The Division Grows Deeper But Will It Divide?

John Joseph Myers, Archbishop
of Newark

Well the Synod goes on and the markers of division within the Church grow stronger and stronger as fear of change haunts the anti-Francis faction in the Church.  I posted on this past Monday about the letter sent to Pope Francis by Cardinal Pell and several (the exact number is disputed as it seems some Cardinal’s names were added without their knowledge) other Cardinals protesting that the Synod has been rigged to predetermine a more progressive agenda towards sacramental inclusion of those in “irregular” unions. 

Now it turns out that Newark New Jersey Archbishop John Joseph (aka “Farmer John” because of his southern Illinois roots) Myers of Newark sent a letter to his clergy insisting on the tightest of guidelines about who may and who may not receive Holy Communion.   Turns out that the priests and religious of the Archdiocese are as banned from the Lord’s Table as are the multiply married, the transgendered and the gay.  “His Grace,” as he likes to be known with all the affectations of an Anglican Primate waddling into the House of Lords, has declared that “Catholics must be in a marriage recognized as valid by the Church to receive Holy Communion or other sacraments.”  Well, golly gee.  That puts the Arch himself in a catch 22.   If he is married, it cannot be in a canonical marriage, as priests cannot validly marry.  And if he is not married—well he himself has declared that only those in a marriage the Church recognizes as valid can receive the Sacraments—he is not eligible for Holy Communion.  We have canon lawyers for a reason—you would think they would have checked his letter before it was sent out.  In fact you would think a good secretary would catch the blunder.  But at the end of the day there are more horses’ asses than horses.  No need to verify the obvious. 

But that is only part of the story.  “His Grace” of Newark is living beneath the shadow of his far more popular successor, the appointed coadjutor, Bernard Hebda, as the clergy and faithful count down the days to Myers’ 75^th.  Myers and Hebda provide  a sort of good cop/bad cop duo.  Hebda, at least in his public face, walks a more Francis line on things.  He lives more simply, living in a dorm at Seton Hall University.  He has better people skills and is more approachable.  Behind the scenes he is every bit the Institution Man that most bishops are, but if life is a Christmas pageant, he knows how to play the shepherd.  That alone gives him an edge over many of his colleagues who are still into the Prince of the Church model and can’t seem to shift.  In any event, Archbishop Hebda gave a good talk to the Religious of the Archdiocese yesterday where he offered a far more inclusive theology of Church than Myers’ terse veditum.   It wasn’t a direct assault on Myers’ position but it made it clear that there is a new sheriff waiting in the wings, one who sees the Church as more inclusive and welcoming to all.  In the event, most priests have said that they will take the Archbishop’s letter for what it is worth and that policies in the parishes will change little if at all.  The Archdiocese is in the middle of a 90 million dollar capital campaign and it will be interesting to see if Archbishop Myers’ letter causes much fallout.  

Myers is not the only bishop to express his concerns about where Francis is taking the Church.  Cardinal Burke has said that the Church under Francis is a ship without a rudder.  Bishop Tobin of Providence has criticized Pope Francis.  Archbishop Chaput who just two weeks ago welcomed the Pope to Philadelphia has spoken up about the “anxiety” that Francis’ Synod on the Family is causing among those determined to resist any change in pastoral practice.  Several other bishops—Cordileone of San Francisco, Loverde of Arlington, Lori of Baltimore, Paprocki of Springfield, Lennon of Cleveland, Sheridan of Colorado Springs, Slattery of Tulsa, Olmstead of Phoenix, have all been quoted from private conversations—often after a drink too many—with disparaging remarks about Pope Francis or the direction in which he is taking the Church.  I am sure they are not the only bishops who have let slip their dismay with the current occupant of Peter’s chair.

Clergy and laity are far more outspoken.  Despite the lovely welcoming ceremony at the seminary of Saint Charles in Philadelphia, the word is that the student body is overwhelmingly anti-Francis.  Even more rabid are the seminarians at Mount Saint Mary’s in Emmitsburg where Francis is widely regarded as a usurper on the Papal Throne.  And an acquaintance just back from the sabbatical program at the Pontifical North American College  (you know, you saw the video of the NAC *** Men’s Chorus and the toe-tapping clerics of Little Broadway) was shocked by the anti-Francis sentiments being expressed openly by “a vast majority” of the NACers.  Diocese of Arlington clergy regularly undermine the Pope and his desire for a more inclusive Church from the pulpits of Saint John the Beloved in McLean, Saint John the Apostle in Leesburg, Saint John the Evangelist in Warrenton, Saint John the Baptist in Front Royal, and several other parishes where the priests are determined to hold the line against any loosening up of Church discipline.  Arlington, while particularly infested with clergy who are anti-Francis is far from the only diocese that is suffering from a split Catholicism.  Examples can also be found in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston.  And of course, our friends such as the Canons of Saint John Cantius in Chicago and the Canons Regular of the New Jerusalem in Wheeling and in Saint Louis as well as the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest run churches that are bubbles of a bygone Catholicism and while they are devout in prayers for the Holy Father, otherwise barely acknowledge his existence much less his vision for the Church in our contemporary world. 

And then we have the blogging priests.  “Father Z,” who in between gorging himself with culinary delights and squeezing into over-sized airline seats manages to blog consistently against Francis and his policies, is sort of the Dean of the Anti-Francis blogs.  More vicious but less well known is the English Father Hunwicke, a refugee from the Church of England who would like to make us all over in his image and likeness of what the Catholic Church should be, as if the soured Anglican would know authentic Catholicism.  And of course there is Rene Henry Gracida, the retired bishop of Corpus Christi and his blog, Abyssus Abyssum Invocat which might be better translated the Abysmal Calls to the Abysmal.  Honest to goodness, the man was a poor enough excuse for a bishop, as a blogger he just fills the world with a gloomy faux gospel of judgment and condemnation.  Father Joseph Illo, aka Father Riceroni, the San Francisco treat, makes sure everyone is on board with his scribe and Pharisee Catholicism in contradistinction to Francis’ message of Mercy.  And then there is The Black Biretta: A Cleric Opines.  Sorry Father, but stop opining and get to work preaching the Gospel, the Good News of salvation not the sour news of condemnation.  You weren’t ordained to opine and you obviously weren’t give the charism by the Holy Spirit to have anything worthwhile to say. 

I won’t even go into the Lay Bloggers save to say that Michael Hichborn of Lepanto Institute is in virtual schism in what he says about Pope Francis and the Synod of Bishops.  Rorate Caeli, at one time a worthwhile blog despite its right-wing biases, has lost any credibility for sound theological thinking or for loyalty to the Church and has just morphed into a rant.  As for the witches of Eastwick, Janet and Carole and Mary Ann and the other koven of krazies are beside themselves in despair and ready to jump ship from Peter’s barque should compassion and reconciliation triumph over self-righteousness and spiritual pride.  Let ‘em go, let them all go. 

In the end it will be, I think, much ado about nothing because while many priests and the wing-nut laity will let spiritual pride win out and convince them that they know Catholicism better than the Pope, ultimately I don’t think a single bishop will go with them. You can’t have a schism without a bishop.   In the end Myers and Sheridan and Olmstead and Lori and Burke—and even that old senile windbag Gracida—won’t walk Peter’s plank.  Frankly I might have more respect for them if they did.  I can deal with stupidity, but it shakes me to see people who lack moral courage to stand by their convictions.  Old hens all, I am afraid, who squawk and pick and ruffle their feathers but nothing more.  

The Problem With Francis; The Problem For Francis A Matter of Perspective

The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts. For theirs is a community composed of men. United in Christ, they are led by the Holy Spirit in their journey to the Kingdom of their Father and they have welcomed the news of salvation which is meant for every man. That is why this community realizes that it is truly linked with mankind and its history by the deepest of bonds.

Hence this Second Vatican Council, having probed more profoundly into the mystery of the Church, now addresses itself without hesitation, not only to the sons of the Church and to all who invoke the name of Christ, but to the whole of humanity. For the council yearns to explain to everyone how it conceives of the presence and activity of the Church in the world of today.

Thus opens Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World issued by the Council Fathers of Vatican II and promulgated by Pope Paul VI on December 7, 1965.  The Church addresses itself not only to its own members, or even to all Christians, but to the entre human family and it does so in a dialogic manner.  The Church has picked up not only on our spiritual needs but on “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted.” The Church here approaches the world with a very different tone and a revised set of priorities than had been used at Vatican I or Trent or even in much of the papal magisterium of the previous centuries.  I say “much” because the amazing encyclicals Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII (1891) and Quadrigesimo Anno of Pius XI (1931) had made brave sallies into the practical world of everyday concerns regarding the rights of Labor and a just ordering of society, putting aside for the moment the more ethereal concerns of the what some might call the “purely spiritual.”  Even these encyclicals, however, were delivered in a magisterial tone where the respective popes intended to “set things right” by decree.  Gaudium et Spes took an entirely different approach, inviting the world beyond the Church to enter into a dialogue by which both the world and the Church can be enriched by a common exploration for the Truth.  Actually both tone and matter of Gaudium et Spes was to some degree anticipated in the Encyclicals of John XIII, namely Pacem in Terris and Mater et Magistra.

The entire tone of the Second Vatican Council was one of dialogue.  Nostra Aetate calls us into dialogue with non-Christian Religions. Unitatis Reintegratio establishes dialogue among the various branches of the Christian family.  Sacrocanctum Concilium calls for the various differing cultures of our human family to be integrated into our Roman Rite as a way of expanding our awareness of the broad diversity of cultures within our Catholic faith.  Christus Dominus calls for the Pope to act collegially and dialogically with his brother bishops in leading the Church.  Often our vision is so locked on the “trees”—the individual changes of Vatican II—that we fail to see the “forest”—the fundamentally different ecology of the Post-Vatican II Church. 

Unfortunately there was an attempt during the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI to soothe the nerves of those for whom this fundamental shift in the Church’s self-understanding was overwhelmingly threatening.  This shift led to what was called “the hermeneutic of continuity,” an attempt to blunt the Council Father’s vision but reinterpreting it in a more narrow context.  Certainly there is great continuity in the Church throughout its history and it has not been broken by the Second Vatican Council.  The immutable and eternal Truths of the Creed remain intact.  The basic nature of the Mass as a Sacrificial Banquet in which we are made present to and participant in the Death and Resurrection of the Lord remains.   The Pope is still infallible—in fact, under John Paul and with the articulation of Josef Ratzinger (later Benedict XVI) there was even an extension of infallibility into the ordinary magisterium.  John Paul and Benedict often “talked the talk” of collegiality and dialogue, they fairly rarely “walked the walk.” There was a strong recentralization of authority in the Roman Curia with the consequent demission of the authority of the bishops, both collegially and individually.  The Ecumenical and Inter-religious dialogues have all but imploded.  The Liturgy, especially under Benedict, was returned to a European expression of faith.

All this is a bit of a background to Pope Francis and in particular to his visit to the United States.  It is becoming undeniably clear that there are two Churches in the United States. There is a majority Church which not only accepts the Council but is enthusiastic about the dialogical approach.  They want discussion about the issues of the day: climate change, immigration, income inequality, the death penalty.  They want a Church is that more inclusive and where there is honest dialogue between those of differing opinions.  They understand the moral underpinnings of the great social and economic challenges that face our nation and our world.  On the other hand there are those who want to go back to the Church of Gregory XVI (reigned 1831-1846) whose monastic background left him frightened, defensive, and condemnatory of the world around him.  (This was the Pope who condemned gas lighting and railways which he saw as dangerous innovations that threatened the existing social order by promoting the bourgeois class.)  These Catholics want the Church to retain its authoritative tone and to limit is voice to those issues which they perceive to belong to the “spiritual realm.”  Needless to say, they perceive Pope Francis’ speeches and actions during his American visit to threaten their entire understanding of the Church and its mission. 

Ultimately what is at stake from a theological perspective is our understanding of the Incarnation.  What does it mean for God to have become human in Christ Jesus?  An orthodox perspective sees that the Divine has entered directly into our human experience.  As such God has taken on himself the concerns of the human family as one of us.  There is nothing that does not fall under his reign or his benevolence—economics, politics, education, health, displacement of peoples from their homes, the protection of life at every stage—discipleship demands a response from us in this world and the Kingdom of God is seen as something that not only finds its realization in the eschaton but involves the transformation of this world by the grace of God. 

On the other hand, the attempts to limit the Church’s mission to the “purely spiritual” represent theologically a Nestorian position where God comes among us in human appearance but never truly embraces our humanity and makes it his own.  This scheme verges on Gnosticism in which the world is divided into the “sacred” and the “profane” and the Church’s only interest is with the “sacred.”  In such a scheme “salvation” is about the eternal reward of the soul in a post-apocalyptic heaven.   (The body gets to go along as a free ride in the Resurrection of the Dead, but the concern is the soul.)   This world and those who belong to it meet only judgment and destruction.  This scheme separates charity from justice, content that the poor and those on the margins of society receive the crumbs that fall from the tables of their betters.  The orthodox scheme realizes that without a determination for justice there is no true charity only condescension. 

The split between the two Churches in the United States grows stronger and stronger.  It isn’t a result of Vatican II, though I think Vatican II has to some extent crystalized it.   Years ago I approached the same issue from the perspective of the English Colonial Catholic Church and the Maryland Recusant Tradition as opposed to the European immigrant Church Tradition which challenged Colonial Catholicism in the early 19^th century and afterwards.  The conflict for the Church found its way into Vatican II.  There were many influences for reform and change, but there is no doubt that the universal Catholic Church was highly influenced at Vatican II by the distinctly American tradition as represented in the Decree on Religious Freedom and by a more communal and less hierarchical self-understanding.  To a notable extent the Universal Church was “Americanized” at the Council and the conflict continues today between those who want a monarchial and authoritarian Church and those whose vision is a more communal and dialogical Church.  In the end the Vatican II model will prevail both because its foundation was well laid at the Council and because the vast majority of Catholics worldwide have embraced it.  The question will be, how long can the two Churches co-exist in mutual recognition? 

The Tensions Mount between the Francis and the Anti-Francis Forces in the Curia

Cardinal Raymond Burke, the
most outspoken of Vatican critics
of Pope Francis, standing next to
Francis as the Pope receives
various bishops at the end of the
Wednesday Audience 

Here is a follow-up article to my last posting which comes as the same topic—Pope Francis and his efforts to bring the Church into a more open and pastoral response to the needs of 21^st century people—but this article in the Washington Post is from the perspective of Vatican intrigue rather than Father Santora’s wonderful essay written from the heart of a Shepherd.  As this article makes clear the opposition to Francis is well organized and with leadership from the highest ranks of the Church.  We can see how increasingly difficult it is for the whole thing to hold together.  Francis is likely to reign no more than another five years, seven at the most.  What will happen in the struggles to find a successor?  Will the Church survive the tensions of a rabidly divided conclave?  The vast majority of Catholics around the world are enthusiastic about Francis and his more “open style.”  Large numbers of clergy and of the hierarchy are far less enthusiastic.   It’s a recipe for all out civil war. 

Conservative Dissent Brewing inside the Vatican

By Anthony Faiola    September 7 at  7:33 PM

VATICAN CITY — On a sunny morning earlier this year, a camera crew entered a well-appointed apartment just outside the 9th-century gates of Vatican City. Pristinely dressed in the black robes and scarlet sash of the princes of the Roman Catholic Church, Wisconsin-born Cardinal Raymond Burke sat in his elaborately upholstered armchair and appeared to issue a warning to Pope Francis.

A staunch conservative and Vatican bureaucrat, Burke had been demoted by the pope a few months earlier, but it did not take the fight out of him. Francis had been backing a more inclusive era, giving space to progressive voices on divorced Catholics as well as gays and lesbians. In front of the camera, Burke said he would “resist” liberal changes — and seemed to caution Francis about the limits of his authority. “One must be very attentive regarding the power of the pope,” Burke told the French news crew.

Papal power, Burke warned, “is not absolute.” He added, “The pope does not have the power to change teaching [or] doctrine.”

Burke’s words belied a growing sense of alarm among strict conservatives, exposing what is fast emerging as a culture war over Francis’s papacy and the powerful hierarchy that governs the Roman Catholic Church.

This month, Francis makes his first trip to the United States at a time when his progressive allies are hailing him as a revolutionary, a man who only last week broadened the power of priests to forgive women who commit what Catholic teachings call the “mortal sin” of abortion during his newly declared “year of mercy” starting in December. On Sunday, he called for “every” Catholic parish in Europe to offer shelter to one refugee family from the thousands of asylum seekers risking all to escape war-torn Syria and other pockets of conflict and poverty.

Yet as he upends church convention, Francis also is grappling with a conservative backlash to the liberal momentum building inside the church. In more than a dozen interviews, including with seven senior church officials, insiders say the change has left the hierarchy more polarized over the direction of the church than at any point since the great papal reformers of the 1960s.

The conservative rebellion is taking on many guises — in public comments, yes, but also in the rising popularity of conservative Catholic Web sites promoting Francis dissenters; books and promotional materials backed by conservative clerics seeking to counter the liberal trend; and leaks to the news media, aimed at Vatican reformers.

In his recent comments, Burke was also merely stating fact. Despite the vast powers of the pope, church doctrine serves as a kind of constitution. And for liberal reformers, the bruising theological pushback by conservatives is complicating efforts to translate the pope’s transformative style into tangible changes.

“At least we aren’t poisoning each other’s chalices anymore,” said the Rev. Timothy Radcliffe, a liberal British priest and Francis ally appointed to an influential Vatican post in May. Radcliffe said he welcomed open debate, even critical dissent within the church. But he professed himself as being “afraid” of “some of what we’re seeing”

Rather than stake out clear stances, the pope is more subtly, often implicitly, backing liberal church leaders who are pressing for radical change, while dramatically opening the parameters of the debate over how far reforms can go. For instance, during the opening of a meeting of senior bishops last year, Francis told those gathered, “Let no one say, ‘This you cannot say.’ ”

Since then, liberals have tested the boundaries of their new freedom, with one Belgian bishop going as far as calling for the Catholic Church to formally recognize same-sex couples.

Conservatives counter that in the climate of rising liberal thought, they have been thrust unfairly into a position in which “defending the real teachings of the church makes you look like an enemy of the pope,” a senior Vatican official said on the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely.

“We have a serious issue right now, a very alarming situation where Catholic priests and bishops are saying and doing things that are against what the church teaches, talking about same-sex unions, about Communion for those who are living in adultery,” the official said. “And yet the pope does nothing to silence them. So the inference is that this is what the pope wants.”

A measure of the church’s long history of intrigue has spilled into the Francis papacy, particularly as the pope has ordered radical overhauls of murky Vatican finances. Under Francis, the top leadership of the Vatican Bank was ousted, as was the all-Italian board of its financial watchdog agency.

One method of pushback has been to give damaging leaks to the Italian news media. Vatican officials are now convinced that the biggest leak to date — of the papal encyclical on the environment in June — was driven by greed (it was sold to the media) rather than vengeance. But other disclosures have targeted key figures in the papal cleanup — including the conservative chosen to lead the pope’s financial reforms, the Australian Cardinal George Pell, who in March was the subject of a leak about his allegedly lavish personal tastes.

More often, dissent unfolds on ideological grounds. Criticism of a sitting pope is hardly unusual — liberal bishops on occasion challenged Francis’s predecessor, Benedict XVI. But in an institution cloaked in traditional fealty to the pope, what shocks many is just how public the criticism of Francis has become.

In an open letter to his diocese, Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, R.I., wrote: “In trying to accommodate the needs of the age, as Pope Francis suggests, the Church risks the danger of losing its courageous, countercultural, prophetic voice, one that the world needs to hear.” For his part, Burke, the cardinal from Wisconsin, has called the church under Francis “a ship without a rudder.”

Even Pell appeared to undermine him on theological grounds. Commenting on the pope’s call for dramatic action on climate change, Pell told the Financial Times in July, “The church has got no mandate from the Lord to pronounce on scientific matters.”

In conservative circles, the word “confusion” also has become a euphemism for censuring the papacy without mentioning the pope. In one instance, 500 Catholic priests in Britain drafted an open letter this year that cited “much confusion” in “Catholic moral teaching” following the bishops’ conference on the family last year in which Francis threw open the floodgates of debate, resulting in proposed language offering a new stance for divorced or gay Catholics.

That language ultimately was watered down in a vote that showed the still-ample power of conservatives. It set up another showdown for next month, when senior church leaders will meet in a follow-up conference that observers predict will turn into another theological slugfest. The pope himself will have the final word on any changes next year.

Conservatives have launched a campaign against a possible policy change that would grant divorced and remarried Catholics the right to take Communion at Mass. Last year, five senior leaders, including Burke and the conservative Cardinal Carlo Caffarra of Bologna, Italy, drafted what has become known as “the manifesto” against such a change. In July, a DVD distributed to hundreds of dioceses in Europe and Australia, and backed by conservative Catholic clergy members, made the same point. In it, Burke, who has made similar arguments at Catholic conferences, issued dire warnings of a world in which traditional teachings are ignored.

But this is still the Catholic Church, where hierarchical respect is as much tradition as anything else. Rather than targeting the pope, conservative bishops and cardinals more often take aim at their liberal peers. They include the German Cardinal Walter Kasper, who has suggested that he has become a substitute target for clergy members who are not brave enough to criticize the pope directly.

Yet conservatives counter that liberals are overstepping their bounds, putting their own spin on the pronouncements of a pope who has been more ambiguous than Kasper and his allies are willing to admit.

“I was born a papist, I have lived as a papist, and I will die a papist,” Caffarra said. “The pope has never said that divorced and remarried Catholics should be able to take Holy Communion, and yet, his words are being twisted to give them false meaning.”

Some of the pope’s allies insist that debate is precisely what Francis wants.

“I think that people are speaking their mind because they feel very strongly and passionately in their position, and I don’t think the Holy Father sees it as a personal attack on him,” said Chicago Archbishop Blase J. Cupich, considered a close ally of the pope. “The Holy Father has opened the possibility for these matters to be discussed openly; he has not predetermined where this is going.”