More on Pope Francis' Critique of the Curia

Let’s get back to Pope Francis and his critique of the Roman Curia.  I want to finish this up and we still have several spiritual diseases to look at. 

But as we look at the Curia, its diseases, and its needed reforms, let me say that I am tired of reading that Cardinal Burke was “demoted.”  When a Congressman is reassigned by his party’s leadership from one committee to another, or when a Senator is removed as chairman of a committee because his party no longer has control of the Senate, he is not demoted.  He remains a member of the House or the Senate.  We expect a congressman who is not in line with his party to lose membership on a key committee and end up on one whose role is not as critical.  We expect the chair of a committee to change when the balance of power changes.  Why do we think an injustice or a humiliation was imposed on Cardinal Burke?  He remains a Cardinal.  He is not working with the administration in power; why would he not be removed from crucial committees or lose his prefectship of a dicastery?  They very people who are wailing about Cardinal Burke’s reassignment are the ones who had been calling for Cardinal Wuerl or Cardinal O’Malley or Cardinal Kasper to be removed from their positions.  Surely they understand that Cardinal Burke cannot be entrusted with responsibilities that he will not carry out according to the mind of the Pope.  And it could have been much worse as the Holy Father purges men whose intrigue, whose acceptance of “stipends” for favors or advancements, or whose moral character are at the root of these diseases he sees to infect the Curia.  Cardinal Burke escaped with his reputation intact; there are worse fates.  Now, on to the next two critiques with which the Pope has slammed the Curia.    

The disease of gossiping, grumbling and back-biting. I have already spoken many times about this disease, but never enough. It is a grave illness which begins simply, perhaps even in small talk, and takes over a person, making him become a “sower of weeds” (like Satan) and in many cases, a cold-blooded killer of the good name of our colleagues and confrères. It is the disease of cowardly persons who lack the courage to speak out directly, but instead speak behind other people’s backs. Saint Paul admonishes us to do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent” (Phil 2:14-15). Brothers, let us be on our guard against the terrorism of gossip!

The Holy Father seems to keep coming back to this particular issue of the poisonous atmosphere in the Curia with priests and prelates competing with one another for advancement as they claw their way up the caterpillar pillar.  The competition leads to vicious gossip and the spreading of rumor and innuendo in order to destroy one’s competition.  The same disease is rampant in university faculties, the corporate world, the civil service and government workers and even garden clubs and volunteer associations.  It certainly can be found in Diocesan offices and in religious orders.  The Pope does well in tying it to Satan’s sowing of weeds among the good wheat (cf Matt 13:25).  While it is bad enough for Christians to engage in this sort of behavior in daily life, we have a right to expect more of the leaders of the Church.  The scandals that pushed Pope Benedict into resigning—the purloining of his personal papers by his butler and their release to a journalist—revealed just what a hotbed of intrigue, jealousy, and underhanded politics the Curia is.  This is nothing new—the stories of corruption and chicanery in the papal court can be found back into the early Middle Ages.  Systemic reform will be ineffective without personal conversion on the part of those who are part of the bureaucracy.  That sort of conversion has been rare over the centuries, but hopefully Pope Francis will encourage us all to take a long hard look at ourselves and how we, in our little worlds, fall into the same vices. 

The disease of idolizing superiors. This is the disease of those who court their superiors in the hope of gaining their favour. They are victims of careerism and opportunism; they honour persons and not God (cf. Mt 23:8-12). They serve thinking only of what they can get and not of what they should give. Small-minded persons, unhappy and inspired only by their own lethal selfishness (cf. Gal 5:16-25). Superiors themselves could be affected by this disease, when they court their collaborators in order to obtain their submission, loyalty and psychological dependency, but the end result is a real complicity.

One of the most nauseating sights one can see in Rome is the gathering of the capella papale before a papal ceremony.  In the half-hour or so before the scheduled arrival of the Pope, the various officials of the Curia arrive to take their places in the Vatican Basilica.  There are usually about six to eight rows reserved for them.  The Cardinals sit in the first row on gold chairs with their individual pre-dieus.  Behind them there are two to three rows of bishops seated on benches.  Behind them are the benches for the monsignors and priests who work in the Vatican or who represent the religious orders.  As the various men (this is an all male club) arrive in the reserved area, you see the lessers courting the greaters.  Bishops search out the cardinals; priests search out archbishops.  There is much bowing and scraping, the occasional kissing of a ring, the empty laugh, the glad-handing and the distracted glances as the various priests and prelates select their next target for a suck-up. It all continues until the first notes of the processional start and it resumes as soon as the Mass is over.  The same scene plays out on a different scale in the restaurants of Rome, at parties and receptions, even on the street when one encounters a potential patron or ally.  The whole structure reinforces the tendency of men to see themselves as people of importance rather than as those who are called to be of service.  What does it profit a person to gain the whole world and lose themselves in the process?  It takes people out of contact with reality and reinforces a fantasy world of exaggerated egos and misaligned values. 

I think what this highlights is the need not just for structural reform but for personal conversion.  Leave it to a Jesuit to sound the call.  It is a gift that Ignatius left his sons from his own experience at Manressa; thank you Francis for sharing that gift with the rest of us.  

More on the Pope's Christmas Message--including the biggest bombshell.

I have noticed that whenever I dip into the past, readership goes down and when I deal with current issues, it springs back up.  So, while I am really enthused about this Church of England thing, I need to swing to the bleachers; consequently back to Pope Francis and his message to the Roma Curia.  But remember this is not just for us to gloat over the sins of the boys in purple (a sin itself under the wonderfully named category of morose delectation—the savoring of another’s faults or misfortunes), it should serve each of us as well as a measure for our own conscience.  You don’t need have a miter to chip away at the credibility of our Catholic faith.  So Pope Francis went after the boys for:

The disease of rivalry and vainglory. When appearances, the colour of our clothes and our titles of honour become the primary object in life, we forget the words of Saint Paul: “Do nothing from selfishness or conceit but in humility count others better than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Phil 2:3-4). This is a disease which leads us to be men and woman of deceit, and to live a false “mysticism” and a false “quietism”. Saint Paul himself defines such persons as “enemies of the cross of Christ” because “they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things” (Phil 3:19).

The “Holy” See has long worked on the principle of rivalry and vainglory and now the Pope decides this is a “disease?”  I guess it is somewhat like smoking—for the longest time it was fashionable, a necessary social activity and all of a sudden someone decided that it wasn’t good for you—or for anyone within 100 feet of you.  Just as our eyes were opened to the dangers of tobacco, we should be grateful that this poison of pomposity and a zeal for its trappings has finally been called out.  Of course there are some—and we all know who don’t we—for whom it is still all about dressing up in more yards of silk than a Chinese empress ever dreamed of and parading around for people to kiss your ring and kneel for your blessing.  How much is a blessing from a self-idolater worth anyway?  I guess you need to go up to Gricigliano and ask the boys in blue.  And this is precisely the problem: how often do we fall for the bait represented by some grandiose prelate.  There is a saying that when a man becomes a bishop he has had his last bad meal and he will never hear the truth again.  How much to we get carried away in the moment fall all over the bishop or the Cardinal or whoever when they come to visit our parish.  We respectfully listen to what they have to say—whether it is worth listening to or not—and we bite our tongues rather than speak up and tell them what we believe.  Last November at their meeting in Baltimore, the American bishops showed a lot of hesitancy about the agenda for the family that clearly has the backing of Pope Francis.  They are not willing to go out on a limb and explore the possibilities to offer greater support to the non-traditional family structures that are very quickly becoming the norm in our society.  Yet the “Catholic in the pews” is supportive of Pope Francis.  The “Catholic in the pews” wants to see new pastoral approaches to the remarried, to same-sex households, to single parents, to couples who have opted for in vitro conception, and others who just don’t fit the traditional mold.  I am not saying that we want to abandon our traditional values, much less our moral heritage—but we do want to explore new ways to minister to those who feel themselves on the margins of the Church and we want ways to be more inclusive as a faith community.  Our bishops hesitate because we hesitate to speak up.  We are the fidelium (the faithful) of the consensus fidelium.  The deposit of the faith is held in our collective heart—not in some catechism or some tome of moral theology. 

I have no problem with bishops wearing red dresses, or even jeweled rings and crosses.  Granted some overdo it, but in principle I could care less.  I know good bishops who just like to dress up and I know sad examples of bishops who dress down in more functional attire.  What we need is to become a community of Truth where all can speak their mind (and their heart) and where we listen to one another and weigh carefully what each other has to say.  The real problem isn’t pomp; the problem is a hierarchical mentality.  Cure that and the pomposity will fall into line. 

The disease of existential schizophrenia. This is the disease of those who live a double life, the fruit of that hypocrisy typical of the mediocre and of a progressive spiritual emptiness which no doctorates or academic titles can fill. It is a disease which often strikes those who abandon pastoral service and restrict themselves to bureaucratic matters, thus losing contact with reality, with concrete people. In this way they create their own parallel world, where they set aside all that they teach with severity to others and begin to live a hidden and often dissolute life. For this most serious disease conversion is most urgent and indeed indispensable.

This is the real bombshell in the Christmas address.  I remember when I was living in Rome being invited to a Diplomatic Reception in Lateran Palace.  It was one of those scenes like you see in a movie with everyone dressed to the hilt—men in evening dress, women with their jewels, prelates in full peacock glory, waiters with trays of champagne and hors d’oeuvres, tables piled with pastries and all the empty chatter.  I was in the company of a priest friend, a chaplain in the Canadian military, and a handsome man.  There was a long line of prelates—including two cardinals—waiting to speak with him and invite him to dinner.  As he remarked to me afterwards: “the expectation is that I will be the dessert.”  The double-life of many in the Curia is a matter of open knowledge and frequent gossip in Rome.  And you know, it could to a certain extent be forgiven if it wasn’t so hypocritical with everyone posing as the paragon of moral virtue.  Francis’ “Who am I to judge” should be the blazon on every prelate’s coat of arms.  We all need to keep in our moral eye our own failures and sins and realize that none of us is in a position to judge—much less to condemn—others.  Francis defined this particular fault as a “schizophrenia” and so it is as so often we are able—all of us from the boys in the red dresses down to little old lady from county Monaghan who is daily at the communion rail—we are all able to compartmentalize our lives and put a fire wall between our own sins and our public persona.  Psalm 50 is my favorite prayer perhaps simply because it calls me to face my sins honestly and keeps me truthful to myself.  At least I hope it does. 

The disease of gossiping, grumbling and back-biting. I have already spoken many times about this disease, but never enough. It is a grave illness which begins simply, perhaps even in small talk, and takes over a person, making him become a “sower of weeds” (like Satan) and in many cases, a cold-blooded killer of the good name of our colleagues and confrères. It is the disease of cowardly persons who lack the courage to speak out directly, but instead speak behind other people’s backs. Saint Paul admonishes us to do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent” (Phil 2:14-15). Brothers, let us be on our guard against the terrorism of gossip!

 This gossiping, grumbling, and backbiting has long been part of the Vatican culture.  You can go back to the very dirty papal elections of the 16^th century where cardinals knocked out their rivals—or at least attempted to—by circulating the most scurrilous of rumors.  What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul in the process?  But again, the fight to the top of the caterpillar pillar is so vicious and it brings out the worst.  Unfortunately the Vatican runs on gossip: if you could turn it to energy you could light and heat all of Italy.  The nasty little comments that are slipped in between the primo piatto and the secundo at Abruzzi on the Piazza SS Apostoli, or La Sagrestia over near the Pantheon are legendary.  Just grab a table anywhere in the Borgo during lunch and you will overhear some nasty remark or another from a fellow in a soutane about one of his co-workers. 

Francis comes from a very different tradition.  I understand that Jesuits take a vow never to speak ill of another Jesuit.  Of course, like other vows people take the rate of keeping doesn’t match the rate of taking.  Nevertheless, it does create a certain culture in which you learn to be careful of speaking ill—especially when untrue—of others.  We could all benefit from that consciousness.  People can be just as vicious in staking out their niche in the local parish as some desk-jockey Monsignor in the Vatican in his battle for the purple.  Or it may not even be in the Church that we fall into gossip and undermining the reputation of others.  It might be in our Knights of Columbus Council or even the local swim club.  It might be at our job.  In whatever situation we find ourselves sinking to this low, we need to remember that it reflects very poorly on us as Catholics.  This is an area where you and I can do as much damage, and maybe even more, to the credibility of our Faith than any Cardinal or bishop ever could.

Francis Merry Christmas: Christians 15, Lions 0 cont.

 Let’s look some more at that bombshell that Pope Francis dropped on the Curia in his Christmas message—not only because it gives us some insight as to why the Papal Curia is as dysfunctional as it is, and not even because it gives us hints where the Pope sees that Reform is necessary, but maybe mostly to see if the silver buckled shoe on the feet of one Cardinal or another might also fit your foot or mine.  The New Year is a good time to examine our consciences as well as taking guesses about the state of another’s soul, or as Jesus put it, to take the beam out of our own eye before we try to remove the speck from someone else’s.

Pope Francis characterized the second spiritual disease infecting the Curia and, by extension, the Church as:

Another disease is the “Martha complex”, excessive busy-ness. It is found in those who immerse themselves in work and inevitably neglect “the better part”: sitting at the feet of Jesus (cf. Lk 10:38-42). Jesus called his disciples to “rest a while” (cf. Mk 6:31) for a reason, because neglecting needed rest leads to stress and agitation. A time of rest, for those who have completed their work, is necessary, obligatory and should be taken seriously: by spending time with one’s family and respecting holidays as moments of spiritual and physical recharging. We need to learn from Qohelet that “for everything there is a season” (3:1-15).

You know, when Leo XIII condemned “Americanism” in the 1899 Encyclical Testem Benevolentiae, one of the criticisms proffered by the Holy Father was that Americans tend to underappreciate the contemplative essence of the Christian life and here Pope Francis is slamming the prelates of the Roman Curia for the very same fault.  Notice that he hits them on two levels: they are not spending enough quality time with Christ, sitting at his feet (contemplative prayer) and they are not spending enough quality time with others, especially their families.  The Pope sees the Curia bureaucrats as men (and nowadays some women) who let their work consume them, forgetting that God did not created us for the purpose of work—even his work—but for love.  We were created to love God with our entire hearts, souls, strengths, and being and to love our neighbor as ourselves.  We need to redefine our lives putting the primacy of our life on relationships not on accomplishments.  But, of course, we are evaluated (judged) on our work and it is our work that wins us advancement.  But what does it profit us to gain the whole world and lose our very selves in the process?  How many of these bureaucrats have lost themselves in their desire to gain higher and higher position in the caterpillar tree that administers the institutional dimensions of the Catholic Church?  And at the same time, how many of us too trade time with God and time with those whom we are called to love in hopes of advancing our careers?  Oh, we do it for our families.  We do this to be better providers.  We do this so they can have tae kwon do.  We do this so they can afford piano lessons or to be in the school band.  yada yada yada   But at the end of the day we aren’t there for them because of all the things we “do for them.”  The fact of the matter is we opt for a higher standard of living that we could afford if we have our priorities in the right place.  At the end of the day all that matters is that we have been there and given them love.   

Then too there is the disease of mental and spiritual “petrification”. It is found in those who have a heart of stone, the “stiff-necked” (Acts 7:51-60), in those who in the course of time lose their interior serenity, alertness and daring, and hide under a pile of papers, turning into paper pushers and not men of God (cf. Heb 3:12). It is dangerous to lose the human sensitivity that enables us to weep with those who weep and to rejoice with those who rejoice! This is the disease of those who lose “the sentiments of Jesus” (cf. Phil 2:5-11), because as time goes on their hearts grow hard and become incapable of loving unconditionally the Father and our neighbour (cf. Mt 22:34-35). Being a Christian means “having the same sentiments that were in Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:5), sentiments of humility and unselfishness, of detachment and generosity.

And hasn’t this just been the problem?  We have cardinals and bishops and monsignors and priests who, far from having the shepherd’s heart that is a proffered grace of the Sacrament of Orders, have chosen to have hearts of stone.  The Law is what is important.  You know the routine—it is rooted in our Christian tradition from the first days: the High Priest declared: “We have a Law and by that Law this man must die.”  And so too we have our laws: who can go to Holy Communion; who can have a Church wedding or funeral; who can have their children baptized etc.  Gay people can’t be Eucharistic ministers or lectors.  Catholic School teachers must not be remarried after a divorce.  If you are in a same-sex marriage you can’t be the Director of Music.  And don’t forget the famous “Canon 915”—you know the one; it’s the canon that says “I’m holier than thou, you miserable piece of moral turpitude and I will decide that Jesus doesn’t want you coming to the Table of His Body and Blood.”  That’s a loose translation, admittedly, but you get the idea—or at least how some people read it.  Stone, stone, stone—hearts of stone that are quick to judge without knowing the story, without knowing the pain, without knowing the struggles.

This certainly has been the sin of some prelates in the Curia—or, at least formerly in the Curia and now, thanks to Francis the Compassionate, relegated to more ceremonial functions where they can do less harm.  But we find this same legalism in some of our parishes and even among the laity who, given their life experience, should know better.  But it is so much fun to be better than everyone else and to make sure that they, and everyone, knows it.  Why doesn’t the sins of others make us weep in compassion for the struggles they have faced in making their decisions?  Why do we let the failings of others give us an unholy glee to celebrate our moral righteousness?  I think Francis is right on—not just in the sins of the boys in the purple dresses but in raising the questions that should give us all pause. 

We can only be hopeful that the call of Pope Francis to his Curia will bring them to an ever deeper awareness of the Compassion Christ has for each of us and a renewed desire to use their office bring the mercy and forgiveness of God into the lives of all people to heal us of our own spiritual maladies and bring us reconciliation for the forgiveness of our sins.  We need a new face on the public image of the Church.  Francis has brought that at his level, but it needs to spread down and out through the entire administration, not just in Rome but also to our dioceses and our parishes.  For too long everyone has known what the Catholic Church is against.  That is no way to spread the Gospel.  Now we are being given the chance to proclaim loudly what we are for: the spread of the Good News of Jesus Christ that in his infinite mercy God has so loved the world that he sent his only son that whoever believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life; God did not send his Son to condemn the world but rather so that the world might be saved through him.