Reform Begins With Honest Conversation

Regensburg Domspatzen

A report claiming that between the end of World War II and the early 1990’s over 231 boys and young men who were part of the world-famous Regensburg Cathedral Choir School were physically or sexually abused has tarnished the reputation of Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, the older brother of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and provided one more humiliation to the former pontiff.  Monsignor Ratzinger served as the Director of the Choir from 1964 until 1994. 

The Domspatzen  (Cathedral Sparrows) are perhaps the oldest surviving choir in Europe.  Founded by the reformist bishop Wolfgang von Regensburg in the year 975, the choir has an unbroken tradition of providing the finest of traditional Catholic music for the Cathedral services.  In the years of the Lutheran Reformation Regensburg was a bastion of Catholic orthodoxy.  In the years immediately before World War II, choir director Father Theobald Schrems borrowed from the British model of choir schools and restructured the choral program at the Cathedral to establish a private boarding school for boys ages 10-19 that would give them a music-focused education while the students, as part of their curriculum, would provide music for the round of Cathedral services.  Under Monsignor Ratzinger’s direction, the choir developed in proficiency, established its reputation as a concert choir as well as a liturgical choir, and became well known throughout musical circles as one of the principle choir-schools in the world.  When Monsignor Ratzinger retired in 1994 Roland Büchner was named Domkapellmeister (Cathedral Music Director—German is such a fun language), the first layman to hold the position.  As the survey concludes during the administration of Monsignor Ratzinger, he gets most of the blame for have allowed the situation to take place.  It should be noted that most of the claims are of physical abuse rather than specifically sexual abuse and while Monsignor Ratzinger admits to—and has apologized for—having known about the physical abuse he claims that he was ignorant of any sexual misconduct by the two individuals named in the charges.  Neither of these two individuals is still living. There are some reports of other perpetrators and their status is not known.  

It seems that we will never get to the end of this dark tunnel of abuse being leveled against priests, brothers, nuns, and others who work, or who have worked, in Catholic institutions.  Not only in the United States but through much of the world significant steps have been taken to establish guidelines to protect minors and other vulnerable people from this point forward, but the past seems to hold innumerable cases that have to come to light.  Of course the Catholic Church is not the only organization with its dirty little secrets but given the high moral standards which we preach we are all the more vulnerable for the hypocrisy of when we have failed to meet them.  Of course this is far more than a matter of “sin.”  It reveals a profound sickness in our society that needs to be brought out into the light.  In particular we need honest and frank discussions about the abuse of power and authority as well as about human sexuality.  We will never be able to truly make people safe in their churches, schools, scouts, athletic teams, and—first and foremost—families until we stop lying to ourselves that this is someone else’s problem and it doesn’t affect me or my loved ones. 

On a more cheery note, Saint Wolfgang of Regensburg who established the choir over a thousand years ago was a reformist bishop, closely tied to the Emperor Otto II who was responsible for Church reformation in the late 10^th and early 11^th centuries.  Saint Wolfgang set very high standards for the monasteries and convents of his diocese and was rigorous in enforcing them.  We need more reforming prelates today that can take the same ideals and energetically lead the Church in a new direction for a new millennium.  

Francis, Rebuild My Church

Well, we are coming into Holy Week and the fuss of the papal inaugural is dying down.  We can move on from the anger at who went to communion and the sorrow over who didn’t wear a mozetta to the substantial issues at hand.  “Francis, rebuild my Church.”  As Christ spoke to Francis of Assisi from the Crucifix at San Damiano and the Holy Spirit spoke to the Cardinals in the Sistine Chapel, the task of rebuilding is at hand. 
I think the clear signals of the reduced pomp and friendly smiles, as welcome as they are, are no more than the initial sweeping away of cobwebs.  They don’t address the issues, only let in some fresh air and much needed sunlight.  Over the past few days I had to read a doctoral thesis on the expanding role of lay ministry in the face of the growing clergy shortage.  Here I found several things to reflect on.  First, despite the implications to the contrary that the candidate kept reinforcing to my frustration, that the expansion of the laity’s role in the Church is not—or at least should not be—consequent to the decline in vocations to the religious life and priesthood.  The problem is, as he did point out, that over the centuries the rightful roles of the laity in the Church had been assumed by the clergy.  Today we need to restore the commitment to active apostolate to every baptized Christian.  The bishop, the priest, and the deacon each have specific ministries to which they must apply themselves, but the baptized have a wide variety of ministries that belong to them—teaching, healing, counseling, administering, raising funds, publishing, reading the lessons in the liturgy, serving at the altar, feeding the poor, spiritual and corporal works of mercy, caring for the material structure of the churches, sacred art, liturgical and catechetical music, ad infinitum.  The Church’s mission of bringing the Good News (Evangelion, Gospel) of God’s Kingdom into the whole world involves a complex network of ministries to which each and every Christian must be committed. 
This idea of a Church of ministers whose mission involves a complex of ministries helps us as a Church to move from the old model of Power to the new model of service. I have written in previous posts of Cardinal Dulles’ insight that as we move into the third millennium we, as Church, must move from a paradigm of power to service paradigm.  Pope Francis’ new style is pointing us in that direction but it is a model which we must all embrace.       
But returning to the earlier assertion that this expansion of lay ministry must be not a consequence of the shortage of vocations to the religious life and priesthood but a restoration of the rightful vocation of the laity, we must still face the fact that there is a dire need of ordained ministers to serve the ministries that are rightfully theirs—namely the preaching of the Gospel, the celebration of the Liturgy, and the administration of those sacraments proper to the Sacred Orders.  In order to attract vocations to the ordained ministries, we must restore the credibility of the clergy.
There is no doubt that the credibility of the clergy has suffered due to the sex abuse scandals and the way in which clerical sexual abuse has been handled.  The problem is much greater however.  Vocations were seriously falling off for over twenty years before the scandals hit.  Moreover, as the vocational crisis affects not only the ordained clergy and male religious but also female religious communities which have not, for the much greater part, been complicit in the sex abuse crisis, we need to look at the broader issue.
Fifty years ago the priest or religious was widely respected. In great part this was due not merely to the supposed (sometimes wrongly so) holiness of the priest or religious, but to their having a superior education to the laity.  The priest, the doctor, and the lawyer were the three educated men in the Catholic parish of the 1950’s.   Catholics, in general, were working class people with high-school education.  That changed after World War II and by the ‘60’s and ‘70’s Catholics were increasingly college educated and a decade later, had post-graduate degrees.  The laity had quickly surpassed the clergy in formal education.  Moreover, the inbred seminary systems—while providing better than high-school education—could not (and for the most part, still cannot) match the education provided by universities and colleges.  As a Catholic I have often been embarrassed by clergy whose provincialism and narrow views on a wide range of subjects show an inability to think critically.   No one expects the priest to be a renaissance man—indeed with the explosion of knowledge in our contemporary world renaissance men and women are increasingly hard to find—but we need clergy who have been thought to think critically and not merely swallow any shallow doctrine or silly notion proclaimed by someone higher up the ecclesiastical food-chain. 
But intellectual ability alone is not enough to restore credibility to the clergy.  We must strive for genuine holiness.  Piety is a beginning but piety is not to be confused with holiness.   Virtue is fundamental but virtue alone is not holiness. We need a spiritual rebirth in the clergy, among the religious, certainly among the hierarchy, and among the faithful.  Hopefully our new pope with his experience as a novice director in the Society of Jesus and his personal familiarity with the riches of Ignatian spirituality can help show the way.  I suspect the scaling down of pomp and ceremony are already signs of a deeper spiritual life on the “throne” of Peter.  Anyone who has given serious mediation to the Man of Sorrows would lose taste for scarlet capes and brocaded robes.   
No entries the next few days--back on Palm Sunday or Monday.

Help! Sheep Without Shepherds!!!



Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas

City Missouri

Bishop Robert Finn, the Ordinary of the Diocese of Kansas City Missouri was convicted last week of failing to report suspected child sexual abuse to authorities.  Bishop Finn has indicated that despite his conviction he will not resign his see.  As he was not sentenced to prison but received a probationary sentence, he will not be impeded in any significant way from carrying out the responsibilities of his office, yet this is the first time that a Catholic Diocese in the United States has been led by a bishop convicted of such a crime.  (Note, the crime of not reporting the suspected abuse is a misdemeanor under the law, not a felony.)   Pressure by victim advocate groups is being put on the Vatican to remove Bishop Finn if he does not willingly resign but the Vatican does not respond well to such ground-roots pressure so it is unrealistic to expect he will be deprived of his Diocese.  In fact, the Vatican (I certainly need to refrain from using the term “Holy See” in this instance as the irony would be appalling) is all but certain to back up the bishop’s decision.  Hopefully they won’t promote him to a higher See.     

For those who think that this is just another case of the secular world harassing the Church, it should be noted that Bishop Finn himself had appointed former United States Attorney Todd P Graves to conduct an independent investigation of Diocesan policies and procedures regarding charges of sexual abuse perpetrated by clergy or Diocesan employees.  Graves was the national co-chairman of the U.S. Justice Department's Child Exploitation Working Group.  Graves’ final evaluation was “that Diocesan leaders (read: the bishop) failed to follow their own policies and procedures for responding to reports" of sexual abuse by clergy.”   In other words, not only did a Court find that the Bishop failed in his responsibilities, but the independent counsel the Bishop hired  to investigate the situation found the bishop at fault.  Bishop Finn needs our prayers as to the people of the Diocese of Kansas City in Missouri.  The victims of abuse need our prayers and the clergy whose sins and sickness has led to this debacle need our prayers.  But also the Old Boys Club in Rome needs our prayers that the Lord will open their eyes to comprehend the problem.  In other words, Cardinal Law still doesn’t get it.  Talk about Invincible moral Ignorance! Incidentally, when Archbishop-designate Salvatore Cordileone assumes the responsibilities of the Archdiocese of San Francisco on October 4^th, he will be the second Ordinary to assume the diocese under a legal cloud as he was arrested recently on charges of drunk driving—another misdemeanor.  He is due to appear in court five days after his installation as Archbishop.  I only hope he has the aplomb not to wear his cappa magna to the courthouse.  

My complaint here is not against Bishop Finn or Archbishop-designate Cordileone.  I live in a glass house myself and am not anxious to throw stones.  I am sure that each is a good man within the parameters of basic moral structures; they (and those responsible for their advancement) are simply injudicious.  And injudiciousness at this level is not simply unadvisable, it is immoral.  What I am complaining about is that the American Church not only deserves but is in desperate need of better men for the ministry of Bishop.  The Church is being humiliated not by external enemies who ultimately are unable to wound the Church but by her own hierarchs who can do great damage to the faith.    I know that there are wiser and holier men for the ministry of Bishop than we are getting in many of our Sees—and at some Roman desks.   I have met priests who would make better bishops than Finn or Cordileone or the clique responsible for their advancement (The Burke-Law-Lori axis).  Please just give us the leadership we need. 

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. 

We're Back --And Back on the Question of Clergy Maturity

Pierre de Berulle, a leader in the seventeenth-century
French Spiritual Revival

Well, I am back from my time in the Czech Republic.   I had very limited access to the internet so I was not able to post any entries in the last week and a half, but am back and ready to post.  While I was away I I had an inquiry from a correspondent of mine, a priest who is doing doctoral work at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, as to reasons why there is a renewed interest today in seventeenth century French Spirituality.  I think he was trying to get me to do an exam question for him, but I thought I might share some of the reflections that I sent him with you.  

I think there are both good and not-so-good motives behind this recovery of what is a very rich spiritual tradition.  Note, I did not say bad—even if the reasons themselves may not always be healthy, the recovery of the French Tradition—the authentic tradition not its Jansenist or Quietist aberrations—will hopefully return an interest in spirituality to the contemporary Church which has too often, at least here in the United States, confused spirituality with a rather heady mixture of moralism and piety—what I am inclined to describe as the Tanquerey approach to spirituality  as opposed to the Garrigiou-Lagrange approach.  Alphonse Alfred Tanquerey, S.S., (not to be confused with the Gin) was a moral theologian ; Réginald Garrigiou-Lagrange ,O.P. was a systematic theologian.  Most twentieth century spiritual theology, at least before Vatican II, followed the one or the other of these two theologians.  Tanquerey seemed to have undue influence in English language countries and his thought, most of which I admittedly only know “second-hand,” seemed to have far too much emphasis on moral “perfection” and was far too shallow in regards to the nature and place of contemplative prayer, seeming to think that we should content ourselves with pious practices, leaving contemplation to “the professionals.”   This may be a caricature of this thought, but it does match both my memories of the priestly devotionalism of the mid-twentieth century and the exaggerated piety which see so much of today among the recently ordained graduates of such seminaries as (among others) “the Mount” in Emmitsburg, SJV Denver, or Kenrick-Glennon in St. Louis.   Not that these—and other—seminaries may not be good orthodox theological faculties, but a genuine crisis facing the Catholic Church in the United States (among other Churches in the Developed World) are priests who may know their dogma but have not been formed as spiritually and psychologically mature adults capable of speaking to a laity that is sometimes, and perhaps even often, more advanced in the spiritual life than many of their pastors.   If we can learn anything from the Fathers of the Church—and after all that is the Tradition part of our Catholic “Scripture and Tradition” as the two sources of Revelation—it is that sanctity will produce orthodoxy but orthodoxy will not necessarily produce sanctity.  But let us move on.           

I think the first reason—and the best—for the revival of seventeenth century French spirituality is that the everyday practical down-to-earth spirituality for the common man (and woman) as typified by the spiritual teaching of its “greats” and, in particular,  Francis de Sales  is undergoing a huge revival today as more and more ordinary people (not just monks and nuns)  are looking to deepen their spiritual life.  Of course de Sales drew on the rich tradition, especially Saint John of the Cross and and Saint Teresa of Avila, that preceded him but he had an incredible ability to make the highest teaching very practical in the everyday world.  For the secular priest and for the lay person in the world, one can probably not find a better introduction to the devout life than Francis de Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life. 
Secondly, the Incarnational thrust of seventeenth century French Spirituality (again, the authentic Parti Dévot strain, neither the Jansenist nor Quietist aberrations) meets the needs of today’s people to come to the infinite love of God through the mediation of the human heart of Jesus.  Incarnational
spirituality speaks to people today in their everyday lives.  Yet, I believe (and as you know by now, I am no sack of pious manure) too often in the last forty years, an emphasis on the humanity of Christ has lacked the appropriate reverence and dignity due—in love—to Our Lord.  A return to the French Tradition, a very courtly tradition, models a balance between intimacy with God rooted in the human nature of Christ and the awe due to the mystery of God- become-human.   Saying that, I think that the particular expressions of that reverence used in seventeenth century France or sixteenth century Spain are artificial in twenty-first century America (and indeed point to the spiritual immaturity of those who fall back on antique and monarchical piety), but we have our own ways of expressing an authentic  admiration in the classic sense of the Latin ad –mirari.  Mirari, of course, is not only the Latin root of admire but also of “miracle.”   In “admire” it refers to the astonishment in the heart or the soul caused by love.  But enough of that.   That we will save for the spirituality blog when I get that revived.   
A third reason—and I suppose in some seminaries, the primary reason—for the revival of seventeenth century French Spirituality is a rediscovery of the priestly spirituality centered around the thought of Pierre de Bérulle, especially stressing the sanctity of the priesthood.  This became a “stamp” of Frech Spirituality, not only in the influence of Bérulle but of his disciples, Jean Jaques Olier and Jean Eudes.  A revival of priestly spirituality is much needed today.  In the North American Church this is sometimes exaggerated in an unhealthy way in which the holiness is attributed solely to the sacramental character of the priesthood without paying sufficient attention to the moral, psychological, and emotional maturity of the individual who may be finding a refuge from his own psychological and moral immaturity in the sacramental identity of the priesthood.  Nevertheless, today we need a new emphasis on the holiness of the priest to recover from the scandals of the last twenty years.  Of course such holiness must be cultivated within the individual priest and seminarian and not just supposedly super-imposed on him with the reception of the sacrament.  The holiness of the priest is found in neither the biretta nor the stole, but the heart filled with Charity—as Eudes would be the first to tell us.  So these are just a few thoughts on the revival of French Spirituality.  Perhaps once we get back to our Roots of the Reformation and make some more progress on that we can look at the very rich tradition of French Spirituality originating from the seventeenth-century parlor of Madame Acarie and still with much to us today.