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	Betrayals of Trust at Easter Time By Alan Cowell The New York Times April 2, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/world/europe/03iht-letter.html LONDON — Last Sunday, in a modest, middle-class neighborhood in north London, a group of people marched in cheerful procession along the public highway, carrying fronds of palm in a display of belief as the calendar of their faith ticked toward Easter. Then, inside St. Anne’s Anglican church, commemorating Jesus Christ’s arrival in Jerusalem on a donkey almost 2,000 years ago, they joined with their priest in reciting the Passion of Christ as narrated in the Gospel according to Luke, a story of betrayal, perverted justice and denial. “Before the cock crows, you will disown me three times,” Jesus tells his disciple Peter, in prophetic testimony to human frailty. The annual Palm Sunday celebration was replicated in many places where Christians pray — including St. Peter’s in Rome — and, to an agnostic or atheist, their observance might seem no more than a winsome display of unshakeable belief in the utterly unprovable, arguably the essence of faith. But this year, the lessons of Easter seem to resonate far beyond parish churches and grand cathedrals — and far beyond matters of the spirit at a time when the bedrock tenets of Western societies are challenged by the failures of those entrusted with their preservation. Faith has lost ground to skepticism. Many of those who enjoin the people to believe — in God or Caesar or Mammon — have forfeited their right to do so. Most recently, the world’s attention has focused on the Roman Catholic Church and a scandalous tally of sexual abuse of children. The Vatican’s response has inspired scrutiny of the behavior of Pope Benedict XVI himself in dealing with priestly offenders during his time as an archbishop and then as a cardinal before he assumed the papacy in 2005. “No longer can the Vatican simply issue papal messages — subject to nearly infinite interpretations and highly nuanced constructions — that are passively ‘received’ by the faithful,” an editorial in the National Catholic Reporter, an American Catholic publication, proclaimed. “It is time, past time really, for direct answers to difficult questions. It is time to tell the truth.” People might still have faith in the gospel, that is to say, but they have lost confidence in those they once relied upon to promote its teaching as their confession enjoins them to — in word, thought and deed. And that sense of trust betrayed could just as easily be applied to other institutions brought into disrepute by their own leaders. Many Westerners, for instance, might still believe in the Economics 101 notions of work and pay and profit — but they do not trust the world’s financial stewards at all. At a time when recession gnaws at the majority, why should a small minority of financiers win huge bonuses after bankrupting entire nations? Or, take politics — in Britain at least. Late last month, three former government ministers were caught in a sting operation by investigative journalists, offering to trade influence for cash. The three — Geoff Hoon, Patricia Hewitt and Stephen Byers — were disciplined by the Labour Party, but their actions were only the latest in a series of episodes painting politicians as venal creatures unworthy of the trust of those who voted them into office. With elections approaching, probably next month, that corrosive sense of leadership gone astray gnaws at the nation’s political fabric. Most Britons would still profess a belief in democracy, of course, but — as with attitudes to the Vatican or to the boardrooms of the globalized economy — many have lost trust in its practitioners. Acceptance has turned to scorn; acquiescence has curdled. For the Vatican, the damage is worst of all. The pope himself, held by the church to be infallible when speaking solemnly on matters of faith or morals, is now under the same kind of scrutiny as the politicians or the bankers and hedge fund managers. The calls for transparency are the same. The emperor has no clothes: Reporters pore over Benedict’s personal history in much the same way as they would routinely scour company filings or political committee reports. For some in a divided church, the aura of near-divinity has gone. “We now face the largest institutional crisis in centuries, possibly in church history,” the National Catholic Reporter said. “How this crisis is handled by Benedict, what he says and does, how he responds and what remedies he seeks, will likely determine the future health of our church for decades, if not centuries, to come.” Those considerations might not have weighed too directly on the congregants who processed from Swains Lane to Highgate West Hill last Sunday. Their Church of England has not, so far, been drawn into the sexual abuse scandal. The Archbishop of Canterbury is not being called upon to make his confession about allegations of cover-up and omerta — the Mafia vow of silence to which the Vatican’s historical response to the abuse scandal has been likened. But Anglicans do understand the enduring nature of ecclesiastical upheaval. Their church owes its very existence to Henry VIII’s break with Rome in the 1530s. Centuries on, ecumenical discussions falter. Divisions fester. The schism is not resolved. Yet both denominations share central beliefs. Their liturgies revolve around the Eucharistic feast, the commemoration of Christ’s last supper before his crucifixion. The narratives and holidays are largely the same. The priesthoods differ in many important ways — above all, Anglicans do not share the Roman Catholic practice of clerical celibacy — but they are similar in one, overwhelming way: Believers look to their pastors to lead them honestly and without corruption. They need, in other words, to trust those who administer the faith as much as they cleave to the faith itself. There is an irony in the timing of this confluence of skepticism, just before Easter — the beginning and end of its religious calendar, marking the twin themes of sacrifice and resurrection, human loss and divine redemption — and just as Jews observe Passover to celebrate the Exodus from pharaonic Egypt. Perhaps that is what the bankers and politicians and clerics need to embrace, too — a grand moment of redemption and renewal, an escape. But, by any measure of belief, that would require a leap of faith too far. E-MAIL pagetwo@iht.com
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