, I don't know when exactly "life" begins for a human, but I don't think that's the important issue. What's important is, a viable human embryo represents human potential, and any decision to sacrifice that embryo represents a conscious decision to be sacrificing human potential.

In the early stages, the embryos from which the stem cells were being extracted were embryos that were destined for destruction anyway, and given those parameters I didn't have a problem with stem cells being extracted from them. But without some attention devoted to the issue, it is easy to imagine quickly reaching a place where people would mass produce viable human embryos solely for eventual sale to research organizations needing their stem cells for research. In that case, we would be converting to a situation where we were mass producing human potential solely to destroy it. Even if it were done with the goal of improving human health, which is a fine goal in and of itself, I would not want to go down that road unless I were sure there were no other way to obtain the needed stem cells.

The Church, of course, came out strongly against the use of embryonic stem cells, as did many other religious and non-religious groups, and as a result we did not plow full steam ahead on that front. But over the last couple of years there have been a couple of possible advances on alternate sources of stem cells (e.g., amniotic fluid, bone marrow), that may make it possible to get the benefit of stem cells without mass producing embryos for destruction. And these avenues would not likely have been pursued, certainly not as vigorously, if we had plowed full steam ahead with embryonic stem cells.

In the end, after much research, it may be decided that really the only workable source of stem cells for human health research is embryos. If that is the case, then my opposition to their use will cease, although I will still be uncomfortable with the cost in human potential. But the delay while we look for alternate sources, whether that search is successful or not, definitely carries with it a cost in human potential- the delay causes some number of people who might otherwise have lived long enough to receive whatever benefits eventually accrue from stem cell research to instead die, or at least suffer longer, as a result. And that's what makes a decision like this difficult- no matter what you choose, there's a cost in human potential. The only thing in this sort of debate that really irritates me anymore is how each side typically tries to obscure the fact that there's a cost in human potential no matter what you choose.

Since I've adopted this kind of perspective, I've become a lot less irritated by the Church's stands on things like premarital sex, contraception, etc. I mean, I disagree with those positions entirely, but I respect the fact that the Church is struggling hard to provide some guidance in a world that really does seem to be in need of guidance. And that brings me to the second source of added value in the modern Church:

Let's suppose 2 hypothetical people. Person A is a 35 year old single male, sitting in his beach house in sweats blogging on a Saturday afternoon, whose total responsibilities for the day involve answering a few emails for work, and, possibly, though not necessarily, bathing. Person B is a thirtysomething mother of 2, with a husband, a house, and a job, and whose Saturday responsibilities are "numerous".

Both Persons A and B wish to be decent people. Person A's approach is to spend long amounts of time pondering exactly how to do that, carefully considering various points of view, reading a lot about issues, etc., in order to make each and every decision himself after careful consideration. Person B, much as she would like to follow an approach not unlike Person A's, simply doesn't have that kind of time. What she would like is a template. The Church can provide that; i.e., if you simply follow its recommendations and proscriptions on behavior, I think you will be a decent person. I don't think its recommendations and proscriptions are the only set of such that will lead you to being a decent person, but if you just don't have the time/energy to try and figure absolutely everything out for yourself, the Church can help with that.

Of course, I don't think the Church is the only place you can look for a template of behaviors that will lead you to being a decent person. Most of the world's established religions can provide that, including Islam, BTW, which I think as a religion suffers unfairly from the things that are done in its name. Christianity has a 622 year head start (assuming you start Islam from the hijra, or flight of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina) in committing terrible acts that are inconsistent with its own theology. Islam is in that place right now, at 1386 years old. In 1386 AD, Christianity was currently enmeshed in a schism caused by the simultaneous election of 2 popes, one in Rome and one in Avignon, popes generally exacted tribute from all the local nation-states, friars roamed the countrysides causing as much scandal as anything else, about 200 years of crusading had recently been completed, and the Church was selling indulgences like hotcakes.

My point here, to circle back to something I said earlier, is: don't confuse theological Islam with institutional Islam. I studied Islamic Law at Yale Law School, and after doing maybe 25% of the total required reading, I came to the conclusion that theological Islam is no more inconsistent or prone to abuse than is theological Christianity. But since it has no single voice, as the pope functions for the Catholic Church, institutional Islam is a lot more prone to abuse, and we are continuing to see the effects of that. So maybe, after all, having a pope, proclamations of infallibility or no, is a useful thing.

So, give him a little respect, even if it's grudging. He wants to be a force for good, and his voice adds value, even if you disagree, as I do, with 75% or more of what he says. And here's hoping I don't get excommunicated for this post; Islam and Judaism are too much work, Buddhism takes more concentration than I have, Hinduism is too different, non-Catholic Christianity is too similar, and Scientology is bogus. So if I get kicked out, I'll have to develop my own religion. And if I do, I'll be looking for converts.

Don't say you weren't warned...