Double Cross: The Code of the Catholic Church

Double Cross: The Code of the Catholic Church is a book that discusses the relationship between the Catholic Church and Jews, sex and political power. It was written by political scientist David Ranan and was published in 2007.

Background

David Ranan researched the history, dogma and strategies of the Catholic Church across its 2000 year history with the goal of determining whether there is an inherent fault in the blueprint of the Church that might pose a risk from which society needs to protect itself. Ranan states that the sexual abuse crisis in the Church was a primary motivation for his research.

Contents
==="The Church and Power"===
In this section, Ranan examines the role of the Church in politics including the Crusades, colonialism, the Holy Inquisition, witchcraft trials, the trial of Galileo, the burning of books, personal corruption of earlier popes and recent institutional corruption in recent times.

==="The Church and Jews"===
The history of anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and the Church’s attitudes to Jews, Judaism and the State of Israel since the Holocaust are scrutinised in three separate chapters. The Church’s attitude to Jews has changed considerably after the Second Vatican Council. However, not only because the Church finds it virtually impossible to rescind rulings made in the past but importantly because she is unable to deal with and accept her own culpability, these changes are very careful changes of nuance. As such, Ranan contends, they cannot undo two thousand years of the insemination of hatred.

==="The Church and Sex"===
The Church’s teaching on sex can be embodied by an early 20th century Jesuit theologian’s words: “The Creator has infused human nature with sexual pleasure and the desire for it so as to entice people into something that is filthy in itself and burdensome in its consequences.”In the book’s chapters on sex, the Church’s approach to marriage, divorce, homosexuality, masturbation, contraception and abortion are analysed. Her approach may have changed somewhat; however, much harm continues to be caused by the Church, especially in the fields of contraception, abortion and homosexuality.

Sexual abuse scandals have brought to light the criminal cover-up policy and practice of the Church. It is clear that the Church â€• even in the twenty-first century - was willing to cause the most terrible injury to her members in order to protect her public image. The motivation for the cover-up has not and most probably cannot be rooted out.

Conclusion

Double Cross demonstrates that the problem of the Catholic Church is not a single issue problem but systemic. None of the situations described are one-offs. There is continuity in the wrongdoing and similarity in the cover-up which have not changed over centuries. The Church’s evident difficulty with true repentance is a significant indicator for the future. The analysis of various mea culpae delivered by the Church in recent years demonstrates how very limited they were as well as their attempts to deflect from the Church’s culpability instead of accepting her guilt.

The fusion of her claim that all the popes form an uninterrupted line as Vicars of Christ going back to St. Peter, her undemocratic structure, her inability to compromise, the tendency of her hierarchy and those under her influence to be more loyal to the institution than to the purported values of the institution, and the formal and informal power base the Church has built have moulded her modus operandi. Not random errors, nor occasional bad decisions soon rectified or just acts of corrupt members of the hierarchy; they reflect the well thought-out policy of the Church.

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