By George 2

Leo XIII, the Pope who introduced the

Catholic Church to modernity

Weigel lays the foundation for his book by claiming—and rightly—that Leo XIII breaks the continuity of what Weigel calls “Counter-Reformation Catholicism” which he characterizes as the marriage of catechetical instruction with devotional piety.  I think this is another genius insight—both Leo’s radical turn towards modernity from the defensive-mode Catholicism that preceded him and the description of pre-Leonine Catholicism as a combination of catechism and devotions.  However, what raises my suspicions of Weigel and I seeing things very differentlyis the term “Counter –Reformation.”  Historians are very divided on the precise nature of the program of Church Reform in the sixteenth-century.  There are those Catholic historians who see Ignatius and the Society of Jesus, Philip Neri and the Oratory, the Theatines, Mary Ward, Charles Borromeo and the Council of Trent all as a reaction to Luther and Calvin—thus “Counter-Reformation.”  I belong to the other school of thought that looks through a wider lens and sees the above in the context of Ferdinand and Isabella’s Spanish Reformation, the Fifth Lateran Council, Desiderius Erasmus, Dean Colet, Teresa of Avila, the Capuchins, the Ursulines, and call it “The Catholic Reformation.”  The issue is whether sixteenth-century Reform of the Church came about only because of Luther and the Protestant Reformers or was there a genuine movement towards Reform in the Church that happened independently of—and had even begun previously to—Luther and his contemporaries?  Indeed, there is even the question whether Luther and others were even part of that same impetus for Reform and their break with the Catholic Church due to the Catholic Reform proceeding too slowly for their little patience?  This question of “Catholic Reformation” or “Counter-Reformation” has serious implications for ecclesiology and for ecumenism and while it can never be resolved one way or the other, it needs to be discussed, argued, and understood.  Weigel and I obviously see the issue of Catholic Reformation/Counter Reformation from very different perspectives and that will undoubtedly play itself out as I delve further into his book. 
That being said—and remember I think his identification of Leo XIII as the Pope who breaks the train of this Counter Reformation (or Catholic Reformation) Catholicism with its emphasis on catechism and piety, is sheer genius—I also think he is right on with the unsuitability of this catechism and rosary Catholicism for the modern age.  (Which is not to say that the catechism, much less the rosary, doesn’t have a place in contemporary Catholicism—only that we have to have a much more deeply rooted and more intellectually sophisticated faith if we are to be anything more than religious idiosyncratists.) 
Weigel makes the argument that both the “traditional Catholics” (whom I usually refer to as “neo-trads” because the traditions by which they identify themselves are not part of the Tradition/Deposit of Faith but later customs and pieties) and the “progressives” by which term he means the Catholic-Lite variety we so often find today reading the NCR or going to dour Voice of the Faithful covens held in the borrowed Presbyterian basements, cannot move beyond the “rule-based catechetical devotional Catholicism.”  Weigel claims that the one group wants to “tighten up and ratchet down the rules;” the other wants to “loosen the bolts in the name of openness or compassion.” For Weigel—and I agree—both groups are wrong because the rules-catechism-piety type religion is waiting to catch a train that left the station more than a century ago when Leo began serious engagement with the social complexities of the modern world. For the neo-trads: you can’t put the toothpaste back into the tube.  And for the happy-clappies—why remodel a house that no one is interested in living in any more?  Whichever end of the spectrum from which you are coming: we need something new.  That something new Weigel calls “Evangelical Catholicism”—a faith rooted in taking the Word of God to heart in our daily lives and nourishing ourselves with a full sacramental life in the Church.  So far I am with him.  However—as I look ahead, I see some stormy seas and realize that we have some very different ideas of how the barque of Peter should set these sails of Word and Sacrament. I also can’t help but wonder if George is doing a bait and switch—talking the new game but offering his reader the same old same old.  I am seeing hints that beneath the “Evangelical”
 language there is little more than catechism and rosary beads. 

Papal Resignations! VIII

The chimney in the Sistine

Chapel that will signal the

election of the new pope.

Electing a pope while there is a living former pope is pushing the Church into unchartered waters.  Pope Benedict was expected today to approve rules permitting the opening of the conclave to be advanced from March 15, what had been the earliest possible date under existing rules.   As I mentioned in the February 16^th posting, beginning the conclave on March 15^th would probably throw the installation of the new pontiff into Holy Week—a time in which those Cardinals who are also residential archbishops need to back in their own dioceses.  But there is a problem in advancing the date, as that shortens the time the Cardinals have for the necessary discussions to discern what the Church needs in new leadership.
The critical situation in which the Church finds itself—and to which I referred in my last posting—is only highlighted by today’s announcement of the resignation of Cardinal Keith O’Brien from his post as Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh and his decision not to attend the conclave due to allegations that he is guilty of “inappropriate behavior” going back thirty years.  Several priests and a former priest have accused the prelate of unspecified actions, the implication being of sexual advances. 
The Catholic Church is in a serious crisis of credibility and it will take more than a new pope for it to face the challenges successfully.  Regardless of the Cardinals’ desire to be home in their own dioceses for Holy Week, shortening the time for the Cardinals to meet and discuss the qualities needed in a new pope is not a helpful strategy right now.  The Vatican Bank scandals, clerical misconduct, the pedophilia scandals, the abuse of power in the Curia, the challenges by the Lefebvrist schismatics, along with serious questions as to where the Church is going in ecumenism and interfaith relations, liturgical policies, role of women in the Church, the state of the Church in China, all require intense study and discussion by the College of Cardinals so that they can help set an agenda and then select the most suitable candidate to carry out the necessary reforms.  This is not a papal election like the election of 1958 or 1963 or the elections of 1978.  Work that should have been done in 2005 and was not can no longer be delayed.  Benedict did not create these problems and they were—for the most part—in place when he was elected.  Josef Ratzinger convinced the Cardinals that he was the man who could deal with the problems.  It turns out that he was not, as he himself now recognizes.  This time the Cardinals need to settle in and come to a consensus on what must be done before the situation becomes irreparable.  Only then can they discern who the right candidate is to face the challenges and bring necessary reform to the Church. 

Semper Reformanda--A Church Always in Need of Reform

Bernini's famous statue of Saint Teresa in ecstasy
Santa Marria della Vittoria in Rome  

In my last post I mentioned the Church’s loss of membership as one of the reasons that we need a Reformation.  I really only spoke of North America, or actually the United States, though Anglophone Canada suffers the same and Francophone Canada much worse as a once devoutly Catholic people simply slide in secularism.  The Church is growing rapidly in much of sub-Sahara Africa and in parts of Asia and there is great vitality but Europe is in lamentable shape.  Indeed Pope Benedict has made the revival of Catholicism in Europe a chief priority of his pontificate.  Unfortunately , tragically, to date he has completely failed in this mission.  My opinion is that he has not known how to go about it and thinks that all it requires is a somewhat effete renaissance of he thinks to be “Catholic Culture” focusing on music and art rather than a vibrant and authentic “new Evangelization.”  I too love Mozart and Michelangelo, but neither the Freemason composer nor the gay artist can bear the weight of the Gospel.  A genuine Evangelization needs a Saint Francis and a Catherine of Siena and an Ignatius Loyola and a Teresa of Avila.  We need men and women who are on fire with the Gospel and who exude a love for God and the Love of God for us.  The art and the music come later.  I mean, Bernini’s skill needed Teresa’s passion to create his masterpiece, and first came Ignatius and then the marvelous Gesu.  The religious situation in Europe is terrible.  When I attend Mass in France, for example,  I have found—in Paris, Avignon, Bourges, Nantes, Angers—wonderful vibrant congregations that are warm and welcoming and in which the liturgy is well celebrated with beautiful music and deep reverence, but I have also seen that only a fraction of the population is at Mass. (In Rome, on the other hand, while only a fraction of the people are at Mass, I find the Masses hurried, uninspiring, minimal participation, empty homilies.)   This tells me that it is not a liturgical renewal that is needed—though I appreciate good liturgy—but a genuine evangelization.  Even where the liturgy is good we, as a Church, are not speaking to the hungers of the human heart.  I don’t think that the problem is that people aren’t interested in what the Church has to offer, but rather the Church is not offering in what the Holy Spirit is leading the hearts of people to desire. We are too confident in our own convictions to listen attentively to what God is calling us to become.  We think that our own “tried and true” approach to the faith is THE approach.  I am not sure what hungers the Holy Spirit is putting in the hearts of people today, but it obviously isn’t for the externals of religion that we are too often offering them.  I do think that there is a deep desire for an inner life, a spiritual life.  I think people long for paths to wisdom and compassion—paths our Catholic Tradition knows well (John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, The Ignatian Exercises) but too rarely draws on.  I think people are looking for integrity, honesty, transparency which are signs of genuine holiness but we offer a rather palid piety and superficial devotion.  To bring that down to earth—the need today is not for May Crownings and Holy Hours (though there is nothing wrong with either, other than that they are no more than frosting on the Catholic Cake) but a Church that practices the ideals that it preaches, a humble Church, a Church that delivers on its promise to bring good news to the poor, healing to the sick, freedom to the oppressed and announce a time of God’s Favor to ALL.  I think that people are looking for a Church that empowers them to be of service to others—both to individuals and to society.  They are not looking for a Church that will think for them or tell them what to do or how to make specific decisions, but will give them the tools to be self-actualizing and responsible disciples.  There are people, of course, who will look only towards their own good or their own hedonistic satisfaction, just as there are people who have no awareness of any religious hunger within their heart, but I honestly believe that most people, especially most people who were raised in Christian families, or even families that were only vaguely religious, have values that make them want to move beyond themselves and self-interest to the good of others.  They don’t need, or want, to be told that they have to oppose same-sex marriage or contraception or even abortion.  When it comes to concrete issues, they can make their own decisions but they want an opportunity to discuss and reason out the sound moral principles that will empower them to make those decisions.  Frankly, they are often just as intelligent, or sometimes even more so, than their priest or bishop and they resent being told how they should think.  They want a faith that engages them, that lets them bring their own experience and insights into dialogue with the moral heritage of the Church—not because they reject that heritage but precisely because they want to make that heritage their own, to contribute to its development, to bring heritage into a shaping dialogue with contemporary experience.  They day of telling the faithful what to think or how to believe is over.  The earthquake has begun, the tomb is rumbling, the stone starting to roll back and the Consensus Fidelium is being raised from its deathly slumber of a millennium and a half.  This will be the beginning of the New Evangelization, not a Mostly Mozart evening in the Nervi Hall.     

Need for a New Reformation

Croweds Gathered in Saint Peter's Square
the first night of the conclave that elected
Benedict XVI

We have seen that both the Carolingian and Ottonian Reformations were carried out not by prelates but by the Emperors and their officials.  These should not be considered as “external” reformations however as it was understood in both the ninth century (the Carolingian (which refers to the Emperor Charlemagne) and the tenth century (The Ottonian Reform under the Emperors Otto I, II, and III) that the Emperor, not the pope, was the Vicar of Christ and that the Church stood under his “Protection”—protection here being somewhat akin what Elizabeth I of England would later claim to be the royal “governorship” of the Church, eschewing the title “head” which was perceived in both instances as belonging uniquely to Christ.  The next Reformation we will look at is the Gregorian Reformation, named after Pope Saint Gregory VII, one of two popes Gregory known as “Gregory the Great.”  (Patristic scholars like to call Gregory I “the Great;” historians award the title to Gregory VII.  Both really deserve the title, but from different perspectives and for vastly different reasons.)  Actually the Gregorian Reform, though named after Gregory VII, began before him and was the work of a number of curial (if that is not too anachronistic a word) officials .  The reason I fear that it might be too anachronistic is this is the very early stages of development of what would today  be called the Roman Curia.  Influential in this Reformation, which will be the most successful yet, will be an illustrious array of men such as Saint Romuald of Ravenna, Saint Peter Damian, John Gracian, Bruno of Eguisheim-Dagsburg, and the monk Hildebrandwho will ascend the papal chair in 1073 as Gregory VII. 

       It is always ideal when Reformation comes from within the ranks of Church leadership whether through Papal leadership as it will with Innocent III or Conciliar Leadership as at Trent.  But what happens when the internal leadership either is not interested in Reform or cannot overcome its internal division in order to fashion and hold to a program of Reform such as happened after Lateran V in 1517?  (Don’t worry if you don’t know much about Innocent or Lateran V, we will look at those episodes in detail as time and blog entries unfold.)  As I am writing this I can’t but help think how these very days our federal government is so divided over various self-interests (Republicans, Tea-partiers, Democrats) that they can’t forge a program to meet a national crisis regarding the debt.  This is what happens when people lose their sense of the common good and seek only to preserve their own self-interest.  This happens in Church politics as well as national politics.  Original sin sits as heavy on a bishop’s mitered head as a politician’s fat ass.  

      And that is why I want to look at the question of Reformations in the history of the Church.  Today there is no Emperor to take charge and clean up the mess and the curias (or technically curiae) of John Paul II and Benedict XVI are too complicit in the problems for the their papacies to be effective in the needed reform the Church . 

     Why do I think that the Church today needs yet another Reformation?  Well, in the first place, the Church always needs a Reformation. Ecclesia semper reformans, semper reformanda—the Church, always reforming and always in need of reform.  That is just a principle of history of the Church.  Just as no one of us individual Christians is ever quite “there” but continue to journey on towards the perfection to which we are called in our baptism so too the collective assembly of the faithful is never fully what Christ calls us to be as his Church. 

      I do have some more concrete examples of why we need to have a Reformation—and it is not an exhaustive list.  I am sure there are other reasons beyond the one’s I am going to enumerate.

Roots of the Reformation XX: The Ottonian Reformation I

The Empire of Otto I
included modern Germany, Switzerland,
the Netherlands, Belgiumjparts of Austria,
France, and Italy as far south as Naples 

Well, I ended up taking a bit of a vacation from the blog—which I shouldn’t do as every time I skip just two days, the readership starts falling and it takes me a week to rebuild it.  So sorry folks for the interruption.  I do have a life—and even a day job—and this blog takes a considerable amount of time.  But I do enjoy it and what is more it is worth it if it encourages people to think, not a about the past, but about our Catholic Church today and some of the issues confronting it.

We had been talking about the problem of Reform of the Church—and who can reform it when the need for reform begins right at the top.  This has happened in the past with corrupt popes and papal administrations that forgot the gospel and became over invested in their own ambition for power, wealth, and pomp.  We saw how in his day Charlemagne had stepped in and set things right with Leo III (blog entry June 4, 2011).  Well after Leo things only got worse—and we saw what happened with Marozia, Theodora and the pornacracy (entries June 9, June 6, and January 15).   You may remember the Cadaver synod (entry, January 24, 2011).  These are all great stories.  Amazingly, as corrupt as the Borgias were—and as Showtime showed them, they were pretty corrupt—the tenth century papacies were even more wicked.  Who would set the Church back in order?

Charlemagne’s empire with its Renaissance and Reformation did not last.  The Emperor was succeeded by his son, Louis, who in turn was succeeded by his son Lothair.  But Lothair’s claims of Imperial supremacy were disputed by his half-brothers Louis the German and Charles the Bald  The two brothers were too strong for Lothair and after much warfare among the three, Lothair was left with the imperial title but with much of the realm taken by his brothers. Lothair himself, when dying, left the imperial title to his son Louis, but divided his remaining lands among Louis and his two brothers—Lothair II and Charles of Provence.  This was not an easy time for Europe—the Magyars were sweeping in from the east, the Vikings were ravaging the Atlantic and channel coasts and the Saracens were ravaging the Italian possessions of the Empire. There was a need for strong leadership to meet the challenges and there were plenty of strong leaders—but they kept fighting one another rather than the external enemies.   On his deathbed, Louis named his cousin Carloman, the son of his uncle Louis the German, to succeed him, but his other uncle, Charles the Bald—in connivance with Pope John VIII—seized the throne.  John, by the way, is a curious personage himself and was quite effeminate.  Patrick Madrid, an amateur historian (and the operative word here is amateur), suggests his effeminacy may have given rise to the Pope Joan legends.  That is a very complex topic and we will have fun someday soon looking at those stories.  However “light in his buskins” he may have been, John was a good pope; indeed a great pope.  Of course the competition at the time was not much.  John had a problem and that was the Saracen (Muslim) pirates who were raiding papal Italy and so the pope turned to the Carolingians for help just as Leo III had turned to Charlemagne and Pope Zachary had turned to Pepin in their respective political woes in the previous century.  They let him down—they were too divided among themselves for any sort of effective response—and, in the end, the popes had to pay tribute to the Saracens.

Speaking of the Carolingians,  Charles the Bald was succeeded in the Imperial title by his nephew, Charles the Fat.   Meanwhile in each of these successions various grandchildren and great grandchildren of Charlemagne kept dividing lands and squabbling with one another, each trying to expand his own power.  Most were not interested in the imperial title because it had become nothing more than that—a title.  Power was local and the central administration of Charlemagne had completely broken down.  In fact, with the death of Berengar of Friuli in 924 the throne and title themselves were empty and remained so for thirty-eight years.  All this at a time when Europe needed strong leadership—and when the Church needed a protector not only against Vikings and Saracens, but against some of the most unworthy men every to sit on the throne of Peter.   This was a time when popes obtained their office by cash, by murder and by adultery.  

In 962 the great-great-great-great-grandson of Charlemagne, through a predominately feminine line, took the throne and revived the empire.   His name was Otto.  He had become King of East Francia in 936, that part of Charlemagne’s empire that went to Louis the German and is what we call today Germany (West Francia, or West Frankreich being France, also known at this period as Neustria).  Otto arranged for his coronation at Charlemagne’s capital of Aachen and in Charlemagne’s cathedral where Charlemagne’s bones lie.  Now, just in case you’re missing this—he is trying from the beginning to establish a claim to Charlemagne’s title and realm. His intention is to refound Charlemagne’s “Roman Empire.”

In the early 960’s, the papal possessions in Italy—the Papal States—were overrun and conquered by Berengar II, the grandson of Berengar of Friuli who had been the last emperor, dying in 924.  Berengar II was a thug.  The Pope—John XII—was worse.  Nevertheless, when John asked the help of Otto in regaining his temporal possessions, Otto came down into Italy, defeated Berengar, restored the Pope to power.  The Pope, for his part, then crowned Otto as Emperor, restoring the lapsed imperium.  Pope and Emperor then established the Diploma Ottonianum, a treaty in which Otto and his successors would “protect” the papacy. 

This brings us back to the thorny issue of papal versus imperial power.  Charlemagne saw himself having supreme authority over the Church in the model that the Byzantine Emperors had exercised from the time of Justinian, and in fact from Constantine’s control over the Church.  Certainly Constantine met nothing but gratitude from Popes Miltiades and Sylvester.   Justinian, for his part, kept papal authority dependent on the Imperial exarch in Italy.  This was and would be a problem for Eastern (later specifically Orthodox) Christianity where the Emperors—first the Greek Emperor at Constantinople and later the Russian Emperors at Moscow and Saint Petersburg—firmly kept the Church under the imperial thumb and the Church thanked them for that.  So deeply ingrained was the Caesropapism in Orthodoxy that centuries later, even under the worst years of Communist oppression and persecution, the Russian Church was totally compliant with the Soviet government.  But, to be fair, that was its strategy for survival and in so far as it was a survival strategy, it worked. 

The Western Emperors saw their authority in the same way and for several centuries most popes agreed.  We saw (see blog entry of May 12, 2011) that Charlemagne altered the Creed of Nicea and, in direct contradiction to Leo III, insisted that this revised Creed be used in the liturgy)   In 824, Louis the Pious, his son and co-emperor, Lothair, and Pope Eugene II promulgated the Constitutio Romana, a protocol by which the Popes recognized, among other things, that the authority of the Emperor was supreme.  The Popes, for their part, were in a bind.  They needed the military protection from a series of foes—Lombards, Magyars, Saracens, and a host of Italian warrior-counts—to protect Rome and the papal territories.  Secondly they, like everyone else in Europe, were used to thinking of the Emperor as being supreme, indeed as being the Vicar of Christ which was a title the emperors (not the popes) had appropriated to themselves.  Finally, the popes had very little real power.  Bishops were elected locally, admittedly often under some royal or noble pressure.  Local Bishops, not popes, made decisions regarding liturgy and cult as well as Church discipline.  Papal authority was exercised more by encouragement and exhortation than by decree.  There was not much point into getting into “turf warfare” with the Emperor.  That would change, but for the time being, the popes were willing to let the issue slide.  And it was just as well—the Church needed the emperors to clean up a papacy that had become hopelessly corrupt.  I did a blog entry on what historians call The Pornacracy (cf. January 15 2011) which means the Rule (of the Church) by whores and refers to a period.  While you’re looking at that check out the January 24 2011 entry which is about the Cadaver Synod.  This might give you a picture of just how mad things were in the Church in the tenth century.     I think tomorrow we will talk about John XII—the pope who asks Otto for help.  It will show you why we need some outside authority to clean up the mess in Rome.  Just remember the old Italian axiom—il pesce puzza dalla testa—the fish rots from the head: it was coined about the papacy. 

History in the Making: Today's Need for Reformation II

The Council of Trent
painting in Santa Maria in Trastevere, Rome
note the lady pope in the foreground

After yesterday’s blog on the question of what happens today when (and if) the Church needs Reformation and who has the authority to reform it when (and if) the papacy doesn’t see the need for reform? I was emailed with the question whether I think that the Church today does indeed need a Reformation.  My answer is yes.  That is why I am tracing the history of Reformations.  We are facing many of the exact same questions and issues that we have had to face in the past—internal power-struggles, fiscal irregularities, personal sinfulness and sexual immorality at all levels of hierarchy and laity, doctrinal confusion, authority issues—the list goes on.  It is a key axiom of the history of the Church—ecclesia semper reformans, semper reformanda—the Church, always reforming and always in need of reform. 

I think that the Second Vatican Council was a superb opportunity for Reform in the Church and it held great promise.  I believe that it began to make some significant headway in Reform, but I also believe that its agenda has been abandoned or subject to a sort of ecclesiastical “bait and switch” scam where many of its chief advances have been “reinterpreted” to very different ends than the Council Fathers envisioned.  By the way, this is not a new problem.  Several times in the history of the Church, Councils have had be followed up by subsequent councils to put them back on track.  The best example of this was the Fifth Lateran Council (1512-1517) which met and passed key legislation that probably could have avoided Luther’s Reformation had the Council been taken seriously.  But its reform legislation was never implemented and it took a subsequent Council, the Council of Trent (1545-1562) to clean up the mess that Lateran V had tried to address and failed. 

It would be easy to say that the problem is the Sex Abuse Crisis, or homosexuals in the clergy, or celibacy, or an all-male priesthood, or lack of doctrinal orthodoxy, or the new liturgy, or the revival of the old liturgy, or whatever one’s favorite bugaboo is and say all that we need for reform is some tough legislation that will whip everyone back to shape or to force everyone out of the Church who doesn’t see things the way that we see them.  But the problem is sex-abuse or orthodoxy or secularism or liturgy or whatever.  Certainly the sex abuse crisis is a problem, but it is symptomatic of a far more fundamental problem.  Liturgical aberrations on either the “left”  or the “right” can be problematic, but they are telling us something of a deeper problem to which we must pay attention.  The lack of fiscal transparency in the Church and the lack of accountability of many clergy and hierarchy in financial as well as other matters is a problem, but more important it is another symptom of more basic things going wrong.  No matter what issue is surfaced, we must face the fact that simple legislation—however strict—will not solve the problem of human nature and original sin. 

We can back up a step from the concrete problems and identify the fact that we have some very different theologies operating today in our Catholic Church.  There is a conflict between those who, to use Avery Dulles’ models of Church, are invested in an Institutional view of the Church as opposed to those who embrace a Servant model of Church.  They see issues of authority and mission from vastly different perspectives, so vastly different that it is difficult (if not pointless) for them to even discuss their differences.  There are different moral theologies operating today and this does not just represent a magisterium and a counter-magisterium view as the fuss over condoms as a method to combat aids suggests.  There are different understandings of the Mass and the sacraments which is witnessed by the official sanction of two vastly different rites expressing two vastly different (though not necessarily contradictory) understandings of the Eucharist, of the Church, and of the relationship of humankind to God.  There are times when being Catholic is somewhat like the “crazy-cars” ride that one finds in amusement parks with the little cars all going around in every direction, bumping into one another and bouncing off with no common order or rules.  But this lack of uniformity in practice and even in doctrine is not the fundamental or foundational problem in need of Reform.

What is needed, I believe, to Reform the Church today, is a head-and-members (or the classic term is “root and branch”) renewal in which we examine our personal and communal life as Church with all its structures and rites in the light of the Gospel and the mission of the Church as it is outlined in the Gospel.  We must come to see the Catholic Church as an Evangelical Church—that is a Church, indeed THE CHURCH, of the Gospel.  We need leadership and we need membership who find themselves personally and institutionally renewed and energized by the Gospel. 

It would be relatively easy to legislate “reform.”  People are not to have sex outside of marriage.  Priests and deacons are not to have sex, period!  No abortions.  No birth-control.  Mass is “by the book.”  Everyone has to ante up their share and the clergy have to be honest in dealing with Church funds.  But good luck.  Laws don’t take into account human nature and the effects of Original Sin.  That is why Saint Paul didn’t have a lot of use for “The Law”  (read the commandments of the Old Testament).  The only thing that works is conversion—that arduous process of admitting (and ultimately we have to do this one by one, each for ourselves but with each other’s support and encouragement) of admitting that our way of doing things isn’t working and surrendering to God’s way for us.  I know it sounds naïve.  I know it sounds idealistic.  I know it is terribly abstract.  But conversion is the only model the Gospel gives us and I believe, (to bend Chesterton’s words but not his intent) that it is not that the Gospel has been tried and found wanting; but that it has been found difficult and left untried.

I think as we look at the history of Reformations, we will see that the most successful ones—the Reform of Gregory VII and the Reform of Innocent III, along with the Reform of Trent (or the so called “counter-Reformation)—have all been successful because and to the degree that they fostered conversion in the great and the small alike.  They fostered spiritual renewals in which clergy and laity (and even some bishops) began taking the Gospel to heart.   When Bishop Emil deSmedt stood up at the opening session of Vatican II and called for an end to “triumphalism, juridicism, and clericalism” I think this is what he had in mind.  You cannot legislate Grace. But you can open yourself to it.  We need voices in the Church today that will open our hearts to this sort of conversion—as Saint Francis did in his day or Francis de Sales did in his.  We don’t need bishops or clergy who see the world through the prism of Canon Law (which is not to say that we don’t need Canon Law, only that it is not the foundation of our Christian life).  We don’t need bishops or clergy who are fascinated by their own prerogatives or pomps (which is not to say that a little pomp now and then can’t be a fun thing as long as we don’t take it seriously).  We don’t need dogmatic strict constructionists who strangle Grace before it can emerge from the womb of spiritual experience (which is not to say that we don’t need genuine orthodoxy, operative word being “genuine”).    We don’t need ecclesiastical Nazis who would have a place for everyone and keep everyone in their place (which is not to say that we don’t need some good order in the Church.)  We need in the Church men and women; hierarchy, lay and clergy; that take Jesus—and Jesus alone—at his word and encourage each other to do so too.  We need Christians who get enthused when the read the scriptures and see the possibilities for that Word to incarnate again today in the world as we, the Church, focus on the mission that Jesus has left us.  I am sure that such Reform and Renewal will need guidelines, will even need some parameters, perhaps even a law or two—but it is primarily a question of conversion, personal and communal. 

This will not eliminate sexual misconduct, abortion, dishonesty, pomposity, twenty-foot long trains of scarlet silk trailing behind overweight prelates, priests who don’t know a quid from a quod saying mass in an unintelligible language, aging nuns in capri pants, greed, bad doctrine, nobody going to confession anymore or any other problem.  Human nature is human nature.  No reformation yet has eliminated original sin and its effects—or, for that matter, what the old catechism called “actual sin.”  What it can do is eradicate the “establishment culture” that makes the Church a comfortable home for so much covering up of sin and scandal and help us call one another to ongoing conversion and greater  discipleship.  And we don’t have to wait for Pope Benedict or someone in Rome to lead the way.  Conversion, again, is a one by one process.   None of us can do it alone—we need the support of one another to be faithful—but if we keep the eye of our heart on Christ the Good Shepherd we don’t have to wait for those huffing and puffing guys with shepherds’ crooks to lead us.  They can catch up when they are ready.       

History in the Making: Today's Need for Reformation I

The question of  what happens when the papacy itself needs reformation has created problems for the Church at several periods in history.  We have been looking at the turbid position in which the Church found itself in the tenth century during the so-called “pornacracy” or “rule of whores” when the papacy found itself a pawn in the hands of a ruthless family determined to exploit its wealth and power through the efforts of the notoriously lascivious Marozia and her mother, Theodora.  We will see in one of our next entries that the Emperors Otto I, II, and III came to the rescue and cleaned up the papal act.  And we will also see that there are times that the papacy will lead reform in the Church as typified in the aggressive programs of Gregory VII (11^th century) and Innocent III (13^th century). But there are other times when the Church stagnates because there is no one to call the leadership of the Church to account.    In the fourteenth century there was the Great Schism when the Church found itself divided among three rival claimants to the papacy.  In that situation the Emperor and the bishops tried to resolve the crisis and eventually met with success, at least in narrowing papal claimants to a manageable number, one.  The television series, The Borgias,  has made people aware of to just what depths the papacy sunk in the Renaissance period—and trust me, Alexander VI Borgia was only one of several wicked men to used the papacy to their own and their family’s advantages while leading thoroughly immoral lives.  This was the situation that provoked Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Müntzer and others into the Protestant Reformation.  A papal led Catholic Reform did come about, but too late for the unity of the Church.  The damage had been done, and the papacy reduced to “the Whore of Babylon” in Protestant polemics. There have been other situations in which the lack of a counter-weight to the papacy has left the Church “naked unto her enemies.”  The captivities of Popes Pius VI and Pius VII by Napoleon left the Church with ineffective central leadership for a period of almost twenty years which, due to the relative independence of local bishops in pre-Vatican I era it could survive, but which today would paralyze Church administration.  Indeed, during the Second World
War Pius XII was well aware of the crisis that would befall the Church should he have been taken prisoner by Hitler.  He allegedly had plans to evacuate the papacy to either Lisbon or Dublin and, should that have failed and he been taken captive, had prepared a letter of abdication to be made public upon his arrest. 

It is unlikely that a pope today would be taken prisoner by a political leader, but that does not mean that the popes exercise their authority unimpeded.  The final years of the papacies of Pius XII and John Paul II presented some troubling questions over who was truly overseeing the Church at the time.   Much has been made of the influence of Mother Pasqualina Lehnert, the major-domo of Pius XII.  This German nun, often termed La Popessa, had organized Pius’ household for over forty years, beginning during his term as Papal Nuncio (ambassador) to Bavaria in 1917.  Always a strong influence on Pius, after his serious health decline of 1954 she had almost total control of access to him.  No one, even the Dean of the College of Cardinals—at that time the Vatican’s number 2 officer (Pius, serving as his own Secretary of State)—could have access to the pope unless she permitted it.  For the last four years of his life, all papers passed through her to the pope.  While the situation was never as grave as her detractors portrayed it—with her exercising papal authority in Pius’ name—it did create serious administrative issues and all but stalled Church administration.  Cardinals, bishops, and prominent laity found they could do an end-run around the Vatican bureaucracy by going directly to Mother Pasqualina.    In fact, the very first act of Eugène Tisserant as Cardinal Dean upon the death of Pius was to banish Mother Pasqualina from the Vatican—allegedly told to move out, bag and baggage, that very day. 

The situation toward the end of the pontificate of John Paul II was different.  There was no La Popessa here, no single person of influence.  Yet it was clear that the pope was increasingly incapacitated by the 1990’s.  Curial officials made use of the lack of oversight to expand their own powers and influence, often squabbling in rivalry with others over who had jurisdiction in particular instances. Stanislaw Dziwisz, John Paul’s chief private secretary, like Mother Pasqualina had total control of access to the Pope, and allegedly, unlike Mother Pasqualina “sold” that access—getting individuals access to private audiences or attendance at the Pope’s morning mass in his private chapel for sums up to $50,000.   Dziwisz was closely tied to Father Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, who was accused by numerous former seminarians of having sexually abused them.  Despite the number and credibility of allegations, neither Maciel nor the Legion of Christ were never held to accountability during the pontificate of John Paul, one of the most serious flaws in his papacy.   Only in the current pontificate have the charges of sexual and financial impropriety been duly investigated and been found to be even more outrageous than previously charged.   Another case in which John Paul’s incapacity resulted in the Curial “old boy” network triumphing over good judgment was the nomination of Cardinal Bernard Law, the disgraced archbishop of Boston, to a cushy position in Rome.  Law’s arrogance in defending clergy credibly accused of sexual abuse is what brought down the wrath of Americans—Catholic and non-Catholic alike—on the American Episcopate.  While the majority of American Catholics still seem to have great confidence in the clergy, particularly their own parish clergy, the American bishops have largely become shepherds without sheep.  The Catholic Church in America is prone to this problem in any event as our Protestant culture predisposes us to see the Church congregationally—that is to identify Church primarily with the local congregation to which we belong.  In fact, American Catholics tend to see the Church on two tiers: there is “the Church”—i.e. Rome; and there is their church—that is the parish community to which they belong.  Bishops seem only sort of middle-men; local agents of the central authority as it were.  If the American Catholic knew how much of his Sunday collection-plate dollar went to the bishop, he would be very unhappy.  But what little credibility bishops have in America has been all but destroyed in the sex-abuse crisis where so many bishops have not dealt effectively with pedophile clergy.  Cardinal Bernard Law, the former Archbishop of Boston, is the poster boy for bad bishops.  It was not the protecting of accused clergy that did him in—it was the unmitigated arrogance with which he defended himself and his indefensible policies.  Finally forced to resign just to quiet the outrage, he was rescued from serving retired nuns as their chaplain in rural Maryland and installed in the palatial quarters of the Archpriest of the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome.  And then, despite these being said to be the most luxurious cardinalatial apartments in the Eternal City, he undertook to renovate and expand his suites.  This is part of an old-boy system in Rome where they take care of their own.    It is not that they don’t care about the public-relations aspect of the Church; they honestly don’t understand that in today’s world they are being held accountable and their failure to be responsible seriously undermines the credibility of the Church and indeed dichotomy of what the Church teaches and how so many of its leaders function undermines the credibility of the Gospel itself in as that it reduces, or at least appears to reduce, the Gospel to snake-oil whose sale is only meant to enrich those who “sell” it. 

The papacy of John Paul II is one of the most paradoxical papacies in the history of the Church.  As one commentator for the BBC said, echoing Charles Dickens, when John Paul lay dying: it was the best of times; it was the worst of times.   John Paul’s policies gave the coup de grace to European communism and provided the restoration of democracy in the countries of Eastern Europe.  His internal policies in the Church were another matter with an ever deepening gap between progressives and conservatives.  This division was only aggravated as he aged and gradually lost power to the curial machine which took on a life of its own.

It was hoped that the election of a curial cardinal to the papacy would bring the curia and its various bureaucrats back under control.  Popes like Pius XII and Paul VI who had curial experience usually knew how to keep the Curia working for them rather than trying to run the Church their way in spite of the pope.  Popes whose previous experience had been as residential archbishops—popes like John XXIII and John Paul II—had more difficulty in managing the politics of the Curia.  So Joseph Ratzinger, having spent so many years in Rome as Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, should have been able to bring the Curia back under papal control, but experience is showing that he can’t.  The recent controversy where Cardinal Bertone, the papal Secretary of State, blocked the nomination of Dr. Lesley-Anne Knight for a second term as General Secretary of Caritas Internationalis is one example of how the papal hands are tied.  Dr. Knight’s election to her first term met with a hostile reception in certain Vatican circles, apparently for no other reason than she was a woman.  The papal audience at which she and the rest of the executive committee were to be presented to Pope Benedict all but turned into a brawl when some Vatican monsignore just refused to believe that such an important person might possibly be a woman and tried to remove her from her reserved seat and force her to the back of the hall in the Apostolic Palace where the reception was being held.   It took a cadre of Caritas officials to put a protective ring around Dr. Knight in order for her to keep her assigned place.  Similar episodes have been reported at ecumenical welcomes when women bishops from various Protestant groups have been due to be presented to the pope.  Curial officials have long memories and before this year’s General Assembly of Caritas, Caritas was notified that the Vatican would not approve a second term for Dr. Knight.  When Cardinal  Rodriguez-Maradiaga, the president of Caritas Internationalis went to intervene with Pope Benedict the Pope supposedly threw his hands up in the air and said that he had no say in the matter.  It was beyond his power.  The decision had been made.  Incidentally, Bertone is one of six members of his religious congregation, the Salesians of Don Bosco, in the College of Cardinals.  ,    

The reputation of the Curia is far from good in other ways beyond their internal bickering and jockeying for power.  While Italians tend to take a more jaundiced eye than we Americans about the weaknesses of human nature—after all can you imagaine an American politician getting away with what Sylvio Berlascone gets away with?—and while most clerical misconduct goes unnoted in the press, it is not unknown to see a story in the Roman newspapers about some low-level Vatican official who has been caught picking up a transvestite prostitute or having sex in a public park.  A 1998 double murder/suicide involving two officers in the Swiss Guards, attributed to the one officer’s being refused a promotion, is rumored to involve a homosexual relationship between the two guards.  Vatican immorality may not be at the extravagance of the Borgia’s Banquet of the Chestnuts, but the Curia certainly aren’t the angelic choirs either and there seems to be no one to whom anyone is accountable.   

It would be good to think that a Gregory VII or an Innocent III could reform the Church from within but although Vatican II has brought many changes, and I believe changes for the good, it has not brought genuine reform or renewal.  A weakness of the current structure of Church leadership is that there is no person or group who has the authority to call the Church leadership to realign itself to the demands of the Gospel. 

Roots of the Reformation I: Don't thank Gutenberg, it was the Muslims

Gutenberg usually gets all the credit, but that is grossly unfair.  The invention of  movable type (c. 1450) certainly speeded up the processes of challenging the authority of the Church because the printing press made books so much more readily available, but the fact that Europe had been experiencing an educational revolution for at least three centuries gives a wider angle to the picture of European society ripe for intellectual revolution. 

Avicenna, the Arab Philosopher
whose works helped introduce Aristotle
to the west

Where does it start? I suppose some would say the roots of the Reformation can be found with the rise of the universities in the later part of the twelfth century while others would look to the eleventh century cathedral schools which were themselves the “pollywogs” from which the universities matured.  Certainly, by the thirteenth century universities were springing up all over Europe and grammar schools in most cathedrals, urban friaries, and collegiate churches were providing the basic education that allowed the sons of the rapidly expanding middle class to acquire the basics they needed to study law, medicine, or theology at the universities. 

While these universities were intimately linked to the medieval Church they were not catechetical centers—far from it.  The medieval university was an intellectual hothouse which was jumping with ideas.  No doctrine or dogma of the Church went unexamined in the classroom nor unchallenged in the debate hall.  While today few study theology and theology departments rest (or are supposed to rest) firmly under the thumb of the local bishop, in the Middle Ages theology (along with its adjunct, philosophy)  was the hot topic of the intellectually curious.  Granted many studied law (so as to take their places in the royal administration) and some studied medicine—but it was Theology that made the reputation of a school and none more than the University of Paris, the premier university of Christendom.  And it was not merely doctrines that were challenged at Paris and Cologne and the Oxbridge schools—but entire philosophical systems on which the Church had constructed its doctrines.  In the thirteenth century the neo-platonic philosophical structure on which Christian doctrine had been built since late antiquity  was not only challenged but ultimately replaced by the more experiential Aristotelian system, newly rediscovered through the works of the Arab (and Muslim) philosophers such as Avicenna and Averroes.   Neo-Platonism depended heavily on the “authorities”—that is the long history of previously determined philosophical and theological “truths” –as taught by those whom “Tradition” has validated.  Aristotelianism, on the other hand, taught that empirical evidence and logic  together trumped “Tradition.”  While initial efforts to subject the doctrines of faith to the questions of reason led to the condemnation of Abelard, Aristotelian thought eventually was vindicated by such brave new (and revolutionary) theologians and philosophers as Aquinas.  But at the same time that the triumph of scholastic Aristotelian thought led to Aquinas as the premier Catholic apologist in history, it also undermined the foundations of Tradition and Authority.  This would, in turn, lapse into Ockham and nominalism which would undermine the notion of belief all together.  Note—I said undermine, not destroy, because while nominalism would raise the questions that challenged  belief it also, for believers, demanded to know of them precisely what it is in which they believed, not as mere words or formulas, but as realities that transcended the words and formulas, and even transcended “universals” or concepts which those words and formulas were meant to convey.  In the hands of mystics like Meister Eckhart and those who would be associated with apophatic theology such as the author of The Cloud, this would disassociate personal religious experience from doctrinal affirmation and threaten to make religion purely subjective.  (Like it is for so many today.) While Eckhart himself would never have said this, and indeed his pledge to renounce any “heresy” that might be found in his writing in favor of the faith of the universal Church testifies against his radical subjectivism, it did create the theological ground from which Luther and others could challenge the staid (and indeed embalmbed) doctrines of last medieval scholastic thought.  There is something ironic in Scholasticism’s having challenged the authority of Tradition only to end up having its own authority challenged by its post-scholastic heirs.  But then where would history be without irony?  tomorrow: the renaissance and the roots of the Reformation.