....© 2000, Kimit A. Muston
I have a friend who is a Republican. She doesn't trust government to make important decisions, like whether a woman should have an abortion or whether children should start each day with a prayer. She thinks those are decision best left to individuals. I told her once that she wasn't a moderate Republican but rather an Old Republican. She punched me in the shoulder.
I don't agree with her on some issues but we do agree that her party is being controlled by its radical right wing. She thinks her party needs to be reformed. And I don't think the radical's are ever going to give up control of the Republican party. My friend is also a Catholic and the example of frustrated reformers that comes to mind is the time there were three popes.
The issue in 1294 A.D. was the great wealth of a church that preached piety and poverty. Things came to a head when the reformers elected an ex-hermit as Pope. Within weeks the Vatican bureaucracy forced him out and got their own man, Bontiface the VIII, elected to replace him.
Bontiface immediately started to act more like a King on earth than the representative of a heavenly King. Actually he thought he was both. In 1303 his arrogance reached such levels that the French and English paid some Italians to place his holiness under arrest. Bontiface dropped dead from the shock.
The French decided to keep the next pope on a short leasH. Not only did they make sure he was French but they moved the entire papacy, bureaucracy and all, to Avignon, and bought off any independent minded churchmen with even more gold.
That scandal led to a confrontation when there was an election for a new pope in 1377. The French cardinals elected one of their own and the rest of the cardinals elected somebody else. There were now two popes, both issuing edicts and ex-communicating people who didn't support them. This silly state of affairs lasted for eight years until a committee was formed to look for a solution. For some insane reason they decided the solution was to elect yet another pope. Now there were three Popes wandering around Europe. The reformers were split and the anti-reformers were as adamant as ever. Seeing the weakness the noble houses of Europe feasted on Church property.
It wasn't until 1417 that things got bad enough to bring everybody to their senses. Another conference was called to reach a settlement and much to everyone's surprise, it did. The conference voted to fire one Pope, forced another to resign and ordered the third Pope to go to hell, literally. A compromise Pope who seemed friendly to the idea of reform was quickly elected, Martin V. It looked like the reformers had finally won something. And it only took them one hundred twenty-three years.
Except, Martin V, it turned out, was no more interested in reform than old Bontiface VIII had been. It seemed to Martin that a lot of the reformers seemed to be guilty of heresy and he had some of them burned at the stake and others shut up in monasteries. And that was pretty much the end of reform from within the Catholic Church.
Well, not quite the end. The reformers might be dead but reform was not. It just moved outside the church. In time there came Martin Luther and the Protestant reformation, which produced two hundred years of civil war in Europe, bankrupted Spain and split Western Christianity into two antagonistic halves.
You might wonder if pompous old Bontiface VIII would have compromised with the reformers if he could have seen what the battle was going to cost his church. But I don't think he would have. A man who fights political battles to save his immortal soul is not likely to believe that the battle can ever cost him too much.
And that is the self vision of the radical right wing of the Republican party; fighting for their immortal souls. Whatever they say, whatever compromises they might appear to be willing to make they are never going to allow their party to stand for anything they oppose, even if it means the destruction of the party. To quote Barry Goldwater, who is now considered not radical enough, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is not a vice." And political suicide is not an admission of defeat. Not to these folks.
Kimit A.Muston is a writer living in North Hollywood. He may be contacted at www.inditer.com or email the editor. His work may be also be read in the Los Angeles Daily News