Popes Can't Afford To Be Tone-Deaf

According to news sources, the Holy See is instructing bishops that it is “not necessarily” their duty to report accusations of clerical child abuse and that ultimately victims or their families should make the decision to report abuse to police.  The document, produced by the Pontifical Council for the Family, advises bishops that while they must be aware of local laws that require allegations to be reported to civil authorities, as far as the Holy See is concerned the only duty of the bishop is to deal with the matter internally. 

Now, despite the impression the news agencies are giving, the Vatican isn’t telling the bishops that they can break the civil law in those places where it is required for social workers, teachers, and other authorities to report abuse cases. And I can understand the dilemma of a bishop who becomes aware of an allegation against a member of the clergy or a Church employee but also is confronted with a victim or a victim’s family that is reluctant for the matter to be made public.  But the directive obviously shows that some people in Rome are still tone-deaf to the crisis of credibility that is facing the institutional Church. 

And, of course, this story follows up on the the suspension of clerical sex-abuse survivor, Peter Saunders, from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.  Saunders was “voted off the island” by an all but unanimous vote of his fellow commission members.  (There were sixteen votes against, one abstention, none for Saunders.)  Now, again, this was not an executive decision from above but a decision by peers.  And we have all served on committees where one member keeps gluing up the works with his or her own agenda.  But again, however justified the commission members might be, it is a matter of tone-deafness that brings considerable scandal on the Church and undermines our credibility. 

And now we have the president of a Catholic University, fortunately in this instance a layman and not a priest, comparing under-performing students to “bunnies” who “should be drowned.”  Boy, where in the Gospel do you get that????    I realize that good academic management requires weeding out those who will not succeed so that more viable candidates can take their space—but again, how does the murdered bunnies image play in Peoria?

Why is the Catholic Church on a suicide mission?  If there is a failure in regard to implementing the mandate of the Second Vatican Council for the Church to take its place on the modern world, it is this: the presupposition that we, as Church, are not accountable to the larger human community among whom live and work.  How can we be that “light of revelation to the nations” if we maintain that we are somehow exempt from the standards of behavior we ourselves set with our Christian ideals? 

And I must admit that as much as I admire Pope Francis he too seems at times to have become bogged down in protecting the institution rather than witnessing to the integrity of the Gospel.    The Pope’s appointment and defense of Juan Barros Madrid as Bishop of Osorno, Chile, despite Barros’ ties to notorious priest-abuser Fernando Karadima, is another case of Rome being tone-deaf.  Barros’ installation in his cathedral church turned into a huge fracas as the vast majority of the faithful made their rejection of their bishop public.  Moreover, the vast majority of his brother bishops in Chile, including the two Chilean Cardinals, refused to attend the installation, signifying that few, if any, supported the Pope’s appointee.  Francis allegedly referred to those who opposed Bishop Barros Madrid’s appointment as “lefties” and “dumb.”  Holy Father, we know you can’t carry a tune in a basket, but get to a hearing-specialist and get your ear canals cleaned out.  We can’t afford to have a tone-deaf Pontiff sitting on the chair of Peter. 

Part of the problem, I suspect, is that hearing confessions desensitizes the clergy to the evil of certain sins.  This isn’t just a Catholic problem.  I suspect that many Protestant clergy  and rabbis after years of pastoral counseling ministry, also become somewhat immune to the impact of evil.  The problem is that most of the evil encountered in confession or counseling is done by basically good people. Bad people—and there some—generally don’t come to see the priest or rabbi.   Most people sin to, in some way or other, escape the pain they feel in life.  (Pardon the split infinitive in the above sentence; I too am a sinner.)  The husband who finds himself continually rejected by his wife (or the wife, by her husband), turns to an illicit relationship. This is not right but the sin is most often the result of the pain and anger of rejection.  Beneath the abuse of alcohol or drugs is often a huge amount of psychological pain.  And when it comes to physical or emotional or sexual abuse: how many abusers have themselves been the victims of abuse?  None of this justifies the evil we choose,  but the priest or minister, becoming aware of the complexity of people’s lives, puts sin in a context that not only involves judgment but compassion.  In pastoral care that is most probably a good thing.  But it can’t leave us, as a Church, in a world of moral ambiguity.  It is a difficult balance to achieve, especially without risking the sin of phariseeism ourselves, but we need to find it.   Our integrity as a Church demands that while we deal compassionately with sinners we keep true to the moral compass of the Gospels. 

Perhaps the problem is, at least in part, that the bishops and clergy have no idea that they are in any way accountable to us, the People of God.  We are still an overly hierarchic Church rather than a true community of the faithful.  There are still too many working on the pyramid model of Church where the Pope is over the bishops, the bishops over the clergy, and the clergy over the people.  In this model, communication is one way—top down and the role of the laity is still perceived to be “to pay, pray, and obey.”  And need I say that for many of us, those days are over. 

We need to develop an ecclesiology in which we—and I mean all of us, not just the laity—see ourselves  not in a hierarchic pyramid but in a communal model of concentric circles with the bishop at the center, the clergy around the bishop, the faithful around the clergy.  In the same way the larger perspective is viewed with the Bishop and Church of Rome at the center surrounded by the communion of local Churches with their bishops at their center.  This model of Church is far from new and was the predominant ecclesiology in the patristic period from the second century through the thirteenth. 

To a certain extent we have already begun to move towards this model of Church.  The decrees of the Second Vatican Council, particularly Lumen Gentium (the dogmatic Constitution on the Church) and Christus Dominus (the Decree on the Bishops), and to a lesser extent in Apostolicam Actuositatem (On the Apostolate of the Laity), actually lay out this theology.  Unfortunately, as we all know, John Paul II didn’t much care for this model and pretty much smothered it in its post-Paul VI cradle.  Francis has given us hope of reviving it, but the above-mentioned actions on the part of the Holy See show not only some back-pedaling but even the Pope’s failure to see the implications of his actions.  Hopefully his remarks about “lefties” and “dumb” is only another case of a live-mike picking up an indiscreet comment from a world leader, but it is still troubling that the Pope doesn’t see the profound theological issue when not only the faithful but the regional episcopate reject a candidate for bishop. 

Today’s adults are not going to continue to belong to an organization—even a Church—that doesn’t take them seriously.  I am not advocating a democratic Church but one in which there is genuine communication so that those whose ministry it is to speak the faith of the Church know what is in the mind and the hearts of the Church’s members.  The consensus fidelium needs to be restored as an essential part of the dynamic of the Church’s teaching and governing mission. 

It Is Time To Dig In and Begin Anew

The Late Father Dick Martin:

would that there were more

priests like him. 

In parish after parish, it can be just so disillusioning to go to Sunday Mass and hear a flat homily and see the liturgy done "by rote."  what happened to the promise of Vatican II?  Where is the Church that thirty-five years ago we were expecting to dawn?  We have in his post looked at the issue of clergy burnout, albeit from the observations of one who is but a layman in the field of psychology, but the question remains: how do we energize what is—in too many parishes—a tired and somewhat disillusioned Church for the task of the new evangelization?  And it is not just the clergy that suffer from burnout:  how many of us are "just too tired, too old, too 'been there and done that' to invest ourselves in what was once a bright and shining promise? 
I think we need to go back again to the Council and take a new look at the Council’s call to be Church.  In particular I think that we need to re-read and re-study Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes, but this time through the lens of the overlooked Apostolicam Actuositatem, the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity.  The first time around I think many of the clergy overlooked the Decree on the Laity.  We, laity and clergy alike, still have not bought into that new vision of the Church that took the laity seriously and we all—priests and laity alike—thought that the work of the Church was the province of the ordained.  And while we are at it, we need to take a look at Christifideles Laici, John Paul II’s 1988 letter on the holiness and apostolate of the laity.  I find that we still work on the assumption that the ordained are there to minister to the laity and the laity are there to be ministered to by the clergy.  This is short-circuiting the action of the Holy Spirit that is meant to drive us all out into the world in witness and in service. 
I saw a few months ago on one of the Katholic Krazies blogs an attack on the message in front of Nativity Catholic Church in Burke Virginia.   The message reads: “The Ministers of the Parish are the entire congregation.”  The KK blogger made fun of the idea that the parishioners share in the ministries of the Church.  They obviously believe that “ministry” is something the ordained do while they, the laity, sit back and have their feet washed or, if they are women, passively watch while the priest washes the feet of their husbands.   They don’t get the message that is so clear to the parishioners at Nativity.  The Church of the Nativity is one of the most dynamic congregations in the United States—due primarily to the leadership given by its late pastor, Father Richard Martin.  In Father Martin’s first year at Nativity a number of parishioners—knowing his reputation—fled for safer ground where they could daydream their way through a quiet Mass. They knew things were going to change at their parish and they didn’t want to be part of it. But under Father Martin’s guidance the parish has grown immensely in active membership as people have come from all over the diocese of Arlington to be members of this dynamic church.  It has all the usual activities—bible study, sodality, Knights of Columbus, Scout troops, pro-life activities, Just Faith, Bereavement Ministry,  Vacation Bible School, Prayer-Shawl ministry, home visitors, etc.  There are six weekend masses and all are filled to standing room capacity; five choirs ranging from traditional to contemporary to family; a fully accredited blue ribbon school with over 400 students, another thousand kids in Religious Education.  Most exciting is Operation Starfish—the parish’s program of outreach to the poor of Haiti.  Hundreds of parishioners have gone to Haiti to have a “look/see” and come back energized for mission.  In the 20 years or so since Father Martin came to the Church of the Nativity, Nativity has built over 800 homes in 7 different “Nativity Villages” throughout Haiti.  They have rebuilt an orphanage for handicapped children after it was destroyed in a fire.  They have bought nine fishing boats to provide employment for residents of the various Nativity Villages that are on the coast.  They have planted over 5000 fruit trees and dug numerous wells for irrigation.  They have built health centers, clinics, and provided relief in the cholera epidemic.  After the 2010 Earthquake the parish raised $300,000 for immediate aid to those in distress.  And this is only a few of the things parishioners of Nativity have done for the poor. 
I asked Father Martin several years ago when we were talking and he was introducing me to the parish and its operations, what made this parish so thriving in a Church that overall was in decline.  He told me that he thought the single most important factor was a serious attempt to provide the very best possible Sunday liturgy.  It was in the Liturgy above all that people are catechized; that they experience community, and that they receive a sense of mission.  While so many other parishes in his diocese were establishing the Tridentine Mass, Father Martin was focused on the renewed post-conciliar Liturgy and its power to open people to the reality of the Kingdom of God.  Unlike so many of his fellow clergy in the Diocese of Arlington, Father Martin understood that the true worship of God demands a sincere commitment to the betterment of our neighbor and that God’s Kingdom of Justice, Peace, and the Joy of the Holy Spirit begins in the Liturgy.  Sadly, Father Martin went to his eternal reward two months ago, but hopefully the Church he helped to build at Nativity with a committed laity will stand strong on the rock of Christ’s word. 

The Deterioriation of Papal Authority

Pope Benedict speaks his Sunday message to the
faithful, but are the faithful listening? 

I think it is worthwhile to ask ourselves why there was an erosion of papal authority during the pontificate of John Paul II.  In the first place the erosion did not begin with John Paul but had begun already with Paul VI in his encyclical Humanae Vitae.  I have no intention of criticizing the encyclical from a theological point of view.  In the first place, Paul VI has always been one of my heroes.  I think he and Pius XII were the greatest popes of the 20^th century. (yes greater than John XXIII—I will explain why some day.)  I am not competent to criticize Humanae Vitae from a theological perspective nor do I want this blog to get into theological issues except as they are also historical issues.  But there are problems with the encyclical.  Perhaps we will do a detailed entry on the subject sometime, but to keep it in the context of its effect on papal authority we can note several factors. 

1.      It did not take into adequate consideration the complex scientific data intrinsic to the questions it was examining. 
2.     Given that the encyclical did not follow the recommendations of the majority of the papal-appointed commission but accepted the conclusions of the commission minority, the basis of the final decision reflected in the encyclical can be called into question.  In other words, what were the Pope’s motives in accepting the minority conclusion? The Pope’s reasoning for rejecting the advice of the majority of his commission was never sufficiently given.  Certainly the Pope was not bound to accept the majority conclusion, but the failure to explain why lessened the credibility of the decision. 
3.     The conclusions on which Paul VI based the encyclical are not reconcilable with the cultural framework of the time.  
4.     The vast majority of the Catholic laity and perhaps even of the clergy implicitly or explicitly have rejected the teaching.  

     There may be other factors to consider but let me say that the first two I think are valid concerns; the second two, and especially the third, are not.  Yet valid concern or extraneous to the argument, modern society for the most part dismissed the papal teaching and did so with considerable disrespect and that alone weakened the magisterial authority.  
     Related to the issue of Humanae Vitae but extending far beyond it, a second reason for the erosion of papal authority in the final years of Paul VI and in the pontificate of John Paul II is that there was a “change of rules” where I think both bishops and laity expected to have more input into Church teaching and discipline and were disillusioned when their views were not heard.   In its decrees, and notably in the decree Christus Dominus, the Council had returned an immense amount of authority to the local bishop at the expense of the power of the Roman Curia yet the pontificate of John Paul II saw the reconsolidation of power in the hands of the Congregations of the Roman Curia.  As this has been particularly true in regard to matters of Worship where the Congregation began ruling on such minutiae as prohibiting the use of Eucharistic flagons to hold the Precious Blood or where hundreds of changes in the new translation of the Roman Missal were made on curial desks even after the respective Bishops’ Conferences had approved the translations that had been foisted on them by Rome to begin with, the bishops were emasculated by pezzi grossi monsignori in the sight of all the Church.  The laity have fared no better.  Despite the decree  Apostolicam actuositatem   which called on the bishops to respect the expertise of the laity, we see the laity as being treated as little more than the lackeys of the magisterium in the realms their expertise--politics, economics, education and other areas proper to the laity,  In particular many both in Rome and in the American hierarchy see that Catholic laity are only to do the bidding of the hierarchy in public life and many of the laity whose expertise is not theology but fields such as Constitutional law, psychiatry, reproductive science, education, civil law, or political science object.  The day of the laity deferring to the clergy in matters of secular concern are over and not likely to return and while good Catholics will listen patiently to sermons of varying worth outlining their responsibility, and will study documents such as Faithful Citizenship, they will make up their own minds on how to live their Catholic and Christian faith in the marketplace.   Today's laity have learned to think for themselves and while, like thinking people, they are open to information that makes them reconsider their position, they are not about to cede their duty to make responsible decisions to others, even Church authority. 
       This brings up a third problem and that is a clergy that is not sufficiently educated to convincingly relay magisterial teaching to contemporary laity.  Gone are the days when the priest, the doctor, and the lawyer were the only three men in the parish who had a college background.  (In those days no women, except possibly some of the nuns in the parish school had been to college, and they to the educational hothouse of a women’s college.)   The problem is that most Catholic priests today are educated little more than their predecessors of two generations past, but the laity—men and women alike—are far more highly educated than were their grandparents.  College education among white American Catholics is all but universal.  While immigrant populations are often poorly educated they, and especially the Asian and Pacific Rim immigrants, make the education of the second generation a high priority.  Graduate degrees are not rare among contemporary American Catholics--in fact today Catholics are probably the most highly educated religious group in the United States excepting Jews.  Catholic laity are used to leadership roles in business, education, science, technology, the military, politics and other fields and they expect to be talked with as peers.  Meanwhile the clergy, while they may have earned an “M.Div.” degree at some seminary or other, are usually abysmally undereducated in non-theological fields and lack the “renaissance” background to intelligibly explain the doctrines they have been taught to modern people of some sophistication.  When the clergy get into the pulpit and pontificate—whether it is liberals about socio-economic matters or conservatives about psycho-sexual issues, what one too often sees is an appalling display of ignorance.  And I don’t think this is an uniquely Catholic problem but that most Christian denominations seem to have far too many clergy who—while good people—lack the intellectual discipline to convincingly put forth the importance of their faith for modern people.  It may explain why religious practice is falling off among more highly educated and critically thinking people of all Christian denominations.