18 dec

Who am I to judge? Famous words from a pope. Read an article today in the New Yorker about pope Francis. This was the title. The words almost tell the story.

I have a curious fondness for the church. Curious to me, at least. Always have had it. Not as a teenager, but as a History student I remember going to the Benedictine abbey of Affligem, in order to write an essay about the feudal system in the Middle Ages. Based on original contracts between farmers and the abbey, in this case, we had to write about what life was like in the Middle Ages.

Made a mess of that story. But I remember my stay at Affligem vividly. First of all there was a Dutch monk that also had gone to the same high school (Kruisheren College) that I had gone to. He was there in the years after the war, in the same years as my dad although he was older, the Benedictine monk and didn’t remember my father. My father, when I asked him later, remembered this guy. Son of a General in the dutch army, that wasn’t something one saw everyday in Uden.

Cosy chatting, that was what this Dutch monk did.

I also remember talking to the abbot, who invited this guest (for 3 or 4 days) for a conversation. The conversation was partly about the future of the abbey. They made and make a fine beer, we drank one tonight, but the production was not at the abbey anymore. Most of the monks were in their seventies, the abbot was in his sixties. There were hardly any younger monks, and the younger ones who were there, the abbot was searching for friendly words – found them too, as I recall – were not of the same quality (my words) of the ones that would used to enter the abbey.

I quit studying History and switched to Economics. The ‘History of the Future’ as I defended my choice at the time. I moved to Tilburg and got involved in the Students-church. Why? Nobody that I knew did, as I recall. But I liked to have the opportunity to think and talk about things that really mattered somehow. It helped that the student pastors, Hub Lenders and Han Oude Munnink, were just terrific. Erudite, social, charming, good conversationalists – just what I needed.

The abbot and the student pastors. These were men with charisma and common sense. And of course I had the example of my parents. Dedicated to a church that was less and less dedicated to them. I remember one day that there was a new bishop in the area where my parents lived, a forgettable man called Ter Schure, which means something like ‘Going to the Shed’. I remember my uncle Fried telling my parents: ‘Now you won’t longer go to Church, but ‘Ter Schure’. It was a despicable route that the Church was following. It was the route where they would tell people: ‘here am I to judge’. Nonsensical people would tell people with common sense that the nonsense was right. That doesn’t work in the long run.

Although they would not express it clearly, the people I met in Affligem and Tilburg , they almost had given up hope about the Church with a capital C. The Church was narrowing itself down to become an obscure and uninspirational symbol that exactly knew how people should behave in their bedroom, and had nothing else to say. Well, as a stand up comedian said in the seventies in Holland: If you do not play the game, don’t get involved in the rules. Which is the right attitude as far as I am involved.

I have followed the Church from a far distance since those days. Julie and I wanted to marry in the church, it being the surroundings that had perfected the ceremony of promising trust to perfection. We had to go through a series of un-dignifying conversations with the parish priest, who would fall asleep when we would answer the questions, and had the guts, after all this snoring (and our laughing behind our hands about it) to tell us that he didn’t think it was a good idea for us to marry – but marrying we happily did in a lovely ceremony with my uncle Fried as pastor. We touched on different church communities ever since but never found a place where we could be ourselves.

Part of the problem was that we most often met priests who were there to judge about this or that. It doesn’t really matter what, it is not the role for priests to judge. They should try to inspire people. They should try to inspire people to become the kind of persons that they aspire to become. On the condition of course that this is based on decent behaviour. But who really cares about judging these processes as much as the people that are involved themselves.

‘Who am I to judge?’ It is the most powerful statement imaginable from the pope, the supposed to be unfaulty person at the top of the hierarchy of the church. All these priests down the line, who have been happily judging – and talking about the happy judging week after week – need to look into the mirror and ask: Who am I to judge? Not them, that is for sure. We ourselves are, if we are not trashing any law – in that case a judge judges, and that is the way it should be -.We are dealing with our own shortcomings and dealing with them opposite a rule of thought that we consider worthwhile. Most of us will come up with a rule that is something like; do not do unto another what one doesn’t want to be done to oneself. Call it Catholic, Christian or Humanistic. It is the rule that we all have learned to follow. And we try to stick to it. And we fail. And, my God, am I glad that there is not an inferior priest somewhere who dares to declare his judgment on me, because we can say now, after pope Francis, who are you to judge. And that is progress, be it a little late.