The Obamazation of Pope Francis III

The Founder of the Franciscans of Immaculate,

Father Stefano Manelli, with the Sisters of the

Congregation

For many neo-trads, Pope Francis’ most damning stance was taken on that airplane back from World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro when he was asked—in regard to the case of a priest, Monsignor Battista Ricca, accused of having had several same-sex affairs—what policy he would follow in regard to gay clergy.  Pope Francis first said that he had investigated the rumors about Monsignor Ricca and did not find them credible, but then went on to say: "If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?"  This comment sent the world of Catholic neo-trads crazy.  It was a marked departure from the policies of Francis’ two predecessors, Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul II, both of whom said that men with deep-rooted same-sex attraction should not be admitted to the priesthood.  Ironically, Pope John Paul and Pope Benedict, despite their tough talk on the issue, were notoriously lax in turning a blind eye to homosexual indiscretions among the ranks of their closest aides and advisors.  In fact, both popes moved rather effortlessly in the atmosphere of sexual ambiguity that has developed in the Roman Curia over the past thirty years.  Francis too seems not to be threatened by being surrounded by a significant number of gay clergy but, unlike his predecessors, he is both honest about it and determined to address the issue.  I am not expecting the reforms of the Roman Curia currently being directed by the commission of eight cardinals to purge every Vatican worker with same-sex attraction.  That would be neither desirable nor realistic.  I am expecting a Curia that has integrity—an administration in which the men and women (yes, there are women in Vatican posts—though not the most significant ones) who are charged with assisting the Pope in the governance of the Church will be people of their word; men and women who, regardless of their sexual attraction, conform their lives to the values the Church proclaims. And I certainly don’t limit such integrity to matters of celibacy as there are far more problems in the central administration of the Church than sexual misconduct.  We need to see a Curia that witnesses to the Gospel to humble service rather than give itself to careerism, graft, and the raw abuse of power.  However, in answering the now-famous question, Pope Francis dealt with the issue of gay clergy very appropriately—as a matter of sin and grace rather than ideology.  Human nature being what it is, even after the reform of the Curia, both sin and grace will still have an operative role in the administration of the Church—after all, that is what our Christian Gospel is about.  And we must keep the mystery of sin and grace front and center in our perspective.  But those who were upset with Francis and his response were unhappy precisely because they want to deal with it as a matter of judgment—not leaving it to the judgment of God but to their own petty pharisaic preoccupation with the speck in their neighbor’s eye. After all, if the Pope declines to judge, how can they claim to have any title to the task?   To bolster their arguments, they even dragged in Franklin Graham, son of the famous Evangelist, Billy Graham.  Unfortunately the younger Graham lacks the Wisdom of Christ’s Gospel that allowed his father to transcend sectarian and other biases and bring people to Christ rather than drive them away with pharisaical harshness.  For many neo-trads who were convinced that the “liberal” ideas of the Vatican II and post-Vatican II years had been turned back forever, this statement of Pope Francis came as quite a shock.  Most bloggers were too stunned to react and scrambled to put the Pope’s comments into a “context.”  There was some concern that he used the word “gay”—an English expression inserted into his Italian remarks—because it “validated” the gay perspective by using a word by which those who identify with the LGBT movement(s) identify themselves.  Among the quick to react was one “Thinking Housewife:” (http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/)   who wrote

ONE of the most disturbing things about Pope Francis’s recent comments on the plane from Rome to Rio was his implication that the Church may legitimately view homosexuality as a permanent inclination and a form of identity. But there is no such thing as a Christian homosexual. There are obviously Christians who have homosexual desires, but not homosexual Christians.

One of her respondents wrote

Those who define themselves by some sin have no place in the Church, and in rejecting the sin, the Church must reject those who identify themselves as willingly, unrepentingly, participating in that sin. 

Talk about make-it-up-as-you-go-along theology.   Well, actually not: I should call it a borrowed theology.  If we were Calvinists this would be true, but in our Catholic world, the wheat and tares grow together in the same field only to be separated out at the final judgment by the One who is to Judge.   This is a key part of the problem with the Francis-bashers.  The Jansenism in which they have been steeped is simply a variation on Calvin’s twisting of Saint Augustine.  The Catholic position is that the Church has a mission to sinners—not after they repent or when they repent—but precisely at that point in their lives when they find themselves in conflict with God’s plan.  I seem to recall something about “Healthy people do not need the physician, the sick do.  The Son of Man has come not for the righteous but for sinners.”  But then perhaps I take Jesus too much at his word.

The Thinking House Wife’s reaction was mild compared to Mundabor’s Blog (http://mundabor.wordpress.com/) whose author’s frustration poured forth in this invective: There is no week now without this disgraceful man reaching for a new deep from the gutter in which he has already put himself.  And this about the Vicar of Christ, the Successor to Saint Peter.   The Liberals were never so vile in their anger with John Paul or Benedict—but hey, not everybody is happy about the changed menu in the Catholic cafeteria. 

In fact, most people took Pope Francis’ comments on gays quite positively and so, considering the dramatic impact of this new approach, the neo-trad critics got surprisingly little traction on this issue.  Moreover the reaction was undoubtedly dulled by another controversy brewing at exactly the same time, and one that stole the gay-thunder by causing a flap about the “Extra-ordinary Form” of the Liturgy and the right of priests to celebrate that form guaranteed by Pope Benedict XVI in Summorum Pontificum.   

Before flying home from World youth Day Pope Francis had appointed Capuchin Franciscan Friar Fidenzo Volpi as Apostolic Commissioner to settle difficulties among the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate.  It is still unclear—and the smoke of this still raging fire is making it ever more unclear—what the root issue is that has divided the community. (I have a number of blog entries on the Franciscans of the Immaculate: August 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 14  2013.)   The problems seem to have originated with a decision of the Founder/General Superior of the Congregation, Father Stefano Manelli, that in their friaries only the pre-conciliar rites would be used.  While the Congregation is quite traditional, not all friars were quite that conservative and wanted to maintain the option to use the Novus Ordo.  They appealed to the Holy See to protect their rights to use the “Ordinary Form” of the approved Liturgy of the Church.  When Father Volpi began to unravel the complexities of the complaints, he found that it was about far more than which liturgy to use.  The conservative nature of the Congregation had attracted any number of candidates and friars who not only preferred the Baroque Rite, but who rejected the Rite of Paul VI (the Novus Ordo).  Moreover, it was not simply the rites they rejected but the teachings of the Second Vatican Council on issues such as ecumenism, inter-religious dialogue, and freedom of conscience.  At this point the issue becomes are these friars Catholic?  The requirement to accept the teachings of the Council and validity of the post-Conciliar Rites is the very sticking point that is preventing the healing of the Lefebvrist schism.  Father Volpi took severe action.  He insisted that the current Rite must be the normative form of the Liturgy and that permission was needed to celebrate the pre-conciliar Rite.  He also undertook a thorough examination of the course of studies for the friars and decreed that until he was satisfied that the friars were being educated according to current Catholic doctrine, no man would be advanced to ordination.  When he met with resistance from Father Manelli and his chief supporters, Volpi assigned them to remote friaries where they could cause less disruption.  Those friars who wanted to impose the traditional forms on the entire Congregation did not take Volpi’s decisions lying down and the neo-trads—especially those such as the blog Rorate Caeli (http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/) which are primarily interested in restoring the traditional rites, picked up the hue and cry. Neo-trads complained that the rights to celebrate the old liturgy (or to avoid the new) “guaranteed” by Pope Benedict had been abrogated.  The shrieks spread to sites like The Eponymous Flower (http://eponymousflower.blogspot.com/) that have a more popular readership among the neo-traditionalist crowd.  Injudicious remarks about Pope Francis abound among those who defend the rebellious friars.  This too has led to a growing estrangement between Pope Francis and what has become a Tea Party within the Church.  I find it interesting that when in 1981 Pope John Paul stepped in and appointed Father Paolo Dezza as Pontifical Delegate for the Society of Jesus after the liberal generalate of Father Pedro Arrupe in order to bring the Society back to the center, the conservative cheered.  Now once again, as so often with Francis, the shoe is on the other foot and some people are not so happy.  Francis is being portrayed as a bully who is persecuting these friars and the religious women attached to the Congregation.  More and more for those on the farther right reaches of the Church, Francis can do no good.  The same polarization that is undermining us as a nation by clogging our political processes with polemic is now driving a wedge in the Church.    

Gay Lobby in the Vatican? Ya Think?

Does this make
me look gay?

So Pope Francis says there is a “gay lobby” in the Vatican?  All due respect to the Holy Father, but there has been a gay lobby in the Vatican so long that it might actually qualify as “Apostolic Tradition.”  Peter Damian complained of it in the eleventh century and it was nothing new then.  
And we have had our share of gay popes.  Pope Paul II Barbo (reigned 1464-1471)—the Pope who built the fabulous Palazzo Venezia in Rome—died while being sodomized by a page.  Sixtus IV dellaRovere, (1471-1484) the Pope who built the Sistine Chapel, was openly homosexual during his pontificate and his nephew, Julius II dellaRovere, (1503-`1513) the pope who hired Michelangelo to fresco the Chapel ceiling, was a bisexual who allegedly rewarded one male lover with an archbishopric. Leo X Medici (1513-1521) was also said to be a practicing homosexual.  Julius III Ciocchi del Monte (1550-1555) made his lover,  a beggar youth of fourteen, a boy of great beauty and little intelligence, a Cardinal, and eventually Secretary of State, to the scandal of Church reformers such as Reginald Pole and Giovanni Carafa (later Paul IV).  To be fair, most popes of this period were, or had been before their election, sexually active; these few just preferred the company of gentlemen in their beds to those of the ladies.  There have been some rumors about more recent popes but at this point they are only rumors and not accepted as historically reliable stories. 
Not so for members of the Roman Curia or the Sacred College.  Among the American Cardinals it seems that Cardinal O’Connell of Boston (Archbishop 1907-1944) was blackmailed by his nephew, Monsignor James P. O’Connell, to keep secret a sexual relationship the Cardinal had with a judge.  There are some particularly salacious stories about O’Connell’s Roman Patron, the English/Spanish Cardinal Rafael Merry Del Val who served as Secretary of State (and almost vice-pope) to Pope Saint Pius X.  Upon the election of Pius’ Successor, the prudish Benedict XV, Merry del Val’s was pushed to the margins and his influence never again the same as it had been.  Stories alleging the death of George, Cardinal Mundelein (Archbishop of Chicago 1915-1939) was related to a homosexual love triangle have long circulated but what gives them credibility is that among those who told the gossip was the eminent Catholic Church historian, Monsignor John Tracy Ellis, himself a priest of Mundelein’s Archdiocese of Chicago.  And of course the stories about the homosexual double life of Cardinal Francis Spellman (Archbishop of New York 1939-1967) are widely accepted as factual.  Some stories even have ties between Spellman and the double life of long time FBI director, J.Edgar Hoover.  If the Spellman stories are true, and I think there is sufficient evidence to warrant their credibility, Spellman had to have protectors and allies not only in the Church but in law enforcement.    
As for the current scene in Rome, having lived there off and on over the last twenty-five  years and being a frequent visitor to the city, the gossip about prelates and priests with same-sex orientation abounds at every dinner party, every religious house, every seminary, every coffee bar.  The “Gay Bars” of Rome thrive with clerical customers.  Some prelates make little or no attempt to hide their homosexuality with their handsome young priests or seminarians trailing behind them whether to a Papal Mass at Saint Peter’s or embassy receptions.  Other prelates and priests live in fear of being betrayed or discovered but still have their liaisons with Swiss guards or young monks or petitioners who have come to Rome seeking some favor or dispensation.  Every so often the newspapers report a priest or monsignor being picked up by the police at the Termini (the train station) or the Pincio for soliciting sex and it never seems to be from a woman—though sometimes it is from one of Rome’s famous transvestite prostitutes.
So is there a “gay lobby” at the Vatican.  No doubt.  No surprise.  What this experience should teach the Church is that there is a need to rethink its theology of human sexuality from the foundations up.  Not only the mystery of sin and grace that is revealed to priests hearing confession should call for a re-estimation of sexual moral theology, but the lived experience of the clergy themselves should make them evaluate the true nature of human sexuality, whether “gay” or “straight.”   I am not saying that  that there should be a carte blanche for irresponsible sexual behavior but it does mean that we should know from our own experiences of grace that the magisterium’s current moral definitions are far more narrow than the parameters in which God works.    

Papal Resignations! VIII

The chimney in the Sistine

Chapel that will signal the

election of the new pope.

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

Papal Resignations! VII

Sixtus IV (seated), one of

several gay popes

It has been a few days since I have posted and I am sorry because this is such a fascinating time.  Most recently there have been a spate of articles in the Italian press and then picked up by the American press that Benedict is resigning because an investigation into the leak of papal documents last year has revealed a network of gay prelates in the Roman Curia—the bureaucracy that runs the Church. 
Is there such a network?  Well, I am not sure that there is a “gay network” but the presence of prelates with same-sex attraction in the papal administration is hardly enough to send Paul Revere up into the cupola of Saint Peter’s with his lanterns.  The Italian newspapers regularly carry stories about one monsignor or another arrested on the Pincio or in the Villa Borghese gardens or the back of the Capitoline for performing obscene acts with some fellow or other.  Bishops and cardinals tend to be more discreet, but Roman dinner parties are always abuzz with this sort of gossip.  One exceptionally handsome Canadian priest I know who was doing graduate work in Rome had two Cardinals practically clawing each other’s eyes out at a reception in the Lateran Palace some years back.  And this is nothing new—all since Vatican II—as Michael Voris and some of the neo-cons are saying.  Peter Damian complained about the problem back in the eleventh century.  Good heavens—there have been gay popes:  Benedict IX, Sixtus IV, Leo X, Julius III.  Paul II is reported in some sources to have died having intercourse with a page in his household.  Julius II, while he had fathered several illegitimate children is also said to have had male lovers.  Rumors have abounded about several modern popes as well but nothing that I can substantiate. 

Neither the history nor the present situation would be news to Benedict whose long years in the Curia before his election made him only too familiar with the seamy underbelly of the Church.  I don’t give credence to his resignation being due to the shock that not everyone on his payroll is a saint.  But this papal election is unlike any in recent history because it is clear that the Church needs Reformation and it had better come from within and be thorough or it will come from without in the form of schism.  The papacy has not been held in such low esteem in centuries. 

An essential component of Reformation must be candor and it is time for the ban on discussing certain subjects to be lifted.  Several Cardinals have already spoken about the need to reevaluate the requirement for celibacy in the Church.  We do need to have honest discussion on that matter.  But permitting clergy to marry without an overall honest and frank discussion about human sexuality—and a discussion that involves the laity (whose province practical knowledge about sex and sexuality is)—would be dangerous to the moral climate of the Church.  We need to talk honestly about every aspect of human sexuality—same-sex attraction, contraception, masturbation, pre-marital and extra-marital sex, sexual compulsions, pedophilia and the whole shooting match (pardon any double entendre)—not to give license to immoral behaviors but for an honest understanding and moral reappraisal of human sexuality.  A sexually active clergy—gay or straight—at the heart of the Church’s administration simply exposes the superficiality of current moral teaching.  I am sure that some of the sexually active clergy in Rome—or in your parish or mine—are irresponsible people who have lost their moral compass but I am also sure that there are  men of good character and serious commitment who are in relationships that are not only mature and responsible but are grace-filled. In the same way I know that there are good Catholics who practice contraception or who have employed in vitro methods to become pregnant.  I know couples whose marriages are not recognized by the Church but whose marriages are also obviously a source of great grace.  Our public and private stances are at a variance and a cosmetic resurfacing won’t do.  It is time that the Christian family has some honest heart-to-heart talk about what constitutes a moral life and permit a theology to develop that is consistent with our contemporary experience.  The sex is not nearly as sinful or as dangerous to the Church as is the hypocrisy of professing standards to which we do not in life subscribe.        

Well, Back to Bill O'Connell and His Sad and Sordid Tale

Cardinal O'Connell enthroned
in state in his cathedral--
somewhat reminiscent of
Cardinal Burke's visits to the
"Canons" of Gricigliano

 

I have a tendency that some of my readers have let me know is most disconcerting—I break off in the middle of a topic to switch to an entirely new topic without any promise of returning to the original conversation.  I currently have doubled that in as that I left the “Revisioning God” series to take up “his Pomposity,” Cardinal O’Connell (with implications for Cardinal Burke) only to break off from the sordid story of that nasty prelate to talk of the political overtones in the historical development of the devotion for Christ the King.   And now a number of potential new topics have broken—Benedict’s admonition to the new Cardinals to forgo the temptations of power, the discovery of the presumed remains of Richard III and the question about which rites should be employed for his reinternment,  and a quote of Andrew Carnegie that I think has some interesting potential for understanding the anti-social justice prejudices of the Catholic Right.   But all that in time.  For now, back to our errant Cardinal of Boston—O’Connell that is, not Law.
One of my favorite stories about William O’Connell is that when he was a student studying for the priesthood he was expelled from Saint John’s Seminary by the Sulpician Fathers who ran the seminary and who found the young man “unfit” for the priesthood.  Perhaps they had uncovered his homosexuality that was to play a role in his later undoing—we don’t know the specifics of their reason for his expulsion.  Whatever the crisis, it didn’t derail his determination to become a priest.  In any event after having been expelled from Saint John’s he went on to study in Baltimore and then to the Pontifical North American College in Rome.  Years later when O’Connell returned to Boston as Archbishop, he had his ghoulish revenge on the Sulpicians.  He ordered them to leave the Archdiocese and to “take your dead with you,” requiring the Sulpicians to exhume their deceased confreres from their cemetery and move the bodies to rest elsewhere. 
Now I know Karma is not a Christian belief but sometimes you have to wonder.  O’Connell built a magnificent Italianate villa on the seminary grounds where he and his successors were to live in princely splendor.  His current successor, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, OFM Cap—a man of far more humble tastes as befits a son of Saint Francis—sold the palace to Boston College in order to pay some of the archdiocesan debts incurred in the sex-abuse scandal under his predecessor—and O’Connell’s successor but three, the disreputable Cardinal Bernard Law.  The problem arose of what to do with O’Connell’s remains which were interred in a mausoleum in the palace grounds.  (O’Connell had disdained the idea of being interred in a vault in the Cathedral as is the normal custom with a diocesan ordinary and wished to remain near his much-loved villa.)   Boston College, however, had no desire to have the remains of this prelate on campus.  The O’Connell family, challenged the removal but eventually had to accede and the dust and ashes that were once the mighty prelate have been moved to the adjoining grounds of Saint John’s Seminary. 
In popular lore, the Cardinal was depicted in the 1963 Otto Preminger film The Cardinal as Lawrence Cardinal Glennon by actor/director John Huston who played him as a gruff but benevolent pastoral prelate: such the license to depart from truth that is given to art.    
My favorite description of the Cardinal is that of the waspish Miss Ella B. Edes—an American old maid convert to Catholicism who had amazingly wormed her way into Vatican employment in the days when only men held access to such positions.  Edes was an agent of Archbishop Corrigan of New York, a figure who has always reminded me of Archbishop Lori even as O'Connell reminds me of Cardinal Burke.  I would love to know more about Ms. Edes as she seems to be a fascinating cross between a cobra and a comedienne whose drily venomous humor savaged some of the most prominent American Churchmen of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.  Edes is the one who named O’Connell as “Monsignor Pomposity” and said of him:    
“Monsignor Pomposity…is so invariably rude, ill-bred, and disobliging…I suppose he does not know better, being low-born and common, pitch-forked, suddenly to a position which has turned his head.  Like all ill-bred Paddies, I am not, in his eyes, sufficiently rich, or fashionable to be treated with even ordinary courtesy.”  Well, as they say “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

Too Severe a Judgment?

Cardinals Gibbons and

O'Connell--not a mutual

admiration society

I had mentioned in the previous blog that among the horses’ asses honored with a miter (and later with a Cardinal’s hat) in the history of the Catholic Church in the United States was William O’Connell who from 1907 until 1944 was Archbishop of Boston.  Some have thought I was too severe on O’Connell and other named prelates in this judgment but I think the history bears out O’Connell’s reputation for one of the most undeserving of men to rise to power in the American Church.  Sean Winter, writing two years ago for the National Catholic Reporter, and comparing the tragedy of O’Connell’s rise to that of the equally fatuous Cardinal Raymond Burke in an essay “Gibbons Cried,” wrote:

It is said that when, in 1911, James Cardinal Gibbons learned that Archbishop William Henry O'Connell was named a cardinal, Gibbons cried. O'Connell was referred to at the time, by a woman who worked at the Vatican, Ella Edes, as "Monsignor Pomposity." He was most known for his efforts to have the U.S. Bishops Conference disbanded and his opposition to laws against child labor.

Cardinal Gibbons was no enthusiast for O’Connell whom he recognized not only as lacking in ability but strident in his antediluvian views on social reform.  Not only did he oppose laws outlawing child labor but he ridiculed the theories of Albert Einstein, suggested that priests refuse communion to women wearing makeup, and decried such singers as Al Jolson for their “crooning” which he considered effeminate.   

O’Connell’s promotion in the American Church was due to his sycophancy towards Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val, the Machiavellian Secretary of State of Pius X.   O’Connell was to prove a major embarrassment to the Church over the years of his Cardinaliate.  His nephew, a priest of the Archdiocese of Boston, was aware of the Cardinals’ homosexual affair with a married judge and used the knowledge to cover his own embezzlement of funds from the Archdiocese to support a secret wife.  O’Connell had made the nephew, a Monsignor James O’Connell, chancellor of the Archdiocese, a position which gave him access to diocesan monies.  The nephew secretly married a woman in Ohio in 1913.  His secret was safe as long as Merry del Val was running the Vatican.  Merry del Val fell from power with the death of Pius X in 1914 at the outbreak of World War I.  In 1922 when confronted about his nephew, O’Connell lied to the newly elected Pius XI—and was caught in the lie—which sealed his fall from influence in Rome but not from power in the American Church where he continued to exercise a bullying influence over the other bishops especially after the death of Cardinal Gibbons in 1921.  O’Connell found an unholy ally in Cardinal Denis Dougherty of Philadelphia in attempts to suppress the emergence of a national bishop’s conference.  O’Connell and Dougherty believing their position as Cardinals should have given them authority over the other bishops and rendering any sort of consultative body superfluous.  O’Connell died in 1944—but there are humorous stories there as well.  Perhaps next time.    

There Is Always More to the Story . . .

The Cathedral of Saint Thomas More,
Diocese of Arlington

In my last entry I mentioned Father Marcel Guarnizo, the priest who had refused communion to a woman at her mother’s funeral back in February and James Haley,  the former priest who allegedly was defrocked and excommunicated earlier this year.  I had a number of inquiries asking more about Mr. Haley and I only know what I have read about him on a number of right-wing websites posted by friends of his.  All in all it seems a tragic story. 
       James Haley was ordained for the Diocese of Arlington in 1987 and was suspended from priestly ministry fifteen years later.  He fought his suspension in Rome but—at least according to his defenders—ended up being defrocked and excommunicated rather than vindicated. 

      Mr. Haley claimed in a court deposition while he was still a priest that until he was ordained he had no idea that there were homosexuals in the Catholic priesthood.  He sure had that misconception cleared up early on.  According to an article by Mark Fellows on the website Daily Catholic    (http://www.dailycatholic.org/issue/2003Feb/febfor1.htm) back in 2003, Haley was assigned to one gay-pastored parish after another.  Now, I’m not saying this couldn’t happen but if Mark Fellows is to be believed, Sodom and Gomorrah looks like a finishing school for young ladies next to the presbyterate of the Arlington Diocese.   And then, as if all these gay pastors wasn’t bad enough, apparently every gay priest in the diocese began going to confession to Haley as he had to see a psychologist for counseling to help him cope with the emotional burden of “knowing what I did not want to know about my fellow priests through confession."

        Let me just take a break here and interject that other priests have told me that the subject of homosexuality in the clergy was discussed in their seminary years and that while it may have been disheartening to hear of this subject, later life experience came as no surprise much less trauma.  Priests have also said that it is highly unlikely that sexually active priests would confess to “such a delicate soul as Haley purports to be.”  In other words, they believe Haley was over-dramatizing his surprise and trauma in the deposition he gave and which Fellows related in his article.
         Deposition—what deposition?  Well that is where the trouble began.  But before I get to the deposition let me continue the narrative.  Haley went to the bishop about his “discovery” that there were gay priests in the Diocese of Arlington.  The bishop at the time was John Keating, aka “John the Good” according to the right-wing detractors of the current bishop.  Nevertheless, as good a bishop as Keating may have been, he told then-Father Haley he was powerless to do anything about the gay clergy and their acting inappropriately.  (“Inappropriately” is, I realize, an understatement if Haley’s stories are true.)  Haley kept accumulating evidence about his fellow priests whom he saw as betraying their vocation.  Now here is where it gets a little weird.  Well, no, it has gotten plenty weird awhile back.  Here is where I get confused.
         Then-Father Haley was assigned to All Saints Parish in Manassas, Virginia, an outlying suburb of Washington DC.  While on the parish computer, he discovered that the pastor had been visiting gay porn sites.  That is a risky thing to do on a computer to which others have access, but hey, we all know about bucks in rut running across eight-lane highways when they get the scent of a doe, or another buck if the first buck be gay.  But that isn’t all.  Apparently the pastor at All Saints wasn’t gay but omni-sexual as Haley also found over 300 love letters from the pastor to a married female parishioner.  And according to Haley the pastor and his lady friend had become a source of scandal to the entire parish, if not to all Loudon County, for their carrying on in hot tubs at parish parties.  (I have yet to go a parish party featuring hot tubs, but then hey I am a Yankee and we north of the Mason Dixon are a bit more, how you say, puritanical?  My parish doesn’t have hot tubs even for Easter baptisms much less for the Altar and Rosary Society annual banquet.   I guess what I am trying to say is that James Haley seems somewhat of a Drama Queen, er, sorry, King.) 
         Well things escalated from there.  The woman in question divorced her husband and like the fork with spoon, ran away with the pastor.  There was an ugly lawsuit from the (justly) aggrieved husband at which then-Father Haley testified and spilled the beans not only about the adulterous pastor-in-rut but about any priest he ever knew of who had a voluntary sexual discharge. Here is where the deposition comes in and if you read the deposition—it is on line—it is a bit over the top but would make a great mini-series.  The Thornbirds looks like the Ave Maria Hour after you read this. 
         But wait, there is still more, between the time Haley discovered the pastor’s combined taste for gay porn and straight sex—which (porn and loveletters) by the way he downloaded onto a disk and gave to the new bishop, Bishop Keating having died—and the deposition, Haley had been transferred to where he could do more “investigating”  Why would any pastor let a man into his house who would go through his computer, his rooms, and his wastebaskets, looking for “evidence” of misconduct? It is one thing to find such material; it is another to actively search. Once the pastor (the guy who likes gay porn and female parishioners) knew the “parish computer” had been raided for the material of his viewing pleasure, it was clear Haley could no longer stay in that house.  So he was transferred to a new parish where the pastor “confided” to him how he was embezzling parish funds and was into gay porn.  My God, is there a straight priest in Northern Virginia???  Or a priest with enough common sense not to tell his associate of his crimes and sins?  Haley reported this pastor too to the bishop and while the pastor was not reprimanded in any way, Haley was transferred to another parish with—you guessed it—another gay-porn addicted pastor.  What are the odds?  Once again, Haley reported the matter to the bishop but this time the bishop demanded Haley resign from active ministry. 
         This is an incredibly sordid affair.  There is no doubt that the pastor in Manassas was carrying on with a married parishioner or that the subsequent pastor had embezzled funds.  The one priest left the priesthood, married the woman (after her divorce); auditors found over $300,000 taken from the second parish.  Some of the other stories Haley related in his deposition seem to be without basis in fact in as that various priests named continue to be in good standing.  Haley has been suspected in some circles of tampering with the evidence he presented to the bishops regarding the alleged misconduct and porn.    
         James Haley had been an engineer before entering the seminary and supposedly had a history of whistle-blowing that led to his loss of employment.  Whistle blowers are not always the heroes of stories.  And sometimes people start fires so they can be the hero who discovers the fires and puts them out.  This pattern of whistleblowing was repeated in the Diocese of Arlington.  Was each and every alarm a genuine fire?  I don’t know.  Father Haley’s defenders are quick to insist it was.
         Earlier this year it was reported that the Holy See defrocked and excommunicated James Haley after a long series of judicial procedures, the records of which are not publicly available.  Haley’s supporters claim that he was framed and railroaded by the Bishop of Arlington in revenge for the deposition he gave regarding the clergy of the diocese.  They also claim that at least one canon lawyer was told that he “would never work again” if he defended Haley in Church Tribunals. While I see why James Haley may have been suspended from ministry, I am sorry to hear that he has been defrocked, but I am curious about the excommunication.  Granted, there was an allegation against Haley that he had, while a priest, absolved a partner (a woman) in a sexual sin and this brings an automatic excommunication that is reserved to the Holy See for lifting.  But that does not seem to be the reason for this excommunication. Such an excommunication is latae sententiae,i.e. automatic, whereas the stories reported seem to suggest that in Haley’s case there was an actual decree of excommunication.  The story is that the woman had taken Father Haley’s hand and put them on her breast to see if he could tell which breast was “the real thing” and which had been reconstructed after surgery.  Father Haley was not a willing participant in this act.  Furthermore, it was not a sin for anyone unless and except in the intent of the woman for it to be sinful and it would thus only be sinful for her and not for Father Haley who actually would be the victim of sexual harassment in this situation.  Third, any first-year seminarian would know enough to tell the woman, if she thought she needed absolution for this act, that is if her intent were sinful, to see another priest.   There has to be something more to incur excommunication, even latae sententiae.  And then—if incurred—excommunication is one of the easiest problems to resolve.  All you need do is repent of whatever you did.  James Haley might not be able to get back into the priesthood for whatever crimen got him defrocked but the excommunication only requires the humility of repentance.  I feel bad for him.  I suspect he is a very disturbed individual.  It is probably good that he is out of ministry but I hope he has friends and a confessor who can help him find the balance to rebuild his life.  It isn’t that he has been persecuted by the Bishop of Arlington and a lavender cabal that runs the diocese.  Like the story of Father Guarnizo and his various “charities” there is more to it that we don’t know.  I am not saying that the machinery of Holy Mother Church is always just, I am only saying that there is more to this story than has been admitted to.  And pardon me for ending a sentence with a preposition.  According to Sister Arrabiata in seventh grade this incurs a penalty worse than latae sententiae.  

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.

Everything is For Sale in Rome

The Dome of Saint Peter's from the

Vatican Gardens

Saturday evening I was with a group of friends and one friend passed to another Michael Rose’s book Good Bye Good Men (Regency Publishing, 2002).  They saw the questioning look on my face and the one fellow, the one giving the book, asked me what I thought of it.  I had to admit that I don’t think very much of it.  I think Rose had some points but his reliance on anecdote—and anecdotes from anonymous sources—leaves it void of credibility.  One simply cannot check his “facts” and consequently the book is useless except as a piece of polemic and polemic these days in the Church is as common as “cow pies” in a pasture and worth about as much. 
     This is not to say that he is wrong.  It is clear that there is a gay subculture in the Catholic clergy today.  One only has to see the effeminate approach to worship that many of the younger priests embrace to know that there is a critical absence of male role models in clergy formation programs.  (I don’t mean to equate effeminacy with homosexuality, but in the context of the younger clergy and the way they behave on the altar, I mean “camp.”) Where is the strong, loving, and wise male to lead us in public prayer?  I increasingly see brussles lace clad wraiths with manicured fingers delicately holding tulip shaped chalices as they whisper magic words like a sorceress conjuring her magic.  Don’t misunderstand me, this isn’t a liberal swipe at the conservative younger clergy.  The Legionaries of Christ, a most conservative group and one despised by liberals, for whatever other faults they may have present very good masculine men.  That doesn’t guarantee their sexual orientation, of course, but the Legionaries demonstrate that one doesn’t have to be a pansy to be “orthodox.”  And I don’t believe that a gay priest who is committed to celibacy has, by virtue of his sexual orientation, anything less to offer God and the Church than a heterosexual priest who is committed to celibacy.  In fact, if there is one thing I admire about the Legionaries is that they are committed to something other than themselves. I don’t think their commitment is admirable—it is to the Legion, not to the Church or the Gospel, but at least it isn’t the narcissistic ”it’s all about me” pseudo-priesthood that I see today when I hear priests talk about “at my Mass”  or “in my parish.”  It is Christ’s Priesthood; the Church’s Mass, and the people’s parish. 
     I am currently reading Jason Berry’s Render Unto Rome.  It is more interesting and certainly more credible than Good Bye Good Men, but like Rose’s work, flawed.  I am somewhat disappointed in that.  It is much better researched and carefully footnoted which is one advantage Berry has over Rose, but like Rose he starts with his conclusions and then tries to find the “evidence” to support it.  While I suspect Rose’s evidence is mostly made up—being anecdotal and anonymous and fitting just a bit too perfectly to this thesis, Berry’s evidence is far better footnoted, but still the methodology is flawed.   He has an axe to grind and yet I think he is missing some of the real issues.  He talks about the Legionnaires founder, Father Maciel, and his influence pedaling in Rome—throwing around tens of thousands of dollars at a time to buy the favor of high placed prelates but Berry seems to think that Maciel is unique in this.  How much money did Mother Angelica throw around among the key Curial officials?   How much money did it take for some of our red hats to find a head to sit on?  How much money does Christendom College pay out when it invites various Curial officials to come and give a “lecture?”  What sort of a “stipend” does someone like Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos get when he comes to sing a Pontifical High Mass in the “Extraordinary Form” for the Latin Mass Society—I bet it’s more than the ten dollars I give to have a Mass said for my mother.  And those canons at Gricigliano—you can bet that Cardinal Burke isn’t showing up there in return for just a good lunch.   It was true in Luther’s day and it is true today: “everything is for sale in Rome.”  I think Rose is a man without a conscience who exaggerated to the point of libel to prove his point and I think Berry is a man without imagination who naively undershot the fiscal corruption in the Church.  But I haven’t finished his book yet so let’s see.         

Gay Clergy and Married Clergy--An 11th Century Program of Reform

13th centur Bas-Relief on the facade of Lucca

Cathedral depicting the celebraiton of Mass--notice

the celebrant is facing the people over the altar, a

witness to the fact that this is not an innovation but

the restoraiton of an ancient practice.  The 11th century

bishop of Lucca, Anselm da Baggio, was a key

reformer of the Church. 

We spoke in our last post of Saint Romuald of Ravenna, a monastic reformer who founded several monastic communities, most notably the Hermits of Camaldoli, and who laid some of the spiritual groundwork for the Gregorian Reformation.  Over the years, the Camaldoli Monastery and its daughter houses—the Camaldolese Benedictines—have made a great contribution to the Church including Pope Gregory XVI, (reigned 1831-1846), one of the more conservative popes (understatement) who, in his zeal for the modern world, condemned railroads as the work of the devil (literally chemins de enfer—roads of hell—a play on the French for “railroad”: chemins de fer—roads of iron.)   I’m sure he thought it was a rather clever pun but that’s what happens to sophisticated humor when you spend too much time in a monastery.  Fortunately it was not an infallible proclamation.
     Although it was Camaldoli that made Romuald famous (well, relatively famous, like Mel Brooks’ characters Frederick and Anna Bronski in To Be or Not To Be, “world famous in Poland,” it was his foundation at Fonte Avellana that proved to be the springboard of Reformation in the eleventh century.  From that foundation came many holy monks, one of them being Saint Peter Damian who was quite literally a “holy terror.” 
     Unlike the founder, Romuald, who was a serious monk but not at all rigid, Peter Damian found no penance sufficient for his desire for austerity and self-mortification.     It was Peter Damian who introduced the practice of the disciplina, that is of self-flagellation into monastic practice.  Peter Damian was determined to root out all sexual vice from monastic life and indeed from the Church.  One could say that he went after passion with a passion.  That’s a bit lame; perhaps I am guilty of the very monastic overdose of which I accuse Gregory XVI.  
   Lame as it may be, there was reason for him to go after passion 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) 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 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.  (We will see in a future blog that a key element of the Gregorian Reform was the struggle for power between the Emperors and the Popes.)  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.