The communion of saints sinners

In a recent blog entitled The Passion, the Jews and the Teaching of Contempt, the “Secret Agent Man” put forward an essay in which he pointed out what I think is a very important point:

As a Catholic, I share a historical communion with Pius XII, who fought as best he could the evil to which Christendom had, in large measure, contributed. I share it with Dutch Bishops who resisted the deportation of the Jews. I share it with Bronislawa Kurpi, the Catholic nanny who took in Mr. Foxman and protected him from the Nazis. But I also share it with Bishops who raised their arms in heathen salutes to Adolf Hitler, Catholics who saw and heard the night trains but did nothing, and the faithful who venerated Simon of Trent. I also share it with Bronislawa Kurpi who, after the war, tried to keep a young Mr. Foxman from returning to his Jewish parents.

What caught my eye is this concept of “historical communion”, which is something I think we feel especially strongly in the Catholic Church. We profess in our creed that we believe in the “communion of saints”, but we need to recognize as well that we are a communion of sinners! And this communion exists not only today, but in time, in that “historical communion” Secret Agent Man talks about. The Catholic Church is not the only church in which terrible atrocities occurred, say centuries ago; but it is often the only one of those churches that is still around, the only one of those churches where we can draw a straight line from today through history and connect the dots of the past. There is still somebody to blame, even if the Catholics today had nothing to do with the atrocities of the past. Is this fair? Can something be done about this?

Obviously we cannot change the past. But we can change how the past is to be incorporated into our present. Here in Montreal, every December, we remember that night in 1989 when Mark Lepine shot and killed 14 female engineering students at the École polytechnique de Montréal in a misogynistic frenzy, even declaring to his victims that they were a “bunch of feminists” and were themselves culpable for having dared to enroll in an engineering program (a field traditionally dominated by men). But the way we remember is significant. The memorials are somber, the speeches full of rejection of the hatred Mark Lepine had in his heart. If the memorials were done as “Mark Lepine victory parades”, and the speeches made were approving of Mark Lepine’s action, it would be a completely different matter. While none of the participants would have had a direct hand in what had happened, they would be declaring themselves to be in a “communion of heart and intent” with Mark Lepine.

This kind of “communion of sin” can, should, and must be repudiated. The Catholic Church can, should, and must formally declare itself to have no “communion of heart and intent” with those who perpetrated or tolerated evil against Jews or anybody else. And the best means to do this is through repentance. No one in the world has the right to ask forgiveness for the sins of another as though those sins were his or her own, of course, and if the evildoers are long dead there is really no point — such persons have already met God and receive their just reward or punishment. But repentance comes from the Greek word “metanoia”, which means “to turn around”, to change direction and turn our back on the ways evil has been lived in thought or deed. This was, I think, what Pope John Paul II was trying to achieve by his “celebration of repentance” as part of the Year 2000 celebrations. It was not to try and erase the past, but simply to say “We admit that those things were evil, and we want to start in a new direction now.”

This task, of course, is particularly hard for the Catholic Church to accomplish in a way that people will accept as genuine. There are some who believe that the only way to break the “communion of sin” is to also break the historical communion between the present Catholic Church and the Catholic Church of the past. To put it another way, a bit more bluntly, there are some who believe that the only way the Catholic Church could truly “repent” would be to close up shop, or to change itself so radically in its fundamentals that it wouldn’t be the Catholic Church any more. Such persons speak grandly about “refounding” the Church, either because they don’t think that the Catholic Church has been faithful to the Gospel — or because they don’t like the Gospel, in whole or in part. (In the controversy around Mel Gibson’s film we see a lot of this — people whose problem isn’t really with the film, but with the gospel accounts that underlie it.) Well, such initiatives are doomed to failure, because the Church is, according to Catholic belief, not just a historical community, but a theological one. It has been founded by Jesus Christ himself, who told Peter that “upon this Rock I will build my Church”. Directed by the Holy Spirit it carries forward in time the historical gospel message of Jesus. Persons who believe that the only way for the Church to repent is to commit ecclesiastical suicide are being grossly unfair — and unrealistic.

There is, however, another element that makes it hard for the Catholic Church to accomplish repentance in a way that people will accept as genuine, and this one is a bit more subtle. While the Catholic Church can, should, and must repudiate any “communion of sin”, we cannot repudiate our brothers and sisters who join with us in a “communion of sinners”. The Catholic Church believes that we must hate the sin, yes, but we must also love the sinner. I have never understood why this is so difficult a concept to grasp. After all, when parents punish their children and express disapproval for the evil things they sometimes do, does that mean that those same parents hate their children? Of course not. They hate the sin of the child, while always still loving the child. But what the critics of the Catholic Church sometimes seem to demand of Church authorities is that those authorities not only condemn the sins of the members of the Church, but that the Church entirely disown those members. Or the critics demand of the members of Church that they disown their fellow Catholics (including some in leadership), because of the sins of people in authority. They want us to hate the sinners along with the sin. This we cannot do.

It is also important that we remember that the demands of repentance, however valid, cut both ways. When Maimonedes wrote approvingly in his Letter to Yemen of the condemnation and execution of Jesus at the initiative of the Jewish leadership of the day, was he not declaring his “communion of heart and intent” with that condemnation and execution? I would be eager to know where the “communion of heart and intent” lies today.

Ultimately, though, the key thing to remember is not only repentance, but forgiveness. The Catholic Church must repent, as I have said, by refusing to even wink at sin, but who is there to receive and acknowledge the truth of that repentance? I guess that responsibility lies on all of us. Are we ready to forgive as Jesus himself did, even as he hung upon the cross?