A Follow Up With Some Thoughts On Mandatory Celibacy

Rereading my last post several hours after it went up I came across a statement that unfortunately is very unnuanced and which I want to correct.  I had mentioned that Archbishop Laud, like many churchmen before and since “could make celibacy look like an option for holiness rather than a cover for psychological struggles.”  This sounds as if I do not think there is a positive value for clerical celibacy or that celibacy is indicative of a psychological disorder when in fact I believe that in a mature, or maturing, individual celibacy can indeed be “an option for holiness” and is totally compatible with a healthy psyche.  I do not believe, however, that celibacy, especially when it is not a choice one can freely make and still follow one’s vocational pursuit, is automatically healthy much less holy.  I know many priests and religious who are profoundly holy and mentally healthy; I also know many whose psychosexual development is severely arrested to the detriment of their own spiritual welfare and of the welfare and even safety of those with and to whom they minister. 

The celibacy of the clergy is part of a very ancient tradition.  While celibacy as a canonical requirement for ordination can be traced in the western Church back to the Councils of Elvira (306) and of Orange (441), it would be centuries before it became universal law in the Western Church.  There are a number of factors that contributed to it.  First there developed a very negative attitude towards human sexuality and there were various decrees insisting that priests abstain from sexual intimacy with their wives for a set period (usually 1-3 days) before celebrating the Eucharist.  It was, thus, a purity requirement.  Secondly, with the rise of monasticism in the fourth and fifth centuries, it became more and more common to choose bishops from among the monks—who were celibate—and not infrequently these monastic bishops did not have a positive appreciation of marriage or marital sexuality.  That may explain, to a certain degree, the decision at the aforesaid Councils.   Through the early Middle Ages celibacy became more and more expected of the clergy and the problem of hereditary churches—churches and church property passing from priest-father to priest-son to priest-grandson—would lead to proscription’s against clerical marriage.  This problem was limited more or less to the Western Church.  In the Eastern Churches after the fifth century bishops were invariably monastics and ecclesial preferment was limited to celibates, but the pastoral care, especially in rural churches, was entrusted to married priests and deacons.  In fact, most priests in rural parishes of the west were married as well, it was just that the Church did not recognize their marriages nor the legitimacy of their children which barred the children from themselves being ordained or inheriting property—thus solving the inherited church problem.  It was not uncommon for the secular clergy even in the large cities, and even for bishops and archbishops, to be in what today we would call a common law marriage.  While the Reform Canons of the 11^th century “Gregorian Reform” outlawed clerical marriage—and declared all such marriages to be invalid—it was only in the 16^th century reforms of the Council of Trent that there was any significant enforcement of clerical celibacy.  And even then—and now—it is not entirely successful as there are priests and even bishops who are for all practical purposes in a somewhat less than formal marriage.  Only recently I came across the story of a priest who has just retired from active duty as an Army Chaplain who has been civilly married at least twice with the knowledge of both his military and ecclesiastical superiors.  Some years back during a trip to Africa I was invited to lunch with a Bishop with whom I am acquainted.  His wife and three teenage children were all at the table.  Their presence was not explained to me in anyway but the priest-friend who accompanied me that day confirmed my surmises.  Both these men are highly effective ministers and neither is particularly “liberal” in their theological views. Those who do not know their particular stories would undoubtedly consider them both to be “good priests.”  While I must admit that I have found the chaplain to be a man for whom I personally do not have respect, it is not because of his marriages per se but rather what I perceive to be a general lack of integrity; I can’t but stand in awe of the Bishop whose selfless work in building a strong Church under the most challenging of conditions, I have seen over many years.  More to the point of this posting, whatever the irregularity of life of either of these two men, my dealings with them have shown them to be psychologically mature and well-integrated men. 

On the other hand, I have seen some of the grossest psychological and spiritual immaturity on the part of some priests who conform to celibacy.  I remember an American priest I knew in my Rome days—he was a confessor at Saint Peter’s where he was known for his rigid penances and the somewhat prurient questions with which he would interrogate penitents, going far beyond not only what is required but what is allowed a priest to ask a penitent.  Younger members of his Religious community learned to give him great distance as he had a tendency to “violate boundaries” in his relationships with them.  He was considered a saint by those outside his community but those who lived with him found him controlling, sly, untruthful, and manipulative. 

The fuss that some priest have created in refusing communion to those whom they suspect—even with good reason—of not conforming to Church teaching regarding human sexuality: abortion, masturbation, same-sex relationships, etc., and even more their self-righteousness in defending their position when summoned by their bishops or criticized by their parishioners, indicates a probable lack of psychosexual integration. Indeed, the choice of judgment over compassion might well be an indication of an arrested spiritual—and probably psychological—development.       

Growing up in the 50’s and 60’s I have vivid memories of how much many of the clergy drank and how common alcoholism was among priests.  In retrospect I wonder how much of this was triggered not simply by the loneliness of celibacy for those not called to it, but by the lack of psycho-sexual maturity that mandatory celibacy fosters.

At the same time I write this, I think back on my school days and a Jesuit who taught me junior religion and senior Latin.  He was a man of exceptional kindness and compassion, a man who could look into a person’s soul and see beyond all the superficial crap right to the best of what is in the human heart.  I also think back on a priest friend of my parents—a Diocesan priest—who was the epitome of priestly modesty and discretion, but in a way that was overwhelmingly joyful.  He never drank anything stronger than tea but could sit at the piano for hours making you laugh and making you cry with music ranging from Ragtime to Verdi.  This was a man who for all his natural dignity and grace, was not above doing the laundry for a shut-in or frying up some ham and eggs for a homeless man. Celibacy can be one man’s manna and another man’s poison.  It is clear from experience that just because a man is given a vocation to the priesthood, he is not necessarily given the vocation to celibacy.  And there are more than enough men there who have opted for celibacy but who have not the “shepherd’s heart” that is a sign of an authentic priestly vocation.  

Need for Change

A good friend of mine some years back retired as archdeacon of a diocese in a major Protestant denomination here in the United States.  Among his responsibility as archdeacon had been the pastoral care of the clergy and their families—a pastor to pastors as it were.  And he told me—with some discouragement—that he estimated that about 75% of his clergy were “burned out.”   There were reasons for that.  First of all, the other various helping professions—medicine, counseling, teaching—all experience high burn-out rates.  Secondly, he found that many of his clergy were under-paid and thus had come to under-value themselves and their contribution.  This is a rather “worldly” scale of value, but we must admit that we are not immune to it just because we are in the Church.  Moreover, clergy are considered to be on 24-hour call and it is very difficult to establish good boundaries to protect family life and its demands—or one’s need for personal time for prayer and study—from the demands, legitimate or otherwise, of one’s congregants.  Yet another contribution is that a generation and more ago clergy were highly respected as a profession—today they are not.  This is not just because of the sexual abuse crisis though that has been a factor, but as the standards of professional conduct have risen in the other professions, perhaps they have not risen proportionately in the clergy.   Indeed, in an increasingly secular society, clergy are often looked down as “Mulcahys” –after the good-hearted but buffoon priest from Mash. 
I think the situation is even more complicated for Catholic clergy.  Donald Cozzens in his 2000 book The Changing Face of the Priesthood identifies various pathologies that result from the current structures of rectory living.  Cozzens maintains that the low salary and institutional living to which most priests are subject create an unhealthy psychological dependency on hierarchical authority that retards the personal development of the priest who cannot establish a sense of his own personhood apart from the Institutional Church.  This dependency has left men vulnerable to all sorts of abuses of power that have deeply scarred them.  They have had to live in rectories with rageaholic pastors, be subject to ridiculous curfews, made to feel that they were living in someone else’s (the pastors—or the housekeeper’s) home, not having their privacy respected, and otherwise treated as less than mature adults. This has left those  priests so victimized with anger and depression.  Furthermore, the difficulty in securing a personal residence and economic security for an eventual retirement often makes the future look bleakly like a continuation of a depressing present.    
There are other issues.  Many priests seem to be unable to develop healthy adult-adult relationships.  Mandatory celibacy, if not treated healthily during the formation process of the seminarian and young priest, does seem to retard normal affective development, leading not only to predatory behavior in those so pre-disposed, but to an inability of many otherwise “normal” priests to relate with trust, warmth and appropriate affection to one’s peers.  Note: I am not saying this of all clergy but of those whose spiritual and character formation in the seminary was not healthy.  Unfortunately this was not uncommon and is still not uncommon in many seminaries where formators themselves did not have a healthy psycho-sexual development.  Arrested emotional development is permitted to pass as chastity whereas genuine chastity is love-filled and compassionate. 
In the years before and immediately after World War II the priest was often, along with the doctor and the lawyer, one of the few people in the parish with a college education.   With the GI Bill and the consequent rise of the Catholic population from working class into the professional classes, the priest today is often less educated than his parishioners.  This has not only deprived the priest of that edge over his parishioners, but has made his preaching an opportunity to reveal his ignorance rather than display his erudition.  Too many sermons today are bland at best and often simply inane.  Seminary education has often not progressed enough over the last fifty years to give the priest the secular knowledge he needs to know to converse intelligibly about the faith with his more educated listeners.  This problem is not all one-sided.  The de-emphasis on—and even ignorance of—the liberal arts, and particularly on philosophy and theology, in today’s colleges and universities where his parishioners have been “educated” have made the challenge even greater for the priest to be able to explain the relevance of our Christian faith to contemporary listeners.  I put “educated” in quotes because without philosophy there simply is no education, only ignorance fortified by scientific facts.   In other words, physics without metaphysics builds technocrats, not men and women capable of critical thought.  
Burnout does not mean that a person is totally dysfunctional.  A priest or minister can be “burned out” as they walk through the duties of funerals and visits to the sick and marriage preparation and even the liturgy and preaching.  Burnout does, however, severely diminish the quality of work that a person does and it deprives the person of the enjoyment he or she finds in their work.  What do we do to rescue the clergy from burnout?  As with a physical malady such as cancer or heart disease, there is no one answer that fits all.  Each case is unique and requires and individual analysis and treatment.  For many there is a need for psychological counseling to remedy not only the hurts and disappointments experienced in ministry, but to go back and address the flaws in initial formation.  I think there is invariably a need for good spiritual direction to give them more substantial grounding in the spiritual life than the piety that passes for “priestly spirituality” in many seminaries.  There is a need for most to have a gentle re-introduction to the intellectual life, encouraged to read and discuss current theological works that will stimulate thought and energize the priest once again for mission.   And I think there is a need to re-integrate them into community—both the network of presbyteral friendships but also—and equally as important—into a web of diverse friendships that include Catholic laity, non-Catholics, and non-believers where they can be not just “Father X” but their truest and most authentic selves.  Beneath the priest must be the authentic person.  This has too often been ignored in seminary formation where the concern has been to strip down the individualism of the candidate and replace it with a role-identity that makes him no more than the priest he is ordained to be.  Beneath the collar, under the soutane, is nothingness.  The individual is a priest, and no more and no less.  But such a priest is no longer the person God created him to be and there is no nature left on which grace can build.  We don’t need these cookie cutter priests: we need honest, sincere, mature human persons who can bring their unique gifts to the service of the Gospel.  Jesus, in his paschal mystery did not renounce his distinct humanity but allowed it to be transformed into the Resurrected One.  We in our baptism are called, not to be erased into the image of Christ but to be conformed to the image of Christ.  And so too the priest—to grow into an alter Christus that incorporates that person whom God has created, Christ has redeemed, and the Holy Spirit is sanctifying.  ( By the way—for you silly neo-trads: would you learn the difference between “altar” and “alter” and use each appropriately.  I am tired of seeing your blogs talk about the need to return to only alter boys serving Mass or to hear how the priest is an altar Christus.  Geeze Louise, if you want the Latin to come back please learn it; in the meantime you can consider the female altar servers as alter boys.)    

Well, What Do Liberal Catholics Want?

One of my regular readers—and a good friend—drew my attention to this article by Damon Linker.  You can check out the article at http://theweek.com/article/index/255064/what-do-liberal-catholics-want

What drew my attention was the following paragraph

After reading an endless stream of gushing commentary by liberal Catholics on Pope Francis, I'm beginning to wonder if they ever really cared about reforming doctrine in the first place.

Now I am not sure that Linker knows his Catholicism sufficiently to know what is doctrinal and what is not.  He lumps disciplinary matters like mandatory celibacy in with theological (doctrinal) matters such as abortion and same-sex marriage.  But that isn’t my argument with him.  Frankly, I don’t think “liberal” Catholics have any expectation—or desire—for doctrinal change.  Polls show that while American Catholics stand with the majority of Americans in not wanting a total ban (note the word “total”) on legal abortion, the vast majority of American Catholics believe that abortion is a moral evil in as that it is the deliberate taking of a human life.  Similarly the majority of American Catholics favor the legal recognition of same-sex marriage, but I don’t know any American Catholics (which isn’t to say that there aren’t some, I just don’t know them) who quibble with the Church’s policy of sacramentally celebrating only the marriages of a man and a woman who are free of previous valid marriages to marry.  Similarly, I don’t know of any serious calls to recognize “second marriages” although many would favor lifting the ban on communion from those married outside the Church.  What “liberal” Catholics have long wanted and now found in Pope Francis, is not a revision of doctrine, but a change of tone.  We had just grown tired of being such an unfriendly Church where any who did not conform to our idea of righteousness were judged worthy of only being cast into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.  We were getting known for what we are against rather than what we stand for—and a negative label is never good for morale.  Nor does this sort of Jansenist condemnatory tone proclaim the Good News (evangelion, Gospel) of salvation. 

The one area where there most likely is a desire for change is the matter of opening the ordained ministries to women.  The two previous popes have declared this to be a theological issue but, frankly, have not been convincing.   Many—including some of the finest theological scholars today—have said this is a matter of discipline and not of doctrine.  The argument is that because the bishop and presbyter (the Latin word for a priest, and better term when talking theologically) sacramentally represent Christ, and Christ was male, the bishop and presbyter must be male to represent him.   Granted the Bishop and the priest sacramentally participate in the Unique Priesthood of Jesus Christ—which is to say that Christ is the only priest in the Christian faith and the bishop and presbyter are sacramental-representations of Christ the Priest.  The bishop or presbyter have no priesthood of their own, but only that of Christ in which they participate.  Of course all the baptized participate in the Priesthood of Jesus Christ by virtue of their baptism—but those who are ordained do so in an unique way proper to and restricted to the Sacrament of Orders.  And granted that Jesus is male.  But is the masculinity of Jesus essential to his being, much less to his priesthood?  What is essential to Christ’s Nature, according to the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon is his humanity, not his masculinity.  But again, we are verging on the theological here and I want to avoid going too far into that field and stay to the historical.  Let us just say that other than the possibility of ordaining women to the ministries of Bishop and Presbyter most “liberal” Catholics are quite content for doctrine to go its slow path of evolutionary development rather than have the Pope—even Good Pope Francis—just start changing the key teachings of the faith willy-nilly.   

Let me also say that as someone who would generally fall into the category of “liberal” Catholic, that I don’t want the Pope to change teachings about contraception, abortion, same-sex marriage, or even ordination of women or priestly celibacy.  I want things to be open for study, research, and intelligent discussion.  I am far more interested in a good process than any particularly desired product.  I think we have a lot we need to think about and talk about before we get into substantial change.  Theologians need to reclaim their historic role in moving the discussion forward and not simply providing the rationale for unilateral magisterial decrees.  We need—as we had at Vatican II—bishops making decisions that were enlightened by the theologians.  And we need to involve the faithful in those discussions.  I think Pope Francis and the faithful have learned—and learned instinctively (which is to his credit)—to sing in harmony.  We need for the faithful, the theologians, and the magisterium all to learn how to sing in harmony, realizing of course, that harmony permits descants. 

Finally, let me just add that as a “liberal Catholic” I would hope that any substantial change in Church discipline and any significant development in doctrine would not come from the Chair of Peter  acting unilaterally but from a Universal Council.  What would really seal the Vatican II revival of Francis’ pontificate is the calling of the next Council.  Remarkable things happen when the Holy Spirit gathers the Church and is allowed to “do her (Pentecost) thing” 

Vatican II--And the Dreams of a Swiss Abbot II

Yesterday I published an entry about Abbot Martin Werlen, Abbot of the famous Swiss pilgrimage shrine, the Abbey of Einsiedeln, and a sermon he preached to the Swiss bishops on the occasion of the 50^th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council.  Abbot Martin is himself a member of the Swiss Bishops’ Conference  by virtue of the fact that while he is not an ordained bishop he is the Ordinary of a See—the Abbey of Our Lady of Einsiedeln being an Abbey Nullius.  An Abbey Nullius is a quasi-diocese and its Abbot is the Ordinary of the jurisdiction administered by the Abbey.  An Abbey Nullius would have parishes, schools, convents, monasteries, clergy, and laity—just as would a typical diocese.  The Abbey would have its own tribunal, grant annulments, hear ecclesiastical trials, write dimissorial letters for ordinations, grant required dispensations and give faculties to priests and deacons to preach and administer the sacraments—just like a diocese.  In fact, it is a diocese but headed by the Abbot rather than a bishop.  The Abbot would normally be required to bring in a bishop to do the ordinations of priests and deacons, though he could install clerics in the minor ministries of lector and acolyte and he can confirm the faithful.  It is an unusual situation.  Belmont Abbey was the only Abbey in the United States to have this status but renounced its status in 1977 in favor of the Diocese of Charlotte, North Carolina. 
The Abbey of Our Lady of Einsiedeln dates back to the tenth century when Saint Meinrad, a hermit from the Hohenzollern family—the same family from whom the German Kaisers would come nine centuries later (and who says this isn’t a small world)—established a shrine to the Madonna on the Etzel Pass.  Meinrad was murdered by two thieves—traditionally named Richard and Peter—who were trying to rob the gifts left at the shrine by pilgrims.  Other hermits came to take his place, however, and the monk Eberhard, established a monastery and church on the site in the mid tenth-century.  The Abbots were traditionally princes of the Empire until Napoleon suppressed the Holy Roman Empire in the early nineteenth century.  They also were given the ecclesiastical jurisdiction—as mentioned previously—exempt from the authority of any bishops save the Holy See.   This sort of exemption was quite common in the Middle Ages and is one of the ways that the papacy employed in strengthening its own authority at the cost of that of the local bishops.
At the time of the Protestant Reformation Ulrich Zwingli, the Swiss Reformer, came to Einsiedeln and preached against the cult of the Virgin there.  However, the locals knew that their bread was generously buttered by the Blessed Virgin and the Protestant Reformation made little headway in the surrounding region.  The level of monastic observance was relatively strict and the monks have been long admired for their holiness and their scholarship.  The abbey has a very good reputation today and certainly the insightful talk of Abbot Martin only adds to its credit. 

Vatican II--And the Dreams of a Swiss Abbot

Pope John XXIII opened up

all sorts of possibilities for

Church when he convoked

Vatican II 50 years ago

Shortly before Christmas, an article by journalist Christa Pongratz-Lippitt about an outspoken Swiss Abbot caught my attention.  Martin Werlen is the abbot of the thousand-year old abbey in Switzerland and he gave a remarkable sermon to the Swiss Bishops in mid-December.  In his sermon Abbot Martin echoed the radical critique given by the late Cardinal Carlo Martini of Milan shortly before his death last year.  The Abbot called for the Church (in this case, the hierarchy) to reexamine several issues: the sacramental status of divorced and remarried Catholics, more democratic structures of leadership,  clerical celibacy.  Perhaps the most dramatic suggestion is that the Church bring laity—both men and women—into the College of Cardinals who elect the Pope and serve as his senate.  Let me post part of the Pongratz-Lippitt’s article:  
 Fifty-year-old Abbot Martin Werlen, leader of the Abbey of Einsiedeln and himself a member of the Swiss bishops’ conference, first voiced his appeal in a sermon on the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Second Vatican Council in October. The sermon was later published in a 39-page brochure that sold out within three days and is now in its third edition.
Titled “Discovering the Embers Under the Ashes,” it echoes remarks by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini in his last interview before his death Aug. 31. Referring to the state of the church today, Martini spoke of his sense of powerlessness and how Catholicism’s “embers” were “hidden under the ashes.”
Werlen said he is alarmed by the present state of the church. “The situation of the church is dramatic, not only in the German-speaking countries,” he said. “It is dramatic not only because of the rapidly decreasing number of priests and religious or because of plummeting church attendance. The real problem is not a problem of numbers. What is missing is the fire! We must face the situation and find out what is behind it.”
He said there is leeway for reform and discussed possible reforms at length.
For example, he said, the church could learn from the way the Orthodox church deals with remarried divorced people, who are not barred from Communion. The Catholic church has never condemned the Orthodox approach, Werlen emphasized.
Local churches should also have more say in episcopal nominations, he said, recalling that religious orders have always elected their superiors democratically over the centuries.
On priestly celibacy, he quoted the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, promulgated by Pope John Paul II in 1990. The code says that clerical celibacy “is to be greatly esteemed everywhere,” but adds that “likewise, the hallowed practice of married clerics in the primitive Church and in the tradition of the Eastern Churches throughout the ages is to be held in honor.”
There is also a lot of leeway as far as cardinals are concerned, Werlen pointed out. Women and men from all over the world, both young and old, could be elected to the cardinalate for a period of five years and could meet with the pope every three months in Rome. “Such meetings could bring a new dynamism into church leadership,” Werlen suggested.
The church could also “rediscover” synodal processes. “If bishops’ synods are so influentially prepared and accompanied by the Roman Curia that nothing new can emerge, is that a witness of faith?” he asked. As at Vatican II, “bishops should realize their responsibilities and with the help of theologians, and together with the pope, face changes in full faith — and let paper remain paper!”
… “The problems are known. Pope Benedict on occasion refers to them. But nothing concrete is done to solve them,” Werlen said.
Sweeping problems under the table or forbidding discussion of certain issues undermines the church’s credibility, he warned.
…But polarization between conservatives and progressives in the church, which he said has now reached a “frightening” level, has a deadening effect, he cautioned.
“I myself together with the Einsiedeln community would like to take another path, namely that of seeking the embers in the ashes,” he said. He pointed out that Einsiedeln is in dialogue with both the Lefebvrist Society of St. Pius X and the progressive Catholic theologian Fr. Hans Küng.
…After reading the brochure, Bishop Markus Büchel of Sankt Gallen, newly elected president of the Swiss bishops’ conference, released the following statement: “Abbot Werlen has taken up urgent questions the faithful are asking; he has outlined the problems very clearly and has put forward possible solutions. This is an impetus for very necessary discussions in the church that are also a great concern of mine. That is why I am most thankful to him.”
 

Back to the Future: Saint Peter Damian

Pope Gregory VII--sponsor of the Gregorian
Reformation in the 11th century

Today is the Feast of Peter Damian—one of the most important reformers n the history of the Church and one of my favorite saints.  Peter lived a thousand years ago (1007-1072) at a time when there was an even greater need for Church reform than there is today.  The Church had become hopelessly entangled in the political scene as the Ottonian emperors (Otto I, II, and III as well as Henry II) used their imperial power to reform the Church but in the process had subjugated it to imperial politics.  What had begun as reform threatened to make the Church little more than a slave of the State and it became necessary for Church to both undertake internal reform and seek independence from the Crown.  The struggle would culminate under Gregory VII, the pope for whom the Gregorian Reform is named and who would challenge Henry IV and begin a long struggle between the papacy and the Salian (and later Hohenstaufen) Emperors.  It was not a good time for anyone—kings, popes, or faithful, but it ended with the Church asserting its independence and having benefitted from the Gregorian and then the Innocentian reformations.  Although Gregory VII (the monk Hildebrand) is credited with the Gregorian Reform there were a number of others equally important and one of these is Peter Damian.  Damian is most noted for insisting on the Reform of the clergy, especially as regards enforcing celibacy and his demands that the clergy be purged of all those whose lives did not conform to traditional moral norms.  I want to reprint some material (edited) from an earlier blog posting. 
      There was reason for Peter Damien to insist on reform with a passion. The secular clergy were not taking celibacy seriously. This was a time in which the Church was drawing more seriously on canons (church laws) derived from various early regional church synods (Elvira 306, Carthage 387, Turin 401, Orange 441) that prohibited bishops, priests, deacons, and subdeacons from being married. As we discussed in some earlier postings (July 21, 23, 24 2011) the concern in the eleventh and subsequent centuries was primarily the protection of church property from being alienated to clergy families and many bishops turned a blind eye to the fact that most of their clergy were living in what we might call common-law marriages. To Peter Damian, however, this was not marriage of any sort but concubinage. The clergy wives were, to his mind and in his vocabulary “whores”; the clergy themselves men who had given themselves over to base passions.
     Speaking of base passions, if Peter Damian thought little of the secular clergy for their loose morals, he thought less of his fellow monks. Monasteries, whether in fact or in Peter Damian’s perception (and probably to some extent in both) were filled with homosexuals, and monks, when not busy with Divine Worship, gave themselves over to the most gross of sexual practices. Peter Damian wrote a book, the Liber Gomorrhianus, (The Gomorrhean Book—named after the famous Gomorrah, twin cities with Sodom) outlining the same-sex practices of the contemporary clergy with the most explicitly vivid detail.) By the way, he did not limit his accusations of clerical homosexuality to the monks but extended it to the papal court (the Curia) whom he thought were nothing more than a coven of mincing catamites. (Now that is a word you don’t hear often.) 
      Peter Damian was even more intolerant of gay clergy than married clergy. He wanted men inclined to same-sex relations barred from ordination and those who were ordained stripped of their Orders and reduced to the lay state. When Leo IX (pope from 1049-1054 and himself an ardent reformer of the Church) refused, Peter Damian turned his anger on the pope and wrote an angry letter accusing the pope of neglect in his duties. 
      Peter Damian was by no means a stupid man, but he was quite anti-intellectual. Steeped in monastic tradition—and the tradition of the ancient desert monks more than the urbane Benedictinism, Damian rejected the importance of secular studies, even (and perhaps especially) Philosophy. For him, as for Cassian and the early monks of the Egyptian and Syrian deserts, the monk was a “man of one book”—the Bible. This no doubt contributed to his zeal (some would say fanaticism) in “purifying” the Church. He was one who, like the Gnostics in early Christianity and the Puritans in the English Reformation could simply not bear compromise with what he believed to be the Christian ideal. 
       Surprisingly, while such a “puritan” and anxious to rid the church of what was its biggest problem, simony (the buying and selling of Church offices or positions), he was not nearly as rigid with simonical clergy as with sexually active clergy. He wrote a second book defending not simony, but the validity of the ordination of bishops and priests who had purchased their offices. Some in the Church were saying that simoniacs (those clergy who had obtained their position by purchase) were not validly ordained. (The subject of valid orders is an interesting one and one that we should take a look at sometime as it has impact on contemporary ecumenical affairs.)
To his credit, Peter Damian was a monk and not a man of ambition; nevertheless, he was forced by Pope Stephen IX in 1057 to accept nomination as a Cardinal. Stephen and subsequent popes frequently used Peter Damian as a legate to conduct business in the pope’s name in various places where the Church was having difficulties. His most important legation was to Milan in 1059, representing Pope Nicholas II to decide the dispute between the clergy of Milan—who openly violated the canons on celibacy and who, for the greater part, had obtained their various benefices through purchase. One of the cathedral canons, Arialdo of Cucciago had allied himself with Bishop Anselm of Baggio, the Bishop of Lucca, to form the pataria, an organization that motivated the faithful to reject the ministry of married clergy. Arialdo and Anselm mobilized the middle and working classes against the Bishop, Guido da Velate, and the nobility who supported the married (and simonical) clergy. It was a very complex issue, as married clergy were still the norm through much of the Church and as for simony—well that too, if wrong, was a well-established practice. Beneath the surface there were other issues. One was the attempt of the papacy to establish control over the independent dioceses such as Milan who often were allied with the Emperor and his policies.             
     Another issue was the social conflict between the working classes that supported Arialdo and the propertied classes that supported the bishop. In any event, Peter Damian effected a compromise. The archbishop agreed that no church position would be given in return for money or gifts. He then imposed penances on all who had purchased Church office, but agreed that they should keep their positions if they accepted the obligations of celibacy. The rigorists were furious, because they wanted the offending clergy—both simoniacs and married clergy—permanently deprived of office, but Damian’s compromise held—temporarily. It was to break out again under Alexander II. 
        When Nicholas II died in 1061, the Cardinals met per his instruction (Nicholas was the pope who in 1059 had designated the Cardinals to be the sole electors of the pope; see blog entry January 12, 2011) and elected the aforementioned Bishop of Lucca, Anselm da Baggio, as pope. Anselm, as we saw, was a proponent of reform. Several weeks later, an anti-reform group of bishops met at the summoning of the Empress Regent, Agnes of Poitou, and elected Pietro Cadalus as Honorius II. This created a schism in the Church as the Reform Party and Imperial Party struggled for control. This shows what the real issue for the Gregorian Reform was to be—not Church reform per se, but imperial control of the papacy. Was the pope to be free to exercise his authority unimpeded by the Emperor or was he to administer the Church at the Emperor’s bidding? Peter Damian was on the side of a free papacy and did his best to resolve the schism in the Church in favor of Alexander. He was unsuccessful in the short run, but at a synod convoked in Augsburg by the Archbishop of Cologne, Anno II, in 1062 Peter Damian made a spirited defense of Alexander and the autonomy of the papacy. Through the influence of Peter Damian, Alexander was determined to be the authentic successor of Saint Peter.

The Cathars--The "Perfect Ones"

The wealth of the Church was a

lightening rod for grouips such as

Cathars

Well, it was way back in September—September 20^th to be exact—that we left off our series on Church Reform.  We had been talking about dissent in the medieval Church with the sagas of Peter Waldo and the Umiliati—two different expressions of frustration and anger with the wealth and power of the Church.  The sagas ended up quite differently if you remember, Waldo and his followers were forced into schism by a medieval papacy unable to grasp that genuine Reform might come from lay leadership and the Umiliati ended up becoming a religious order due to a papacy that knew how to harness lay charisms for the good of the larger Church.  We will talk more about the very charismatic pope, Innocent III, who cut through the morass of canon law to empower laity to take an active voice in preaching the Gospel, but first we need to look at another group around at the same time, the Cathars.
       The Cathers (Catheri in Latin) were also known, popularly, as the Albigensians because there were so many in and around the city of Albi in France, but its influence spread far beyond the Languedoc.   Cathars were prominent not only in the South of France but the Rhineland and Italy and not unknown elsewhere.  It is a mystery to historians how the sect originated but, although there is no historical connection,  it does bear certain similarities to the Manichean sect to which Saint Augustine had belonged before his conversion in the fourth century.  Like the Manicheans, the Cathars proposed the idea that there are two Gods—a spiritual god who created our spirits and an evil god who created the material universe into which human spirits have been tricked and entrapped.  The soul must escape this created universe and return to its pure spiritual nature.  It does this by renouncing material realities, especially any of those things that have to do with sexual intercourse and generation as it supposedly is by a sexual curiosity that souls are entrapped into generation into the physical/material world.  Another ancient heresy that taught this same doctrine as the Manicheans is Priscillianism but there is no historical evidence for a survival of either Priscillianism or Manicheanism that would explain the Cathars.  By the way—both Manicheanism and Priscillianism were Gnostic sects and Catharism, while a medieval and not an ancient theology, should also be seen to be in the Gnostic tradition.  
       Another ancient heresy with which Catharism shares some similarity of doctrine is Donatism.  Donatism taught that the validity of the sacraments as channels of grace depended on the worthiness of the minister.  A bishop or priest who was himself sinful therefore could not effectively minister to others.  Donatism was widespread, especially in North Africa, in the fourth and fifth century but this particular doctrine about the worthiness of the ministers resurfaced among the Cathars as it would surface again during the Protestant Reformations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 
        Catharism spread like wildfire in the eleventh century in great part due to dissatisfaction of the common people with the wealth of the institutional Church and lax morality of the clergy.  The use of Latin in liturgical celebrations had reduced the rites of the Church to vague and unintelligible rituals that appeared as superstitious and even magical.  That these rites—baptisms, marriages, funerals, blessings of fields and crops and other rites of everyday life—required offerings of either money or in kind to an often undisciplined clergy from ordinary and even impoverished faithful while the wealth of the Church was vigorously displayed in its buildings, art, vestments and vessels eroded the faith of intelligent if uneducated people.    Lay ascetics who practiced the highly disciplined life of the Cathar holy men—sexually abstinent, economically poor, vegan in diet (food coming from sexual congress—both meat and dairy—being forbidden) impressed many far more than did the too often indolent clergy.  The simple rites—a “baptism” by laying on of hands and a holy communion of bread blest only by the recitation of the Lord’s Pryer—spoke effectively to simple people.  While most converts were unwilling to accept the full discipline of the sect—vegetarianism and celibacy being two of the notable stumbling blocks—large numbers of initiates flocked to the movement remaining at a catechumenal stage until their last moments of life when they would seek the  “consolementum” or laying on of hands.  Of course, it should not be presumed that all Cathar holy men lived up to the demands of their ascetic vocation any more than all priests live up to theirs, but there is a consensus that the rumors of debauchery and charlatanism were more polemics by the institutional Church to destroy the credibility of the movement than serious and credible charges.  While there certainly would have been some charlatans among them, their widespread success in making converts indicates greater credibility than some Catholic historians allow. 

Yet More on the Great Schism

A Celebration of the Eucharist in an Orthodox

Church "We did not know if we were in heaven or

still on earth."

Sorry about the hiatus.  We have been without internet for several days and then I was involved in doing some moving which is always a strain on time and energy.  But things have settled down a bit and I would like to get back to the matter of the schism that has divided the Orthodox Churches of the East from the Catholic Church of the West.  I mentioned in the previous blog that the first thing we Catholics have got to get over is the idea that the Greek Church was in some way or other at one time “under” the Pope.  It never has nor had been.  The Churches of Rome and of Constantinople, and the various local Churches of their respective patriarchates, had been in communion with one another since apostolic times.  That communion was fractured in the ninth century when Pope Nicholas I, as senior patriarch of the Church, had excommunicated the Byzantine Emperor Michael III for having deposed the Patriarch Ignatios and replaced him with Photius but the Pope was acting as senior patriarch protecting the rights and authority of a brother patriarch, Igantios.  Ignatios, as a matter of fact, was restored and when, after the death of Ignatios,  Photios was elected in his own right to the Patriarchal Throne there was no breach of communion with the Churches of the West.  In fact, according to some historians, Photios’ son succeeded to the Papal Throne as Theodore II, one of the few good popes of the late ninth  century.  (He had a very short reign, only twenty days, in 897.  His death may be a witness to just how good a pope he was in a time when a fair number of evil men coveted the Throne of Peter and achieved it by very unscrupulous means.)  This time, however, the schism would be of greater and more serious duration.  
     Part of the problem is that the Byzantine Empire was in the early stages of what would be a fatal decline.  Actually, by the time of the schism o f 1054 the decline was pretty advanced, though it could—and would—get far worse.  For over four centuries the Empire had been being whittled away by first the Arabs and then the Turks.  Jerusalem, Damascus, Antioch had all fallen to the Caliphate.  Most of Asia Minor—modern day Turkey—was no longer under imperial control.  It would be another four centuries before the Empire fell completely but the effects of its diminution were already being felt.  Long-term fatal illnesses in empires, like humans, often lead to denial.  The smaller and weaker the Empire became, the more pretentious and even arrogant its claims to sovereignty.   And while it was shrinking, it remembered that while its dominion may be shaky, Rome was not little more than a clump of ruined temples and theatres in a malaria-ridden cattle field.  It was time for “old Rome” to give up its pretensions to Patriarchal Seniority and allow “new Rome” (Constantinople) its rightful dominance in matters ecclesiastical as well as civil. 
     “Old Rome” was not about to do any such thing.  Granted, the Vatican Basilica was already falling down around their ears and cows wandered grazing around those churches standing among the ruins of Caesar and Marcus Aurelius’ capital, but like a delusional old dowager whose once-expensive dresses were now patched and who no longer could afford the luxury of the beauty parlor, but who claimed yet to be the grand dame of the town’s first family,  the Popes of Rome in the squalor of the Lateran reminded anyone who would listen that they were the successors of Saint Peter to the plenitudo potestatis.  Conflict was inevitable where claims of ego were the agenda of the hour. 
     The conflict had been building over time, but the immediate conflagration was ignited when the Patriarch, Michael Caerularius wrote to the Bishop of Trani, an Italian See that had connections both to Rome and to Constantinople.  The Patriarch accused the papacy of introducing “judaizing” practices into Christianity, most notably the use of unleavened bread into the Eucharist.  (The practice in the Church, both East and West, had long been to use leavened bread for the Eucharistic celebration, but in the tenth and eleventh century the West gradually began using unleavened bread—as would have been used by Christ at the Last Supper.  The concern for the form of the bread itself corresponds to an increasing appreciation of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist that began as a result of the Eucharistic controversies in the Abbey of Corbie in the ninth century.  But note, there was no continuing tradition from the Last Supper of using unleavened bread.  Leavened bread had become the norm and then the West began introducing unleavened bread.) 
     There were other issues as well—the West had made an unilateral change in the Creed of the Councils of Nicea and Constantinople, proclaiming that the Holy Spirit “proceeded” from the Father and the Son whereas the Conciliar formula said only that the Spirit proceeded from the Father.  This is a very difficult theological point to explain, but suffice it to say that the issue was that the West had altered a formula of faith and altering a formula of faith challenges the orthodoxy of the doctrine.  This in fact is a far more significant problem than leavened/unleavened bread. 
     A third issue was that the West was beginning to impose celibacy on the clergy while in the East married men were allowed to become deacons and priests (though not bishops, at least until they were widowed).
     The Pope, Leo IX, resented the Patriarch’s sending a letter of complaint to a Bishop in the West and the Patriarch’s request that the letter be forwarded to the other bishops of the Western Church.  Leo saw this as an attack on his authority over his own patriarchate and he sent a delegation to Constantinople demanding an acknowledgement by the Patriarch of Papal Supremacy.  This would have been an innovation—the Pope may have been first but he was first among equals.  The Patriarch was not going to give in on that point.  The head of the legation, the Cardinal Bishop of Silva Candida, Humbert, marched into the Hagia Sophia during a Patriarchal Liturgy and, in the name of Leo IX, laid a bull of excommunication on the altar.  The Patriarch then in turn excommunicated the Legate.  The Patriarchal Sees of Rome and Constantinople were no longer in communion with one another, nor were the various Churches comprising their patriarchates.   As far as I can ascertain from my sources, the Patriarch’s pronouncement of excommunication was directed only towards the Legates and not towards either the Pope nor the Western Church.  As for the Bull that Humbert laid on the altar—it was not valid for it was issued in the name of Leo IX and Leo was, unknown yet in Constantinople, dead.   Well, more on this in the next entry.  But the chief point we need to pay attention to is that the schism of East and West is not a rebellion against Papal Authority for the Pope never did have authority over the Eastern Churches.  It was a break of communion as the unity of the Church was shattered as Churches equal in dignity and authority set themselves on different courses.