Pissed At The Post

I don’t know if you have seen The Book of Mormon, but it has one of the best musical scores that Broadway has seen in years.  That doesn’t negate the fact that at the end of the day it just a foul rant on religious faith set to some really great tunes.  God bless those Mormons.  They took this attack on their beliefs and practices on the chin, pretending it didn’t hurt.  I think they took it too well.  In fact, I think we have all taken it too well because it is not just violence against the faith and intellect of the Latter Day Saints, but a vulgar slur on believers of any stripe.  Readers of this blog will certainly know that I am no religious wing-nut sounding the tocsin against those who are forcing America into godlessness, but “ya got trouble, my friend, right here, I say, trouble right here in River City.”  And seventy-six trombones ain’t goin’ to fix it.    
I mentioned the other day in posting that Tom Toles, the political cartoonist for the Washington Post, published a particularly malevolent “cartoon” scorning the canonization of John Paul II.   Now as I said in several previous posts, I think the recent canonization of popes 261 and 264 was ill advised and for a number of reasons.  Maybe I expect too much of an “heroic degree of sanctity,” so sue me, but while each of these popes was truly remarkable from a historical perspective and each was certainly extraordinarily pious, I just don’t see either of them as a Teresa of Avila or an Augustine or a Francis of Assisi.  And in my blog entries I have had some particular criticism of John Paul for his poor handling of the sex-abuse crisis in the Catholic Church—but I also had some particularly good things to say about him for what he had to say and—more important, what he did—for human rights and for his role in bringing down Totalitarianism. 
Now I know that the essence of cartooning is succinctness in caricaturing, but Tole’s cartoon wasn’t succinct, it was vilifying.  Removing a subject from his or her context is not succinctness, it turns the cartoon from a caricature to a lie.  The problem is not Toles, of course, it is The Washington Post.   It’s sad because the Post could be a first-rate paper like the Times.  It used to be.  It has good writers.  It’s “opinion page” most often presents some of the best and most thought-provoking columnists.  It certainly beats out The Dallas Morning News, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The Arizona Republic, The Saint Louis Post Dispatch, or the Newark Star Ledger.  But the Post has just gone on the rag about religion these last few years.  Like the South Park crew that wrote The Book of Mormon, the Post just has no respect for people, including its readers, who still have religious views. 
We have lived in a Christian culture for a long time—far longer than any of us can remember.  What I mean by “a Christian culture” is a culture whose myths and stories, whose art and music, whose philosophy and value systems, have been shaped by the Christian religion.  This is nothing new. It goes back to Constantine.  Our “Founding Fathers” who were—for the most part—agnostics, wove this Christian culture (though not the Christian religion) into our national identity.  (Our Founding Mothers, by the way—far wiser than our Founding Fathers—tended to be Unitarians north of the Mason Dixon and Episcopalians south.  And Unitarians in those days were non-Trinitarian Congregationalists, not the sort of “make it up as you go along” quasi religionists of today.  But that is for another time.)  We could afford to have a Christian culture for the last two centuries+ of our nationhood.  Just about all of us were Christians.  And we left enough wiggle room in just how Christian our culture is that Jews didn’t have to feel uncomfortable, at least if they had an open mind.  (An open mind was optional for us Christians since we held all the cards.) 
Much has changed over the last half-century and our culture has for the most part lost that distinctly Christian catch.  Christmas is now “the holidays.” Church bells, if they ring at all, only ring at noon.  Ten Commandments and Christmas crèches no longer stand in public places.  Bible reading is banned in the schools.  And the clergy all know how to offer some vague aspiration that passes for a “prayer” at Memorial Day observances.  The situation is that we are no longer a Christian populace with a relatively small Jewish minority.  It’s not just Jews and Christians in bed together any more. Today we are Buddhists and Sikhs and Muslims (lots of Muslims), and Wiccans, and Hindus, and a smattering of anything and everything else.  And we need to make room under our American cultural tent.  We have to become a secular culture.  It is painful, I know; it is like when once you were the rich family in town and then Daddy lost the factory in a poker game and you go to public school now and live in an apartment.  But put on your big-boy pants and get used to it—that is the way it is and the toothpaste doesn’t go back into the tube. 
The thing is that there are two kinds of secularism.  There is the secularism that wants to ban any and all religion from the public square.  That is the sort of secularism that fed the Marxist/Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe and Asia.  And there is the sort of secularism that insists on a level playing field for everyone—whatever their belief or non-belief.  That sort of secularism—the level playing field—is something we can live with. It is built not just on tolerance, but on mutual respect.  The former kind—the kind whose ideology provokes the sort of Cartoon Tom Toles published—poses a grave danger to us individually and collectively.
Religion speaks up for human rights in societies where individuals are seen as having less worth than some vague “collective good.” The eugenics of a Margaret Sanger or an Adolph Hitler were both threatened by religion because it stood in the way of their desires to create a world in which their ideals of human perfection could eliminate the flesh and blood realities of individuals with Downs Syndrome, same-sex attraction, or who had Roma or Jewish or African bloodlines.  It was religion that after chafing for four decades under communist totalitarianism brought down the Soviet client-state of Marxist Poland, the first domino to fall in the “evil empire.”  It was the combined efforts of the Churches that eventually cracked the apartheid in South Africa.  The Civil Rights movement in the United States and the anti-war movement of the ’60’s and ‘70’s were led by ministers and rabbis and nuns.  It was religious voices that cried out against the American-client military dictatorships in El Salvador and Nicaragua and Brazil and other countries of Latin America.  Tens of thousands of Protestant Ministers and Catholic priests were imprisoned at Dachau, and Auschwitz, and Sachsenhausen for their resistance to National Socialism.  Tens of thousands more would disappear into Siberia or be shot under Stalin.  Priests and ministers played key roles in the resistance movements of World War II and while not nearly enough was done to save the Jews of Europe, nearly all of those “righteous among the nations” who risked—and sometimes gave—their lives sheltering the hunted were religious believers.   Religious faith deserves more respect than either The Book of Mormon or Tom Toles and the Washington Post are willing to give those people who root their lives in a religious belief.  Shame on you Book of Mormon and Shame on you Tom Toles and the Washington Post. 

Making Church a "Safe Place"

 

E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post recently wrote a very interesting column with considerable impact, I believe, for the Church.  It wasn’t about the Church—though it was about religion and politics.  Dionne claims that the Republican party has a bleak future because the “Millennial Generation”  (those born after 1980)  do not buy into the social conservatism of the Middle Aged and older and are not inclined to espouse the social agenda that energizes the Republican base.  Dionne points out that the Millennial Generation also tends to be non-religious and estimates that it is for the same reason.  Organized religion is identified with social conservatism.  This can, I believe, be quite unfair.  The mainline Protestant Churches, dying as they are, have espoused a liberal social theology.  Women are fully empowered in the mainline Protestant Churches and Same-Sex relationships are not only accepted, but for the greater part, blessed.   And yet the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church—these groups annually see a notable decline in membership.  But my concern is for the Catholic Church.  I see in parish after parish that the 30 somethings are missing.  You simply don’t see people under 45 or 50 in Church.  Twenty years ago we expected the 20-somethings to be doing something else on Sunday morning but we assured ourselves that “they will be here when they have children of their own to raise.”   And twenty years ago that prophecy generally proved true, but no longer.  Of course many of the Millennials don’t have children.  Or if they have children they are not in the traditional two-parent mixed-sex relationship to which we once restricted the term “marriage.”  And not being in that traditional relationship, they don’t feel welcome in the Church—or at least in the Catholic Church.
One of my big themes when I go around speaking is that today everyone knows what the Catholic Church is against, but no one knows what it is for.  We don’t have to be ready to bless same-sex marriages in order to make same-sex couples feel welcome in Church.  And of course the issue isn’t making same-sex couples welcome in Church, the issue is making people, regardless of lifestyle choices, welcome in Church.  (And I do not mean to imply here that same-sex orientation is a “choice.”  Only pre-Neanderthals still spout that nonsense.  Sexual orientation is not a choice but the styles of life which we choose for ourselves—Middle Class suburban, Yuppie, mid-town sophisticates, rural greenies, etc—while dictated by economic limitations, are choices.)   And it is not that becoming gender blind or orientation-blind will fill our pews, but stopping the ugly judgmental face we put to the outside world will go a long way in making the Gospel of Jesus Christ look like something positive for the world rather than looking like some sort of fatwa that calls for death to anyone who diverges from Christian sharia. 
I think this is the message Francis has been trying to get out with his remarks on the plane back from Rio and WYD.  We don’t have to change our basic moral convictions but we do need to change our moral attitude.  And I think we need to change our basic conception of the Church from the Community of the Righteous to the Community of God’s Beloved, remembering that we are beloved of God not for our personal virtue but for God’s own mercy on our broken lives.  When we realize that we are all beggars at the feast of Grace that God has laid out we will stop judging the person in the pews next to us and when people feel that it is safe once again to go into church without being judged, we might find our churches filling up. 

Papal Transitions

I want to bring your attention to an op-ed piece by Timothy Shriver recently printed in the Washington Post.  I would not necessarily agree with the article in its totality but I think it raises an important consideration that needs to be discussed at every level of the Church.    

 The next pope should be a mystic

Timothy Shriver is the chairman of Special Olympics.

There’s no need to rehash the recent disastrous track record of the all-male Roman Catholic hierarchy. The sordid abuse of children by priests, the sinister coverups, the callous treatment of nuns, the deaf ear turned toward Catholics who happen to be gay or divorced — it’s all on the front page. The Catholic Church is hemorrhaging moral authority.

What’s much more devastating is that it is losing believers, too. If you can’t trust the messengers, why trust the message? It is not too much to say that the crisis in the church is contributing to a crisis of faith in the Gospel itself.
This is a crisis not of management nor of theology. This is a crisis of the spirit. But before the church can address its great moral collapse, it will have to recover its spiritual bearings. The next pope should be a mystic.
A mystic? Absolutely! Contrary to popular perception, a mystic is not a magician or a crystal-ball-gazer. A mystic is rather a person who has had an experience of God’s love so unmistakable that it changes him or her forever, imparting a confidence that cannot be shaken, a humility that cannot be doubted, a freedom that exudes love and gentleness and authenticity. A mystic knows from experience, not books, that we are each beautiful beyond our understanding, loved beyond our capacity to love, united beyond our perceptions of difference and division.
Happily, mystics have a rich history in the Catholic tradition. I’d like to see a pope who is a devoted follower of the anonymous 13th-century author of The Cloud of Unknowing, who taught the practice of silent prayer and meditation. Like many contemporary teachers of meditation, this person taught students to enter meditation meekly through a “cloud of forgetting” and discover a state in which “the soul is one with God.” Today’s millions who are disillusioned with metaphysical formulations or religious creeds would love an invitation to that experience.
It would also be wonderful if the new pope led retreats based on the teachings of Saint Teresa of Avila, who wrote that “any real ecstasy is a sign you are moving in the right direction. Don’t let any prude tell you otherwise!” The future of the church depends on its capacity to embrace the healthy and wonderful human longing for love and unity and intimacy. Teresa could be the model who celebrated the love of Christ as a lover would, a pioneer who believed that, through the practice of loving God, we can become better lovers of other human beings.
The new pope could update his iPod with the enchanting sacred music composed by Hildegard of Bingen — a 12th-century hermit who longed to become a “feather on the breath of God.” We live in search of experiences of “flow,” where our identity is swallowed up in a unifying consciousness not all our own. Hildegard would be a wonderful guide in the search for that lightness of being, and her music could illuminate our search.
The new pope might also remind believers of the often painful detachment that comes with the mystical pursuit of the purest love of God. He need only teach the writings of Saint John of the Cross, who found himself “living darkly, with no ray of light.” John is a voice for those who feel the void of meaninglessness, but in that same darkness, he is also given the discovery that often comes with spiritual rigor: “[L]ove gives power to my life . . . . Love can perform a wondrous labor which I have learned internally, and all the good or bad in me takes on a penetrating savor, changing my soul so it can be consumed in a delicious flame.”
Today’s searchers can also look to modern-day mystics. American Franciscan Richard Rohr offers guidance about how to seek a heart at peace with others and infused with purpose. Rohr teaches the mysticism of Saint Francis, mysticism as part of everyday life. Rohr reminds us that the Gospel is like the gay rights movement in one way: It’s an invitation for us to come out of our closets and bask in the reckless love of God.
Can a pope be like Saint Francis or Saint Theresa?
It depends on how much the cardinals are willing to risk. They should risk it all, just like Jesus.
Theirs is a church founded on the audacious premise that “God is love.” Jesus trusted that love to enable him to take the greatest risks possible: to love his enemies, to believe that God’s presence was in all things, to teach poverty and humility and the beauty of children and flowers and meekness and peace. It was that depth of spirit that allowed him to say, “[God] the Father and I are one.”
We need a pope like him, a mystic for our times. Nothing less than a mystic can reveal the depth of the beauty of the church to a new generation of seekers, still hungry to believe, still ready to fall in love with God.

I submit that we need to give thought to an article like this not  because we have any say in who the new pope will be but  because whoever the new pope may  be, I think this gives us some direction for the renewal of the Church at the local level.

I gave a lecture last evening at a Church in the Potrero Hill district of San Francisco.  San Francisco is a vibrant city but the Church in San Francisco is dead.  When on March 28 1776 the Spanish explorers established a military base (the Presidio) and a Mission (Mission Dolores) here, it was intended to be a Catholic stronghold.  Today not only has the Catholic Church, despite its magnificent Cathedral of Saint Mary, become irrelevant to the life of this great city but San Francisco is the bastion of American secularism.  We need a new evangelism but for it to be successful we also need religious leaders who know the difference between evangelism and apologetics.  We don’t’ need more doctrine and rules and rituals to be shoved down our throats.  We need the guidance that can open to us and invite us into the experience of God.  This doesn’t mean rejecting the doctrines of our faith or its ancient rites, but it does mean addressing the hungers of the human soul rather than what has become the business as usual of trying to exert power and control over people’s lives.  We need a Shepherd, not an Inquisitor nor a warden. 

Freedom of Conscience--All Depends On Whose Conscience It Is

Bishop Loverde of Arlington

teaching children the faith

My last posting concerned a “fidelity oath” that the Diocese of Arlington has imposed on teachers in Catholic Schools and Religious Education programs throughout the diocese.  This oath allegedly requires teachers to “believe everything the bishops characterize as divinely revealed and Arlington’s top doctrine official said it would include things like the bishops’ recent campaign against a White House mandate that most employers offer contraception coverage…” 

Well we have some problems, here, don’t we boys and girls?
In the first place, is the problem of oaths.  Let us look at paragraph 2155 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church

The holiness of the divine name demands that we neither use it for trivial matters, nor take an oath which on the basis of the circumstances could be interpreted as approval of an authority unjustly requiring it. When an oath is required by illegitimate civil authorities, it may be refused. It must be refused when it is required for purposes contrary to the dignity of persons or to ecclesial communion.

Now I will be the first to say that it is extremely important that those charged with teaching the faith teach the faith as the Church teaches it, no problem.  I will also agree that a priest being given the charge of souls as Parish Priest (the canonical term for a pastor) may be required to take an oath to teach the faith in its fullness and without alteration.  Even more would this be true for a man being installed as bishop of a diocese.  No problem.  But an oath requiring complete assent of intellect and will to be in conformity to all Church teaching for a man or woman teaching seven-year olds?  Or—for that matter—teaching seventeen year olds?  I think the pastor needs to meet with the teachers and explain the importance of teaching what the Church teaches.  I think teaching needs to be—to some extent—monitored to make sure the children are getting the faith of the Church and not the private opinions of a teacher presented as the teaching of the Church.  But an oath!  I would think that it is funny—somewhat like a cartoon of a man going after a horsefly with cannon—were it, if not a violation of the 2^nd commandment at least skirting its violation. 

Secondly, in taking an oath, is the person being required to admit the right of

diocesan authorities to require such an oath and do the bishop and his officials  have the moral right to require religion teachers to take an oath that extends their authority over “intellect and will”? 

According to the catechism we should not take an oath that is being imposed unjustly lest the taking of that oath be interpreted as approving the unjust exercise of authority.  Do Diocesan authorities have the right to call in individuals and make them swear that not only in the public forum—i.e. in what they say in the classroom—but in the internal forum—i.e. what they believe and practice in their conscience—that they give complete assent to whatever the bishop(s) determine is divinely revealed.  This is very complicated as it involves authority over the internal forum—the conscience of the individual.  Now, under certain circumstances, the Church has imposed the obligation on certain people to give assent both internally and externally to certain doctrines, including the teaching on contraception.  I have no problem with the Church requiring priests and those who teach in the name of the Church to promise that they will not teach contrary to Church doctrine.  I do have a problem, however, when you talk about requiring internal assent if that extends to conscience.  While I believe that we must form our consciences according to the teaching of the Church, I also believe that the conscience is sacrosanct and that even an erroneous conscience must be listened to by the person to whom it belongs. I have been taught that this too is a fundamental principle of Catholic moral theology.  What authority then does the Church have to make a person hold in conscience what they do not in fact hold in conscience?    

Now up to this point we have been talking about issues like contraception or same-sex relationships and these are certainly within the area of the Church’s teaching competency, but this Arlington “oath” extends not only to such grave matters but to agreement of intellect and will that the HHS mandate that most employers offer contraception coverage is a violation of religious freedom.  We have crossed a line here from faith and morals (contraception) to Constitutional Law (that the mandate is an infringement of the First Amendment).  Can such a principle justly be required to be accepted in “intellect and will?”  Would not taking such an oath involving a constitutional question with political overtones be a validation of the authority of the Church to impose itself beyond the area of faith and morals?  Or perhaps the catechism is saying that the requirement to resist an unjust oath only applies to civil authorities but that the Church has such a right over its members? Hmmm.  No it seems to be that this oath is wrong in the first place because the matter is not sufficiently grave to require an oath.  Secondly it is wrong because it tries to exercise an absolute jurisdiction over an individual’s conscience.  Thirdly it seems to be to be wrong because it admits the validity of the diocesan authority to impose its weight beyond the competency of the Church’s magisterium.  Let me conclude with an email I recently received from a friend of mine.  It just repeats part of the Washington Post article—but a significant part

Loverde, who called for the oath, was not available for comment. Catholic bishops have broad authority in their dioceses, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said there is no churchwide requirement for such oaths.

Some experts said the oath embodies the intense struggle in Catholicism today to define what makes someone a true follower. What teachings are core? What authority do laypeople have?

The Rev. Ronald Nuzzi, who heads the leadership program for Catholic educators at the University of Notre Dame, said many bishops “are in a pickle.” They want Catholic institutions to be staffed by people who not only teach what the church teaches but whose “whole life will bear witness.”

Nuzzi said he keeps a photo on his desk from the 1940s that shows all the German bishops in their garb, doing the Nazi salute.

“I keep it there to remind people who say to do everything the church says, that their wisdom has limitations, too.”     

Let me repeat

“I keep it there to remind people who say to do everything the church says, that their wisdom has limitations, too.”     

There Is A New Edition of the Spanish Inquisition--Right Here in the USA



Is this to be the "new look" of

American Catholicism?

 The following article by Michelle Boorstein appeared in the Washington Post last week. 

Kathleen Riley knows her beliefs on the male-only priesthood and contraception put her at odds with leaders of her church. But as a fifth-generation Catholic who went to a Catholic school and grew up to teach in one, Riley feels the faith deeply woven through her. So when her Arlington parish asked for volunteers last summer to teach Sunday school, she felt called by the Holy Spirit to say yes.

A year later, the 52-year-old computer scientist feels the same spirit calling her to say no.

Last month, Riley joined at least four other Sunday school teachers and resigned from her post at St. Ann’s parish after a letter  arrived at her home requiring her — and all teachers in the Arlington Catholic Diocese — to submit “of will and intellect” to all of the teachings of church leaders.

Although the St. Ann’s teachers represent a tiny fraction of the diocese’s 5,000 Sunday and parochial school teachers, the letter went out to parishes just as classes were finishing for the summer and diocese officials says they do not know how many teachers have received it.

The Arlington Diocese, which includes nearly a half-million Catholics across northern and eastern Virginia, is one of a small but growing number that are starting to demand fidelity oaths. The oaths reflect a churchwide push in recent years to revive orthodoxy that has sharply divided Catholics.

Such oaths are not new for priests or nuns but extend now in some places to people like volunteer Sunday school teachers as well as workers at Catholic hospitals and parish offices.

One in Baker, Ore., reiterates the sinfulness of abortion and says, “I do not recognize the legitimacy of anyone’s claim to a moral right to form their own conscience in this matter.” One in Oakland Calif., requires leaqders of a grop doing outreach to gay and lesbian Cagtholics “affirm and believe” official church teaching on marriage, hell and chastity.

The Arlington “profession of faith” asks teachers to commit to “believe everything” the bishops characterize as divinely revealed, and Arlington’s top doctrine official said it would include things like the bishops' recent campaign against a White House mandate that most employers offer contraception coverage. Critics consider the mandate a violation of religious freedom.

The Arlington Diocese is considered among the most conservative in the country and was the next to last in the nation to say girls could serve at the altar.  Teachers must give the new oath in front of a priest.

“The church is foremost a communion, not a building,” said the Rev. Paul deLadurantaye, Arlington’s head of education and liturgy. “And the church’s teaching is meant to be a service, not to coerce or oppress. . . . This is just to say the church is a reliable guide, more reliable in these matters than what I read elsewhere. There’s something more transcendent than just my own judgment.”

Diocesan spokesman Michael Donohue said the letter was sent to parishes this spring in response to Pope Benedict XVI’s direction that churches worldwide celebrate this year’s 50th anniversary of the start of Vatican II in various ways, including those that “profess our faith in the risen Lord.”

He said the oath is meant to be a positive sign to parents and called it uncontroversial.

“I can’t imagine there are many [teachers] who have issues with the church’s teachings on faith and morals,” Donohue said. Asked about polls showing that the majority of American Catholics use artificial contraception, forbidden by church doctrine, he said he “found it hard to believe” that anyone who had concluded that a church teaching was wrong would want to teach it.

But for some, particularly more liberal Catholics, the oaths are an alarming effort to stamp out debate in the church at a time when it is bleeding members and clergy in the West. They note that church leaders’ views have changed over the centuries on various subjects, including contraception. 

“I’m just shocked, I can’t believe they’re asking me to sign this,” said Riley, who said she may keep her own children out of the parish education program in the fall. “The bishops are human, and sometimes their judgment is not God’s judgment. We always have to be vigilant about that. The Holy Spirit gives us the responsibility to look into our own consciences.”

The pastor and director of religious education at St. Ann’s parish did not return requests for comment, but Riley and others said about 20 teachers attended a meeting last week that the pastor held for people with questions about the new oath.

Riley and others said St. Ann’s is considered a community that deliberately doesn’t focus on such hot-button issues as abortion and same-sex relationships on which Catholics, like Americans generally, are divided.

“It’s an oasis of humanity,” said Rosemarie Zagarri, a history professor at George Mason University who also resigned last month from teaching at St. Ann’s.

Zagarri said the oath was a “slap in the face” to Catholics who have remained active and close to the church despite controversies.

“Although I fully understand the authoritative role of the Catholic hierarchy in defining the teachings of the faith, in my view only a person who is willing to abandon her own reason and judgment, or who is willing to go against the dictates of her own conscience, can agree to sign such a document,” she wrote to Arlington Bishop Paul Loverde.

“This is not in the spirit of what people go to a Catholic church for, which is community and a loving, welcoming environment. It’s exclusionary, a suppression of dissent, let’s all line up and be the army of God,” Zagarri said in an interview for this article.

To others, the oaths are an inspiring correction after a period when they think Catholic teaching has been watered down.

“The bishops have been appointed by the pope to let us know: This is the path you should be following,” said Kerri Polce, 31, who teaches at the Cathedral of St. Thomas More in Arlington and says she has no problems signing the oath. “If you’re struggling with something, fine, don’t teach.”

Loverde, who called for the oath, was not available for comment. Catholic bishops have broad authority in their dioceses, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said there is no churchwide requirement for such oaths.

Some experts said the oath embodies the intense struggle in Catholicism today to define what makes someone a true follower. What teachings are core? What authority do laypeople have?

The Rev. Ronald Nuzzi, who heads the leadership program for Catholic educators at the University of Notre Dame, said many bishops “are in a pickle.” They want Catholic institutions to be staffed by people who not only teach what the church teaches but whose “whole life will bear witness.”

Nuzzi said he keeps a photo on his desk from the 1940s that shows all the German bishops in their garb, doing the Nazi salute.

“I keep it there to remind people who say to do everything the church says, that their wisdom has limitations, too.”

More on this in future entries.  Rich material for us to consider. 

Financial Scandals Next to Rock Church???

Will the next set of scandals to rock

the Catholic Church in the United

States be about finances?

An interesting profile appeared in the Washington Post yesterday morning.  Jason Berry, a New Orleans based investigative reporter and author of two books (Lead Us Not Into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the Sexual Abuse of Children [Doubleday 1992; University of Illinois, 2000] and Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II [Free Press,  2004], has written a third book, Render Unto Rome: the Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church (Crown, 2011).   
      Insiders have been saying for some time that the potential financial scandals in the Catholic Church could be even more devastating to Church credibility than the sexual abuse scandals.  Personally, I find that hard to believe—not because bishops and clergy are innocent of financial improprieties, but only because it is all but impossible to imagine that anything could do more damage to the Church than not only the sexual abuse allegations themselves but the organized and even criminal cover-up of charges orchestrated by Church officials from the Vatican down to the local parishes.   Nevertheless, hold on to your birettas, boys, because once the lid is off the backstairs financial dealings in the Catholic Church we will see the bark of Peter in for bigger waves than it ever knew on the Sea of Galilee.  The gates of hell may not prevail against it, but the Church will be shaken to its foundations.  The sad thing is that unless we get a wise and holy helmsman guiding the bark of Peter, the institutional Church will let scores of millions of followers leave disheartened and disillusioned and go elsewhere rather than make the needed reforms that would require massive shifts in hierarchical power.  Preserving not its moral authority but its power structures has been the first item of agenda of the Institutional Church ever since the moral fervor of the Tridentine Reforms grew cold in the seventeenth century.  Indeed, if the Church in our time is to successfully engage in Reform as it has in some of the periods at which we have been looking in this blog recently, it must make it a priority to differentiate between authority (with which we Catholics believe it has been invested by its Founder) and power (which its Founder told his apostles to eschew). 
     Of course there are those Catholic voices that criticize Berry for turning his investigative skills on the Church to which he belongs and in which he practices.  I must admit that I have not always, or even usually, liked his tone.  But that doesn’t mean that I dismiss him as a “crackpot,” much less a “traitor.” The article in the Post is nor surprise and might be a bit “sensationalistic.” I will be the first to admit that the Washington Post is no friend to Catholicism—nor is that its function.  And  Berry is no boy soprano in the Catholic choir.  The late John Neuhaus labeled Berry a scandalmonger. Many Catholic voices have decried both the Washington Post and Jason Berry.   Former Vatican ambassador Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand professor of Law at Harvard and George W. Bush appointee to the President’s Council on Bioethics, attacked Berry for his accusations against Legionnaires of Christ founder, Father Marcial Maciel who had been accused of sexual abuse of seminarians.  William Donahue, head of the Catholic League, has scored Berry for his “yellow journalism.”    Well, Neuhaus, Glendon, and Donahue all backed the wrong horse with Father Maciel; Neuhaus and Glendon out of a gullible institutional loyalty and Donahue out of his consistent thick-headed stupidity and own lack of moral compass.  Like him or not, when Berry and others like him scream “fire” we need to look and see if there is smoke and if there is, we need to put the fire out. 
      And so we had better look and see if the lack of financial transparency in the Catholic Church is problematic (it is, I can assure you) and make the necessary changes without covering up the abuses or defending them as “internal affairs” of the Church that are no one’s business except the local bishop’s.  If bishops act quickly, make changes, put good procedures in place, fire employees (cleric and lay) who have abused the system, this does not have to become a scandal.  I have no objection to sending the Holy See money, even lots of money, if it needs it for its work. I do object to having money sent secretly.  I don’t expect the bishop to live in a hovel or wear rags; I do expect him to have a budgeted salary from which his expenses are paid. And I expect that budget to be commensurate with the salaries of his priests.  I understand that angels don’t come down and pay the bills—it takes money and I am willing to contribute my share but I also expect to be told where that money is going.  And speaking of paying one’s share—that article says that Berry digs deep into his pocket every Sunday and puts three or five dollars into the basket.  I may respect you as a journalist, Jason, but for God’s sake you are a cheap bastard.  The going rate these days is 10%--don’t be a skinflint.  Little old ladies are carrying you, buster—ante up.