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6 Canadian Mennonite September 16, 2013denomination, go so unimaginablywrong? It’s hard to imagine worseactions.While Catholic dioceses and orders inCanada have paid a combined $80 millionas part of the 2007 government-ledresidential school settlement, and someof those bodies have issued apologies,the Vatican remained silent until 2009,when His Holiness Pope Benedict XVIexpressed “sorrow” over the “deplorableconduct” of “some members of thechurch.”Compare his one-paragraph statement—extraordinarilyconcise for aVatican document—with the statementby Prime Minister Stephen Harper theyear before, in which he said “we aresorry” in five languages on national televisionfrom the floor of Parliament.Compare Rome’s response to serialpedophiles among its clerical ranks withthe automatic and immediate excommunicationit metes out to womenwho get abortions, regardless of theircircumstances.Compare Rome’s response to the responseat Penn State University, when assistantfootball coach Jerry Sandusky wasarrested on charges of sexually assaultingminors on Nov. 5, 2011. He was firedand banned from the campus the nextday. Two days later, the school rejectedthe resignation of storied head coachJoe Paterno, who concealed informationrelated to the case, and fired him on thespot. The president of the university alsoresigned that day. Then the governingbody for university athletics chopped theschool’s football program off at the knees.That was the response to one pedophileat a secular institution.By worldly reckoning, the residentialschool atrocities, along with the broaderand more recent pedophilia scandalamong Catholic priests, should havesunk the whole show. The faithful shouldhave left en masse. The pope should haveresigned. At minimum, it should have ledto a major revamp of a structure in whichcelibate men exercise inordinate authoritywith near impunity. But it didn’t.Sure, the Catholic Church has lostsome credibility, priests and cash over thescandals, but, overall, as a global whole,Wikimedia Commons photoThe Sedia Gestatoria (litter) of PopePius VII (1800-23), part of an exhibitionof various thrones in the Galerie desGlaces of Château de Versailles.it has pretty much carried on, picking upnew members to replace the ones it loses.I find that remarkable.Code of Canon LawIronically, the criminal indiscretions havehappened despite an extravagant structureof church law and judicial authority,much of which is devoted to rooting outanything that might bring public shameto the church. A key component of this“juridical-legislative” structure is theCode of Canon Law.As I found out, the Code is a stuffyshowcase of the elements of Catholicismthat, like the scandals, one would thinkshould have toppled the Catholic edificelong ago.While the papal conclave grippedmuch of the world’s attention last March,including mine, I found myself online atvatican.va, and, as these virtual things go,In an age of individual freedom, equality,informality and change, [the Code of CanonLaw] sternly holds to a structure in which mostlyold white men unabashedly call the shots.I soon landed upon the Code of CanonLaw. By the time the cardinals had senttheir final smoke signal out the roof ofthe Sistine Chapel a few days later, I hadread all 1,752 canons, along with theirinnumerable sub-canons.My motives for reading were murky. Iwanted to see what should have happenedto the people who committedresidential school abuses; the last 441canons deal with trials, sanctions and thelike. I also wanted to see where it said Iwas not worthy to eat their communionwafers (Canon 844), that women can’t bepriests (Canon 1024), and why they can’tbe priests (nothing). I wanted a furtherglimpse into the bureaucratic bowels ofthe church to which many of the finestpeople I know devote themselves.Despite mentions of love, grace and“a close relationship with Christ,” whatI found in the Code was an unrelentingconcern for rules, discipline, jurisdiction,authority, the aversion of “scandal,” andthe ordering of power among dozens ofchurch offices, from “apostolic provicars”to men of “cardinalatial dignity”(cardinals), to the “supreme legislator”himself.Predictably, I also found much aboutthe ordering of sexual life, “pelvicorthodoxy” as critics call it: laws aboutcelibacy, adultery, “the evangelical counselof chastity,” “the order of virgins” andmarital consummation, including thestipulation that only Rome can adjudicate“the fact of the non-consummationof a marriage,” and only the “supremelegislator” himself can get you out ofyour marriage once his authorities haveestablished said fact (Canon 1698).It’s hard to see the Code as an improvementon “Love the Lord your God . . . andlove your neighbour as yourself.” And, ofcourse, each of their many references tothe aversion of scandal is a reminder oftheir tragic failure to do just that.