The Church Of Burke Or Of Francis?

I have a complicated relationship with the Catholic Church. I was raised in an observant family and I had 12 years of Catholic schooling. But by the end of high school I was done with it. Someplace in there I decided that as soon as I was on my own I’d be out.

Part of it was political. I was pro-choice, the Church wasn’t. I thought it was crazy that women couldn’t be priests or that nobody was supposed to have sex before marriage. And this was long before all of the sexual abuse revelations and further revelations about coverups.

But part of it was philosophical. I found that, upon study and reflection, I just didn’t believe in God, or at least in the personal kind of God that the Catholic Church is built around. Even if the Church suddenly became a bastion of liberal thought I wouldn’t rejoin it because I simply do not buy into the core program. But, my own views aside, the Church still has substantial influence in the world and so, whether I want to be part of it or not, it’s an entity that has to be taken seriously.

This comes to mind now for a couple of reasons. I just got back from Europe, mostly Austria, where I learned that the Austrians were enthusiastic participants in the Holocaust. In fact, small country as it is, about 70% of concentration camp commandants were Austrians. At Mauthausen, the largest camp in the country, over 200,000 people — Jews, Russian prisoners, political prisoners and others — were murdered over the seven years from 1938 to 1945. And, of course, even the survivors were horribly abused.

And this was all done with the tacit consent of the Catholic Church. In fact, after Hitler took over Austria in the spring of 1938 — and was heartily welcomed by the vast majority of Austrians — there was a plebiscite to show public support for German annexation. The Catholic bishops of Austria not only supported a ‘yes’ vote, but actively participated in the campaign for its approval, even signing one letter “Heil, Hitler.”

At Mauthausen there’s an account by the local priest of a prison escape. It’s oddly cold. He simply recounts what happened without commentary and without mentioning how he might have responded. If he helped any of the prisoners he didn’t say so.

I got home yesterday afternoon (a day late — don’t travel through Frankfurt if you can avoid it) to read that Pope Francis has kicked Cardinal Raymond Burke out of his digs in the Vatican. That was a long-time coming. Burke, a native of Richland Center and a former bishop of La Corsse, is a far-right lunatic who would have been right at home with the Austrian bishops of 1938.

An outspoken vaccine-denier, Burke had to be rescued by modern medicine after he got COVID himself. He was placed on a ventilator. How many devout Catholics went to an early grave because they listened to Burke?

Burke also opposes Francis’ outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics and to Catholics who have been divorced. Compassion, understanding and tolerance, not to mention good marketing in a changing world, are not things that Burke seems to have the faintest familiarity with.

There is a part of the Catholic Church that is in goose step with Trump and hard-right populism. Based on the Church’s history in Europe we shouldn’t be surprised.

When I was a little boy my mother gave me a small statue of St. Francis. He’s gently holding a small bird, which is how he is commonly depicted. In fact, St. Francis is associated with kindness to animals and, more broadly, with the environment. It’s entirely possible that I became an environmentalist because of that statue which I displayed on my dresser, surrounded by a little rock garden, when I was a little kid.

I still have that statue. In fact, when my mom passed away last spring I took her own St. Francis statue in a little wooden house that she had had in her garden and later on her patio at her apartment. I’ve refinished it and I’ll place it in my own garden up north next spring — if the weather cooperates, on the anniversary of her death.

If visitors see my statue they might take me for a devout Catholic. My mother would be pleased with the impression given by her statue, if not the reality of her son’s content lack of faith.

Francis — both the saint and the pope who took his name — represents the Catholic Church that I would still be a part of if I could somehow get over my cosmological differences with Catholic dogma. Unfortunately, Raymond Burke is far more representative of how the Church has acted in the world for two millennia.