The guilty and the powerful seldom seek forgiveness, particularly when they think that truth is on their side. So, all credit to an ailing pontiff for publicly owning up to the sins of the Roman Catholic Church, which undoubtedly has a lot to seek forgiveness for. Sins visited on most of humanity, over 2,000 years, have produced a very long list of victims.
But just how much of an admission of error is being made? Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, or what used to be called the Inquisition, said: “Even men of the Church, in the name of faith and morals, have sometimes used methods not in keeping with the Gospel.” This is a rather bland acknowledgement of imprisonment, torture and handing people over to civil authorities in full knowledge that they would be burned alive.
Sins are not just sins in the abstract. They emerge in the detail of understanding, attitudes and practice of the Church and its followers. Sins committed in the “service of truth” say a great deal about such notions of truth. Acts of barbarity were not just committed conscientiously “in the name of faith” but were a clear part of the Church’s doctrine, enunciated by the most eminent thinkers in Church history.
But what does this admission of guilt do for the victims? Does a mere apology for the sins of history transform the present?
While the Pope has apologised, it is clear that many in the hierarchy of the Church remain divided on the wisdom of such public contrition and unclear on exactly what it means. The Bishop of Como, Alessandro Maggiolini, asks: “In whose name, exactly, is the Holy Father asking pardon?” It is a very good question, and seems to suggest that the bishop would rather his name were not included. More ominously, he adds that the Pope is relying on a group of experts, “but tomorrow another group of experts might come up with different examples”.
Catholic sins in history have shaped much of the modern world. Take Latin America, where the Church reaped a great harvest of souls. The Catholic Church in Spain earnestly debated whether Indians in the New World had souls. They found in favour of souls, but not of full humanity. The legacy of poverty, gross disparity of wealth, marginalisation and dependency endemic in Latin America is a direct result of such earnest religious debates.
The Catholic Church, too, was the original promulgator of false information on what Muslims think and believe. The success of that spin-doctoring is illustrated by the sort of churchmen who now suggest that the Pope’s gesture will “be seen by Muslims as a sign of weakness”. The Crusades may be long over, but their legacy is alive and comes tripping off the tongue of expert, layman or lout, on a daily basis. In truth, seeking forgiveness of our fellow beings and of God is the most basic imperative in Islam. It is not only the practice of the Prophet Mohammad, but also revered as a sign of great strength.
So, from the Islamic perspective, the request for forgiveness must be honoured. As a Muslim, I forgive the Pope. But this forgiveness cannot be a vague and general amnesty. It has to be specific. What shall I forgive? The 200 years of barbarity visited by the Crusaders on Muslim lands? The destruction of Moorish Spain, the most pluralistic society in history? The enslavement and forced conversion of Muslims in north and east Africa? The denigration and persistent abuses hurled by Catholic priests and scholars at the Prophet of Islam for over 1,000 years? Or the Church’s role as a handmaiden to imperialism, its central part in the colonisation of virtually all the Muslim world?
In Islam, forgiveness comes in a number of grades. Forgiveness asked is the lowest form; forgiveness that seeks to redress the victim is the highest grade. Thus, if it is to be more than a PR exercise, the pontiff’s apology must lead to the recognition that the suffering of the victims must be alleviated. The meaning of the sins that the Church has acknowledged is not simply matters spiritual – it extends into temporal matters of economics, politics and ideas. Real forgiveness will have to be earned in these realms.
If the Pope is really sorry, then let him prove it. He can, for example, place the ill-gotten wealth that the Church has accumulated through its historic sins in the service of its victims. Let the Vatican pay off the debts of all those African countries still suffering from the Catholic legacy that initiated slavery and colonisation.
The Pope, too, could restore liberation theology to its rightful place in Latin America. The Theology of Liberation, as the ideas formulated by the Puebla Bishops Conference came to be known, is also concerned with sin. It sought to identify structures of sin in contemporary society, structures that originated with the Church’s murky involvement in the history of South America. The liberation it offered was an option for the poor, and included support for such practical redress as land reform and political change. When Karol Wojtyla became the first Polish Pope, he publicly chastised proponents of liberation theology – and ex-communicated one of its leading lights, Leonardo Boff – and accused its followers of being Marxists in Christian clothes.
Brotherhood is to be the new watchword for the Church in the third millennium.
The real question is whether the Catholic Church will continue to be the Big Brother who always knows best, or whether it can seek an accommodation of equal and open relations with those who inherit the consequences of the sins it has committed in history and continues to perpetuate today.
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