CONFRONTING THE CHURCH'S PAST : An interview with Eamon Duffy - Interview

Commonweal, Jan 14, 2000 by Raymond De Souza

* De Souza: What is the role of church historians with the preparation of the church's examination of conscience in the view of the Jubilee?

* Duffy: One of the problems about Catholic ecclesiology in the past has been the identification of the historical phenomenon of Catholicism with the bride of Christ who is spotless and pure. The strict identification of the historical community with the mystical bride of Christ has had all sorts of effects. It means that, for example, we never make mistakes and the Catholic church has worked on this assumption at every level of its life-from the doctrinal to the practical-that we never make mistakes. It is felt that we must automatically, for example, defend Pius XII against charges that he was anti-Semitic. We must find extenuating circumstances for atrocities, for moral lapses in the past, for bad teaching in the past; I think historians have the great responsibility of bringing home to the church that it is a historical community made up of fallible people and that therefore the past of the church is not a sacred area. It is an area where we believe that the grace of God is working itself out in history but that does not privilege our history as different from other human history. The grace of God is working itself out in all human history and very often the gospel is focused in the church by its absence rather than by its effectiveness in the community.

* De Souza: Is there then an inevitable tension between historians and the church hierarchy?

* Duffy: The historian has a great contribution to make in reminding the church of what actually happened and refusing to allow anyone, particularly the hierarchy, to sanitize it. The hierarchy is always looking, not in any malevolent sense, to the past to justify its own actions. It is very important that if the church goes to the past, then it should be the real past it goes to and not some fantasy or some heritage past that has been manicured and tidied up. It was interesting that among the historians called to the Inquisition symposium there were a large number of Catholics but also atheists, Jews, Protestants, and agnostics, because the Holy See recognized that you had to go to the people who knew the history. The primary qualification of the historians there was that they should be good historians, and not that they should be believers.

Some of the most telling interventions came from people who were non- Catholics and they were often extremely friendly. Indeed, one of the non- Catholic participants said that if he had been a sixteenth-century heretic he would have much rather been tried by the Inquisition than by any secular court. But there were also those who disagreed with that.

* De Souza: What is your view of the call for a "purification of memory" as a preparation for the Jubilee, by confessing the sins of the past?

* Duffy: I think the idea of "purification of memory" can be a dangerous concept. The idea of apologizing for the past and starting with a clean sheet in the third millennium-you cannot start with a clean sheet. You carry with you what you have done. People can forgive but the dead cannot forgive. There is a danger of thinking that if you say what you have done- that is it, it is finished. I am dubious about that.