“It would be a Catastrophe if the Church would throw her Principles Overboard”

The third in a series of interviews this year,in which Martin Mosebach defends the Pope and the Catholic Church against the continuing, relentless attacks as well as stating a short “apologia” for Traditionalism.

An interview with Martin Mosebach by Matthias Drobinski and Tobias Haberl “Sueddeutsche Zeitung Magazin” 5/16/2010, translated for this blog by Stuart Chessman

The author Martin Mosebach is a Catholic and finds that religion has to challenge man – otherwise it becomes trivial.

SZ Magazin: Herr Mosebach, at this moment is your pleasure in being Catholic less than usual?

Martin Mosebach: Without doubt, but at the same time it has been wonderfully confirmed for me in the last few weeks that there is no alternative to the Church.

Are you suffering with or because of your Church?

I suffer with her. It is painful to see the Church, which has the mission to make Christ present, become so morally suspect.

You act almost as if an injustice had been done to an innocent institution.

I don’t understand why the Church is always limited to the men in violet socks in the Vatican, according to the motto: “There’s the Church – here is the people.” The Church is represented by every baptized person. And she is represented mainly poorly by every baptized individual.

Now you are digressing from the mistakes of the Vatican.

No! The sorrows of a Christian consist above all in the fact that he himself is a bad Christian. The failure of the institutions of the Church pales in the face of this.

Not for the victims. Do you also suffer with them?

What kind of question is that? Every feeling human being experiences compassion when he encounters the victim of a crime.

Nevertheless the institutional Church enabled sexual abuse and then concealed it.

Of course the Church didn’t make possible sexual abuse. Individual priests broke their vows and betrayed their Church. The Church itself is a victim of abuse.

What about the Canisius school and Ettal Monastery?

You are referring to the hushing up and concealing of crimes. After Vatican II the Church created an image of herself based not on sin and guilt but on forgiveness, toleration and mercy. It’s tragic that thereby a mood was generated in which such crimes were not taken seriously enough.

Klaus Mertes, the Jesuit priest and rector of the Canisius school, spoke of a “Catholic flavor of sexual abuse.”

That is a bad thing to say. Christianity, after all, introduced into the world the protection of children – against pagan customs but also against all other cultures of the world. Jesus spoke of the fact that every child has an angel who beholds God. And everyone who abuses a child should have a millstone hung around his neck and be drowned. This is the reason the cases of abuse are such a catastrophe for the church: a central concern has been flouted.

Nevertheless the church has concerned itself until now much more with the perpetrators than with the victims.

Because the victims, spiritually speaking, are in much less danger. It is the perpetrators who are in danger of losing their souls. Jesus said that he had come as a physician for the sick, not for the healthy.

This logic must sound cynical to the victims.

Not if they have understood the logic of Jesus. Dying, the twelve-year old Maria Goretti forgave her rapist and murderer. That of course does not mean that punishment may be thwarted. The Church has to always accomplish the impossible. She is always paradoxical. She must be just and merciful at the same time.

It sounds like an impossible balancing act.

But just this overextension is the greatness of the Church. Already at the start of the 19th century Friedrich Schlegel wrote that Islam is a religion that can be realized and fulfilled, while Christianity cannot be fulfilled and often enough stands in blatant contrast to the intentions of its Founder. But precisely here lies the strength of Christianity.

Isn’t it hypocritical to derive legitimacy from inevitable failure?

No – to overextend as a matter of principle prevents the trivialization of Christianity. What can be fulfilled is trivial. The human spirit flags if it does not set for itself unreachable goals.

Celibacy also seems to challenge many priests.

Before the Second Vatican Council a priest had a corset and support – both spiritual and physical – which reminded him every day that he was a homo excitatus a Deo: a man called by God. He wore a cassock with 33 buttons or a black suit with a high stiff collar. He read the Mass and prayed the breviary every day. He was never a private individual, but was tightly integrated in orders and obedience. This has largely disappeared in the modern Church. Today many priests take vacations, have days free from the liturgy and possess a modern apartment with a CD player and flat screen TV.

You grudge them that?

Not at all, they should have everything. This freedom, however, makes it much harder for them to live up to the demands of their office. The priest represents Jesus Christ. How can that succeed if he is absorbed without a trace into civil society?

Isn’t it evidence of incapacity for the faith, if a certain measure of freedom opens the way for sin?

It is evidence of incapacity but it affects us all. If there are rules that we can break, we break them: that is anthropological experience. I admire without reservation every man who wants to be a priest. For him there is no way back, in contrast to marriage which can also fail. He can be unfaithful to his vows, but that makes his situation worse. He carries in such case a heavy burden which he will never get rid of.

Sincerely pious people also advocate the relaxation of celibacy. What don’t they understand?

From a political perspective it would be a catastrophe if, out of weakness and fear, the Church would throw her principles overboard just at this moment, under media pressure. If the Church, contrary to her tradition, wanted to make celibacy optional it could only happen in a situation of strength. Otherwise all floodgates would open. Some priests and faithful would not go along with such a step and a serious schism could happen.

That has existed for a long time, just not officially. Estimates indicate that forty percent of priests do not practice celibacy.

Rules are not annulled because they are difficult to keep. Celibacy is difficult to adhere to, but behind it stands an exalted goal. Priests should rediscover the old sense of celibacy in an ascetic renewal. Not as harassment but as the precondition for a religious life that is radically non-middle class.

The Protestant church has female pastors. In the Bible, women are in the company of Jesus as a matter of course.

But even in the earliest community there were no priestesses. What kind of clericalism is it to believe that only as a priest one can be a complete Christian? The office does not make one a better Christian. The office is service to the community.

Not every bishop views things that way.

Then that bishop views things wrong and he knows that he views them wrong. The pope bears the title servus servorum Dei, “servant of the servants of God.” This Pope especially never forgets it.

Margot Kaessmann, the president of the Lutheran church, resigned because she drove a car while intoxicated. Since then the public has made of her a moral exemplar. Has it acted correctly?

I would be grateful to you if I don’t have to comment on that.

Why?

Because how Protestantism handles such moral problems does not concern me. The matter was just a farce which one can only find amusing.

In the last few weeks one often heard of “the bunch of decrepit old men in Rome.” In the executive suites of business men also are largely among themselves. Couldn’t women exercise a moderating function?

We have had women in leading positions for a long time now but I don’t find that the level of political intrigue, lust for power or brutality has diminished. Think of Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi or Angela Merkel. All of them have waged wars with many dead.

But maybe they could compensate for the conspiratorial and fraternal organization-like aspects of the Vatican.

This reproach against the old men in Rome is almost as old as the Church herself. And at times there is surely something to the accusations. The problem isn’t the men, but the institution itself. Institutions are things at the same time beneficial and terrible. That’s especially true of something as great and serious as the Church which has an eye for God and the whole man as well as a message that far exceeds all human measure. Nobody has thought of anything better than an institution to lead the Church through the millennia.

But can one direct an institution against its members?

That doesn’t happen at all. The criticism of the Pope is coming from the failed Church of the aggiornamento – in other words from the conformist, secularized Church. Let me tell you something: not all Catholics are editors of the Sueddeutsche Zeitung. The first business of the Church is precisely to hand down the gospel through the generations. Only an institution can accomplish this “handing down.”
“I have handed down to you what I have received” says Paul regarding the Eucharist. The institutional Church with St. Peter’s in Rome is the cross that the Catholic Church must bear through history. But without the cross she would no longer exist. Her way must be the way of the cross.

Everyone but you is criticizing the Pope.

No, on the contrary, I admire the Pope. He has the most difficult mission of all: to put an end to the decay within the Church, without orders or dictates, and to restore a new harmony. The media are fixated on alleged failures. These concern a news editor not the Pope. A Pope must not take an interest in such agitation. He is not concerned with the latest news, sensations or bombshells. His concern is to plant with limitless patience a tree whose fruits he himself will never see.

Many say he is nonpolitical and naïve.

John Paul had things much easier. He had a clear opponent: the communist regime. Libertarian consumer society with its trend to social totalitarianism is a much more difficult enemy. In addition, Pope Benedict has to think of all Christians in the world. In China, for example – where right now a gigantic labor of reconciliation is taking place: the elimination of the division between the Maoist controlled Church and the underground Church of the martyrs. It’s an endurance test for both sides. We always think that Germany is the center of the world – that isn’t the case.

One thing surprised us when we did our preparatory research – your father was Protestant.

That’s true. He was a very non-middle class man and always encouraged me to be independent and think for myself. Maybe that is a kind of Protestantism within me, but it is an inverted Protestantism. Luther took aim at a mighty institution; I demand the return of an institution in a formless Church.

Critics consider you a reactionary. One could also call you a radical individualist. After all you demand as an individual the return of the institution and thereby paradoxically advocate the individualization of religion.

Those dissatisfied with the formless Church aren’t all that few anymore. We shouldn’t commit the error of holding our present age to be the final valid one. The only certainty that exists is that all circumstances will radically change. That’s why only having he present in view is so dangerous for the Church. I even say that what especially displeases the present is probably the most pregnant with the future.

You are an adherent of the Tridentine mass. Do you remember your first old mass?

It was with a priest in Hattenheim, an ugly suburb of Frankfurt, in a musty and desolate location. The priest was pastor Hans Milch, a powerful thunderer from the pulpit, a wild, boisterous and eccentric man. He had been discharged by the bishop and had built for himself a missionary hut in this dreadful Hattenheim. Now defenders of the old rite are readily suspected of “aestheticism.” But it was in these surroundings, so remote from all beauty, that I learned that the liturgy builds its own cathedral.

Do you mean that Pastor Milch who sympathized with the FSSPX?

Milch had the characteristics of a genius, but he was too expressionistic for my taste. His sermons ruptured the liturgy.

The content didn’t matter to you?

The cult is always more important than any sermon, however clever. The objectivity of cult is the greatest and most important thing our age needs. The old rite is the Church’s greatest treasure, her emergency kit, her Noah’s ark.

This weekend the ecumenical church convention it taking place in Munich. Are you going to be there?

Certainly not. I don’t have to run into cheerful people with a sect-member’s smile. This is the Reichsparteitag of organized Christianity – dreadful!

What’s so dreadful about it?

The idea itself – like a military review. The sentimental ecumenism. The “we” feeling. What counts in religion is the individual and his personal relationship with God. I find terrible this getting carried away by the crowd. Liturgical tradition breathes a sober, almost reserved spirit. It doesn’t serve as a massage for the soul.

What do you mean by “massage for the soul?”

I mean the Church must be nothing like a health outing. Christianity is not easily consumable. On the contrary, religion encounters man as something foreign, as the “totally other.” She challenges him to leave his place and set out to explore her strangeness and profundity. Religion has to act upon man first as foreign and difficult. Terrible simplification leads to great illusions and finally to a hangover.

She always has to have a plan contrary to the spirit of the times?

That is her most precious possession. The Church is always a counter – society. She is always a crack in the wall of the total present. That binds me to the Church and makes her necessary for me until my death.

What happens to you when you can’t attend mass for two or three weeks?

Then I know that I am living wrong.

What is the matter with you then?

What’s the matter with me? That I have not joined myself to this objective icon. That I have not, for once, disregarded myself and entered into the spell of reality, into a world that doesn’t run according to my laws.

By kind permission of Martin Mosebach.