Opportunism and Magisterium

My regrets for the recent hiatus—a combination of the business of this time of the year, family and travel obligations, and feeling somewhat under the weather has deprived me of the time I like to spend writing this blog.   So let’s jump back in.  I was going to start soft, but then thought I would bring out a piece I have been working at off and on over the past two months.  

This past Easter Sunday the indomitable doyen of Conservative American Catholicism, Mother Angelica of the Annunciation, Poor Clare of Perpetual Adoration, went to her eternal reward.  The last fifteen years of her life she was incapacitated by a series of strokes that removed her from her television career and public view, but the impact she had on American Catholicism during her heyday, from the mid 1980’s until her health crisis in 2001, is immeasurable.  Certainly no woman and probably no American priest or prelate has had the impact of shaping Catholicism in the United States that Mother Angelica exercised.

Born Rita Rizzo in 1923 in Canton Ohio, Mother Angelica was the product of a broken home.  Her mother worked hard to support herself and Rita but most of her younger years were lived in extreme poverty.  As a young girl of 16 she had a religious experience that involved a cure from a mysterious abdominal ailment.  Under the guidance of Rhonda Wise, a Canton “mystic and stigmatic” who played a role in Rizzo’s cure, she sought out a religious vocation and entered the Monastery of Poor Clare nuns in Cleveland in 1944 at the age of 21. Mother Angelica always said that she felt no draw to marriage and family life, most likely as a result of the dysfunction in her own family or origin.   Those candidates who come from unhappy family systems often have difficulty adjusting to the demands of community life but right from the beginning,  the young Sister Angelica was more a leader than simply a member of the community.  As a novice she was selected to be one of the Cleveland nuns to make a new foundation in her hometown of Canton and she always cherished a dream of founding a monastery of her own where she would be abbess. 

While still a novice she was injured in a domestic accident causing persistent back pain and requiring her to wear a leg brace the remainder of her life.

From the beginning she was anxious to establish her own monastery and in 1957, only four years after he final vows and at the age of 34 she took leadership for a proposed monastery in the diocese of Mobile Alabama.  For six years she worked hard to gather the funds to purchase property and build her monastery, which opened in 1962.

1962 was the year that the Second Vatican Council opened and Mother Angelica and her nuns were quick to embrace the Council and its reforms.  They were among the first to go into a modified habit, pray the Office in English, and relax the rules of Enclosure (cloister) that govern cloistered nuns.  A strong advocate of exercise and healthy lifestyle, among her innovations was to install a swimming pool for the nuns in the monastery gardens.  She invited and encouraged the various communities of Religious Sisters in the area to come and make use of the pool on their days off.  Partially as a means of raising funds and partially as a publicity tool for her nuns, Mother Angelica also began to write religious pamphlets explaining Catholic doctrines and practices.  These were, for the most part, well written and while traditionally pious in their outlook, hardly reflected the more strident ideology of later years.  She also began taping the conferences she gave her nuns and a market was found for these tapes among a larger lay audience.  In 1972 she wrote her first book and also began taping a weekly radio show.  This, in turn, led to many requests for her to speak at conferences and assemblies across the United States which, despite her a being cloistered religious, she accepted.  During a visit to Chicago to give a speech, she was invited to tour a Baptist-owned television station and it gave her the idea to start a Catholic network of her own—EWTN (Eternal World Television Network). 

I think it was the television experience that dramatically altered her course.  The station was initially a small operation run out of the monastery garage, but it began to grow quickly in popularity.  And as it grew, it required more and more capital to sustain itself.  Mother Angelica and her nuns borrowed considerable sums of money to finance the work and as the loans came due there were a number of financial crises.  It was here, I think, that Mother Angelica realized that the most conservative wing of lay Catholics would be her most generous financial base and she began to pander to that audience as she moved from a voice of main-line American Catholicism to the right-wing.  This was the early eighties.  It was Reagan America. The American Bishops, appointees of the Justice and Peace Pope, Paul VI, had just written a pastoral letter condemning American participation in the Arms Race.  They were writing a pastoral letter on economics that questioned American commitment to Free Market capitalism.  They were planning a pastoral letter on women.  At the same time, the ground beneath the Church was shifting as Pope John Paul II began to distance himself from the course set by Paul VI and Vatican II.  The bishops, for the most part liberal, were out on a limb and Mother decided to saw it off. 

It was an opportune time—the authority of the hierarchical or institutional Church in the United States was crumbling.   The American religious system is Congregationalism and Americans have never understood or trusted Bishops.  American Catholics have had a sense of the universal Church and of their local parish community but the diocesan level has always seemed an expensive and unnecessary layer of authority.  The papacy is what sets us apart from our Protestant neighbors and gives us a Catholic identity but bishops have been seen as nothing more than sort of local lieutenants of the Vatican.  In the early eighties as John Paul II carved a new—and far more conservative path for the Church, the bishops lost evem this credibility as local representatives of a Pope whose ideas they were often not quick to embrace.  Moreover, the changes in the Church since Vatican II, particularly the Liturgical changes, had eroded the somewhat monolithic authority of the Church that existed before the Council.  As many priests and most religious dropped wearing distinctive dress and living a very distinct lifestyle, laity began to feel more free to express their opinions and differences about matters ecclesiastical. 

This perhaps provides the context for Mother Angelica’s battle with Cardinal Mahoney over his 1997 Pastoral Letter: Gather Faithfully Together: A Guide for Sunday Mass in which the Cardinal outlined his goals for liturgical reform in his diocese for the upcoming millennium.  The document is eminently sound doctrinally but, at the same time, was “full speed ahead” with the liturgical development of the Second Vatican Council and the post-conciliar years.  Most upsetting to conservatives was its embracing of cultural diversity and encouragement that the parish celebrations of the Liturgy reflect the wide variety of cultures of the Catholics of Los Angeles.  Americans struggle with cultural diversity—our “melting pot” mythology wants immigrants to lose their distinctive identities within a generation or two and become “Americans.”  Cardinal Mahoney’s letter put the Church somewhat on the side of the multicultural and immigrant population contrary to contemporary political wisdom. 

By this time, many Catholics had been pushed to their limit of tolerance with Liturgical change and Mother Angelica led the charge against the Cardinal and his letter.  Much like today’s Republican nominee presumptive, Mother’s anger gave voice to the anger and frustration of the Catholic Right.  It was a tsunami of anger and vindictiveness as Mother Angelica and her network gave voice to a segment of the Catholic population that had for a quarter-century felt powerless as the Mass (and the Church, and the Leave it to Beaver America) they knew was slipping through their fingers.  It was the Reagan years, the Newt Gringrich era. 

Even though Mother  Angelica had a popular following among the Catholics in the pews, it is never a good idea to take on a Cardinal Archbishop.  You don’t win a pissing contest with a guy in a red silk dress.  The other American bishops recognized in the challenge to Mahoney’s authority a challenge to their own authority in their dioceses and while they may not have agreed with the Cardinal, the boys stood together.  Moreover, as powerful connections as Mother Angelica had in Rome, they were insignificant compared to the Cardinal.  As far as Rome went, it was a draw with the Cardinal holding an Ace.  But even that was remarkable—had the Cardinal played his hand differently he could have crushed the nun from Alabama.  For some reason he chose not to.  It is always foolish to leave a wounded animal. 

Where it played to Mother Angelica to have her spat with Mahoney is that it drew attention and donations to her work. 

Christmas Eve 1993 Mother Angelica and her community of nuns return to wearing the pre-Vatican II habit with some minor adjustments, claiming that it was in response of obedience to the Church and as an example for other religious to return to their traditional habits.  This was a brilliant marketing move both in terms of financial support and vocations.  It was never clear where the “Church” said that the religious should return to their pre-conciliar robes.  About the same time the nuns began broadcasting a daily Mass from their monastery chapel.  At the insistence of the local bishop, the Mass was celebrated according to the approved 1970 Rite, but still with considerable amounts of Latin and pre-conciliar ceremonial.  People began flocking to her Irondale Alabama monastery and her liturgical adaptations began to be copied in many more conservative parishes, becoming somewhat the “gold standard” for the “Reform of the Reform” of the Roman Mass.  More and more places saw two distinct styles of liturgy as some parishes embraced the Mahoney model and others the Mother Angelica liturgy.

One of the customs that grew up in the Irondale monastery was the “Mother Angelica dip”—a quick genuflection by the communicant before standing and receiving the Eucharist.  The rubrics call for a “sign of respect” for the Blessed Sacrament by the standing recipient but say the appropriate sign is a bow—the “dip” became a badge for those who preferred the return to a more traditional liturgy.  While in the late 90’s the “dip” was becoming an all but universal custom, it is rarely seen anymore since the Mother Angelica disappeared from EWTN and the public eye.   

In 1999 Mother Angelica opened her new monastery and Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Alabama.  Built at the cost of just under $50,000,000, it was allegedly funded by five private donors including Catholic philanthropist Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino’s Pizza.  It really was the crowning achievement of a long career. 

Mother’s disappearance from the public view created a challenge for her EWTN network.  Critics referred to it as EWTN: Elderly Woman Talking Nonsense, but the fact of the matter is that it was the presence of the wimpled and veiled acerbic old bag that drew viewers.  Viewership fell off drastically and the station had to cut back both personnel and programming.  While the situation seems to have stabilized these past few years, there was an open niche for someone who is more Catholic than the Pope to be the public voice that undermines the bishops and take up the mantle of the alternative magisterium.  Enter Michael Voris.

Voris lacked both the capital to establish a traditional television broadcast operation and the dramatic costuming of a Poor Clare nun, but he has worked well with what he has.  The Internet provides him with a new form of television broadcasting that is only beginning to grow in popularity.  And his attacks on various Catholic hierarchs from Archbishop Vigneron to Cardinal Dolan are giving a public voice to the anger and frustration of the Catholic Right.  Voris has been very careful not to go after the Pope which has disappointed his more radical aficionados but which is very wise politically as that would give the bishops a tool with which to attack—and destroy—him. 

It is not that I want to accuse Michael Voris of insincerity but I think that he, like Mother Angelica, is more  a businessperson, an opportunist if you will, than an ideologue.  Voris was away from the Church for much of his adult life and his return and embrace of that vitriolic Catholicism that helped the Nun from Irondale succeed coincided with her disappearance and the founding and rise of his Media work with the decline of her television station.  Voris had tried to develop an independent television production company, Concept Communications LLC, before his retun to the faith but was unsuccessful.   His relative success with his current company, Saint Michael Media is only because of its appeal to the krazies who miss Mother Angelica and have transferred their allegiance to the new kid on the block.

Whether it be a Television Nun or an Internet telejournalist, we need the leadership of the Church to distinguish between authentic magisterial voice and independent commentators and make sure that the Catholic in the pews knows which is which.  A big part of the problem, I believe, is that our bishops have yet to find credibility as leaders.  They are fighting two and a quarter centuries of episcopal leadership that their congregants have never understood or appreciated but we need bishops who are strong, loving, and wise.  That means, of course, the current crop has almost all to go. 

Going Into The Windup With The First Stone

Fr. Daniel Coughlin
Chaplain, US House
of Representatives
2001-2011

Let’s all take a walk down Memory Lane to late 1999 when then newly-elected Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, (an “Evangelical Christian”) appointed a bi-partisan committee of Members of the House to nominate a new chaplain.  Technically, the appointment of a Chaplain to the House is a prerogative of the Speaker, but as the Chaplain is available to all members of the Chamber for Spiritual Guidance, Hastert believed that a search committee would be a good idea.  There were over 50 applicants for the job; heading the list of three finalists submitted to Speaker Hastert was Father Timothy O’Brien, a priest of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, nominated for the post by Representative Gerald Kleczka (Wisconsin, Democrat). Never before in its 210 year history had the House had a Catholic Chaplain.  It almost didn’t then. 

O’Brien holds a doctorate and is a professor of Political Science at Marquette University.   His undergraduate degree is in Pastoral Ministry; his specialized studies include Counseling and Addictive Personality; he has been Consultant to the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, Department of Social Ministry since 1984; he served as Chaplain at Walter Reed Medical Center; he has worked in youth ministries most of his life; and for three decades he has counseled soldiers—male and female, single and married—as a Colonel in the Army Reserve. In other words, O’Brien was a man of remarkable qualification for the job.  Speaker Hastert, supported by Texas Representative and House Majority Leader, Dick Armey, (Presbyterian) passed over Father O’Brien and Episcopalian Reverend Robert Dvorak to choose Presbyterian Charles Nathan Wright.  Immediately there were cries of “foul” and “anti-Catholicism” as it was revealed that while the committee had overwhelming recommended O’Brien as first choice, there were House members who had pass questionable remarks.  Representative Steve Largent (Republican Okla.; “Born Again Christian”) passed the derogatory remark about O’Brien’s clerical collar: “Tell me about that thing you’re wearing.”  Others publically wondered how a man who was himself unmarried could be resourceful to married counselees.  One went so far as to question whether an unmarried clergyman could be of sound moral character.  There were unfounded rumors of financial improprieties.  The whole thing became quite unsavory.  Hastert and his Evangelical supporters, being very blunt that they wanted a Protestant chaplain, dug in their heels and insisted on Wright.  House Whip, Tom DeLay (Republican, TX, and a Baptist) asserted that O’Brien would never serve as Chaplain.  But mainline Republicans, especially from beyond he Bible Belt, began to feel pressure from their constituents.   When even conservative Catholics began to complain about Republican Presidential candidate George W. Bush opening his campaign at notoriously anti-Catholic Bob Jones University, the credibility of the Republican Party in regard to respect for its Catholic members made Hastert find the quickest way to undo to the damage.  

In the end Reverend Wright withdrew his acceptance of the post.  This time Hastert skipped all the niceties of a search committee and contacted Chicago Archbishop Francis George for a suggestion of a priest that could fit the bill.   The Archbishop suggested Father Daniel Coughlin of Chicago.  Congress was out of session when Hastert made the appointment but elected Coughlin as House Chaplain on January 2, 2001 when the 107^th congress convened.  Father Coughlin did remarkable work as a chaplain until his retirement in 2001.  As a testimony to the success of his ministry, his successor is another Catholic priest, the Jesuit Father Patrick Conroy. 

Now of course Mr. Hastert finds himself in troubles of his own.  Surprisingly many of his “Evangelical” colleagues, including Mr. DeLay and other former members of the House have written letters praising his contribution to American Political Life and recommending leniency in his sentencing.  This is an American cultural problem: the sin is not in the act it is in the getting caught. While the issues are essentially different, the same flaw of public righteousness concealing private sin underlies the Michael Voris situation.  Again, many of the neo-trads are rallying to him, calling him “brave,” and “an example for us all.” Can you imagine how the American public would have reacted to Hastert's abuse of young men in the days when he wielded such power from the Speaker’s Chair?  This was the time of Karl Rove and his cynical exploitation of religious conservatives.  They hypocrisy of so many of those same voices has gradually come to light and done tremendous damage to any and all religious credibility.  The same is true of Michael Voris.  I will give him credit for having “abandoned his sinful ways” but in his embracing a gospel of contempt and disdain for those in whose company he once found himself, he has only reinforced a negative view of Catholicism. 

I am sorry that Mr. Hastert and Mr. Voris had ever been trapped in their particular questionable lifestyles but I wish that they had learned understanding rather than judgment from their experiences.  A healthy recovery from sin reminds us to stand with the publican and pray “Have mercy on me for I am a sinner,” rather than with the Pharisee reminding God of our alleged righteousness.  Maybe the rest of us, whether or not we have mud caked on our hands, can learn not to throw stones but to ask God for the gift of a listening heart.  (cf 1 Kings 3:9)

Let's Not Play In The Mud

Michael Voris

Just as I was posting the last entry on Father James Martin and his “ten takeaways” from Pope Francis’ Amoris Laetitia, there was a not so startling public confession from self-proclaimed Catholic media apologist Michael Voris that he had, prior to his “reversion” to our Catholic faith “lived a life of live-in relationships with homosexual men.” 

What prompted Mr. Voris to emerge from the closets of his former lovers is that apparently the Archdiocese of New York has been going to considerable lengths to investigate Voris who is an outspoken critic of the Cardinal-Archbishop of New York and many other American bishops.  The Archdiocese—and its Cardinal Archbishop—apparently see a need to discredit Mr. Voris and are willing to get down into the mud to do it. 

I am not surprised at Mr. Voris’ admission.  I am a bit off-put by his avoidance of a deeper self-honesty, attributing his choices to being “confused about my own sexuality” and his claim that “From the outside, I lived the lifestyle and contributed to scandal in addition to the sexual sins. On the inside, I was deeply conflicted about all of it.”  The implication is that others took advantage of “the deep pains of my youth.”   It would not be fair to say that Mr. Voris should acknowledge his homosexuality because it seems from his statements that that he has yet to connect the dots of his past relationships to create an accurate self-portrait.  I think he has been as honest, as remarkably honest, with his audience as he is with himself; the need is for him to do more homework on himself and come to understand better his own psycho-sexual identity.    

I must admit that I am not surprised at Mr. Voris’ admission of having led a gay lifestyle for so long.  His opposition to same-sex issues—gay priests and seminarians, same-sex marriage, a supportive policy of pastoral care of those with same-sex attraction, parishes such as Saint Francis Xavier in NYC that are “gay friendly”—has been so disproportionate to other issues as to identify homosexuality as one of Mr Voris’ obsessions, and an unhealthy obsession at that.  Happy, well-adjusted heterosexual men don’t usually have the passion to wage homophobic campaigns that Mr. Voris had demonstrated. 

I only wish that the wild and wooly sexual experiences of Mr. Voris’s past life  had taught him compassion rather than had confirmed him in black and white judgment.  By this I don’t mean that he should validate the LGBT socio-political agenda but rather that it is sad that he cannot look at the LGBT socio-political agenda and see not a niche for a cultural warrior to make a name for himself  but to see the individual men and women who have all the challenges and confusions and “deep pains” of their youths that comprise the struggles of human lives, gay or straight.  We all need to look beyond the categories into which we pigeonhole people and see each individual in his or her particular struggle to find the inner energy to love God and to love one’s neighbor.  Life is just not lived in the black and white. 

What is the scandal in this story is not Mr. Voris’ past life.  Every one of us has a past.  What is the scandal is that the New York Archdiocese decided to snoop in various closets in order to discredit a detractor.   I will be the first to say that the American hierarchy should have long ago sidelined Voris—along with the late Mother Angelica, Judy Brown, Michael Hichborn, Matt Abbott and others who set themselves up as an alternative magisterium, but do it without slinging mud and digging into individuals’ personal lives.  Mud does not become Holy Mother Church; we have given our enemies enough mud to sling at us, we don’t need to play in it ourselves.  

Francis Does It Again!

Last week Pope Francis entered the fray (yet again) with a statement suggesting that contraceptives might be used to prevent the spread of the Zika virus or to avoid a pregnancy that might be endangered by the mother’s suffering from the virus.  When asked if contraception might, in this case, be “the lesser of two evils” the Pope first drew the line on abortion, which he declared to be “an absolute evil,” even comparing the saving of the life of the mother over the child to “the way the Mafia acts.”  (A bit strong, but point taken.)  The Pope went on then to say that avoiding a pregnancy, on the other hand, is not an absolute evil, implying there might be some room here to use contraceptives both to avoid spread of the disease and to justify contraception where the virus is a threat to mother and potential child.  

Pope Francis then went on to cite the story that Pope Paul VI had agreed that nuns in the then Belgian Congo might take a drug that suppresses ovulation to avoid pregnancy consequent on rape.  The Congo, then a Belgian colony struggling for Independence in a particularly vile war, was torn by brutal warfare in the first half of the 60’s.  The Church—because of its ties to the Belgian colonizers, was a special target of the rebels and there were numerous martyrdoms of clergy, religious and Catholic laity by the Simba forces.  Religious women were particularly victimized by rape.  A fictionalized account of the violence of the time—and a stinging indictment of American involvement in what would become a most savage war—is the novel The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.  Again, this book is fiction but Ms. Kingsolver did a superb job in providing the historical setting for the novel and explaining the socio-political-economic status of the Congo on the outbreak of the war as well as what was at stake for the United States politically. 

Well, back to Pope Francis.  The Krazies are screaming heresy and are up in arms over Francis’ failure to condemn contraception in any and all cases.  The hive is swarming with angry wasps.  Even Michael Voris—who is usually somewhat trepid about a direct attack on the Pope—finds this a bridge too far.    One Loon wrote on her website “How long can the see of bishops let this go on for before they pull the plug on this shit show?”  I am not sure what “the see of bishops” refers to, but it sounds like Pope Francis might have a Simba Rebellion of his own. 

The Krazies are arguing that the claim that Paul VI authorized the nuns to take an ovulation suppressing drug to avoid pregnancy is urban legend and not true.  I don’t know what Pope Paul VI said at the time and despite my efforts at research I can’t come up with a reliable source to tell me.  But I am old enough to remember that it was reported at the time (and so it is no “urban legend”) that the Pope had authorized the nuns to take steps to avoid pregnancy.  He may have been misquoted—I don’t know—but it is, as I say, no urban legend. 

At the end of the day, the Holy Father is saying nothing different than the vast majority of parish priests would tell their parishioners.  Pope Benedict is a noted theologian.  Pope John Paul II was a philosopher.  Pope Francis is a pastor who can cut through the over-intellectualized crap for common sense solutions.  Sometimes, like the Scribes and the Pharisees in the Gospels, we take a very simple thing and build it up into a burden, heavy on others’ shoulders, and make no effort to help bear the weight.  But as Pope Francis consistently reminds us: Compassionless Christianity is no Christianity at all.