Father Rodriguez, Bishop Ochoa, and Priests in Politics

Father Ernesto Cardenal, the poet-

priest of Nicaragua who defied the

order of Pope John Paul to resign his

post as Minister of Culture in 1983.

So what about this Father Rodriguez and his bishop, Armando Ochoa?  I see that it has Michael Voris and his "real" Catholic T.V. in another tizzy.  Should Father be encouraged to be politically active or to withdraw from politics and devote his energy to the spiritual and moral formation of the laity so that they can be politically active? There is an interesting context for this given the history of political activism of the clergy in the United States and other countries since the 1980 demand of the late Pope John Paul II that clergy and religious not be directly involved in politics. 
     Sister Agnes Mary Mansour, RSM, was appointed the director of the Michigan Department of Social Services in 1982. As her job entailed administering funds for abortions, the Holy See determined, not unreasonably, that it was not appropriate for a religious to hold this post and she was given an ultimatum to either secularize or give up her post.  Sister Mansour reluctantly asked for a dispensation from her vows. She was able to remain an affiliate of the Sisters of Mercy and continued to live with the Sisters and for all practical purposes to live as a Sister for the remainder of her life.  She died in the Mercy Sisters’ infirmary and was buried in their plot at Holy Sepulcher Cemetery, Southfield MI.
     Father Robert Drinan, SJ, was elected to Congress as a Democrat on an anti-Vietnam War platform in 1970.  Drinan had been admitted to the Bar in Massachusetts in 1956 and had served as Dean of the Law School of Boston College from that time until his election to Congress.  In Congress he earned a reputation for espousing liberal causes, most of which were soundly rooted in the Magisterial teaching of the Catholic Church as found in papal encyclicals and the Documents of the Second Vatican Council.  An unfortunate exception was his support of abortion “rights” where he tried to separate personal opposition (he called it ‘virtual infanticide’) from public policy.  It was and remains a dubious distinction.  In 1980 when Pope John Paul demanded that all clergy and religious withdraw from public office, Drinan obediently complied though he remained a powerful commentator on American political and public life to the annoyance of not a few bishops and many conservative Catholics.  Contrary to what many think, Father Drinan was not the only priest toserve in Congress.  Father Robert Cornell, a Norbertine Canon from Saint Norbert’s Abbey in DePere had served from 1975-1979 representing his district in Wisconsin.  In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Father Gabriel Richard, a French immigrant,  had served as a non-voting delegate from the Michigan Territory.
     While Fathers Cornell, Drinan, and Richard had all done credible service in their political careers—short though they were—not all priests have been witnesses to the compassion of Christ in their political involvement.  Monsignor Josef Tiso (1887-1947) was the President of Slovakia from 1939-1945) during which time he was a collaborator with Slovakia’s Nazi overlords.  Far from using his admittedly limited power to shield Jews, Gypsies and other peoples marked for destruction, Tiso embraced the anti-Semitic policies of the Reich.  He was hanged as a war criminal in 1947.
     A far more morally credible example of a priest in politics is the noted Nicaraguan poet, Ernesto Cardenal.  Cardenal comes from a wealthy Central American family and he studied in the United States.  He had spent time in the Trappist Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemane in Kentucky where Thomas Merton had been his Novice Master.  Cardenal did not profess final vows but instead went to Cuernavaca in Mexico where he studied for the priesthood. At Solentiname in Nicaragua Cardenal established a semi-monastic community of peasants from which developed a famous artist colony.  A supporter of the peasants in their struggles with the plutocratic families that had long dominated Nicaragua (with American assistance) politically and economically, Cardenal was appointed Minister of Culture when the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza regime.  He ignored Pope John Paul’s demands to resign from the Government and was rebuked by the Pope during the papal visit to Nicaragua in 1983.  That visit was a public relations disaster for the papacy as it was made to appear that the Church favored the wealthy families who had long ruled Nicaragua and opposed the popular Sandinista regime.  At several points the crowds booed the pope when he spoke against the government.  John Paul’s personal experiences with Socialism in Poland left him with a very unnuanced appreciation of the situation in Central America.  On the other hand, Ortega and others were initially blind to the authoritarian and undemocratic aspects of the Ortega regime.  Cardenal eventually broke with Ortega claiming that Ortega’s party was a “false revolution” that had betrayed the people of Nicaragua.  Five years ago Cardenal was nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature in recognition of his status as one of the great poets of our time.     
     I think priests and religious often have much to bring to the political arena.  They are often highly perceptive of human nature; they are usually more compassionate for the needs of the poor.  At least in the past the clergy and the women religious have been not only better educated than the average Catholic, they have often been of notably above average intellect.  I think they usually have a moral anchor and the skills to articulate that.  With the socio-economic advances of the Catholic population over the last half century I think today the laity are often better educated though not necessarily more intelligent. (I am reluctant to trust my impressions on a matter than needs objectification.)  It does seem however that clergy and religious have a proper role in the moral education of the faithful but that the direct political action belongs not to the clergy but to the laity.  So I think Father Rodriguez is fine in the pulpit and even in the newspapers, but not at the city council meeting.  I also think  he is wrong about Catholics having to oppose partner “benefits”  regardless of marital status and indeed even about the legalization of same-sex marriages.  But we can save that for another day. 

The Silencing of the Shepherds 2

Cardinal Bernard Law, former Archbishop

of Boston.  Cardinal Law was made a bishop

under Paul VI but achieved his powerful

status in the reign of John Paul II where he

served as "kingmaker" of American Bishops.

You may remember (see entry for May 22^nd) that after the Americanist crisis of the late nineteenth century Rome instituted a deliberate policy of appointing Roman trained and oriented clergy to be bishops in the United States in a move to eradicate the Americanist ideals that shaped the Catholicism of Cardinal Gibbons and Archbishop Ireland.  Leo XIII and  his successor, Pius X were distrustful of such American ideas as democracy and the separation of Church and State and the Americanist situation had made them realize just how different the American mentality—Catholic and Protestant—was from the Roman mentality.  A similar reaction happened with the accession of John Paul II in 1978.  One of John Paul’s first major appointment shifts was in June of 1980, just about 20 months after beginning his papal reign, to remove the Apostolic Delegate in the United States, Archbishop Jean Jadot, a Belgian, to a desk-job in Rome.  Unlike most Apostolic Delegates, before and since, Jadot was never made a Cardinal—a sign of John Paul’s displeasure.  The (relatively) liberal hierarchy of the post-conciliar years was due heavily to Jadot’s influence.  Jadot was succeeded as Apostolic Delegate by Archbishop (later Cardinal) Pio Laghi who began replacing progressive American bishops with such stellar figures as Bernard Law in Boston, and John Joseph O’Conner in New York.  To be fair, Laghi also saw Joseph Bernardin appointed to Chicago and Roger Mahoney to Los Angeles.  He replaced the liberal Peter Gerety of Newark with Theodore McCarrick who was, at the time, seen as a strongly conservative prelate but who turned out to be one of the most talented members of the hierarchy (and, as a corollary to talent, one of the most Machiavellian).  Many of Laghi’s bishops were in fact good pastors and it was not “conservativism” per se that got them appointed but their unquestionable fidelity to Rome.  John Paul had no room for dissent.          
       To understand John Paul’s paranoia (and that is not too strong a word) about dissent one must remember his own experience in Poland.  Poland was the one Soviet satellite where the communist government had not been able to seriously damage the Catholic Church.  Unlike Hungary or Czechoslovakia, the Church in Poland remained strong and retained not only the loyalty but the active participation of the vast majority of the population.  Much like Nineteenth-century  Catholic Ireland where the Church grew and remained strong because to be a Catholic was a declaration of national pride in the face of an occupying Colonial Power that represented another religious tradition, the Poles stood strong in their Catholic faith and practice as a sign of nationalism and resistance to the officially atheistic philosophy of their Soviet-dominated government.  To be Polish was to be Catholic!  The cohesiveness of the Church and indeed its strength came from its rigid unity which the Communist regime could not crack.  And this unity was rooted in an unswerving loyalty and obedience, in public and in private—to the Primate, the long-suffering Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski (+1981).  Pope Wojtyla, as he was often known both in Poland and Rome, understood Wyszynski’s lesson—if you want a Church strong enough to bring down Marxism and to confront the secularism of the West, you need a Church that moves in absolute unity and uniformity.  John Paul would not risk dissent and was rigid in crushing it.  In 1980 he demanded that all priests and religious withdraw from political office because he would not have the clergy in a position where they might have to disregard their ecclesiastical superiors to perform their civil obligations.  Sister Agnes Mansour, a Sister of Mercy, was ordered by the Vatican to resign from her post as the Director of Social Services for the State of Michigan.  She instead resigned from her religious order.  (The Sisters of Mercy never broke their ties with her and she lived and died within their community.)  Father Robert Drinan SJ, on the other hand, did resign his seat in Congress to comply with the Vatican Directives but he was a greater pain to the authority structures in the Church in his post-Congressional years than he had been serving in the halls of Congress.  Nonetheless, it was clear in the John Paul years that there was to be no room for dissent from Church Authority.  In 2006 Cardinal Angelo Sodano retired as Vatican Secretary of State, a position he had held for sixteen years, serving under two popes: John Paul II and Benedict XVI.  The Foreign Ministers (Secretaries of State) of other European Governments hosted a luncheon in his honor as he was the longest serving Secretary of State among them.  When asked to what he attributed is long tenure he joked “There are advantages to working for a Totalitarian State.”  A  joke yes, but one which was funny only because it is true. 
     To see dissent as disloyalty is a dangerous to any leadership.  Dissent and disobedience are two different realities.  To close off dissent is to deprive leadership of voices they need to hear and monitor, not to punish but to be able to critique their own course.  There is such a thing as loyal dissent and within the Church there are many voices which have been silenced in fear of reprisal.  I recently read William L. Shirer’s work The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.  (At a friend’s suggestion I had read Erik Larsen’s In the Garden of Beasts and as a historian it left me wanting to know much more in detail how the catastrophe of the Third Reich had come about.)  What struck me most in Shirer’s book was the absolute stifling of dissent by Hitler and his inner circle and how that dissent was to create a bubble of bogus realities around the Reich’s leadership.  This past week I had coffee with friends who are retired military and the discussion came to a comparison of Church and military leadership styles and these officers spoke of the importance of dissenting views having voice in successful military operations.  It is not healthy for us in the Church that responsible voices whether they be bishops, theologians, or competent clergy and laity cannot speak out freely critiquing policies set by a leadership that is not necessarily any more competent, educated, or informed. As Catholics we believe that the Holy Spirit speaks through the Pope, but we do not believe that the Holy Spirit (I will avoid the use of a pronoun) speaks through the Pope alone, much less than the monsignoral desk-jockeys that work down the hall and around the corner from him.  But even more serious for the good of the Church and of souls than sealing off prophetic voices that might raise the inspired cries of “yes, but…” is being left with a hierarchy that “loyalty” has reduced to mediocrity.  The atmosphere of blind allegiance has created a culture of codependence in which voices that were consecrated to be prophetic remain silent in the face of the gross injustices of our contemporary society.  Where are the voices to speak for the immigrant?  For the seniors who are in danger of losing their Medicare and Social Security? For the families who have lost their homes?  For the workers who have seen their jobs go overseas?   For the Earth that is being scourged  by the destruction of its resources, its air and its water?  We have a new translation for the Liturgy when what we need is a prophetic and evangelical message of what it means to be a Disciple of Jesus Christ in this world in which we live.  “What father among you,” Jesus said, “would give his children a stone when they ask for bread.”  And we are asking for bread and being given the stones of silence in the face of a rampant and increasing injustice in our society.  We cannot afford to have shepherds who do not raise a cry when the flock is being surrounded by wolves.  The silence of the hierarchy on any subjects other than protecting the right to life for the unborn and the insuring that the right to marriage is limited to heterosexuals implies that the other pressing issues facing us as Americans are without moral consequence and that is simply a flat out lie in itself.  We need the articulation of a consistent and comprehensive moral program for responsible citizenship even if it does mean that the American bishops risk losing the friendship of their political allies and their establishment pals.