April 16, 2006 - "A wide and deep transparency is an antidote for corruption…" (GORDON BROWN, U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer). But this piece is not about corruption. It is simply a recognition that if information is suppressed by an institution, however powerful, there is a probability that the truth may come back a couple of millennia later; and with a haunting vengeance and embarrassment.
So, wherever and whenever the gospels surface, let there be a wide and deep transparency about them. This should avoid postponement of an embarrassment that is equally deep and wide.
Despite the Judas gospel the Church will survive. I do not think that Judas is the Church's biggest crisis. It is nothing compared to the recent publication of the many incidents of priests guilty of child pedophilia.
Last week a priest lamented (on television) that in his experience there were more priests dying than those joining the priesthood. This has the potential to develop into a major crisis.
As if I need to be reminded, those folks who work with me were reminding me this week that I had been querying some facets of the gospels for a long time - even without knowing that a gospel of Judas existed.
Christ was reportedly very transparent in his methods. He preached in the open, publicly, and before multitudes. Why did Judas or anyone else have to betray him? The Roman soldiers had the power to arrest him at any of his sermons.
The above query occurred during my university days. But even in my early childhood, there were circumstances when church doctrines seemed unnecessarily mysterious, contradictory, or perhaps senseless. In those days I could not articulate my instincts as I can now.
"The pope is infallible." "All men are born in sin except the Blessed Virgin Mary." The catechism teachers took the pain to explain that the pope could make mistakes as a man, but as pope he could make none. My brain remained constrained not to accept that distinction between man and pope or pope and man.
At the Dominica Grammar School there was a Mr. L. A. WARD who taught History and English. He was a non-Catholic and he once said: "Nobody should think that because he puts on a gown he is going to fool me." As a good Catholic child you resented remarks like that.
But there was also Mr. CECIL GOODRIDGE who taught History, which was always considered more a matter of fact than of faith. In form three or maybe four, Goodridge mentioned Pope Alexander VI in one of his lectures.
That extraordinary pope had at least six (6) "illegitimate" children born of three mistresses. He made his 18-year-old son Cesare Borgia a cardinal. He often made war for the aggrandizement of his children. In his absence from Rome in 1501 he left Lucrezia Borgia as regent, "...offering the astounding spectacle of a pope's natural daughter in charge of the Holy See."
So much for the confusion re infallibility.
I do not know if Religion can squeeze out some modicum of consolation from the fact that Science too, in 2005 lost credibility. There was a popular belief that stomach ulcer was caused by stress and related factors. A three billion (U.S.) dollar industry developed in manufacture of related drugs. Another U.S. $3 billion industry developed in terms of operation/procedures for stomach ulcer.
A couple of Australian doctors exploded the myth and the industries. They identified the bacteria that caused stomach ulcer and concluded that, without operation, it could be treated by use of appropriate antibiotics medication.
Dr. BARRY MARSHALL and DR. ROBIN WARREN were jointly awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2005. The Judas researchers should anticipate no equivalent recognition. But let the wide and deep transparency prevail. Rather than impede progress, it should facilitate and foster the development of Science and Religion.