Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Cosmos The In Lost

Home
Catholic
Where Will the Spotlight Shine When Pope Francis Leaves?

Where Will the Spotlight Shine When Pope Francis Leaves?

Last updated on: September 25, 2015 at 12:56 pm by Artur Rosman

Where Will the Spotlight Shine When Pope Francis Leaves? 2015-09-25T12:56:17-07:00 Artur Rosman

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Storms will continue to rage in American Catholicism (JWM Turner, The Bell Rock Lighthouse, 1819; Source: Wikimedia Commons, PD-Old-100).

It’s difficult to find the right tone for a post like this. I come as a bearer of bad news. Yet, I am convinced that the good news is that the bad news can see the light of day. When we say the light shines in darkness, are we ready to face the real implications of that saying?

Hope and optimism are not the same thing.

As Americans we all secretly hope the Pope Francis wave will sweep everything away in a flood of positivity. Terry Eagleton diagnoses us this disease in his recently released Hope Without Optimism:

Nations, like political creeds, can be upbeat or downbeat. Along with North Korea, the United States is one of the few countries on earth in which optimism is almost a state ideology. For large sectors of the nation, to be bullish is to be patriotic, while negativity is a species of thought crime. Pessimism is thought to be vaguely subversive. Even in the most despondent of times, a collective fantasy of omnipotence and infinity continues to haunt the national unconscious. It would be almost as impossible to elect a US president who advised the nation that its best days were behind it as it would be to elect a chimpanzee, though as far as that goes there have been one or two near misses.

Following Czeslaw Milosz I think of myself as an ecstatic pessimist. I cannot help but take a peek into the coming American Catholic darkness. Things will not be all sunny after Philadelphia. We all shall tire of posting witty pictures of Bergoglio’s appearance in Congress with the caption “I was sick and you visited me.”

As I noted in 2 Maps Show Why Pope Francis is Out of Place in the United States, PBS Newshour is onto the geography of the coming media coverage of American Catholicism: Boston.

Have you noticed how the sex scandals have evaporated during the Francis papacy? It’s as if the storm had worn itself out battering Benedict XVI. He got so beat up that we frequently forget he did more than anyone to put in place preventative measures that make the Catholic Church the envy of the secular world when it comes to dealing with sex abuse.

But there’s much more coming around the bend than another story “critical” of the Catholic Chruch from PBS or NPR (do these post-mainline-Protestant Poster Children do any kinds of stories?). The film Spotlight, starring Michael Keaton and billed as a front-runner for Best Film, will highlight the inevitable visibility of Catholic sex scandals while tacitly acknowledging the invisibility of Protestant sex scandals.

Here’s the IMDB description of this forthcoming flick:

The true story of how the Boston Globe uncovered the massive scandal of child molestation and cover-up within the local Catholic Archdiocese, shaking the entire Catholic Church to its core.

This is, as I have argued elsewhere, a good thing. Catholicism is an inescapably public religion and therefore shake-able to its core.

There is no place to hide in the Church. People can, and need to be, held accountable. The wonderful thing about Catholicism, with its intricate institutional ties from top to bottom, is that the buck must stop somewhere.

Catholics should be thankful for that. It will be interesting how they will handle this post-Francis punch to their core. I hope they won’t become defensive.

In the unlikely event the American Church gets a Francis-free-pass after the release of Spotlight, Catholics here should not let the sex abuse coverups pass into oblivion, because they will come back to haunt them. Catholicism is a public religion. We are saints, but more frequently, sinners.

In the end continuing to address this problem is about hope and repentance, not American optimism.

If my ecstatic pessimist perspective is something you enjoy reading, then please help us out with this month’s rent through the PayPal donation button on my homepage.

Previous Post

September 24, 2015

The Pope Shepherds Together What American Politics Sunders

Next Post

September 26, 2015 Pope Francis Inspires Kenny Rogers to Fold'Em Like Boehner

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category #WhyRemainCatholic Abortion Advent Anti-Catholicism Arts Atheism Beauty Benedict XVI Bible Book Review Catholic Cinema Comedy Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey Czesław Miłosz Dariusz Karłowicz Devil Easter Eastern Orthodoxy Economics Environment Family Famous Atheists Who Weren't Atheists Guest Post Hans Urs von Balthasar HHS Mandate History Imagination Interview Islam Jean-Luc Marion John Paul II Judaism Just War Lent Literature Little Sisters of the Poor Liturgy Martyrdom Music News Paganism Patristics Phenomenology Philosophy Pierre Hadot Poetry Poland Pop Culture Pope Francis Poverty Prayer Protestantism Rabelais Race Remi Brague Rene Girard Russia Sam Rocha Science & Religion SCOTUS Secularization Sexual Abuse Sexuality Silence Solidarity Stratford Caldecott Synod14 Terrorism Top 10 Uncategorized Walker Percy War Weakened Edition World War II World Youth Day WYD Krakow

Select a Month July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

According to Hebrews, who serves as a copy and shadow of what is in heaven?

Select your answer to see how you score.

The apostles The prophets The priests in the earthly sanctuary The angels