The John Paul Papacy, A Mixed Legacy III

I recently had a friend who reads this blog ask me about something that I had written in my first entry about the legacy of John Paul II and that is what is the connection between the more conservative bishops that were appointed to American sees during his pontificate and the establishment of diplomatic relations between Washington and the Holy See by the Reagan administration in 1984, so I want to revisit this topic in case I have not been clear.

There had been a long tradition of socially progressive bishops in the United States going back into the nineteenth century with such prelates as Cardinal James Gibbons, Archbishop John Ireland, and Bishop Dennis J. O’Connell.  They were succeeded in turn by other progressive leaders as Archbishop John T. McNicholas, O.P., Archbishop Bernard Sheil, and Bishop Francis Haas.  These were all men whose outlook had been shaped by Pope Leo XIII’s Encyclical Letter Rerum Novarum  and later by Pius XI’s Quadrigesimo Anno.   Furthermore, when Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, the head of the ‘Holy Office’—today’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—came down heavy on American Jesuit John Courtney Murray, even conservative prelates, and especially Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York, came to the defense of Murray’s harmonization of Catholic tradition with the American socio-economic-political outlook.  Spellman went so far as to defy Ottaviani and bring Murray (whom Ottaviani had formally “silenced”) to the Second Vatican Council as his personal theological advisor.  In the years before and during the second Vatican Council we saw a blooming of a theologically and socially progressive hierarchy with men like Cardinal Albert Meyer, Cardinal Joseph Ritter, Cardinal John Carberry, Cardinal Lawrence Sheehan, and Cardinal John Dearden, to name only the top ranking.  And then there was the eccentric and indomitable Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston who was willing to overthrow just about everything and break any rule to make the world spin along more happily. Blessed be his memory!   Even men who could be quite authoritarian in the governance of their dioceses—Cardinal Patrick O’Boyle of Washington or Cardinal John Cody of Chicago—championed the cause of minorities, of the poor, and of labor.  It was not entirely a happy situation as men like Cardinal James Francis McIntyre of Los Angeles and Archbishop Thomas Toolen resisted the Civil Rights Movement in particular, but the tide was against them.  In the years after Vatican II positions in the American hierarchy were increasingly filled with talented men of vision—Bishops Howard Hubbard of Albany, Matthew Clark of Rochester, John L. May of Saint Louis, Paul John Hallinan of Atlanta, William Borders of Baltimore, Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle, John R. Quinn of Oklahoma City and then San Francisco, and Roger Mahoney who would end up as Cardinal Archbishop of Los Angeles.  Many of these men—though not all—owed their advancement in part to Archbishop Jean Jadot, Apostolic Delegate to the United States from 1973-1980.   Jadot, a protégé of Cardinal Leo Suenens who had been a principal architect of the Second Vatican Council,  came from an aristocratic Belgian family and had exceptionally progressive views;  he significantly marked the American hierarchy by his choice of intelligent and articulate prelates who were committed to the social agenda laid out by Popes Leo XIII, Benedict XV, Pius XI, John XXIII, and Paul VI as well as by the Second Vatican Council.  Well, Suenens sowed the winds of change but it was Ronald Reagan who reaped the whirlwind.  In 1983 the American bishops—at that point a body heavily influenced, if not controlled, by Jadot protégés, published the Peace Pastoral: The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response.  It was a dramatic counter-voice to the ost-politik of President Reagan and virtually was a Catholic vote of no-confidence in Reagan foreign policy.  And that was only the one shoe.  The bishops were preparing a second pastoral letter that they would in fact issue in 1986: Economic Justice for All.   It would prove to be a critique of Republican economic theory that would clearly show that Reaganonmics is not compatible with Catholic magisterial teaching on distributive justice.   Meanwhile, Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle publicly declared that he would withhold half his taxes rather than allow money to go to the nuclear arms race.  This was a direct challenge to the Reagan administration. 

This split between the Catholic Church in the United States and Reagan policy—both regarding the Arms Race and Economics—threatened to undermine the joint efforts of John Paul and Ronald Reagan to destroy the hegemony of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe.  To keep abreast in the Arms Race, the Soviet Union had to pour its resources unstintingly into military expenditures with no room for developing a consumer economy.  Reagan and his advisors counted on this “breaking the bank” and on it fomenting unrest among the unhappy citizenries of Eastern Europe.  Meanwhile, for his part, the Pope was brandishing the sword of Polish nationalism and egging the population of his homeland on to demand a better life than the Polish government or its Soviet overseers could provide.  Marxisim in Eastern Europe was fighting a war on two fronts.  And it worked.  Poland fell and the dominoes followed.  But that was not until 1989.  In 1984 Ronald Reagan still had to figure out how to hold it together.  He did not want to fight a war on two fronts also—Communism in Eastern Europe and Catholics at home. 

The Holy See had long wanted full diplomatic relations with the Holy See.  When the Popes lost their temporal power in 1870, several predominately Catholic nations maintained ambassadorial ties.  The United States did not. In fact, Congress by law prohibited such diplomatic relations.  In the years between the loss of the Papal States and the restoration of Sovereignty with the Lateran Treaty, more nations gradually began to exchange ambassadors with the Holy See.  Each ambassador gave the Holy See more prestige and credibility in international affairs.  During World War II, President Roosevelt, unable to name an ambassador, sent Myron Taylor as a “personal representative” to the Vatican.  The Vatican proved to be a very important diplomatic post during World War II as representatives from various sides were posted there and it was one of the best—if not the best—channels of communication.  Nevertheless, the outcry from America Protestant groups about any sort of American governmental presences—no matter how unofficial—was so strong that it would not be possible for many years yet to have official ties at the ambassador level.  Periodically Presidents sent “personal representatives” but there was no standing mission.   By 1980 most world powers had established full diplomatic relations with the Papacy, but the Holy See always wanted the prestige of American recognition.  Ronald Reagan gave this in 1984.  As a Protestant himself, and as a not particularly religious man, he was in a good position to do so, but there was still a considerable public outcry and several legal challenges.  Nevertheless, President Reagan appointed William A. Wilson first ambassador to the Holy See.  He served until 1986 when he was succeeded by Frank Shakespeare. 

 “Nothing gets you  nothing” as Monsieur Thénardier likes to sing and while there is no public record of a deal, there is a definite change in the type of priest appointed to the episcopacy during and after the Reagan years.  The concerns moved from issues of social justice, peace, the economy, and the environment to more “in house” matters.  A nominee for the miter—or having a miter, for advancement—had to be explicitly opposed to the ordination of women.  He had to have not blotted his copybook on contraception.  He had to be clear on the Church’s teaching about abortion and same-sex relationships.  There is nothing wrong with making sure that a candidate for bishop adheres to Church teaching, but what was curious is that there were no such litmus tests when it came to the Church teaching on war, on capital punishment, on economic justice.  There was lots of wiggle room there.   The ‘80’ and ‘90’s saw the American hierarchy change drastically in its outlook.  They became far more establishment, some not bothering to conceal their open and uncritical preference for the Republican Party and its policies.  Meanwhile, priests, religious, and laity who were involved in the areas of maintaining Church teaching on social justice—labor relations, health issues, immigration and migrants, against the death-penalty, civil rights—found themselves unsupported by many of their bishops and priests.

The Pope Francis sort of bishop whose priority is the poor was becoming virtually unknown in the United States.  Prelates like Raymond Burke, Robert Morlino, Robert Finn, Edward Slattery, Michael Sheridan, Thomas Olmstead, Frank Dewane became more and more the face of the American Church.  Decked out in pre-conciliar finery and extending their beringed episcopal paw to be slobbered over by the faithful as they proceeded to the altar for a retro-Mass,  they were the epitome of the Tea Party at prayer. 

A few years ago I had a chance to sit and visit with Thomas Gumbleton, retired auxiliary of Detroit.  Bishop Gumbleton is the “last of the lefties”—named a bishop in the heady days after Vatican II and always an outspoken voice crying for Peace and for Justice, he was a thorn in the side of Presidents and Popes alike.  That is what prophets do.  I asked Bishop Gumbleton why there had been such a shift in the way the hierarchy saw things.  He didn’t follow my suspicions of a symbiotic relationship between John Paul’s papacy and Ronald Reagan’s administration.  His explanation was more simple.  He said “In my day, we bishops came from families where our fathers were bricklayers, or worked in a factory, or carried the mail.  Today, my brother bishops’ fathers were Doctors or Lawyers, or Businessmen.  They were raised to think that way.  That is the way their fathers thought.”  Ockham’s razor says that we should accept the simpler explanation and that would be Bishop Gumbleton’s.  Who am I to argue with Ockham, I am—after all—a medievalist.  But I still say, that we got the John Paul Bishops as part of an understanding between the Reagan White House and the Holy See to reach their mutual goal of bringing down the “Evil Empire.”   There are too many fingerprints to think the demise of American Catholic Progressivism was a natural death.  The Good News is, of course, that our whole Christian Faith is based on Resurrection and it does seem that we might be in store for a better cut of Episcopal Leadership.  As they like to say at those Tridentine Masses, Oremus.  

The John Paul Papacy: A Mixed Legacy

A statue in Gdansk, Poland, shows Pope John Paul
and President Ronald Reagan walking together as
joint architects of the collapse of the former Soviet
bloc.  

I mentioned in yesterday’s posting the “complex ambiguities of Pope John Paul’s papacy” and I want to clarify what I meant.  John Paul II was an extremely popular pope and in many circles his papacy is glossed over without careful examination as one of the brighter spots of the Church in the last century, but truth demands that a more critical look be taken and a more balanced appreciation be rendered. 

I was living in Rome in the final years of Pope John Paul’s papacy and was, in fact, in Saint Peter’s Square earlier in the afternoon of the day he died.  An interviewer from the BBC randomly picked me out of the crowd, knowing only that I was an English speaker, and asked to talk with me.  (When he found out that I am a professional historian and was a Romanista, I ended up being taken on by the BBC and several other networks as a commentator during the funeral of the Holy Father and the election and installation of Pope Benedict.)   The reporter asked me for my evaluation of the Holy Father’s reign and I answered by quoting Dickens: “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” 

It was the best of times in terms of John Pauls’ incredible ability to move world-wide audiences to be able to see possibilities for human betterment.   In particular it was the best of times because it marked the collapse of the Marxist ideology which had ensnared hundreds of millions of people in totalitarian regimes that could offer their citizens nothing worth having in this mundane sphere and no hope for the eternal sphere.  The remarkable events of his 1979, 1983, and 1987 visits to Poland chipped away at the first of the dominoes to fall.  John Paul’s battle cry was “Solidarity” by which he advanced the socio-economic-political idea—in contradistinction to both Marxist and capitalist ideologies—that members of society have a set of mutual responsibilities towards one another that require a collaboration in which those who have act to alleviate the distress of those who lack, not merely by relieving the needs but by creating just social structures that work to mutual benefit.  Such solidarity not only undermines the “class struggle” of Marxism but also the “income inequalities” of free market capitalism.  The Pope’s ideal of “Solidarity” was taken up by the Poles and became the battle cry to topple the Marxist regime there.  Unfortunately it has yet to be heard in the income-inequality nations of the West but Pope Francis is working to change that—much to Rush Limbaugh’s and Ken Lagone’s annoyance.  (You go, Francis.) 

It was no one less than Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Communist premier of the Soviet Union, who has said that Pope John Paul was the principal architect of the collapse of the Marxist dictatorships of the former Soviet Bloc.  But Pope John Paul is also credited with a significant role in bringing down the dictatorships in Paraguay, Haiti and Chile and there is no doubt that he was a major player in the arena of human rights in the second half of the twentieth century. 

John Paul was also remarkable in the strides the Catholic Church made in ecumenism during his pontificate.  His particular interest was with the Orthodox Churches of the East and while—and probably because of the Polish-Russian tensions arising from the stress being put on the Soviet Empire by John Paul in working for Polish autonomy—the Russian Orthodox Church was never brought into closer ties with Catholicism, John Paul made some remarkable progress with the other Churches of Orthodoxy.  More remarkable, however, was his subtle recognition of Anglicanism.  I remember seeing him come to the Holy Doors of the Pauline Basilica escorted on the one side by Metropolitan Athanasias of the Greek Orthodox Church and on the other by Archbishop George Carey of Canterbury.  Pope John Paul consistently treated the Archbishop of Canterbury on a par with the Orthodox.  While the Catholic Church still officially  has not recognized Anglican Orders, the protocols established by John Paul (and not later followed by Pope Benedict XVI) gave an implicit acceptance of Anglicanism.  A similar breakthrough came on October 5, 1991 when Pope John Paul celebrated Vespers with the Lutheran primates of Sweden and Finland and the Lutheran Bishop of Oslo.  All sat in copes and miters, the Bishop of Rome and his separated brother Bishops, in front of the papal altar in the Vatican Basilica.  Lex orandi, lex credendi:  liturgical praxis establishes the doctrine we hold in belief.  Without yet giving official recognition to the valid orders of these separated brethren, the Pope showed that we can begin to construct a path through the complex issues of restoring full unity to the Church.

In short, I think we can say that as far as “foreign policy” went, John Paul’s papacy was hugely successful.  As far as “domestic policy”: well, that is a different story. 

The internal governance of the Church in the papacy of John Paul II was a disaster.  While he was extremely popular personally, his teaching went unheeded by most Catholics.  During his funeral, while I was doing consulting for the BBC and other news outlets, I had the opportunity to speak with hundreds who had come to Rome (among the four million pilgrims who came to Rome for the funeral).  It was an overwhelmingly young audience—mostly in their twenties and thirties.  “Yes,” they assured me they “love this Pope.”  “He was a great Pope.”  “It is like losing a grandfather.”  “Do you agree with this Pope,” I asked “on homosexuality?”  “Do you follow his teaching on pre-marital sex?,” “On contraception?,” On marriage in the Church?”  The answer was overwhelmingly, “No—but we loved him.  We don’t agree with him, but we love him.” 

John Paul was without impact on the consciences of the vast majority of his followers—not only on contraception or same-sex relationships, but on the very issues where he found success in his program of smashing Marxism.   Westerners in general and Americans in particular cheered on his attacks on Marxism, but did they embrace his theory of “Solidarity?”  Nothing could be further from “Solidarity” than the Trickle Down Economics of the Reagan Presidency or the Thatcher Ministry.  To push his campaign against Communism to victory in the Soviet Bloc, John Paul formed a political alliance with the Reagan White House that compromised the papal integrity when it came to economic morality.  The symbiotic relationship of the Reagan administration and the John Paul Papacy resulted in the fact that the Catholic Church could hardly be believed in its call for economic justice.  The heritage of John XXIII and Mater et Magistra and Paul VI and Popolorum Progressio  was squandered and Catholicism became identified with the radical selfishness of Reaganomics. 

Furthermore, after the American Bishops’ pastoral letters on the nuclear arms race (The Challenge of Peace, 1983) and economic justice (Economic Justice for All, 1986) there was a very sharp change in the sort of men who were appointed to be bishops in the United States.  In 1984 the Reagan administration established formal diplomatic relations with the Holy See—something the Vatican had long sought but which had always met with much opposition in the United States from those non-Catholics who saw such relations as giving formal recognition to one religious body over others in violation of the American Constitution.  Such favors came at a price and that price was bishops who would not ruffle the political right.  The Social Justice wing of the Catholic Church in the United States was pushed more and more to the margins and the Jadot Bishops (those bishops appointed during the time Archbishop Jean Jadot was Apostolic Delegate, 1973-1980) who were the voice of “Vatican II” Catholicism melted into obscurity as the new breed of John Paul bishops replaced them.  The Church’s social activism –that is the Social Gospel—was more and more in the hands of brave and committed laity who felt cut-off from their own bishops who ignored the grave structural injustices in our society and “obsessed” (to use a current word) on select issues that reinforced the right-wing agenda and distracted the faithful from an integral approach to Christian moral life. 

John Paul paid a heavy price for selling out to the political right.  When he cried out against the Gulf Wars—I and II (1990-91 and 2003-2011), the American bishops did not echo the cry.  Far from it.  Editorials appeared in many Catholic diocesan newspapers on how these wars met the criterion for “just war.”  No, the focus remained on abortion and the rising “threat” of gay rights.  The fear was universal health care and the implications that would have for Catholic institutions.  Catholics were admonished for not falling in line behind their “shepherds” and a political agenda that was morally a very mixed bag.   “Cafeteria Catholics” were denounced for their selective agreement with Church policy, while those who accused them themselves were picky eaters at the magisterial table. 

In the end, John Paul left—as far as the American Church goes—a dispirited faithful who felt alienated from their bishops and caught in the crossfire of the culture wars that have been undermining the larger American society.  Is he John Paul the Great?  Only time will tell—this title has only been awarded to three popes so far, and it takes centuries before history grants it.  Will it do so for John Paul?  Hmm.   John Paul was an enigmatic Pope.  It was an ambiguous papacy.  It was the best of times and it was the worst of times.  

Worship: It Is More Blessed to Receive Than to Give

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams presides

over Lessons and Carols in his Cathedral Church

Christmas Eve we drove into town to go to the Cathedral for 4 pm mass.  It wasn’t my idea.  Usually a priest relative says mass here at home for the family but this year an about-to-be-inlaw suggested we join her and her family for the mass where she was to be a Eucharistic Minister at a special “Children’s Liturgy.”  I hate to be a Grinch but children’s liturgies are one of those things that I think are good ideas and bad—or at least painful to sit through—in practice.  And at Christmas it is just—well chaotic.  I will say that the young girl who appeared to have some developmental issues read the Old Testament Lesson and Epistle as well as any adult (including any priest) if not better.  But as huge as the Cathedral is, there were several hundred people standing for lack of seats.  The Lectionary and the Eucharistic Prayer for Children is just a bit too dummied down (at least for me) and on Christmas Eve the kids’ energy level is off the charts.  The Rector too, while he tried to do a good job, was obviously conscious of the time and the whole liturgy had a feeling of being rushed even though it was an hour and twenty minutes.  I am sure a lot of people—especially parents and grandparents of the kids who crowded around the manger for the homily—loved it and fortunately there was (despite what I had been told there would be) no Santa Claus coming in after communion to doff his hat and leave a gift at the manger.  Nevertheless, I left mass feeling I had been through an ordeal rather than celebrated the great mystery of the Incarnation.  That was me; others, I am sure, loved it.  And I have no doubt that God who delights in children more than religious fussiness (if Jesus in the Gospels, especially  Matthew, is to believed) was well pleased.  Nevertheless, I needed something more. 
        After some obligatory (but short) visits to various relatives I made it back to the country town where I spend the holidays and decided to stop in at the local Methodist Church for their Christmas Eve Lessons and Carols service that began at 9 pm.  This is a small hamlet of about fifty houses, with two Protestant Churches.  The Catholic Church was closed two years ago and now is an “outreach center” with food, clothes, and limited medical services for economically stretched families.   I tend to forget how many people in our society, especially in rural America, are still suffering from the economic crash brought on by the twenty-eight years of unsound and immoral fiscal policies (aka “trickle down economics”) that are creating a vacuum where the middle class used to be.  I give credit to the Catholic Diocese here that instead of selling the Church property they maintain it as an outreach station.  There is an ancient tradition for this in the diaconal churches of Rome.  I will have to do a blog entry on that one day.   
     In any event, I settled into a pew in the Methodist Church—a tiny white clapboard building that could hold a hundred people at the most.  There might have been forty people for the service, including the seven member choir (four women, three men), the pastor, and the music director.  It was a lovely simple service.  The music director is a first-rate organist (a little less successful with the piano) and has a phenomenal tenor voice.  He opened the service with a solo of Handel’s “Who can abide the day of his coming?” from the Messiah.  The choir did their best for seven people of somewhat advanced years.  We sang a good variety of carols.  The lessons were the traditional ones for Lessons and Carols and they relayed the story of salvation from Adam to John’s proclamation that “The Word became flesh.”
      It was a pleasant regrouping of spiritual energy after the more frenetic mass.  But, while I have often attended Protestant services, it struck me last evening how different the Catholic and Protestant approach to worship is.  For us Catholics—and I think the Orthodox as well as (though perhaps to a lesser extent) liturgical Protestants (“High-Church” Episcopalians and Lutherans)—liturgy is about “doing” something for God.  I seem to recall that the word “Liturgy” comes from the Greek, leitourgia “The people’s action” implying the exercise of a civic duty towards the gods.  For more “Low-Church” or evangelical Protestants, worship is more about receiving from God than doing—being nourished or fed as they often say.  I am not going to say that one approach is better than the other.  In fact I think we need a balance that integrates our responsibility to offer God worship with God’s anxious care to provide us with his sustenance.  Too often at Mass I think we are into the doing.  Sing this hymn. Recite that prayer.  Stand.  Kneel.  Bow.  Up and Back for Communion. I think Mass too often becomes one-thing-after-another ritual. 
     Sometimes, though, Evangelical style worship can be all feeling and no substance.  A friend of mine who is an Evangelical told me about a Memorial Day Weekend service at his Bible Church in Denver CO.  He said:
“It was so moving.  First they sang The Navy Hymn and everyone who served in the Nave stood up while the choir sang.  Then they sang The Army Hymn (God of our Fathers Whose Almighty Hand) and everyone who served in the Army stood. Next came The Air Force Hymn and all those who had been in the Air Force stood. Then they sang The Marine Hymn, and all who had served in the Marines stood.  And finally, as they raised a forty-foot American flag over the pulpit we all sang America the Beautiful. I was so moved.”    As a Catholic I was somewhat appalled at such a service—not that I am not patriotic but because Jesus was never mentioned.  This was all style and no substance—total emotion and zero Gospel. That is not what we need either.  When I hear Joel Osteen or some other TV preachers I think it is little more than positivism for bible readers and I think our faith is meant to be much more than that.  The Gospel excites me, makes me critique myself and the world around me, calls forth a response from me.  It touches my heart not with an emotional feather but with an energy that calls me to respond.   
      I think we can have worship that both touches the heart and proclaims the Gospel.  I am fortunate that I am able to participate in the prayer life of a local monastic community, joining them most days for both morning and evening prayer.  The calm slow recitation of the psalms, the lesson with the reflective silence afterward, the ability to pray so much of the office from memory or with attentive listening gives a good balance to the higher pitched and more active demands of participation in the Eucharist.  I think that a healthy prayer life needs both sacramental and non-sacramental worship—in addition to solitude and silence for meditation.  Too many Catholics are unaware of prayer beyond the mass and, perhaps, (and especially for us older types) the devotional prayers such as the rosary or the Stations of the Cross.  It is too soon to evaluate the effects of the current revision of the Mass but perhaps what we need it not so much to revise our Eucharistic liturgy as to look at the entire spectrum of prayer, communal and private, and see how we can revitalize spiritual life for the average Catholic.  
      This brings me back to Lessons and Carols.  The service was designed by Edward White Benson, Anglican Bishop of Truro in England in 1880.  Benson went on to become the Archbishop of Canterbury before his death in 1896.  (His youngest son ended up a Catholic Priest.)  Benson looked at the mediocrity of Church life in his day and realized that some creativity was needed in the Church of England to nourish the waning religiosity of the ordinary people.  He modeled Lessons and Carols rather loosely on a Catholic Matins service, substituting carols and hymns for the psalms.  It has gone on to become a Christmas tradition in many parts of the world, a service cherished not only by Anglicans but by Protestants and Catholics alike.  Perhaps today we need some more creativity to make spiritual life come alive for contemporary Christians.  I don’t think the new translation of the Mass does that, in fact I don’t think the Mass, as wonderful as it is,  is enough but needs to be the jewel set into the crown of a life of prayer.  The stiffness of current liturgical practice in the Catholic Church falls short of meeting the spiritual needs of many.  We may need the protein of sacramental ritual but we also need the spiritual carbs of more scripture oriented worship. After all, our faith tells us that it is not so much what we do for God but what God offers us.  We live not by bread (and wine) alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.      

Church Reform Today: The Political Ties of Bishops, 1

One of the goals, indeed the chief goal, of the Gregorian Reform was to free the Church from political entanglement with the Empire.  The purpose was not create the two separate spheres, or I should say separated spheres, of Church and State which our American mythology values so highly because the Church, with its mission to proclaim the kingdom of God, cannot act as if the State—or any other institution—simply exists in a universe parallel to itself.  The Gospel demands that we take an appropriately critical, critical according to the norms of the Gospel, stance towards the world and all that is in it.  By critical I do not mean negative.  A negative critique of creation slides too easily towards Gnosticism.  By critical I mean that we as Church must critique the world as to where it does and where it doesn’t match up to the Gospel.  Note: we as Church.  It is not the role of the “Institution” alone to do this.  Indeed, the Institution, which is not the Church but only one aspect of Christ’s Church, itself must stand under the critique of the Gospel.  That itself is a lesson that most people in the Institution seem to have forgotten these days.   But to critique with integrity we must not only have stood under the judgment of the Gospel ourselves, we must not be indebted to the institutions we critique.  I am not sure that as the Catholic Church we are equipped to critique our society.  The sex abuse scandal has revealed the lack of gospel integrity in the Church, not because of the sinfulness of certain clergy or religious (though that does not help), but because we, both as Institution and as Community of the Faithful became complicit in the abuse by our failure to address the issue honestly and openly.  We will always have sinners in our midst.  There will be sexual predators of all varieties because human society, and we are a human society, will always have sexual predators.  We will have adulterers and fornicators of both gay and straight sorts. We will have drunks and druggies, thieves, embezzlers, abortionists, those who practice euthanasia, who bear false witness, who cheat their employees, who don’t give their employers an honest day’s work, and who pollute the air and water.  We will have people who take us to wars that cannot be justified, and those who sell bonds that are junk.  Sinners are what makes the world go ‘round and moreover Jesus died for them.  They belong in Church.  indeed, they—or rather we—are the Church.  Don’t get on your high horse about “those” or “that kind of people” or “them.”  We have met the sinner and he is us” to paraphrase Pogo.  That being said, however, it is not our task as Church to bless sin by tacit complicity in remaining silent.  Acknowledging our own sins and failings, individually and collectively, we need to be able to speak out about injustices in the world around us—from sexual abuse of minors to abortion to the death penalty to unjust wars, to human rights abuses, to whatever is wrong and unjust in the ways that we relate to one another whether individually or societally.  Because I sin, there are fundamental wrongs in the way I myself and an individual treat people around me.  I need to be reminded of that and challenged to take responsibility for that.  And there are fundamental wrongs in the way that I, not as an individual but as a member of our American society, treat people around me.  I—and other Americans—need to be reminded of that and take responsibility for that.  And there are fundamental wrongs in the way that I, not as an individual but as a member of the Church, treat people around me.  I—and others in the Church with me—need to be reminded of that and take responsibility for that. 
     One of the ways that I, as a member of American society, am guilty of fundamental wrongs in the way I relate to others around me is that I tolerate the murder of the unborn, hundreds of thousands of the unborn.  I don’t approve of it but I am as complicit in it as any bishop has been complicit in the sexual abuse of minors.  I know it goes on.  I confess it is wrong.  I lament it.  But I go about my day; I eat my meals; I go to work; I hang-out with my friends; and I sleep at night in spite of it.  “I wish we could do something about it.”      But that is only one of the sins I am complicit in as a member of our society.  I stood by while Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfield led George Bush like a pig with a ring in his nose to war—and led us to war along with him—a war that cannot and never could be morally justified and a war that was energized by a knowing web of lies about WMDs.  And I see the coffins come home and the mothers and the wives and the children trying to make heroes of those who are in fact victims because these deaths must have some significance more than the loss of pawns on a chessboard to make the Vice President and his friends even richer than they are.  And I watched while hundreds of thousands of senior citizens were robbed of their retirements by the Savings and Loans Debacles.  And I have no idea how many people are put to death—legally but not morally—in Texas and Virginia and wherever else while I sit down to dinner, or have a drink on the patio, or sleep undisturbed at night.  And Latinos who just want a chance for them and their children to have a better life die in the desert night after night while I dream undisturbed.   And I know that racism didn’t die with Miss Hilly Holbrook when I hear Sunday Mass goers say “Well, he isn’t my president.” 
     There was a time when our bishops gave moral leadership.  There was a time when our bishops wrote a pastoral letter warning us about the fundamental moral evils beneath “Reaganomics”—you know that system that made some people rich before it made a lot of people poor when it imploded back in 2008.   There was a time when our bishops gave moral leadership and wrote a pastoral letter on War and Peace.  They didn’t make these letters up out of whole cloth.  They took the scriptures, the Fathers of the Church, papal pronouncements, the Documents of Vatican II—they mined the whole tradition to give leadership in our day and age.  But today?  Where are they today?

     “When a Baptist gets money, he becomes a Presbyterian,” a friend told me a few years back. “And when a Methodist wants to join the country club, he becomes an Episcopalian.  When a Catholic priest becomes a bishop, he becomes a Republican.”  One of the senior bishops in the United States, a man who has been a bishop since the “old days,” even before the Apostolic Delegation of Jean Jadot and his crop of liberal Vatican II bishops, told me “The problem with the bishops today is that they are the sons of doctors and lawyers and professionals.  They have no connection with the working class—they were raised to see the working class people as a threat—they come from ‘management’ families.”  Yes, I think that is part of the problem.  The bishops know only a segment of society, they have lost touch—as most white Americans—with their own roots.  But I think the problem is far more serious.     You have men as bishops who have lost their socio-political autonomy and who see the challenges facing society not from the perspective of a Gospel critique but from a political ideology.  More to come.