Troubled Seas Ahead For The Barque of Peter?

I love it, but not everybody's happy 

I have been concerned about the probability of a schism in the American Church for over thirty-five years.  While the first ten years or so after the Council seemed to shine favorably on a unified Church moving to implement the conciliar decrees, cracks started appearing somewhat late in the pontificate of Paul VI.  There certainly was tremendous disappointment on the left with Humanae Vitae, but that didn’t show any fissures in the fabric of the Church.  Yes there were people—including many priests—who voiced their dissent to the Pope’s conclusions and it did turn out to be the first warning shot across the progressive bow that all might not go as the liberals had hoped for in John XXIII’s aggiornamento. There were priests suspended for refusing to support the encyclical and there were many angry married Catholics who had been looking for an acceptable solution to the challenges of family planning,  but no one was talking about leaving the Church for some alternative Catholicism. But then the revised liturgy of the 1970 Missal—the Novus Ordo Missae—became as significant an issue for conservatives as Humanae Vitae had been for the left, but again no one, at least in a serious and credible position, was talking about leaving the Church or creating a parallel Catholicism.  In 1970, the year that Paul VI promulgated the new rites,  a French bishop, Marcel Lefebvre, who had also served as the General Superior of the Spiritans (Holy Ghosts Fathers), organized a “pious union” of priests and seminarians to maintain the traditional doctrines and liturgy which Lefebvre saw as under attack by the very sort of “modernist” theologians and clergy that Pius X had condemned in the 1907 decree Lamentabili Sane Exitu, and Encyclical of the same year, Pascendi Domini Gregis.  Nevertheless, Lefebvre had confidence in the Church that it would regain its even keel and not abandon its historic orthodoxy.

Lefebvre had had several reservations about the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, in particular Nostra Aetate (on non-Christian religions), Unitatis Reintegratio (Christian Ecumenism), and Dignitatis Humanae (the right of religious freedom).  While he voted against these decrees, he did sign them once they had passed.  He seems to have later regretted this choice but he also seems honestly to have believed that the Holy Spirit was guiding the Church and would right the course as time went on.  This was not an unreasonable hope as Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI did significantly change the ways in which several of the Conciliar decrees have been interpreted at the time of the Council and by the Council Fathers, though not to the extent that Archbishop Lefebvre would have had it. 

Let me say—in the interest of full disclosure—that my own opinion is that despite all the talk about a “hermeneutic of continuity” several of the Conciliar decrees—including the three above named—represent a break with the previous magisterium.  I personally don’t think that is a bad thing, but I do believe to claim some sort of magisterial continuity on the questions of religious freedom, ecumenism, and inter-religious dialogue is nothing less than just downright duplicitous. 

There were some who from the beginning saw this break in continuity. A seminary dropout from Seattle, Francis Schuckhardt, who was very active in the Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima—a very conservative association of people in the Catholic Church, though one safely within the bounds of Catholic magisterial authority—was convinced that the Council was heretical and went around the United States warning Catholics of what he perceived to be the "heresies" found in the Conciliar documents.  Schuckhardt built a following and founded a religious community of priest, brothers, and sisters called the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen.  He had the canonical permission of the Bishop of Boise—in whose diocese he lived at the time—to establish this new community. (Ironically this permission was the sort of freedom given to Bishops after the Second Vatican Council to establish such communities ad experimentum.) Remember that at this point, Schuckhardt was a layman. About the same time he established his new religious order,  Francis Schuckhardt  became convinced that Paul VI was a heretic and that Vatican II was a “false Council.”  He claimed that a heretic could not hold the papal office and that when a pope went into heresy, he was automatically deprived of his office.  This stance separated him from the Catholic Church.  Schuckhardt would go on to get himself ordained priest and then consecrated a bishop by Daniel Q. Brown who himself was a layman and had been ordained and consecrated by Hubert Rogers, an “Old Catholic” bishop whose orders trace back to the Union of Utrecht and through them to the Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands that went into schism with the 1723 illicit episcopal consecration of Cornelius van Steenoven.  (I don’t want to go too far down this path or we will get sidetracked from our main focus—but I do promise to return at some future point about the Old Catholic Successions and Schisms.  It is sort of an ecclesiastical version of a Chinese Fire Drill.)  Suffice it now to say that Schuckhardt stood in a historic apostolic succession.  I personally won’t say “valid” though most Catholics would.  My reservations are twofold.  First I am not sure what “valid” means when we talk about sacraments; I think that it implies our imposing some degree of objectivity that permits us to tie God’s hands.  Remember, I am a historian and not a theologian, but I think the “valid” thing has somewhat expired as an effective argument and we need a new category to understand the sacraments and the way they work.  Just saying; again I am not a theologian.  Secondly, while matter and form may have been there in these ordinations—and intention to pass on the apostolic succession in the office of priest or bishop (depending on to which office the candidate is being ordained)—when a “sacrament” is celebrated with the intention of fracturing the unity of the Church…. Well, I just wonder.  Again, not a theologian but I think the theologians need to do some remodeling of the arguments here.  Just saying.  

Over the decades since Schuckardt’s renouncing the papacy as sede vacante, that is there being no (valid) sitting pope, sede vacantism has spread among the ultra-kooks in the katholic korral.  Some groups like Schuckhardt’s Congregation of Mary Immaculate or a particularly peculiar group (of 2 monks with a handful of followers) known as Holy Family Monastery in Fillmore NY, or Bishop Daniel Dolan (a Lefebvrist run-away) claim that because Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and now Francis were "heretics," there is no true pope and the see is empty (sede vacante).  Some sede-vacantists push the claim of heresy/invalidity back to include John XXIII.  There are also small groups known as “conclavists” who have decided to fill this supposedly vacant papal office by having conclaves to elect a new pope. A Kansas whack-job named David Bawden, aka “Pope Michael” who was elected “Pope” in 1990 by a conclave of six people (including his mother and father) to fill the chair of Peter left vacant by the aforementioned heretical popes, has a few dozen followers.  Bawden is not the only person who claimed a conclave to elect him pope to fill the empty seat.  The late Lucien Pulvermacher, a former Capuchin Franciscan friar disgruntled with Vatican II, was elected in the ballroom of a rural Montana hotel in 1998 and took the name Pius XIII.  (Some votes were phoned in, a progressive move way beyond the official Catholic Church.)  There are several other conclavist claimants in Europe and South America.  I had a maiden grandaunt who thought she was Empress of Austria. This sort of thing happens even in good families. 

All these various groups—the Congregation of Mary Immaculate People, the Holy Family Monastery folk, the Pope-in-Kansas crowd don’t add up to much over a thousand people.  Even the Lefebvrist faction, the Society of Saint Pius X, are really not a force to be contended with seriously, having perhaps 20,000 followers in the United States and perhaps another 30,000 worldwide. With Pope Francis in the Chair of Peter, the left seems mollified.  Actually they seem delighted as many felt they were being edged out of the Church in the previous two papacies. (Indeed there were a small number of people who went into groups that formally rejected Church authority such as Spiritus Christi Church or Holy Wisdom Monastery or the Catholic Church of the Beatitudes in Santa Barbara, and a much larger number—in the hundreds of thousands who joined Episcopalian, Lutheran, Methodist and other congregations because they had grown disillusioned with a Catholicism they perceived as having backed away from the Second Vatican Council.)  But after the pax benedictina there are grumblings on the right again as there were in the days of Paul VI.  Will it come to schism?  I would think probably not in the formal sense of a mass movement to an alternative Catholicism, but marginal groups like the Society of Saint Pius X and the more moderate schismatic networks that maintain the old rite and the old catechism will probably draw several thousand of the more neo-traditionalist crowd that find Francis’s directions increasingly troubling.  If Pope Francis makes any move limiting the pre-conciliar rites, or permits local bishops to suppress the TLM, that number would be considerably higher though there are probably less that 200,000 American Catholics who regularly attend the Tridentine Mass.  A more serious threat would be any significant change on the status of the divorced and remarried.  That would be a huge opportunity for the sede vacante groups which I would not be surprised to see triple in size—or even more. 

I plan to continue this question of the growing tension between the Catholic Right and the Catholic Left in a few more postings and in particular to look at how Pope Saint John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI laid the groundwork—unwittingly—for the divide

Why Are They Afraid of Pope Francis? 13

  There was much made of the questionairre that Pope Francis instructed be sent out to prepare for the upcoming Synod on the Family, but in the end no one seemed to ever see it.  I have heard that--somewhat suprsingly--Archbishop Lori had it put on the website of the Archdiocese of Louisville, but other bishops were not so enthusiastic.  I asked our local pastor about it and he said that there was no communication whatsoever from our Archdiocese about it.  Lori's suffragen, Bishop Paul Loverde of Arlington, one of the most conservative dioceses in the country, was led after one cocktail too many to express his opinion of Pope Francis and this entire process. It was not favorable.  Newman saw a need to consult the faithful, Loverde and many of his brothers in the episcopacy do not.  But then Newman was a man of superior intelligence.   Checking with my colleagues in diocese after diocese, the average person in the pews is being given no access to this opportunity for input.  Perhaps only the party-faithful are being asked for their opinions but that would be sad as the Holy See seems genuinely want to get a good read on where the faithful are at.  In any event, here is the questionairre.  Notice: there seems an honest attempt to see whether the doctrine articulated in Humanae Vitae has been "received."  This is extremely significant as it indicates a return to the ancient idea that a doctrine must not only be proclaimed but be received to stand.  Notice too that there is honest inquiry about how divorced and remarried are dealt with in terms of the sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist--not about how the issue should  be dealt with but what is the actual pastoral practice.  If the bishops are given the same sort of opportunity for honest talk at the synod there could be some remarkable changes ahead in pastoral practice. 

Top of Form

Pastoral Challenges to the Family in the Context of Evangelization

1. THE DIFFUSION OF THE TEACHINGS ON THE FAMILY

a) Describe how the Church's teachings on the value of the family contained in the Bible, Gaudium et Spes, Familiaris consortio and other documents of the post-conciliar Magisterium is understood by people today?  What formation is given to our people on the Church’s teaching on family life. 
b) In those cases where the teaching is known, is it accepted fully or are there difficulties in putting it into practice?  If so, what are they? 
c) How widespread is the Church’s teaching in pastoral programmes at the national, diocesan, and parish levels?  What catechesis is done on the family? 
d) To what extent and what aspects in particular is this teaching actually known, accepted, rejected, and/or criticizes in areas outside the Church?  What are the cultural factors which hinder the full reception of the Church’s teaching on the family?

2. MARRIAGE ACCORDING TO THE NATURAL LAW

a) What place does the idea of the natural law have in the cultural areas of society; in institutions, education, academic circles and among the people at large?  What anthropological ideas underlie the discussion on the natural basis of the family?
b) Is the idea of the natural law in the union between a man and a woman commonly accepted as such by the baptized in general?
c) How is the theory and practice of natural law in the union between man and woman challenged in light of the formation of a family? How is proposed and developed in civil and Church institutions?
d) In cases where non-practicing Catholics or declared non-believers request the celebration of marriage, describe how this pastoral challenge is dealt with?

3. THE PASTORAL CARE OF THE FAMILY IN EVANGELIZATION

a) What experience has emerged in recent decades regarding marriage preparation?  What efforts are there to stimulate the task of evangelization of the couple and of the family?  How can an awareness of the family as the “domestic Church” be promoted?
b) How successful have you been in proposing a manner of praying within the family which can withstand life’s complexities and today’s culture? 
c) In the current generational crisis, how have Christian families been able to fulfill their vocation of transmitting the faith?
d) In what way have the local Churches and movements on family spirituality been able to create ways of acting which are exemplary. 
e) What specific contribution can couples and families make to spreading a credible and holistic idea of the couple and Christian family today?
f) What pastoral care has the Church provided in supporting couples in formation and couples in crisis situations? 

4. PASTORAL CARE IN CERTAIN DIFFICULT MARITAL SITUATIONS

a) Is cohabitation ad experimentum a pastoral reality in your particular Church?  Can you approximate a percentage? 
b) Do unions which are not recognized either civilly or religiously exist?  Are reliable statistics available?
c) Are separated couples and those divorced and remarried a pastoral reality in your particular Church?  Can you approximate a percentage?  How do you deal with this situation in appropriate pastoral programs?
d) In all the above cases, how do the baptized live in this irregular situation? Are aware of it? Are they simply indifferent? Do they feel marginalized or suffer from the impossibility of receiving the sacraments?
e) What questions do divorced and remarried people pose to the Church concerning the Sacraments of the Eucharist and of Reconciliation? Among those persons who find themselves in these situations, how many ask for these sacraments?
f) Could a simplification of canonical practice in recognizing a declaration of nullity of the marriage bond provide a positive contribution to solving the problems of the persons involved? If yes, what form would it take?
g) Does a ministry exist to attend to these cases? Describe this pastoral ministry? Do such programmes exist on the national and diocesan levels? How is God’s mercy proclaimed to separated couples and those divorced and remarried and how does the Church put into practice her support for them in their journey of faith?

5. On Unions of Persons of the Same Sex
a) Is there a law in your country recognizing civil unions for people of the same-sex and equating it in some way to marriage?

b) What is the attitude of the local and particular Churches towards both the State as the promoter of civil unions between persons of the same sex and the people involved in this type of union?
c) What pastoral attention can be given to people who have chosen to live in these types of union?
d) In the case of unions of persons of the same sex who have adopted children, what can be done pastorally in light of transmitting the faith?

6. The Education of Children in Irregular Marriages
a) What is the estimated proportion of children and adolescents in these cases, as regards children who are born and raised in regularly constituted families?

b) How do parents in these situations approach the Church? What do they ask? Do they request the sacraments only or do they also want catechesis and the general teaching of religion?
b) How do parents in these situations approach the Church? What do they ask? Do they request the sacraments only or do they also want catechesis and the general teaching of religion?
c) How do the particular Churches attempt to meet the needs of the parents of these children to provide them with a Christian education?
d) What is the sacramental practice in these cases: preparation, administration of the sacrament and the accompaniment?

7. The Openness of the Married Couple to Life
a) What knowledge do Christians have today of the teachings of Humanae vitae on responsible parenthood? Are they aware of how morally to evaluate the different methods of family planning? Could any insights be suggested in this regard pastorally?

b) Is this moral teaching accepted? What aspects pose the most difficulties in a large majority of couple’s accepting this teaching
c) What natural methods are promoted by the particular Churches to help spouses put into practice the teachings of Humanae vitae?
d) What is your experience on this subject in the practice of the Sacrament of Penance and participation at the Eucharist?
e) What differences are seen in this regard between the Church’s teaching and civic education?
f) How can a more open attitude towards having children be fostered? How can an increase in births be promoted?

8. The Relationship Between the Family and the Person
a) Jesus Christ reveals the mystery and vocation of the human person. How can the family be a privileged place for this to happen?

b) What critical situations in the family today can obstruct a person’s encounter with Christ?
c) To what extent do the many crisis of faith which people can experience affect family life?

9. Other Challenges and Proposals
What other challenges or proposals related to the topics in the above questions do you consider urgent and useful to treat?

 

Realistic Expectations Are More Than Enough

It is very naïve to expect substantial changes in doctrine from Pope Francis. The media has been quick to label him a doctrinal conservative in the mode of Pope Benedict and he is, but that is beside the point.  In the first place the changes that are necessary for the “rebuilding” of the Church are not changes in doctrine but changes in polity and Francis has been quick to signal that there is a new sheriff in town and while the laws may remain as is, the sheriff has a more contextual manner of enforcing them.  But even more important—at least from a historian’s point of view—is that major changes in doctrine, or rather the evolution of doctrine, is something that needs to come about in a slow and considered way.  Knowing history and its patterns, I have no doubt, for example, that the Catholic Church—despite all the current “theological” objections and obstacles—will one day ordain women to the priesthood and episcopate.  Moreover, I favor the ordination of women.  I think all this “stuff” about theologically impossible is, consciously or unconsciously on the part of those who declare it to be so, simply drawing a line to protect the self-interest of a male power establishment within the Church.  I say that not as feminist mumbo-jumbo, but based on the behavior of those who are insistent on this “doctrine” towards women religious and towards women in their own parishes or chancery offices.  I think celibacy has made the priesthood—for many, not for all—a place of refuge and psychological safety from women.  I know that one of the concerns for many in the Church today is that the clergy are becoming—or are perceived as being—a gay club.  I think that is a misreading of the data.  I am more concerned about the clergy being misogynists.  The dysfunction in today’s clergy, I believe, is not as simple as a gay subculture but the more complex and wider issue of its drawing men who are psycho-sexually non-integrated.  Celibacy is a great gift for ministry and a great witness for the Gospel if it is freely given by healthy adults who are fully developed human persons spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically but it has no witness value or ministerial usefulness if it screens an incapacity for human intimacy, warmth, and depth of personhood.  Real men have no problem working with women as equal or superior collaborators.  All that being said, however, one does not overturn a two thousand year old tradition over-night.  One, even a Pope, does not overturn a two thousand year old tradition on one’s own authority.  And one does not overturn a two-thousand year old tradition without paying close attention to the social implications it will create in a multi-cultural society such as the Church.  There needs to be a process by which the universal Church comes to a consensus on such an issue.  Our Anglican brothers and sisters have seen their world-wide Communion torn apart  by the way significant changes have been unilaterally implemented by one Province or another of the communion.   It is important that we take note and not make the same mistake but rather set up careful dialogue among all the local and particular Churches that comprise the Universal Church not only on the question of the possible ordination of women but on any significant development in polity or doctrine.  
Another area in which many may have unrealistic expectations of Pope Francis is the possibility of change in the Church’s teaching on contraception.  Again, perhaps development is a better word than change for history shows us that doctrine develops, or our understanding of doctrine develops, rather than makes abrupt changes.  Is such development possible?  Absolutely.  Pope Paul VI had convoked a panel of theologians, bishops, and laity to study such a possibility when the invention of “the pill” became a game-changer in the practice of family-planning.  In the end the Pope decided, contrary to the majority report of his commission, that “the pill” was an artificial means of contraception rather than a tool to aid the natural processes.  That was forty-five years ago and the situation today is much different.  Advances in understanding of the reproductive processes makes conversations with biologists, embryologists, and other scientists absolutely necessary as we continue to develop our moral theology.  Notice, I said conversations, not dialogue.  Dialogue implies a parity in the discussion while in this case I think theologians and bishops must listen more than talk.  That is not a process with which they are, for the most part, familiar but we must learn from science before we can make credible moral and theological judgments on matters in which science plays a foundational role.  And after learning the scientific data on which the theological judgments can be soundly constructed I think theologians and bishops need to listen carefully to the lived experience of the People of God.  Theology, moral or dogmatic, cannot develop in an experiential vacuum.    This is not to say that the faith of the Church is a majority decision; it isn’t and never has been.  But the faith of the Church is the Wisdom the Holy Spirit has planted in the hearts of the faithful; it is the ministry of the magisterium and the theologians to clarify and articulate that unspoken wisdom. 
To be honest I am not sure that doctrinal development is the most urgent matter in the Church today as much as it is a change of style.  More and more people have felt increasingly alienated from the Church over the past decades because, at least as they articulate it, they have been made feel unwelcome.  Part of this has been the very successful attempts by secular voices in our society to change the public perception of the Church to be an angry, even bitter, opponent of our contemporary world.  But too many Churchmen (and notice that I am being gender specific because I am speaking of the clergy—both hierarchy and “lowerarchy”) have been unwelcoming, arrogant, self-righteous, pompous, and in general poor witnesses to the power of Christ’s Gospel.  As I often write: today everyone knows what the Catholic Church is against; few can tell you what we stand for. 
In just a week and a half Pope Francis has made some huge changes in that perception.  The world has been drawn by his simple ways.  Let’s hope that simplicity inspires bishops and priests and deacons to change their styles as well.  And let us hope that changed style spills over to us too so that when people join us on Sundays they find a welcome and feel at home around their Father’s table.    

Papal Resignations! IX

Blessed John Henry Newman

As you notice, I very rarely post comments but I often try to respond to them in topics I choose for blogs.  Recently I had several inquiries as to how I view the magisterium if I think that certain Church teachings regarding contraception, same-sex relationships, divorce/’remarriage, in vitro fertilization along with other subjects such as sharing the Eucharist with non-Catholics, clerical celibacy, and women’s ordination need to be discussed openly and honestly at every level of the Church.  The implication of the questions is that once something is defined by the magisterium it cannot be changed.
Well, remember this is a historical blog.  I don’t deal with theology qua theology—only with the history of the Church, and at times the history of the development of theological teachings in the Church.  And—remember this too—my consideration of history is not only about the past but also about what light the past sheds on the present and what opportunities for the future the past reveals to us.  People who limit the study of history to the past and don’t consider the past as metaphor that permits us to speak of the present and the future are not historians, they are antiquarians.   The Church has far too many antiquarians, including whoever it is that has been dressing Pope Benedict up in the left-over glad rags of past centuries.  Nevertheless, I am not anxious to go there in this posting. 
The past shows us that the magisterium, including infallible statements, are not irreformable.  Pius XI condemned the Ecumenical Movement in his 1928 Encyclical Mortalium Animos which was completely overturned by the Decrees Unitatis Reintegratio, Nostrae Aetate, and Dignitatis Humanae at the Second Vatican Council.  Remember it was an encyclical that was overturned—the same medium through which Pius XI condemned contraception in Casti Connubi (1928) and Paul VI extended the condemnation to the use of “the Pill” in his 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae.  This teaching is considered to be infallible; the condemnation of ecumenism was once so thought also. 
In the 1302 Bull, Unam Sanctam, Pope Boniface VIII wrote: Furthermore, we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.   
The Church has long moved away from such doctrine—long before Vatican II—but certainly Nostrae Aetate with its positive comments on non-Christian religions and the Divine truths they reflect is more than a repudiation of Boniface’s teaching, it is a contradiction. 
Mortalium Animos and Unam Santam reflect teachings once considered infallible.  On a lesser level, in the 1930’s Pius XI refused a petition from the bishops of France to declare Saint Thérèse of Lisieux a Doctor of the Church on the grounds sexus obstat: her sex (female) was a barrier to such a position.  Hmmm.  That argument is used today in a different context. Some forty years later Paul VI named the first two women as Doctors of the Church—Teresa of Avila and Catherine of Siena.  John Paul would name Thérèse to that honor in 1997.  Theologians can argue about the ability of the Church to alter doctrine but historians view it from a different perspective, unencumbered by an agenda of apologetics.
What I wrote is that the Church needs to have honest conversation on a wide variety of issues.  The faith of the Church is not solely the teaching of the magisterium—it is the deposit of doctrine and it is the faith held by the faithful, that is by the Church which is not limited to the hierarchy but comprises the community of the baptized.  The Deposit of Doctrine, or the corpus of Tradition, is the province of the theologians who have studied the doctrines along with their roots in Divine Revelation and their historical development through the centuries.  The consensus fidelium—the consensus of the faithful—is the living faith as held and understood (using that term as held intuitively rather than as intellectually fathomed) in the hearts of the baptized.  History shows us, as Blessed John Henry Newman explained so well in his essay On Consulting the Faithful on Matters of Doctrine, that magisterium, theologians, and faithful must work in tandem for doctrines to take hold.  The current dissensions among the hierarchy, the theologians, and the faithful indicate to the historian that this is not yet an opportune time to state the teaching of the Church on a wide variety of issues.  But we cannot afford to come to a standstill, thus conversations are necessary to reach that single voice proceeding from a single heart.
Such conversations will not be easy and such accord will not be quick.  We Americans and Western Europeans have a tradition of imperialistic arrogance that we know better than our “little brown brothers” of Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Pacific Rim.  We are shocked that they do not see questions about the role of women or about human sexuality from the same perspectives that we do and we think that they are backward for viewing these issues differently.  We are, I suppose, as entitled to our prejudices regarding them as they are theirs regarding women and gays.  Or, maybe we are no more entitled to our prejudices than they are to theirs.  But in any case an honest and frank discussion in a universal Church will not come to easy resolutions, nor will all be pleased with the outcomes, but we need to undertake the process nevertheless.  We can see the chaos which has befallen the Anglican Communion when the Churches of the North have moved unilaterally in directions in which the Churches of the South are unprepared to go. But the alternative is not to stay stuck and go nowhere.  If we believe that the Holy Spirit is here to guide the Church, we need to trust that Spirit and begin the process.             

200 Years Out of Date --Who Turned Back the Clock?

I had mentioned in the previous post that John Paul II at the beginning of his reign appointed liberals such as the late Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini SJ to the Sacred College (and, in Martini’s case, to a key diocese, Milan) because John Paul seemed to have wanted to develop a consensus among the episcopate to support his planned “corrections” to the Vatican II course the Church was on.  I also wrote that there was, at least in Martini’s case, another agenda item and that was to move the liberal Jesuit out of the leadership role in the two leading Roman theological faculties: the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Pontifical Biblical Institute.  Martini was “kicked upstairs” as it were from academia where he had a very definite liberal influence to the busy life of the leader of a huge diocese that demanded all his attention.  This second reason, while perhaps the more pressing, doesn’t overshadow the first, however.  The elevation of Americans Roger Mahony and Joseph Bernardin and the French Henri de Lubac are other cases of liberals being advanced to positions of power and influence in the first ten years or so of John Paul’s pontificate.

John Paul, as Karol Wojtyla,  had been a participant in the Second Vatican Council, in the first three sessions as the auxiliary bishop of Krakow and in the final session as the Archbishop of that city.  He was not an enthusiastic supporter of the Council and its agenda, however.  It is important to keep in mind that from the time Wojtyla was nineteen his country had been under the thumb of two of the most ruthless totalitarian regimes of the 20^th century—the Nazi occupation of Poland from 1939-45 and the Soviet dominated Communist government that succeeded the Nazi regime and which fell only in 1989.  As difficult as the Communist years were for the Church, the Nazi occupation was actually worse.  The Poles—and the Polish Church—survived only by forging an unshakeable unity of the Polish people around the Church and the Church around the Primate, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski.  Because this consolidation of People and Church depended on the total identification of Polish Culture and Identity with their Roman Catholic faith where the Church was Poland and Poland was the Church, there was great resistance to any change lest the change provide a crack in the impenetrable façade of Catholic Polonialism/Polish Catholicism.   Liturgical changes were minimal and certainly the pre-conciliar pieties were preserved intact.  Ecumenism and inter-religious relationships were somewhat of a moot point in Poland.  There were few, almost no Protestants.  The Orthodox were identified with the Russians and relationships were cool at best with no desire to build ties with a Church that was seen as “Russian.”  And the Jewish population had been all but wiped out in the Nazi years—not, incidentally, without the support of many of the Polish people for whom anti-Semitism was part of their Catholic faith.  The Social Justice message which had flowered with John XXIII’s Mater et Magistra and then went into full bloom with the Council’s Gaudium et Spes never reached Poland where Wyszynski feared it could be distorted to support the Marxist regime’s policies.  Vatican II, for the greater part, never penetrated the Polish Church during those years under communism. At the Council, the Polish participants hung back from an enthusiastic support for the new programs of John XXIIII and Paul VI because they feared the effects of change on their homeland and the solidarity of the Poles with the Church in resisting the political tyranny under which they lived. 

When John Paul was elected to the papacy he seems to have wanted from the beginning to put a different “spin” on the Council.  Certainly the final years of the pontificate of his predecessor but one, Paul VI, had been painful—both for Paul and for the Church.  Humanae Vitae, the encyclical repeating the Church’s proscription of contraception had crashed the Vatican II optimism into the wall of ugly ecclesial reality and the carnage was complete.  Paul VI was bewildered by his loss of popularity.  Bishops, in an orgy of loyalty to the Holy See, were crushing any objections to the Encyclical from the Catholic intelligentsia.  The theological idols of Vatican II—scholars such as Bernard Häring and Hans Kung who had been major players at the Council—were falling from their pedestals. Moreover, the reactionaries were in open revolt under dissident French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.  John Paul wanted to reverse the damage and put the Church back onto a major key sound-track.  He couldn’t annul the Council—that would undermine all authority and credibility—and nor did he want to, but he did want to give its decrees a new interpretation. 

John Paul wasn’t totally wrong.  In some ways the Council was out of step.  In a globalizing world, the Council wanted to decentralize Church authority, giving more authority to local bishops at cost to the power of the central administration in Rome.  In a world of totalitarian governments, the Church seemed to want to democratize with greater roles and responsibility for the laity.  In a culture where people were becoming increasingly passive in their entertainment, the Church’s liturgy was demanding increased participation.   

The election of John Paul took the world by surprise, but it probably didn’t take Karol Wojtyla by surprise.  Biographers say that at various times throughout his life people had foretold he would one day be pope and he apparently began to take this message with some seriousness.  He was not an ambitious man and I don’t think it could be said that he sought the office, but he had a preternatural bent to his personality.  He was no mystic—the demands of having to outwit the communist regime at every turn kept him a “feet on the ground” sort of fellow—and I hesitate to use the word superstitious as he was both intelligent and educated, but he was a believer in destiny and I think he came to believe the papacy was in his destiny.  His strong showing in the election that chose his predecessor, John Paul I, probably “sealed the deal” though I doubt he realized just how soon it would be before he sat in the Chair of Peter himself.  But I think he came to that chair with a mission.  He had that single-mindedness, that focus, of the Polish temperament and I believe he was determined from the beginning to refashion the Council into something that he could believe in, a Church that was a global macrocosm of the Polish Church he knew—a Church that was internally strong and united against its external opponents.  It would be, as he was used to in Poland, authoritarian in its internal discipline and populist the face it showed to the world.  John Paul found a Curia anxious to work with this agenda so that it could take back its power from “the College of Bishops” and be even stronger than it was before the Council.  Unfortunately, the pressure of the authoritarianism, instead of forging unity has revealed cracks in the foundation—cracks that need to be fixed before they can no longer bear the weight they are under.  Neither John Paul nor Benedict has been able to close those fissures nor do they seem to know how.

One final anecdote about John Paul and his re-vision of Vatican II.   One of the people I was privileged to come to know in his final years was Denis Hurley, the retired Archbishop of Durban, South Africa.  When Hurley was named a bishop at age 31, he had been the youngest bishop in the world.  When I knew him he was an old man in his 80’s.  He was the voice against Apartheid in South Africa when Desmond Tutu was only a young priest.  He had served on the preparatory Commission for Vatican II.  He was a founder of ICEL.  The last time I saw him was just two weeks or so before his death.  He was in Rome for some meetings with the Communità di Sant’Egidio and I had lunch with him.   He said to me: “I met with the Holy Father (John Paul, just a year before his own death) this morning.  I said to him ‘Holy Father, you and I are both old men.  You know how it is when we get old.  We forget things.  But I distinctly remember that we had a Council.  What did you do with it’?”  They say that Archbishop Hurley, despite his early and prophetic voice against apartheid and his tireless work at Vatican II, had never had been made a Cardinal because he refused to congratulate Paul VI on Humanae Vitae.  It is probably true.  Right to the end he spoke his mind.  What had happened to Vatican II? 

Let's Hear It For the Ladies --Yet Again

good nuns

Sister Dorothy Vidulich of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Peace, attributes the following words to their foundress, Mother Margaret Anna Cusack. 

The prophet does not compel;
She invites each person to see herself,
her world, her God,
in a fresh way.

bad nuns

I find it all but impossible that a woman in the nineteenth century could express herself this way—or even formulate such ideas in her own mind—not because a woman’s mind differs from the male mind in any capacity but simply because the ideas expressed are far ahead of 19^th century categories.  Indeed, the creativity to birth this insight and the courage to give it speech is far more likely to come from a woman than a man, especially a man trained in the stodgy Neo-Scholastic thought canonized in the papacy of Leo XIII.  Perhaps I have misunderstood Sister Dorothy and she is writing about the impact that Cusack has had over the years rather than quoting the foundress directly.  But even so, this is a remarkable statement and it captures the reason that I think  today’s American Religious Sisters have triggered the alarm bells in the Vatican. 

      Margaret Anna Cusack was a remarkable woman.  I first read about her over thirty years ago while staying in a retreat house run by her Sisters.  She had been a convert to the Catholic Church from the Church of Ireland (Anglican).  Immediately after becoming a Catholic, she entered the Poor Clares at Kenmare in Ireland as a nun.  In those days, the Irish Poor Clares, for a variety of historical reasons, were not strictly cloistered and Cusack brought her education to bear in writing articles supporting the Irish Land League in its attempts to break the Landlord system in Ireland by which English gentry lived off the labor of impoverished Irish tenant farmers.  She developed a huge name for herself as an author and she left the Poor Clares to establish a new community free of the burden of monastic customs that regulated day to day life among the Poor Clares.  The new community, founded in England, was called the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Peace and they were founded to do what we would today call Social Work among the poor immigrants to England from Ireland.  Cusack soon established a second foundation of her Order in the United States.  Here, as I said yesterday, she fell afoul of Archbishop Corrigan who demanded control over Cusack’s new Congregation.  The conflict escalated and Cusack realized that Corrigan would persecute the Sisters as long as she was associated with them.  Discouraged and disgusted by it all, Cusack left the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Peace and returned to the Anglican Communion.  She kept up contact with the Sisters throughout her remaining years but the Sisters were forced to rewrite their history and make no mention of their original foundress.  Such is the fear that independent minds can raise in moribund institutions. 

     The Catholic Church today is in a crisis of leadership.  The largest religious denomination in the United States today is the Catholic Church.  The second largest denomination is former Catholics.  Note: I said former Catholics, not non-practicing Catholics (they are in the first group regardless of their inactivity.)  Even as huge numbers of converts are received into the Church every Easter and as its ranks are swelled by immigrants from Latin America, the Philippines, Vietnam, Korea, Haiti and other nations with large Catholic populations,   American Catholicism is also hemorrhaging members out the back door.  There are various reasons for this and one of them—and not the least—is that as the tectonic plates of culture have shifted and people have much more confidence in their religious experience and less needy of—and less inclined to trust in—being fed their experiences of God by others, even (and perhaps especially) religious “authorities.”     This is particularly true when the God delivered by religious authorities does not match the God people experience.  The fact that the Catholic hierarchy has lost its moral credibility doesn’t help the situation. 

     This is where a huge part of the problem relates to Humanae Vitae, the encyclical of Paul VI that condemns contraception.  The Magisterium has told us that artificial contraception is a moral evil and that its use separates one from direct communion with God—such separation being one of the consequences of what we Catholics call mortal sin.  In fact, despite magisterial teaching, millions of Catholics have opted to ignore the Church’s proscription of artificial contraception and have found no disruption in their relationship with God.  This isn’t to say that artificial contraception isn’t gravely wrong—I don’t do theology, only history—but it has weakened the credibility of the Church to claim an absolute authority over access to God when Grace seems to flow in abundance regardless of magisterial proscriptions. Along the same lines but even more dramatically, hundreds of thousands of gay Catholics have learned to maintain a strong relationship with God while also maintaining a committed and loving (and sexual) relationship with another human person.  Moreover, gay people, like those using contraceptives, are all over the Church—educators, theologians, musicians, hospital chaplains, spiritual directors, canon lawyers, pastoral associates, extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist, fund-raisers, institutional administrators—and again, their experience is a disconnect with magisterial authority.        

       At the same time, of course—and tragically—the magisterial authority has been grossly undermined by the inept handling of the sexual abuse crisis and now more and more with financial scandals.  Most of our bishops seem unaware that they are ludicrous emperors marching naked down the aisle with only their miters for ornament and while their (moral) nudity might be repulsive to the rank and file Catholic, the real problem is that they have been so isolated from reality as, like Adam, not to know they are naked.  They honestly believe they are still in a position to offer moral guidance.  I am all for people believing but God’s people should never be naive.  It is beneath the dignity of those who are baptized and sealed with the Holy Spirit to be credulous.   And here is why the nuns are in trouble: they’re prophetic in an Institution that distrusts prophecy.

The prophet does not compel;
She invites each person to see herself,
her world, her God,
in a fresh way.

Notice, I said in an Institution that distrusts prophecy.  I did not say a Church that distrusts prophecy.  The Church includes the hierarchy but is much broader than its leadership.  People today are seeing themselves, their world, and God (God is never “my” God, “your God” or “their God”—God is just God. )  in fresh ways and this takes control of the God experience away from the boys and let’s everyone in the game.  And that is precisely what the boys in Rome—and the local chancery offices—are afraid of, a level playing field of grace where they can’t control the game.  Go nuns!!!