Source of Revealed Truth: God Meets Adam Smith or The Best Freaking Pope in History

Before Laudato Sii was released this past week I was in the middle of a series of postings on the Enlightenment as it both is relevant to my series on the Church of England in regard to its effects on the C of E in the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries and it raises a number of questions I want to explore such as the issue of secularism in the public square.  In the most recent of those postings last week I mentioned Adam Smith, the Scottish philosopher who laid the philosophical and ethical groundwork for modern capitalism.  Smith lived through the very time of the American Revolution and our founding fathers very much subscribed to his theories.  Liberty was a crucial value for him and he law liberty as one of the pre-requisites for individuals to be empowered to acquire wealth.  Though born a Scots Presbyterian in the strong Calvinist tradition of that Church (or, as it is known in Scotland, The Kirk) Smith evolved throughout his lifetime to the vague non-dogmatic sort of ambiguous Latitudinarian Christianity characteristic of the genteel upper crust 18^th century Brits.  In his journey into that comfortable Christianity he abandoned the idea of original sin but clung to its anthropological foundations. Let me explain.

The doctrine of Original Sin is found only in Western Christianity and is absent from the Orthodox theological framework. This is because it is the construct of Western Church Fathers, especially Irenaeus of Lyons and Augustine of Hippo.  The essence of original sin is the sin of concupiscence or inordinate desire.  Unfortunately the emphasis has usually been places—falsely—on sexual desire but Augustine had a much broader understanding and it would better be seen as greed.  To illustrate what he means, Augustine in one passage uses the example of the greed with which a child nurses.  This example usually appalls modern readers and Augustine doesn’t mean that the act of nursing isn’t a beautiful gift of the mother for the child but only wishes to point out that the child, even in the pre-rational state of infancy, naturally seeks out his own self-interest.  It is natural for us to wish to acquire and safe-keep those things which we need for our survival and our comfort.  One doesn’t have to make a moral judgment about this in the pre-rational person it is just our nature.

Unlike the orthodox position of Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists—all of whom recognized this “original sin” as part of our “fallen nature;” Smith saw our natural inclinations towards greed as something good.  Indeed, he saw it as the motivating virtue of a healthy economy.  As I desire more and more and you desire more and more we will work harder to make our desires into realities.

I remember as a child that one of my favorite fairy tales was the fisherman’s wife.  You may remember it.  In it the fisherman seeks from an enchanted fish whom he has set free a larger house for his wife.  She then sends her husband back to ask for a mansion.  Getting the mansion, she wants to become a Queen.  Becoming a Queen she then desires to be Pope.  And so it goes.  Ever more and more until her greed makes her demand to rule the earth and the heavens—to become God—and then she loses it all.  This story is just a twist on Smith’s theory: we always want for more and strive for more.  Whereas the Catholic tradition and even more Martin Luther and more yet, John Calvin, all saw this greed as sinful, Smith saw it as the foundation of a healthy economy.

Adam Smith’s writings are, as I said, that foundation of modern capitalism.  James Madison and Thomas Jefferson were both huge fans.  Margaret Thatcher allegedly carried a copy of Smith’s The Wealth of Nations in her handbag.  (We still haven’t found out what the Queen carries in hers.  Why do those British ladies all need such oversized bags?)  Smith’s theories are that this natural desire of the human person for wealth will drive the markets and allowing the markets to be free of control is the tide that permits all boats to rise equally. 

Pope Francis is not a subscriber to the theories of Adam Smith. Like Saint Augustine he sees greed as inherently sinful, and indeed the root of all other evils.  Like his two immediate predecessors he subscribes to the doctrine of solidarity by which he means that we all have responsibility for the welfare of one another.  These ideas come out loud and clear in Laudato Sii. 

In fact, Laudato Sii is a major threat to the doctrines of Adam Smith and thus to our modern free market capitalistic world.  And the troops have risen in rebellion.  Ross Douthat, a columnist for the New York Times, wrote a stinging and far less than objective critique of the Encyclical in today’s paper.  He betrayed his hand by labeling the Pope and his allies as “catastrophists,” while he and other disciples of Smith are the “dynamists.”  Really?  You don’t think this is prejudcing the argument in a way that wouldn’t pass the editorship of a junior-highschool newspaper?

Dynamists are people who see 21st-century modernity as a basically successful civilization advancing toward a future that’s better than the past. They do not deny that problems exist, but they believe we can innovate our way through them while staying on an ever-richer, ever-more-liberated course.

Thank you Adam Smith. 

Catastrophists, on the other hand, see a global civilization that for all its achievements is becoming more atomized and balkanized, more morally bankrupt, more environmentally despoiled. What’s more, they believe that things cannot go on as they are: That the trajectory we’re on will end in crisis, disaster, dégringolade.

My heavens, Mr. Douthat, wherever did you learn a word like dégringolade?  My spellcheck doesn’t recognize it.  Given the remainder of your article and its level of argument I can only presume you own a thesaurus. 

Francis X. Rocca wrote a somewhat more objective and more thoughtful reflection—though certainly not an endorsement—for the Wall Street Journal.  What I want to focus on now, however, is not Rocca’s article but the response of readers to the article.  The sharks are circling!  I am not surprised that Wall Street Journal readers are not ready, by and large, to endorse the papal teaching, but I was amazed at the levels of both bias and stupidity so many readers—90% of the—displayed.  Let me just give you a sample for your reading pleasure.  I have cut and pasted (as well as edited) them so that the various spelling and grammatical errors remain in place.  Of course, we all make mistakes in those realms so the mistakes are not meant to be indicative of the intelligence level of the writers.  I will let their messages speak for them selves.

Steve Volla

The words of despair from Commissar Pope Francis. Best stick to the moral angle and leave the political burden to politicians.  He best not carry the political burden for worsening the very people he tries to save.

Steve Volla

@bassam madany Just as our leader has re-written the Constitution, Pope Francis has taken on the task to re-write the scriptures.

Steven Frankel

By the way, has the Pope reviewed the results of Communist and Socialist control on environmental quality as opposed to free market countries? What type of foot print did the soviets leave, or the South Americans? Nothing good.

Michael Thompson

No wonder the Castro brothers and Obama like this guy so much. Put down the Communist Manifesto and read the Bible instead.

Richard Beleson

The Pope should stick to religion - what did Jesus say? "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's."  I get enough political garbage stuffed down my throat by Obama and his sycophants.  I do not need a "holy man" posing as a wannabe politician.

Karl Noell

This is what happens when a liberation theologist from South America is elected Pope. He is anti-capitalism, pro-collectivism, ignores, nay tramples, the teaching of Jesus to give up to Caesar that which is Caesar's and to God what is God's. He is the equivalent of an Obama undoing what the Church's Reagan, Pope John Paul the Great, accomplished.

Tom Painter

@Steven Chen "Still, his argument on this this issue commands a moral high ground that shows his concern for the future of humanity."

No. His argument is moral pretense, not moral high ground and it is not moral high ground because the theological view is not standing on either EMPIRICAL scientific or economic high ground to inform it.  It is Marxist pretense, pure and simple.

William Fehr

I have always thought that all Popes were frauds, after all who can claim to be a deity on Earth. My conclusion about the Church and the Pope was just affirmed that again. He really confirmed that he is just another Maxist/Socialist Liberation Theology idealist. 

Maureen DiRienzo

The Pope's marxist slip is showing, He has no place in commenting on things other than religion and faith. I will ignore his encyclical as much as I would ignore a cyclical from him on surgical techniques.

Having been born raised and educated a Catholic, I am seriously considering a protestant conversion.

Edward Kinsey

"Climate Change" is the excuse for taking over more and more control of our lives. The "inadequate distribution of resources" is the rationale for socialism/communism. This Pope would know that more than others coming from a South American socialist country.

Thanks for the tip, Pope. And thanks for telling the non Catholic world how to live its life, as if it's your business. Catholics can make up their own minds on how to deal with this document, others can be guided by their own beliefs in science. JNow that you have made this proclamation, what do you suggest we do? Do we All join some Commune and share each other's food, clothing, toilets, kitchens and diseases all under the careful and caring Argus eye of the Catholic Church, like in the Middle Ages? Live under Church control and believe in church approved science? Go back to the pre-industrial age without indoor plumbing, water purification or mechanized travel? I don't see the Church selling off its holdings and moving to thatch huts from grand Cathedrals. What I do see are a lot of empty churches all through Europe and simmering, crouching Moslem communities all over Europe waiting to pounce on the self emasculated Christian states and populations. The only thing overheated is the rhetoric contained in the document.

Anthony DeAngelis

Not sure where this Pope is headed, embracing a vehicle invented in the old USSR to undermine capitalism.  Concerned that next he will adopt the pagan Mother Earth doctrine.

Marco Martins

it was only a matter of time before marxist liberation theology hit the vatican. hopefully this pendulum will swing back to normal before too much damage is done by this. Ask the Pope what other system of economic engagement has lifted more people out of abject poverty, subjugation, indentured conditions, etc., than the system that relies on free choices, open exchanges, respect for personal property and competition. lets see what he comes up with. of course, a cynic could point out that the church, like the democratic party of the USA and most left parties worldwide rely on a constant supply of poor and ignorant for their power. 

Giselle Toth

Since when is the role of the Pope to pontificate politically charged issues from a strongly partisan aspect, an extreme left as such? The guy is nothing but a communist hack. How will the world's Catholics react to that?

 Alan Then

The Pope is an espoused communist, what would you expect?  His contempt for free market economics is belied by the fact that it has lifted more people out of poverty in the world in the last 40 years, than in all of human history.  

Michael Selden

The Pope should stick to religion——oh wait, he is talking about a religion. The religion of socialism and statism. Same church Obama attends.

James McManus

He is sounding more like Obama everyday

Andrew Eppink

The Pope speaks against abortion, 'gayness' in his encyclical and elsewhere, then invites proponents of precisely these and other of the revolting lib agenda to Vatican conclaves. The only reasonable conclusion to be drawn is that evil and disgusting politics is being played.

He stubbornly rejects capitalism, which obviously has many of the faults he enumerates, stupidly preferring instead thoroughly discredited socialism.

Things are getting pretty crazy, evilly destructive. It's little wonder there's such confusion.

Roger Potocki

Sadly, the Pope's thinking is so wrong headed that it is embarrassing to all rational people. All of the poor among us in this world aspire to be consumers. People need products for basic life, health and advancement. It is market capitalism that has provided the highest standard of life to God's creations. It is socialism and all of its forms that have brought misery. It is authoritarianism and the worship of the state that keeps entire continents at a constant level of poverty. The Pope's "moral content" is at best confused. 

Robert Mayfield

@RODGER POTOCKI You are completely right! This (second-string) pope is hoping to convince the world that we should all be brought down to the living standards of the "developing" world.  Sure hope that doesn't happen in my life time.

Gina Liggett

First, there is nothing more "filthy" than then the running sewage, germ-infested drinking water, and toxic fumes of cooking over burning dung fires. Industrialization and human-inspired (not Gaia-given) ingenuity have freed people by the hundreds of millions the world over.

Second there IS NO catastrophic global warming, NO impirical evidence that human activity has any significant impact on climate. The "studies" are invented computer models.

Third, the Pope has a vested interest in condemning capitalism, the only political-economic system liberating ordinary people from abject poverty and repression. If the Pope is successful in keeping people poor, then the Church has greater sway.

This Pope and Climategaters have a core world view that human beings are subordinate to God & Mother Earth, which makes them perfect bedfellows.  They view humans as vermin, imbued with sin. And they reject in principle the notion of the pursuit of individual happiness in life on earth

Henry Lyczak

Here we go again.  The "North", through exploitation, is responsible for all the ills of the "South". With this message, the South American dictators will have Vatican coverage to continue exploiting their own people.

If Catholic churches in the US start to "preach" this political victim/redistribution message, will the IRS revoke their religious tax exempt status and re-label the churches as political organizations?  Just asking.

Tomas Pajaros

I was not ashamed to be Catholic till now.    …

Free markets have raised the standard of living in just a few hundred years, from lives that were universally "nasty, brutish and short"  to today's long life expectancy filled with good food, fantastic health care, and decades of family enrichment as grandchildren, children, parents and grandparents.  

No Utopian society, and no totalitarian society, ever produced such advances.   EVER.    

Markets are not the problem - markets are the answer.    Pronouncements such as this carry a great risk of moving societies toward socialist dictatorships, and we have seen over and over how badly those turn out.    We miss Pope John Paul II more than ever.

Scott Horsburgh

@Charles Easterman

Mr. Easterman, you are citing economic policy according to Easterman, not according to the Pope.  He has given no indication he believes in capitalism.  Every indication is that he is a redistributionist (or socialist or Marxist, if you prefer).  Accusing the industrial North of "exploiting" the resources of the southern hemisphere is Marxist language.  That the North owes an "ecological debt" to the South is anything but capitalism.

Peter Drucker

I am sorry, may be i am rude. But it seems Pope is busy with other people's business. He should serve God, help Christians do it. But he is busy with talks about business, markets and their impact on environment. This is Obama's deal to talk, talk and talk about climate change. And take some Muslims. Pope, cause of you we are losing Christianity in America

Gene Lebrenz

This Pope is very disappointing. He speaks of liberal "causes" of which he has no personal  expertise nor scientific data to support his personal opinions and "pontifications." He clearly has no lucid knowledge of how capitalistic systems have enriched more lives than all socialistic systems combined -- which he clearly advocates. His anti-capitalistic comments are enigmatic and egregious. 

This Pope  would be far better prepared to condemn the barbaric activities of the Muslims in the world against Christians than to attack Capitalism--of which his comments indicate he is totally ignorant. 

Based upon this Pope's  perfidious comments and hubris, nothing he says in the future  is worthy of belief.

Walter Hauschildt

"Pope Blames Markets for Environment’s Ills"

the pope is  plainly stupid;  markets are the voice of the people! 

Lee Gaffrey

@MITCHEL GALISHOFF  As a Christian since my Baptism 82 years ago and a former Roman Catholic I believe that the reason the Church is in existence is to spread the Good News; The Gospels. I do not know what this Pope has in mind about the former; but, I believe he is wandering around on unholy ground with his encyclical on global warming and economics of global markets.

Philip Pick

Having come from a socialist society, the Pope is continuing to reflect on the socialist approach to solving the southern hemisphere's (mainly South America) economic problems.  I'd suggest that he concentrate on trying to solve those economic problems by trying capitalism.  In the meantime, maybe those of us from the "evil capitalist economies" should withhold our "ill-gotten" financial support from the Vatican.

Philip Pick

@Joel Nicholas @Bernard Nachman The only really stupid people are those who voted two times for the current socialist in chief in the White House.  Doubled the nations debt in less than eight years.  Not sure who the bigger socialist is, the Pope or Obama.

Charles Jones

To the Cardinals that elected this Pope...did you knowingly place a Marxist as Pope, because while his views may raise people spiritually...his political views will doom millions to poverty.

Michael Jessup

Honestly, being a practicing and HEAVILY donating Roman Catholic. This REALLY turns me off. I won't say more regarding this but this is really getting old. While he talks of Climate Change perhaps he needs to focus more on issues like Women in the Priesthood, birth control, and the litany goes on.

John Sobieski

Truly the worst Pope in history

Ari Chutjian

"He just need to go away"? HA! I think this is the best freaking Pope in modern history and I'm an atheist! 

Well, thank you Ari.  I have more respect for someone who will not put his faith in God than those who put their faith in Adam Smith.

More Than One Way to be Catholic

The Byzantne Chapel in the National
Shrine of the Immaculate Conception
in Washington DC

Well, last night some of my colleagues and I were going to go out after work for some Mardi Gras festivities—nothing out of control, just a nice Cajun dinner and music but Christos from our finance office said he couldn’t—it was—for him—already Lent. Already Lent on Mardi Gras?  Christos is Byzantine Catholic and Lent for him had begun last Sunday.  It is a reminder that not all Catholics are Roman Catholic and that we should not refer to our Church as “Roman” but simply as Catholic for the Church does indeed include Ruthenian, Coptic, Chaldean, Syro-Malabar, Ukrainian, Russian, Greek, Syro-Malankar, Syriac, Maronite, Armenian, Melkite, and I don’t know how many other Catholics—all of whom stand in communion with (not under) the See of Rome and its Pope as full members of the Catholic Church.        I have always been surprised how few Catholics know about the Eastern Rites.  (the Western Rites—of which there are more than the Roman—is another question and somewhat more complex).  I was always aware of the multiple ways of being Catholic given that just a few blocks away from my hope parish in New York State is a Byzantine Rite Catholic Church.  Father Peter had fled what was then the Soviet Union after World War II with his young wife.  Their four children were in our parish school and we never thought anything of a married priest.  Back in those pre-Vatican II days Father Peter and his parish would come to our parish one Sunday a year—just before lent—and sing the Divine Liturgy.  We all knew that Divine Liturgy was another word for Mass and we all went to communion. Our pastor wanted us to know that there were many different ways Mass could be celebrated.  By 1960 their liturgy was already in English and we could follow along very easily, though the music—and the entire liturgy was sung—was beyond our (at the time unused) Catholic vocal range. Nevertheless, his parishioners raised the roof with their singing.  And communion was in both kinds—with small cubes of real bread soaked in the Precious Blood and given into our mouths on a spoon.  (In those days none of us received in the hand, so communion on the tongue was nothing unusual or archaic, though this wasn’t so much on the tongue as dropped into our mouths.)  All this was a great help when Vatican II came along because we had no illusions about “The Mass of Antiquity” or ridiculous stories about how the Mass had been given in the form we knew it by Christ to his Apostles.  We saw for ourselves that Mass could be radically different in form and yet the same Mass. We saw that priests can be married and be no less holy than unmarried ones.  We saw that the Liturgy can be celebrated in various languages.  We knew that the unity of the Church did not depend on uniformity but rather on the bonds of charity that united us in diversity.  
      As I have gotten older and studied a bit I have found that there are even doctrinal differences among the various rites.  Purgatory, for example, is not a universally held doctrine among the rites for there are different eschatologies in the East than in the West.  The Doctrine of the Assumption (or what we Catholics call the Assumption) is formulated differently in the Byzantine Rites, stressing Mary’s “Falling Asleep” or death.  And my friends among the clergy in the various Eastern Rites keep telling me that it is fine with them if I keep original sin where it belongs—in the Western Church—as they want nothing to do with it.  Yet united in charity and mutual respect and around the See of Peter we are one Church—unified in our diversity.   

The Immaculate Conception

Mary and Jesus, from an altarpiece in

the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine

Florence, Italy

Well, triggered by the word “prevenient” in the new translation for the feast of the Immaculate Conception, we have been looking at original sin in order to better understand how the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception developed.  It is a fairly late doctrine and despite its being infallibly defined we will see that it cannot claim, at least historically, to have been part of the Tradition handed down from the Apostles.  
     As I mentioned in my previous post, while the idea of original sin can be traced back through Augustine to even earlier patristic sources, it is a theological concept that never developed in the Christian East and is unknown in Orthodox and Eastern Catholic sources.  Without a concept of original sin, there is no doctrine of the Immaculate Conception because the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is that Mary was conceived in her mother’s womb without the original sin that has affected the rest of the human family.  Mary is unique in this regard.  The Church says that she was saved from original sin through the merits of the death and resurrection of her Divine son even though that passion, death, and resurrection had not yet taken place in time: hence “prevenient.”  Although the Eastern Churches did not celebrate Mary’s Immaculate Conception they did celebrate her conception, affixing the date  (originally) to December 9—nine months (minus one day) before the feast of her birth.  In the same way the Church celebrated the conception of her Son nine months before the Church celebrates his birth.  (March 25^th is nine months before December 25^th.)  These are the only two “conceptions” I know of being celebrated in the Church calendar.  The feast of Mary’s Conception originated in the Church of Syria (which included the Holy Land) in about the sixth century but soon was celebrated throughout Eastern Christianity. 
       How did the feast come to the West?  Scholars agree that it was the Normans who introduced the feast to the Western Church.  In the eleventh century Normans conquered Sicily and Southern Italy where the Church, at that time,  followed the Greek Rite rather than the Western Latin Rites.  It was probably at this time that the Normans became familiar with the feast of the Conception of Mary.  There was a problem though in the west.  Western theologians, including Augustine, saw that Mary was, like the rest of us, conceived in original sin.  How can we celebrate a sinful conception?  (Remember the East, not believing in original sin, saw no sin in the conception.)  Immediately a theological debate broke out.  Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, a great devotee of the Blessed Virgin insisted that she, like us, was conceived in original sin.  Saint Thomas would pick this up and affirm that Mary was conceived in sin.  The Franciscans and Carmelites however, came to Mary’s defense and insisted that she had been spared original sin in order to prepare her for being the Mother of Jesus.  The debate raged through the Middle Ages.  When Pope Sixtus IV put the feast of Mary’s Conception on the universal calendar in the fifteenth century it was simply called the Conception of the Virgin.  The Dominican Pope, Saint Pius V, in revising the Roman Calendar also simply called it “The Conception of the Virgin.”  In Franciscan and Carmelite Churches, and several dioceses, however, it was called “The Immaculate Conception.” 
       The doctrine remained an open question for centuries with Catholics free to believe that Mary suffered the consequences of original sin or that she had been preserved from it by a special dispensation of “prevenient” grace.  In much the same way, while Catholics today must believe that Mary was assumed body and soul at the end of her earthly life, we are free to believe that she died or that she did not die before her assumption.  The matter is undefined.  In regard to the Immaculate Conception,  however, Pope Pius IX closed the issue in 1854 by defining the doctrine that Mary was conceived without sin through a dispensation on the merits of her Son’s passion, death, and Resurrection.  Thus today this is a defined dogma for the Church, though the Eastern Churches—the various rites that comprise the Eastern Churches in union with Rome as well as the Orthodox Churches, sort of nod their heads in ambiguous assent and go on their way thinking that we westerners argue over the darnedest things.  And perhaps we do. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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