March 28, 2024

White man’s Jesus

He was white. All you had to do was look. The statues. The crucifix. The little pictures in our little books. All showed a plainly Caucasian Christ.

That school is an apartment building now, and the church that stood in front of it is closed, those being the common fates of urban ethnic Catholic schools and churches. It’s the same in Europe. Except there, the churches become museums.

Worldwide, the church fares well. Latin America, despite the inroads made by Protestant evangelicals, is now the demographic heartland of the Catholic Church. In Africa, the Catholic Church is exploding, as it is in Asia.

But here in America, the scandal-battered old mother church shudders as the divorced question the “fairness” of certain doctrines, as gays rail against the church for being “bigoted” and not “inclusive,” as though the Catholic Church can be expected to hold sensitivity training seminars, the way a paper cup manufacturer does when one of the truck drivers screws up and calls a receptionist, “sweetheart.”

The church is an old firm and more importantly, one that bases itself on huge books of theology, interpretations of God, seekings of God, tiny arguments about tiny differences in doctrine that stretch back 2,000 years. In the 1100s, the same kind of minds that now study theoretical physics studied theology, two sciences aiming at nearly the same end.

But the Catholic Church is European-based or, to put it more kindly, cannot exist as a worldwide faith if Catholics in Europe and America persist in ignoring the rules.

And the rules will change because geography- savvy men of God will not choose to let the divorced and others remain outside the church doors, not contributing their numbers and their money, not maintaining the seat of the Catholic Church in Europe, not holding its wealthy bastion in America.

That part of the church must be saved, and I believe rules will be changed until that wayward freedom-loving part can be drawn back in, through the doors and into the pews.

Am I being cynical?

No.

The Catholic Church is an old survivor and it knows when to give in and wait for the next fight, all the while gathering strength.

Am I one of those lapsed Catholics who delights in tormenting the old faith?

No.

Six years ago, I married for the first time. I married a divorced woman. As a Catholic, I pay a heavy price for that decision, but I never expected the rules to change just for me. I made my decision and I’ll take my punishment silently, which is something I learned from the nuns, all those years ago.

If my punishment is lifted from me in some way, I will be glad and grateful but some part of me will always miss the days of surety, of doctrines that never changed, of white man’s Jesus.

Marc Dion is a syndicated columnist. Dion’s book of Pulitzer Prize-nominated column, “Between Wealth and Welfare: A Liberal Curmudgeon in America,” is available for Nook and Kindle.