Catholics, Mormons, Crises, and "The Wages of Faith"

I just finished reading Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, a biography by Richard Lyman Bushman about the founder of Mormonism. The release of the book was accompanied by a mild ballyhoo of press hype amid LDS circles, being touted as the most upfront, honest treatment of Smith's life and controversies ever written by a believing, practicing Mormon. I think the promise of "honesty" scared away a number of potential LDS readers, which is a shame, but not surprising. At the time, I was serving in the Young Men's organization in my ward as the secretary to the presidency. The president mentioned that he was reading Rough Stone Rolling, so I asked him what he thought. He slowly shook his head and said, "That book really tries your faith in the prophet." This man is the very stereotype of the stalwart Mormon; salt-and-pepper hair, bounteous progeny, and a litany of high-profile leadership positions, before and since then. And this book was too "honest" for him.

I'm a sucker for controversy, so my interest in the book was instantly piqued. I picked up the book from the library recently and gave it a read. It was prodigiously researched, convincingly argued, and, as promised, completely open about the less-than-inspiring aspects of Smith's life. For anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the early years of the Mormon movement, Rough Stone Rolling is an excellent place to start. For me, the close inspections of Smith's follies and foibles did something unexpected; it built up my faith in his calling.

I explained this to my Dad, telling him that framing Joseph Smith as a fallible human was enhancing the compelling mystery of his life. By openly acknowledging his faults and admitting some confusion at some of his decisions, Bushman suddenly thrust the unexplainable aspects of Joseph's life into the spotlight. Namely, if he was a false prophet, someone please explain the Book of Mormon. Explain where the carefully-dictated revelations came from. Once his faults are acknowledged, controversies no longer become a crisis of faith, but an easily-explainable human error.

My Dad comes from a much more traditional approach to understanding the prophet: focus on the supernatural, inspiring, positive aspects of Smith's life, and casually ignore the rest. Where he sees inspiration, I see propaganda. Where he sees a conundrum of faith, I see an acknowledgment of the agency of man. Consequently, his favorite comic book hero is Superman, and mine is Batman. Coincidence? Hmmm . .

Anyway, I wanted to frame these different approaches to faith and history before moving on to the topic at hand. The Catholic church is going through one hell of a crisis right now that I cannot, for the life of me, understand. I remember when the first wave of accusations crashed against the church in the 90s or so, making the Catholic priest forever the butt end of myriads of pedophilia jokes. Back then it seemed to me that the incidents of priestly molestation were isolated in nature and didn't really reflect on the church in any significant way. It was just a bunch of sicko priests who got punished and sent on their way.

With the recent revelations about the institutionalized nature of child abuse in the Irish church, it's beyond clear that the Catholic church has a systemic problem that renders them incapable of dealing with this sort of issue. Offending priests are shuffled like so many decks of cards and offended families are ignored and disfellowshipped. Now, as the evidence, pressure, and criticisms mount, the Vatican is resorting to ever more irresponsible, crude, and just plain baffling methods of dealing with this historic crisis.

Evidence states that the Irish Church had a massive child abuse problem. The church's response?

"Woops, guess the Irish had a problem, eh? Well, sorry I suppose. Try prayer. I'm sure that will make it all better."

Evidence states that the Pope participated in a cover-up of priestly abuse. The church's response?

"Ah, this is all just petty gossip from the media. Pay it no mind."

Evidence continues to mount and more and more people call for the church to actually, you know, respond. The church's response?

"What you are all doing to us? Yeah, this is just like what Hitler did to the Jews. You should be ashamed."

Now, as more and more pressure is applied to the church, the Vatican is nearly silent but a myriad of Catholic voices are seeking to shift the blame to anyone they can. Everyone from working women to the Jews are more responsible for the church's failure to deal with pedophile priests than, you know, the actual church.

The Catholic church clearly has no idea how to respond to a crisis of faith brought on by those it assumes are most pious and trustworthy. When even the supposedly holiest man on earth is still susceptible to corruption, how can a believing Catholic respond? There are many ways, but the traditional practice seems to be the current one: deny or ignore any wrong doing and shift the blame to the forces of Satan. It's just the devil mounting a siege on the faithful from the inside out and back to the inside again. This cognitive dissonance and scapegoating sleight-of-hand the church is practicing is engineered to entertain and distract the minds of faithful Catholics, while the Vatican continues to shrug its shoulders as to how to respond to anyone outside the church. And they wonder why the controversy continues to mount.

This veritable circus of wrong-headed decisions and PR stunts is amusing to me, but only to a point. It becomes disconcerting when I realize how close to home this situation strikes (not to mention that, you know, hundreds if not thousands of children were abused at the hand of this veritably bonkers organization). Catholicism and Mormonism share a similar attitude regarding organization, authority, and power. This relationship is foreboding, should Mormonism encounter the same type of situation. Oh wait, it's already happened. Sure, it's not on the same scale as the Catholics yet, but the similarity is troubling, nonetheless.

When a religion with a highly-structured, extremely authoritative leadership is presented with such a grave sin within its systemic ranks, is the only recourse to sweep it under the rug and hope the secular world doesn't catch wise? If so, we Mormons have a disappointing future ahead of us, akin to the Catholics. When I mentioned something about the Catholic controversy on my facebook, my uncle responded, "Wages of faith *shrug*." Is that the idea that anyone dedicated to a life a faith is doomed to a regular practice of cognitive dissonance, denial, and allegiance to dishonest leadership?

Look, it's pretty clear to me that things don't have to be this way. I'm confused why the Catholic church doesn't just own up to its massive abuse of power and begin putting measures in place to ensure such things don't happen again. Controversy would subside, critics would quiet, and perhaps a new respect would be born for the church. Is that so naive to think? Am I foolish to think that such a move shouldn't utterly destroy any claim the church may have to divine design? They may lose a few disillusioned members who see the admission of fault to be a signal of apostasy, but I think the moral gain would be well worth it. And let's put that practice in place here in LDS-land before things grow too dire.

When Brigham Young decided to finally declare the then-established practice of plural marriage within the LDS church to be a divinely-appointed doctrine, the conundrum the present church faces was born. The teaching of plural marriage can never be fully rescinded at the risk of damaging Young's (and to some extent, Smith's) claim to prophetic revelation, while it can never be fully instituted again unless the law of the land (and cultural aversion to it) is changed. Such a rigid attitude puts the church in a no-win situation. It's not the situation that damages the church, it's the attitude. The attitude that church leaders are infallible and divinely-guided in every action throws their inherent humanity into stark relief. Then every criticism is a threat. The attitude that we are a pack of humans led by other humans who are divinely appointed and guided allows us a little more flexibility. Criticisms are no longer crises. Systemic abuses can be admitted, accounted for, and repaired. Mormons and Catholics both stand to gain much from such an attitude shift.

I am bemused, troubled, baffled, and deeply concerned over the Catholic child abuse controversy, because I see in it the seeds of a similar controversy for the Mormons. And I don't think that holding onto the same rigid dogmas of priestly infallibility and exhibiting more of a concern for the reputation of the church than for abuse victims is going to work for either church. Let's practice a little more intelligence in how we deal with our crises as a church than the one that ran the road before us.