Roots of the Reformation XIII: Clericalism, Cardinal Law and the Fall of the Church

We need to ask ourselves if this is the model
 of Church that will advance evangelization
in the 21st century

I want to stress that this blog is not oriented to Catholic doctrine or theology but is a historical commentary.  Historical commentary involves using the lessons of history to interpret present phenomenon.   History is not about the past.  Those who are interested in the past for its own sake or out of curiosity are antiquarians.  History studies and analyzes the past as a tool to understand the present and the options the future presents to us. 

This will be my final warning about the dangers of the clerical culture that is undermining the health of the Church today, though in several upcoming entries I will treat of anti-clericalism in the sixteenth century and how it opened the door to mass defections from the Catholic Church to the Protestant Reformers.  And it is that reason—the effect that clericalism and the reaction to it, anticlericalism, have on the unity of the Church—why I have spent so much time on the problems of clerical culture in the contemporary Catholic Church in North America and the English speaking world.  The abuse of priestly authority is creating a very dangerous situation as respect for the priesthood falls fast, and as priests alienate the faithful by clinging to the artificiality of a clerical identity and role in a Church and society that is moving beyond hierarchical models. 

It is the clerical mentality that has steered the Catholic Church in the United States—among various nations—on such a disastrous and ill-advised path by which it attempted to “handle” the sex-abuse crisis instead of meeting it with transparency and dialogue.  If one person is to be blamed—and of course it is never the fault of a single individual—but historically, if there is one person who touched the match to the fuse, it is Bernard Law, the former Cardinal-Archbishop of Boston.  His Eminence’s arrogance when confronted by the misdeeds of some of his clergy enraged not only the people of Boston but people—Catholic and non-Catholic alike—across the United States and that anger spread like wildfire from diocese to diocese.  It has continued to spread beyond the United States and has now become a serious issue in many European countries.  The Cardinal was so convinced of the inviolability of the Church and his personal rank that he foolishly thought he was answerable to neither the civil and criminal law nor to public opinion.  No one today, no one, not even the Pope himself, is above being judged by public opinion.  There was a time when the Church declared that no one was suited to sit in judgment of the Roman Pontiff, but those days are over.  Fit or not, Catholics and non-Catholics alike will not be deprived of their opportunity to critique.  We can claim the Church and its prelates are above such judgment; we can protest it; we can even dismiss it, but in the end we had better wake up and smell the coffee. The great unwashed sits in judgment on the Prince of the Apostles and all his little violet-clad princelings and passes judgment.  The Court of heaven may ignore earthly judgments, but the Church, as a visible and historical presence must realize that its day of being a law unto itself is over.  King Louis is dead and millions of Madames deFarge are knitting away as the mitered heads are tumbreled to the guillotine of public opinion.  And it is public opinion, not the rights and privileges of the past, that will determine the fate of the Church in society.   The sooner that the clergy realize that the day of privilege and unearned respect is over the sooner we, as Church, can get on with our mission. 

Anti-clericalism is a very important monitor of danger for the Church.  Distrust of or discontent with the clergy undermines the Church as an institution and alienates people from the practice of the faith.       

In the opening session of the Second Vatican Council, Bishop Emile DeSmedt of Bruges, Belgium, said that the Church had to renounce the “Clericalism, Triumphalism, and Juridicism” of past centuries.  The late Cardinal Avery Dulles expanded on this quite a bit in his book The Catholicity of the Church. We need to listen to these contemporary prophets.  The clerical culture that Archbishop Martin and Bishop Cupich denounced (see blog entries for May 10, 13, and 15 ) is a cancer in the Church that is devouring the very heart of the Gospel from within the Body of Christ.  This does not mean that priests should not wear clerical garb or that titles of respect need to be abandoned.  It does mean that priests or bishops who need such trappings to know who they are and what their mission is need to be removed from ministry until they get the help they need to be healthy functioning adults capable of working collaboratively in a Church that recognizes the maturity and giftedness of each individual not in light of what sacraments they have received but according to the charisms with which the Holy Spirit has endowed them.  We need to see that just as Church structures evolved and changed over the centuries to empower the Church—the entire Body of Christ—to achieve its mission, so too today the Church is changing and evolving to keep pace with the saving work God has called it to in today’s world.  To live is to change, declared Cardinal Newman, and to be perfect is to have changed often.  

Roots of the Reformation X: More Danger Signs of Future Reformations

well he looks like a nice kid
let's just hope its halloween

Well in the last posting I said I would write about the clerical culture in this entry.  As I had mentioned yesterday, at a conference on the sex abuse crisis at Marquette University in Milwuakee Archbishop Diarimud Martin of Dublin and Bishop Blase Cupich of Spokane had spoken about the negative impact that a “clerical culture” has had on the Church and it is a point well worth investigating.

Just this morning I ran into a friend of mine in the library who has spent years as a seminary professor, who is a member of a religious community that has houses throughout the United States, and who has published extensively on the situation of the American Church.  In an exchange of stories and reflections, she described Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington as “a persona.”  I asked her what she meant.  She has known the Archbishop since his days in Seattle when he was sent to “axe” Archbishop Hunthausen who had fallen into the grave disfavor of the Reagan administration which in turn had implored the Holy See to remove him.  (The immediate conflict with the White House was the Archbishop’s outspoken opposition to Reagan’s Nuclear Weapons policy and his dramatic threat that he would default on his Federal Income Tax as a witness to the immorality of the Reagan policy.)  The Holy See did not removed him, of course, but as the revised ostpolitik of John Paul required collaboration with the White House in their joint (and successful) effort to topple Marxism in Eastern Europe, Hunthausen’s credibility as a spokesperson for Catholic moral principles was seriously undermined.  Archbishop (later Cardinal) Hickey of Washington DC was appointed by Rome as “Apostolic Visitator” of the Seattle Archdiocese to investigate Hunthausen’s administration of the Archdiocese.   When the visitation was concluded Donald Wuerl was appointed as auxiliary bishop and assigned by Rome to many of the duties and responsibilities of the Archbishop, relieving him of much of his authority.  This was a public sign that Rome lacked confidence in Hunthausen and undermined his credibility in the eyes of those who believe moral authority is in the gift of the Holy See.  Fortunately many American Catholics know that while power is in the gift of the Holy See, Authority, at least in the New Testament sense, is a charism that is only able to be bestowed by the Holy Spirit and respect for Hunthausen only grew.  Donald Wuerl, for his part, went on to become first bishop of Pittsburgh and now is the Cardinal Archbishop of Washington D.C.—where, by the way, he seems to be doing a very credible job.  He had to fill Cardinal McCarrick’s buskins and that was no easy task, but Wuerl is well thought of and capable by the Washington faithful.  But I am digressing. 

This Sister friend of mine referred to Cardinal Wuerl as a “persona.”  What is a persona?   A persona is a role, a stereotype, a well defined public identity.  Cardinal Wuerl, she implied, was always just that—His Eminence, Donald, Cardinal Wuerl.  There is no “Don” inside the His Eminence, Donald, Cardinal Wuerl.  There is only the six-hundred dollar black suit, the clerical vest over the white-shirt with cufflinks and pontiff collar, the perfectly shined black shoes and black over-the-calf men’s stockings.  Inside there is a ghostly shadow of what could have been a human being.   Everything this spectre does is exactly what a Cardinal should do.  At night, his secretary removes his battery for charging, rolls him into a closet, and turns out light.  We should pity people who are personae (plural of persona for you Latin lovers).   What profiteth a man should he gain the whole world and lose his soul in the process?

Let me say again, from what I hear from Washington Catholics—clergy and laity alike—they are well enough satisfied with the Cardinal as their Archbishop.  He is not a bad man in any sense, just an empty sort of cardboard man.  He is a man who has allowed himself to be defined not by grace but by the Institution to which he is sincerely devoted.  Alas, His Eminence is not the only persona in the Church.  The hierarchy is filled with them.  These days being an empty cassock is almost a requirement, at least in the United States,  for Episcopal Ordination (what we used to refer to as Consecration of a Bishop, not ordination in the Episcopal Church). 

Twenty years ago Father George Aschenbrenner, the famous Jesuit author and Spiritual Director, gave a day of recollection at the Pontifical North American College.  It was his swansong at that institution.  I don’t know if it was his swansong because of the talk he gave or, knowing he was leaving, he decided to “go for the gold.”  Now I was not there for Father Aschenbrenner’s talk.  I was living in Rome at the time and the talk was a sensation in the city when word got out.  As it was reported in a hundred cafes and several hundred seminary and monastery dining halls, Father Aschenbrener said that the biggest problem in the North American Church was clericalism and the reason for clericalism was psycho-sexual immaturity of so many of the clergy.  What does that mean? 

When individuals do not come to terms with who they are on the deeper levels of their own psyche, they need to find or to create an identity for themselves.  When people do not know who they are, they need to “invent” an identity.  The clergy offers one a ready-made identity (or persona) in place of the identity in which one has grown up.  The clergy offers a sharply defined “ready to wear” life style that will tell the world who you are.  You are “Father.”  You wear black with a little white collar.  You drive a somewhat anonymous looking car in a dull color—black or gunmetal if you have aspirations to higher posts.  You say prayers—both privately and publicly.     You can play golf.  You can’t play softball, football, or go horseback riding. Until you are 35 you can play the occasional pick-up game of basketball, however.  You drink Scotch.  If you drink beer, it must be from a glass (except after a pick-up game of basketball and you are under 35).  You drink wine with your dinner but it is too effeminate at other times and you don’t want to do anything effeminate, never! Never! Never!  Unless, of course, you are putting on one of lacy negligee style surplices or albs. 

And this is the problem.  You never get to know who you are.  You are a priest, first and foremost.  There is nothing else about you that is important.  You conform yourself to the model of “priest.”  And why is this bad?  Mostly because it is dangerous.  You are a powder keg that could explode at any moment because you, yourself, the safety-guard of your anger, your ambition, your sexual desires, your greed, your sloth, whatever else are components of each and every human person—you don’t know yourself well enough to know not only what your are capable of but what your hidden agendas are.  You only know the parts of your soul (your psyche) that fit the clerical persona, and those areas which can be problematic: you live in denial. 

I have seen this lack of authentic self-knowledge in far too many priests.  One moment Father is walking up and down in his cassock and biretta saying his office and the next he is slugging the deacon, or fondling some kid, or passed out drunk on the rectory floor.    Catholic Tradition says that grace builds on nature.  Priestly ministry and identity must be rooted in the individual and proceed from within his innermost core.  It cannot be something that the priest puts on—like his cassock or his vestments.  We have too many empty cassocks walking around—and frightenly a disproportionately high number of them are purple.  We need people to serve in the priesthood who know who they are and are comfortable with whom they are.  We need people who have successful and happy peer relationships with a wide variety of people—not only other clergy but men and women of a variety of ages, economic status, and (very importantly) religious beliefs and disbeliefs.  The clergy must be no refuge for people who suffer from arrested emotional development.  It is a recipe for disaster as we have seen these past twenty years. 

Roots of the Reformation IX: danger signs of future Reformations.

Troops in Iraq receive Holy Communion at Christmas Mass
 Such situations are often the occasion where Protestant
Christians find themselves welcome to receive Holy Communon

I am including the following posting in my Roots of the Reformation series because I think the issues addressed here might well  be among the roots of the next Reformation.  Most of what I am dealing with in this series is not simply the story of Reformations past—but I am hopeful that you can recognize that they parallel some contemporary situations and could well be apparitions of Reformations-yet-to-come. 

I don’t normally read The National Catholic Reporter for the same reason I don’t read The Wanderer, The National Catholic Register, or most diocesan newspapers.  They are not newspapers.  They’re polemical pamphlets promoting a particular point of view—liberal or conservative—to which they will sacrifice not only objectivity but even factual truth.  That being said, I did recently pick up a copy of the NCR and found it, for the most part, as partisan as I had long thought it.  (I can’t say always because there was a time in the late sixties and early seventies I enjoyed it quite a bit and thought it reliable.  That may have been before I learned to think critically, or perhaps if I searched the archives, the paper itself had more to offer.)  I found two articles that gave me something to think about.  One was by Jamie Manson and discussed “how to lose Catholics and alienate people.”  The other referred to a conference at Marquette University Law School where Archbishop Diarmud Martin (Dublin, Ireland), Bishop Blase Cupich (Spokane, Washington) and several priests spoke about how a “culture of clericalism” has fostered the sex abuse crisis and hindered the ability of the Church to effectively recover and repair the damage—both to victims and itself—that the numerous instances of clerical sexual abuse have caused. 

The two topics—alienation of the faithful and the sex-abuse crisis—overlap but are two distinct issues.  There can be no doubt that one of the major factors in many people being disillusioned and disheartened with their Catholic faith is not only the numerous instances of sexual abuse by clergy, religious, and lay ministers in the Church but even more by the dreadful ways in which abuse cases have been handled over the years—and in some cases continue to be handled. (The same edition of the NCR said that there are 55 dioceses in the United States that are not complying with the protocols the bishops set for themselves in 2002—The Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.)  At the same time, there are many more reasons why increasing numbers of Catholics are becoming discouraged—and alienated—in the practice of their faith.  Estimates claim that there are more the twenty-five million Americans who identify themselves as “former Catholics” (as distinguished from non-practicing Catholics), making ex-Catholics the second largest religious denomination in the Country, second only to Catholics (practicing and non-practicing, estimated to be 75 million).   It would be interesting to reflect somewhat on these two articles. 

Ms. Manson attributes alienation from the Church over the question of exclusion from Holy Communion.  There are many who are not permitted Holy Communion in the Catholic Church.  Indeed, more are forbidden the Eucharist than are welcome to it when you consider that, at least under ordinary circumstances, only those who have formal membership in the Catholic Church are welcome to receive Holy Communion.  (There are some limited circumstances when Protestants and other Christians can receive; these circumstances are largely unknown and, at least in the United States, almost always stingily applied when known).  In addition to being Catholic, one who wishes to come to the Eucharist must be “in the State of Grace,” that is they must not be conscious of having committed a grave sin and not (yet) having received sacramental absolution.  Catholics living together without benefit of clergy, those in a marriage not “blessed” by the Church, those in same-sex unions or the unmarried practicing sex—heterosexual or homosexual—are all prohibited from receiving the Eucharist.  Abortion is another block to receiving the Eucharist—indeed it not only bars one from the Eucharist but imposes excommunication on them.  Some would also say that voting for a politician or a political agenda that supports legalized abortion or would establish the legality of same-sex marriage would also excluded one from Holy Communion.  Sins outside the genus of sex don’t seem to incur this prohibition, at least in the popular understanding or from most pulpits.  It seems that in the eyes of many Catholics a sin can’t be mortal unless it is sexual. We certainly don’t talk of excluding from Holy Communion politicians or members of the judiciary who deviate on the conservative side from Church teaching.  

Our Catholic faith has a long tradition of requiring a scrupulous examination of conscience and sacramental confession before the reception of Holy Communion.  (Technically confession is only required before Holy Communion when the prospective communicant is guilty of “grave” or “mortal” sin.)  For the most part that seems to go by the wayside these days.  There are those who, reckoning themselves to be in good conscience, ignore Church laws and come to Communion blissfully unaware (or unacknowledging) of their moral failures .  And there are those—actually the majority—who simply come to mass rarely, if at all, to avoid the situation where they are left sitting in the pews while everyone around them goes to communion.  It is uncomfortable to sit back while everyone else goes forward.  I know.  When I am at Mass with my Methodist sister-in-law—who patiently accepts the fact that she is unwelcome at the Lord’s Table simply because she is a Methodist—I sit with her in the pews.  There is more than one way to be in Communion with Christ; sharing the loneliness of those members of his Body who must stand back is one of the alternative ways.     

Not coming to Holy Communion has not always been as uncomfortable a plight as it has become these more recent years.  Fifty years ago fewer Catholics went to communion.  Those who planned to receive went to early mass; those attending later mass rarely went to communion.  With each later hour, the number of communicants drastically fell.  The sinner and the Methodist need not have felt so alone.  This was because the communion fast made it difficult to wait until ten or eleven o’clock, much less noon mass.  Perhaps we need to add non-Eucharistic worship-Morning Prayer, for example—to our Sunday Services to accommodate those who want to be part of the Community of the Faithful and worship God but who find not being able to come to communion too difficult to bear.  This is not as revolutionary as it sounds.  Morning Prayer was long a part of the Sunday (and even daily)   liturgies in Catholic churches.  Moreover, in the Eastern tradition—both Catholic and Orthodox—those who attend “Orthos” (Matins) or Vespers fulfill their canonical obligation for Sunday Worship. 

Keeping people away from church, or making them uncomfortable once they are there, is no way to bring them back to God and to rectify their lives.  Nor is it consistent with the teachings and practice of Jesus in the Gospel.  Maybe it is time to look back into our tradition and find a way to make all welcome—if not at the table, at least in the household. 

The clericalism topic—maybe next time.