Cy Kellett is joined by apologist Joe Heschmeyer as they engage in a thought-provoking conversation with a listener who shares his reasons for not being Catholic. Joe addresses serious concerns about the Church’s historical actions and their impact on humanity, emphasizing the importance of acknowledging past wrongs while also exploring the Church’s mission today.
Transcript:
Caller: I’m not a Catholic, not for any theological reasons. It’s more for its humanitarian impact on the world, for its crimes against humanity, that it’s still doing today with its mass graves in Canada, the Rwanda genocide, 52% of LGBT children in Catholic families are more likely to commit suicide and things of that nature. And you guys are doing nothing to address this because you value church unity over people’s lives?
Joe: I would love to look at each of those in turn, if you’d be interested, Eric. But before I get into all the specifics, I want to concede the broader point, which is there have been a lot of ugly things done in the name of the Church and by representatives in the Church. And amazingly, like, you’ve only scratched the surface. Like, we could have a much longer list of here’s some other horrible things that Catholics have done. And I mean, to be expected in one sense, right? Like, the Church is more than a billion people. It’s more than the population of China. So if you just said, what are all of the bad things any Chinese people have done in the last, like, 2,000 years? You could have a pretty full episode of just that. Or, what are all the bad things happening in China right now? You have a pretty full episode. And so hopefully the Church’s track record is better than that of Communist China. But I’m pointing out merely that a billion people, you’re going to get some horrible stuff.
In the particulars of the mass graves, I do think it’s important to know that that appears to be a myth, meaning there is a big international scandal with that, with this Kamloops Indian Residential School, but not one body has actually been unearthed. And the mass graves that are alleged to be there are using some really questionable technology of, like, ground detection that could be detecting things like roots and the like. And so actually, The Federalist back in January had an article called, “Not One Corpse Has Been Found in the Mass Grave of Indigenous Children in Canada” by John Daniel Davidson. And so if you want to know more about that history, it is worth knowing that this is one horrible thing attributed to the Church that maybe just didn’t happen. It may have happened, we don’t know. But, like, right now, there’s not actually any good evidence that there’s any mass graves to begin with in Canada.
But having said that, you will find there were certainly abuse cases. There were certainly people who were not treated with their Christian dignity. And so I don’t want to just let all Catholics off scot-free. Likewise, even though the catechism is very clear that people who are same-sex attracted should be treated with Christian dignity, a lot of families don’t live that out in practice and don’t treat family members struggling in that way with the dignity they deserve. And I think that’s worth acknowledging that we can both be against same-sex relationships and realize that they’re not actually satisfying and that there’s a wealth of sociological data that they’re not satisfying and still treat the people who struggle with that inclination with the dignity and charity that they deserve, that they richly need. And we often fall short of that. And for that, I, as a Catholic, am sorry. And I think a lot of Catholics are sorry and ought to be.
But the last thing I’d say, oh, and Rwanda. Well, in Rwanda, there’s this fascinating thing with Our Lady of Kibeho where Mary actually appears and kind of warns against this. And so there the Church’s role is much more ambiguous where Hutu and Tutsi Catholics are on different sides. Immaculée Ilibagiza has some fantastic books that I can think of that are really good, kind of exploring that from a Catholic angle. So I would say that’s a much more complicated story. Filip Guraevich has a good book on that as well.
But at the very end of the day, I would say this. Catholics regularly fail to live up to what they’re called to be as Catholics. But that is an argument against our own shortcomings, not against Catholicism itself. Meaning in a lot of systems, a lot of religions, a lot of philosophies, the horrors that it produces are because someone takes it too seriously, they become a radical and they kill people in the name of it. And they do all these horrible things because this system, like, forces them in this really ugly direction. And what’s really striking about all of the examples that you gave are that they’re all cases in which the problem was that Catholics weren’t Catholic enough; that they needed to be more like Jesus, not less. They needed to believe more fervently and practice more faithfully Catholic teaching. And so if that’s a problem, and I think you’re right, that it is, then the problem is that all of us need to be more Catholic, not that we need to be less Catholic. What do you think of that?
Caller: Okay, I hope you didn’t try to just take up all the time of this call with that response. Give me two seconds to respond. As for the it’s not about what Catholics are doing. It’s about what is the organization of Rome doing when these allegations are presented as a result of it. Yes, Catholics themselves can fail as individuals, but the institution itself, like when in Canada when it first came to light, the first thing that Rome did was fire that priest that aired it. And they have yet to say anything as for an apology to it, even though Troubadour has been calling for this. And Canada has officially apologized for that issue back in 2008. And in Rwanda, the priests that were in charge of the genocide there, Rome directed them to come back to Rome to protect them from extradition, to be held accountable for war crimes. Rome continues to do this as an organization. It protects its priests at the expense of people’s lives.
And as for the LGBT issue, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops actively fought against a suicide prevention line just because it had its members on that line. Learn how to talk to the LGBT community. They actively canceled that suicide prevention line in the United States just because it’s associated with LGBT. This is obscene. And you guys still do this as an official apology or as an official policy from Rome? These aren’t individuals. These are institutional things coming from high up from the Pope itself.
Joe: Well, again, I would say in the case of… I mean, we’re trying to touch on three issues. I don’t think I’m doing a very good job of being very thorough on any of those. But in the case of Canada, the Pope is actually arranging a visit to Canada to meet with indigenous leaders. And so, yeah, he could just write an official apology. But I, and especially given that we don’t know if any mass graves exist in the first place, he has spoken out against the horrors that have sometimes been associated with the treatment of the indigenous. But in terms of the specific thing here, to demand that he apologize for a thing that’s not yet clear whether it happened or not, I’m not sure what that gets us or how that better serves Jesus Christ.
But I certainly agree that there have been massive institutional failings. I don’t know any of the story behind this suicide line you’re referring to. I would be happy to read up more about that. I have not heard anything about that. I know there are suicide prevention lines, but certainly if they’re giving kids bad information that’s actually going to hurt them, that’s not something we want. Not because we don’t care about the kids, but because we do. But I would just say, you know, in any of these cases, yes, on the one hand, it’s certainly possible there are institutional failures. It’s certainly possible there’s institutional cover-up, not something unheard of in the Church by any stretch. On the other hand, I do think it would be very easy to paint with a very broad brush and miss all of the nuance with it. I would still say even in the case of institutional actors, whether it’s the Papal Nuncio or whoever, even the Pope himself, my earlier point still stands that this is a question not of them behaving too faithfully to Christ and teaching to the Church. The people who articulate the teachings don’t always live by them themselves.
Cy: It’s certainly true that the Church is going through a time of reform and the pace of the reform is not satisfying to many Catholics as well. I know we’ve spoken many times before, Eric. We’re always happy when you call. I know that that was not… I know you would have liked more of a conversation, but I do have to get to the other folks who are on the line, so we’ll just trust that the conversation will continue.