Editor’s Note: Dunphy and Posner pull no punches in their ongoing insider’s discussion of the Vatican’s sins. Is there a chance for redemption?
===============================
By Catherine Dunphy
Dear Catholics,
We are nearing Easter, that time of year when thoughts tend to contrition and self sacrifice, when Catholics are called to be holy and emulate Jesus. I ask you, do you think the church is following its own lead?
I think most Catholics would answer “yes” without even thinking about it. After all, the church is in the business of morality, right? In God’s Bankers, Gerald Posner peels back the highly secretive cloister that shielded the world from the corruption that lay at the heart of the Vatican and its bank. As Posner says in his book:
“All the attention on Holocaust restitution claims distracted Vaticanologists who might have otherwise kept a better watch on what was happening inside the IOR (Institutes for the work of Religion aka, Vatican Bank). But for those paying close attention, there were warning signs that the bank was still plagued by systemic problems. In 1999, the $232 million fraudulent empire of American financier Martine Frankel unraveled. The FBI tracked down Frankel and arrested him in Germany. Prosecutors discovered a troublesome IOR link. Frankel had established the St. Francis of Assisi Foundation to Serve and Help the Poor and Alleviate Suffering, a British Virgin Islands company through which he ran millions of offshore dollars, much of it stolen from clients. A seventy-nine-year old monsignor, Emilio Colagiovanni, had allowed Frankel to use his separate foundation at the Vatican Bank so that Frankel’s money transferred stayed off the radar of financial watchdogs. [page 585 of ebook]
Facts like these could easily be diminished by characterizing these happenings as a rare occurrence – the result of a few rogue clergy – much like the Catholic perspective on the church and its problem with sexual predators. Unfortunately for Catholics, the scale and duplicity inherent in the plotted orchestration of the Vatican Bank and its covert endgame cannot be ignored no matter how uncomfortable it may make them feel.
In my previous post about God’s Bankers, I focused on an overview of Posner’s book and mentioned external influences such as Italy adopting the Euro and the continued influence on the Vatican and its bank. Here, my focus is on informing readers about the impact this information could have on Catholics’ understanding of the Church’s role as a moral authority.
During our interview, Posner, a cultural Catholic, told me about the effect that writing God’s Bankers had on him and his opinion of the church.
“I am a non-practicing Catholic, but my DNA is Catholic, so I had a [somewhat] skeptical view of the institution, but yes, writing this book gave me a worse view. It opened my eyes, but in a way these are things I probably should have known. When you are talking about human nature and operating in the dark and money, it doesn’t matter if they are wearing the robe of a Catholic priest or not. Now that seems like common sense to me, so this history that I discovered shouldn’t have surprised me but it did.”
I was shocked too, even though I left the church a decade ago. Reading the details of the Vatican’s relationship with the fascist parties that ruled Europe during the Second World War revolted me. As Damon Linker wrote in the recent New York Times review:
“The cumulative effect of Posner’s detective work is an acute sensation of disgust.”
At another point in our interview, Posner clearly articulated his view of the church’s failed moral responsibility to the Jews during the Second World War:
“As an institution, the Church had information about the civilian massacres earlier than the western governments. There were thousands of priests in parishes located in the killing zones and many reported back to their bishops what they were seeing on the ground. Thus, they had – not an extra moral responsibility, because every nation had an equal moral responsibility to say or do something – but because they represent Catholicism and because the vast majority of perpetrators were Catholics, the priests were in a unique position to be influential in an era when the Pope’s word was really sacrosanct.
It is very frustrating for me to go through that history and see the extent to which the church failed to act more forcefully. There were two possible outcomes if they had become involved. [Number one], the church’s efforts to intercede would have made no difference, the Nazi’s would have only turned on Catholics and priests, and perhaps even the Pope. Let’s assume that had happened — that Pius XII had condemned the murders — and it is a mortal sin for any Catholic to kill a Jew. Even if Hitler had taken steps to close churches or had sent priests and bishops to concentration camps, today we would be saying, ‘How terrible that the effort failed, but what an amazingly brave Pope he was!’ That pope would have stood up for Christian ideals, at great personal risk for himself. So even if it had failed, it would have changed the moral discussion 180 degrees. Number two, I think that one of the reasons why there has been resistance from the Vatican [to condemn the holocaust] is that it raises the possibility of restitution. The church clearly rejected that in the 1990’s; they don’t want to open that door. Again it comes back to money.”
This is a tough book for Catholics but I hope it is one that they will read. If so, perhaps it will become evident to them that infallibility is a fallacy. And that if the church can make such ethically unsavory and morally wrong decisions, then it’s likely to be wrong about a lot of other things.
Posner’s book clearly articulates the need for a correction within the moral landscape of the church – his work a proof of Luther’s theses, as Wikipedia puts it:
…against clerical abuses, especially nepotism, simony (the selling of church offices and roles), usury, pluralism and the sale of indulgences.
So, Catholics, I ask you, What do you do about your church and its dirty money problem and has this discovery changed your opinion about your church and your faith?
=========================
Bio: Catherine Dunphy – A humanist, atheist and former Roman Catholic chaplain, Catherine is a member of the Clergy Project and former Executive Director, she has written a book about the founding of the Project and her experience of losing her faith as religious leader. It is scheduled for release in July 2015.
_______
Photo Credits:
Posner Photo -Dale Stine
Photo Credit Church <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/31033598@N03/16099045940″>Interior Holy Trinity Church</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://www.flickr.com/commons/usage/”>(license)</a>
Photo Credit Pius XII <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/49487266@N07/5020885797″>Pacelli, Cardinal Eugenio (Pope Pius XII)</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://www.flickr.com/commons/usage/”>(license)</a>
Photo Credit Luther <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/33255628@N00/6641781155″>[ P ] Georg Pencz – Portrait of Martin Luther (1533)</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>(license)</a>
FYI Georg Pencz was an atheist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Pencz
