Bart Eeckhout's dangerous leap

'Whoever finds strength and inspiration in their faith to do good, deserves respect,' Bart Eeckhout wrote last week in De Morgen, upon the death of Roger Vangheluwe. A beautiful sentence. But in exactly the same paragraph, he draws a radical conclusion: church and pope, and by extension every religious institution, have lost so much moral authority that they also lose the right to participate in discussions about how we shape our society. 'That's a good thing too,' he concludes.

They are two consecutive sentences that fundamentally contradict each other. For what does 'respect for faith' mean if you exclude the societal translation and organization of that faith from public debate from the outset? Apparently, no one is surprised by this anymore.

Let me first say where Eeckhout is right, because that deserves no nuance. What Vangheluwe did to his nephews, and what countless other victims of clergy worldwide have endured, has been covered up, minimized, and brushed aside by the Catholic Church as an institution for decades. That is not a matter of interpretation. That is simply what happened. There can never be enough attention, recognition, and restoration given to those who had to endure that.

But then that leap. From 'the Catholic Church has severely failed as an institution' to 'faith therefore no longer deserves a voice in public debate' is a leap of a completely different order. It is precisely this intellectual short circuit that we must analyze, because it is based on a fundamental misunderstanding about the distinction between a specific institution and the broader category of faith itself.

Faith is more than one failing institution

What failed here was not merely one man who coincidentally betrayed his own message. It was leaders of the Catholic Church themselves, who structurally prioritized their own reputation over the safety of children. That finding deserves no relativization.

Exactly there, however, lies Eeckhout's mistake: he makes a double category error. He jumps from the failure of one specific institution to all religious institutions, and then from those institutions to the concept of 'faith' in general..

Compare it to what came to light at the Boy Scouts of America, or at USA Gymnastics in the abuse case surrounding Larry Nassar. In both cases, it concerned organizations that for decades knew, covered up, and protected perpetrators to safeguard their own institution. No one draws the conclusion from this that scouting or youth sports as such no longer have a right to exist, or that no youth movement may still say anything meaningful about upbringing. We condemn the rotten organization, rightly and harshly, without denying the value of what scouting or sport means for a child. What's more, these scandals have led countless otheryouth organizations just led to a sharper focus on child protection, not to the conclusion that youth work itself is suspicious. For the sake of Pravda, should we not ban De Morgen?

That distinction is lost in the wave of understandable indignation. Faith and Christianity are not synonyms for that one Catholic institution, and certainly not for its many good members. These are broad categories with enormous diversity of communities and traditions that are separate from this specific history. Anyone who uses the structural error of one institution to silence an entire category engages in intellectual exclusion. The Catholic church is also larger than its failing leaders and perpetrators.

Why a moral monoculture is dangerous

If we assume that moral authority may only come from one corner, or that only one secular morality may count in the arena of society, we open the door to a dangerous monoculture. History teaches that such a 'pensée unique' – whether packaged in a state religion or in a coercive secular regime – stifles every form of pluralism. A society without shared morality does not exist. The question is not whether there should be moral values, but how we shape them together. It is precisely there thatdiversity should be our starting point, not the exclusion of religious voices.

What makes us vulnerable as a society today is not an excess of shared morality, but a deficit. We risk turning into a collection of individuals who only look at their own autonomy and take personal standards as the sole norm. Living together requires community, unifying power, and shared values. Religion, despite everything that has historically gone wrong, still holds that potential for millions of people.

A warning for every leader

I am not writing this as a detached spectator. As a bishop within a very different religious tradition than the Catholic hierarchy, I bear responsibility myself. That is precisely why this discussion affects me doubly. I know what is demanded of a leader, and I see the dynamics within a faith community from within. That responsibility is never a free pass; it is a continuous warning. Whoever receives a position of spiritual trust loses their authority the moment they damage that trust.

The institutional failure exposed by the Vangheluwe case reminds us that every institution that betrays its own message must be held accountable and dare to change radically.. That is what faith is supposed to produce: introspection and restoration..

The leaders and structures of a specific church can lose their social credit.. That is sometimes painfully justified. But faith itself, as a living source of inspiration to do good, does not lose that value. Whoever claims that confuses the shadow of a failing organization with the light of the message itself.