It is time for them to go.

William H. Slavick

The clueless Roman Catholic hierarchs and their apologists--in Rome and out--can moan endlessly about "the petty gossip of dominant opinion” and anti-Catholic bias. That did not work for Boston Cardinal Bernard Law nor will it now. The Vatican’s Teflon shield is shattered.

In truth, John Paul II and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, fearing loss of patriarchal control, conspired to slam shut the windows the Second Vatican Council opened to the modern world and, before all else, shore up the battlements of the Church Triumphant and celibate male power. That campaign has been, for the Church, on all fronts, a disaster. Now revelations of the Vatican deliberately subordinating care of children to the “Church’s” reputation demands a reckoning.

Both hierarchs rejected the Council's first fruit--Latin America's liberation theology and implementation of the preferential option for the poor, initiating a precipitous decline there. Only Archbishop Oscar Romero's assassination forestalled Rome’s removal of the Salvadoran poor’s champion--for not making peace with a government that had killed thousands of his flock.

They dumped on theologians attuned to the Council's thrust--Hans Kûng, Leonardo Boff, Charles Curran, and Tisa Balasuriya.

They have carved away at the Council’s well-studied, almost unanimously approved and welcomed liturgical reforms, again distancing the celebrant from the assembly; scuttling the Council’s translation protocol for sexist, Latinate language that won’t pray, and encouraging use of the Tridentine form that subordinates the Eucharist as meal and challenge to live the Gospel.

And despite warnings as early as the 60's that priest sex abusers should not continue in ministry, the hierarchy continued to coddle abusers and threaten, silence, shame, dupe, or buy off victims to put the appearance of a pure institution before the dignity, innocence, and healing of victims—and before justice. John Paul II and bribed curial cardinals sheltered the Legionnaires of Christ founder-abuser and chief Vatican fund-raiser. Ratzinger ordered bishops to keep abuse information secret and slowed defrocking processes, assuring further abuses.

The Church is imploding, suffering the largest defection ever in the Vatican’s turn on Council reforms, its re-emphasis on doctrine rather than living the Gospel, its abandonment of John XXIII’s pursuit of peace and justice for the poor, its sexist rejection of women's equality, its denial of the Eucharist and pastoral care to half the faithful for lack of male celibate priests, its obsession with sex, and its continued failure to act responsibly in the abuse scandal.

To reassert authority, the patriarchy has engaged in a heartless war on "objectively disordered" gays and lesbians that runs roughshod over their dignity and civil rights and flouts Vatican II recognition of separation of church and state, religious liberty, and primacy of conscience.

By their fruit we have come to know them. As Munich archbishop, Ratzinger turned a wolf loose on his sheep—still loose 20-odd years later. In Rome, his office opposed Wisconsin bishops defrocking a serial abuser of hundreds of deaf children, honoring his wish to die a priest before affirming the human worth of his victims. He refused to laicize a younger California abuser for “the good of the Church.” These are unfathomable and unconscionable, betrayals of pastoral trust.

Benedict XVI’s defenders claim that, as pope, he has done everything possible about the abuse mess--everything, that is, except the essential—putting the healing of the abuse victims foremost by affirming their dignity. That requires holding abusers accountable, stopping legal stonewalling, removing hundreds of complicit bishops, and recognizing Vatican culpability. He and they still do not understand that their first pastoral obligation is to give succor to the wounded. His defenders continues to substitute for accountability ridiculous excuse-making that further diminishes victims. The words of Chaucer’s Parson echo endlessly: the "shitten shepherd and the clene sheep."

It is time for Benedict XVI to discover humility and search his conscience, to acknowledge that fear of change, patriarchal authoritarianism, and righteousness have led him—and the Church-- into a moral morass. It is time for him to recognize that his—and the Vatican’s--temporizing while thousands more were victimized; his refusal to acknowledge his and the Vatican’s wrongs, and his lack of care, of compassion, for still wounded abuse victims makes him unfit to lead the People of God--time to resign.

Before he goes, he should remove bishops and cardinals who has been party to that misdirection and abuse cover up. Then he should ask the next, necessarily smaller papal consistory to pray to John XXIII and Oscar Romero for intercessions in picking a new Bishop of Rome committed to being a faithful and humble servant and shepherd of the People of God.

Otherwise, Boston’s Fr. Bob Bullock, who circulated the petition that removed Law, should make a real Year of the Priest by summoning overextended and exhausted priests faithful to the Council and faithful women and men religious—and laity everywhere to say to the patriarchs, plainly and forcefully, that the jig is up. They must go and allow the Gospel to bloom out of the hearts of the faithful.


William H. Slavick has written extensively on peace and social justice issues in the Catholic press and Maine newspapers. He is long-time coordinator of Pax Christi Maine.

Bishop Dowling Reflects on Trends in the Church

Bishop Kevin Dowling CSsR

The following lunchtime address was given by Bishop Kevin Dowling CSsR to a group of leading laity in Cape Town, South Africa on 1 June.

''Jerry Fiteaux wrote in the National Catholic Reporter: 'On April 24, 2010, Edward James Slattery, bishop of Tulsa, Oklahoma, celebrated the Mass in Latin in the extraordinary form – that is, in the Tridentine Rite – in the Basi-lica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. He delivered his homily in English. More than 3,000 people attended the liturgy.

More relevant to me in the April 24 event in Washington were several
elements: First, there were no demonstrations outside or inside the shrine by clergy sex abuse victims after re-tired Colombian Cardinal Castrillon, former prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy and former president of the Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei,” which oversees and promotes use of the Latin Triden-tine rite in the Roman Church, made major news just a week before the shrine Mass when a French newspaper revealed that in 2001 he had praised a French bishop for breaking the law and refusing to turn over to civil authorities a priest engaged in sexual abuse of minors. Castrillon not only did not apologize for his letter; he reaffirmed it and said John Paul II had urged him to send it to bishops around the world. Dario Castrillon Hoyos withdrew as principal celebrant of the Mass.

'Second, for the first time in my life – although as an altar boy in the 1950s into the late ’60s and as a semina-rian for nearly 12 years I participated in numerous pontifical liturgies in the Upper Midwest and in Washington – on April 24 this year I finally saw the grandiose display of the “cappa magna,” the 20-yard-long brilliant red train behind a bishop or cardinal that has come to be one of the symbols of the revival of the Tridentine Mass.

'Fifteen minutes before the Mass, Slattery processed up the shrine’s main aisle wearing the extravagant cloak, held up in the back by a young altar server; before the main altar, there was a magnificent turn to exit stage left, at which point the cappa magna stretched almost the entire width of the sanctuary in front of the main altar.

'Throughout more than half an hour of pre-Mass entertainment with beautiful Latin music by an a capella choir (including Giovanni Pierluigi Palestrina’s Tu Es Petrus and Thomas Tallis’s O Sacrum Convivium) and into the full first half-hour of the Mass, the entire basilica congregation of more than 3,000 sat passively as an audience to a musical concert, with nary a word to say in the liturgy.

'The shrine’s magnificent pipe organ played instrumental accompaniment to the nearly 20-minute processional as altar servers of all ages (but only males), knights of various Catholic organizations, deacons, priests and a variety of other ministers processed to the altar. Many of the priests and deacons bore pomped birettas, the stiff square black caps once worn by all priests and seminarians in choir.

'It wasn’t until the Collect that any of the 3,000-plus Catholics filling the shrine’s pews and aisles actually heard a voice from somewhere near the altar.

By that point I had come to realize that this Tridentine liturgy was an elaborate ritual manifestation of eccle-siastical rank, not a Mass in conformity with the fundamental Vatican II mandate for full, active participation by the faithful.

'The Mass marked the fifth anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI’s formal inauguration into his ministry as Pope..'

"The Southern Cross about three or four weeks ago published a picture of Bishop Slattery with his “cappa magna” – in colour, nogal! For me, such a display of what amounts to triumphalism in a Church torn apart by the sexual abuse scandal, is most unfortunate. What happened there bore the marks of a medieval royal court, not the humble, servant leadership modelled by Jesus. But it seems to me that this is also a symbol of what has been happening in the Church especially since Pope John Paul II became the Bishop of Rome and up till today - and that is “restorationism”, the carefully planned dismantling of the theology, ecclesiology, pastoral vision, indeed the “opening of the windows” of Vatican II – in order to “restore” a previous, or more controllable mo-del of Church through an increasingly centralised power structure; a structure which now controls everything in the life of the Church through a network of Vatican Congregations led by Cardinals who ensure strict compli-ance with what is deemed by them to be “orthodox”. Those who do not comply face censure and punishment, e.g. theologians who are forbidden to teach in Catholic faculties.

Lest we do not highlight sufficiently this important fact. Vatican II was an Ecumenical Council, i.e. a solemn exercise of the magisterium of the Church, i.e. the college of bishops gathered together with the Bishop of Rome and exercising a teaching function for the whole Church. In other words, its vision, its principles and the direction it gave are to be followed and implemented by all, from the Pope to the peasant farmer in the fields of Honduras.

Since Vatican II there has been no such similar exercise of teaching authority by the magisterium. Instead, a series of decrees, pronouncements and decisions which have been given various “labels” stating, for example, that they must be firmly held to with “internal assent” by the Catholic faithful, but in reality are simply the theo-logical or pastoral interpretations or opinions of those who have power at the centre of the Church. They have not been solemnly defined as belonging to the “deposit of the faith” to be believed and followed, therefore, by all Catholics, as with other solemnly proclaimed dogmas. For example, the issues of celibacy for the priesthood and the ordination of women, [were]withdrawn even from the realm of discussion. Therefore, such pronounce-ments are open to scrutiny – to discern whether they are in accord, for example, with the fundamental theolo-gical vision of Vatican II, or whether there is indeed a case to be made for a different interpretation or opinion.

When I worked internationally from my Religious Congregation’s base in Rome from 1985 – 1990 before I came back here as bishop of Rustenburg, one of my responsibilities was the building up of young adult ministry with our communities in the countries of Europe where so many of the young people were alienated from the Church. I developed relationships with many hundreds of sincere, searching Catholic young adults, very open to issues of injustice, poverty and misery in the world, aware of structural injustice in the political and economic systems which dominated the world . . . but who increasingly felt that the “official” Church was not only out of touch with reality, but a counter-witness to the aspirations of thinking and aware Catholics who sought a diffe-rent experience of Church. In other words, an experience which enabled them to believe that the Church they belonged to had something relevant to say and to witness to in the very challenging world in which they lived. Many, many of these young adults have since left the Church entirely.

On the other hand, it has to be recognised that for a significant number of young Catholics, adult Catholics, priests and religious around the world, the “restorationist” model of Church which has been implemented over the past 30 - 40 years is sought after and valued; it meets a need in them; it gives them a feeling of belonging to something with very clear parameters and guidelines for living, thus giving them a sense of security and clarity about what is truth and what is morally right or wrong, because there is a clear and strong authority structure which decides definitively on all such questions, and which they trust absolutely as being of divine origin.

The rise of conservative groups and organisations in the Church over the past 40 years and more, which attract significant numbers of adherents, has led to a phenomenon which I find difficult to deal with, viz. an inward looking Church, fearful of if not antagonistic towards a secularist world with its concomitant danger of relati-vism especially in terms of truth and morality – frequently referred to by Pope Benedict XVI; a Church which gives an impression of “retreating behind the wagons”, and relying on a strong central authority to ensure unity through uniformity in belief and praxis in the face of such dangers. The fear is that without such supervision and control, and that if any freedom in decision-making is allowed, even in less important matters, this will open the door to division and a breakdown in the unity of the Church.

This is all about a fundamentally different “vision” in the Church and “vision” of the Church. Where today can we find the great theological leaders and thinkers of the past, like Cardinal Frings and Alfrink in Europe, and the great prophetic bishops whose voice and witness was a clarion call to justice, human rights and a global community of equitable sharing – the witness of Archbishop Romero of El Salvador, the voices of Cardinals Arns and Lorscheider, and Bishops Helder Camara and Casadaliga of Brazil? Again, who in today’s world “out there” even listens to, much less appreciates and allows themselves to be challenged by the leadership of the Church at the present time? I think the moral authority of the Church’s leadership today has never been weaker. It is, therefore, important in my view that Church leadership, instead of giving an impression of its power, privi-lege and prestige, should rather be experienced as a humble, searching ministry together with its people in order to discern the most appropriate or viable responses which can be made to complex ethical and moral questions – a leadership, therefore, which does not presume to have all the answers all the time….

But to change focus a bit. One of the truly significant contributions of the Church to the building up of a world in which people and communities can live in peace and dignity, with a quality of life which befits those made in God’s image, has been the body of what has been called “Catholic Social Teaching”, a compendium of which has been released during the past few years. These social teaching principles are: The Common Good, Solida-rity, The Option for the Poor, Subsidiarity, The Common Destiny of Goods, The Integrity of Creation, and People-Centredness – all based on and flowing out of the values of the Gospel. Here we have very relevant prin-ciples and guidelines to engage with complex social, economic, cultural and political realities, especially as these affect the poorest and most vulnerable members of societies everywhere. These principles should enable us, as Church, to critique constructively all socio-political-economic systems and policies - and especially from that viewpoint, viz. their effect on the poorest and most vulnerable in society.

However, if Church leadership anywhere presumes to criticise or critique socio-political-economic policies and policy makers, or Governments, it must also allow itself to be critiqued in the same way in terms of its policies, its internal life, and especially its modus operandi. A democratic culture and praxis, with its focus on the partici-pation of citizens and holding accountable those who are elected to govern, is increasingly appreciated in spite of inevitable human shortcomings. When thinking people of all persuasions look at Church leadership, they raise questions about, for example, real participation of the membership in its governance and how, in fact, Church leadership is to be held accountable, and to whom. If the Church, and its leadership, professes to follow the values of the Gospel and the principles of Catholic Social Teaching, then its internal life, its methods of governing and its use of authority will be scrutinised on the basis of what we profess. Let us take one social teaching principle, vitally important for ensuring participative democracy in the socio-political domain, viz. subsidiarity.

I worked with the Bishops’ Conference Justice and Peace Department for 17 years. After our political libera-tion in 1994, we discerned that political liberation in itself would have little relevance to the reality of the poor and marginalised unless it resulted in their economic emancipation. We therefore decided that a fundamental issue for post-1994 South Africa was economic justice. After a great deal of discussion at all levels we issued a Pastoral Statement in 1999, which we entitled “Economic Justice in South Africa”. Its primary focus was neces-sarily on the economy. Among other things, it dealt with each of the Catholic Social Teaching principles, and I give a quotation now from part of its treatment of subsidiarity:

“The principle of subsidiarity protects the rights of individuals and groups in the face of the powerful, especi-ally the state. It holds that those things which can be done or decided at a lower level of society should not be taken over by a higher level. As such, it reaffirms our right and our capacity to decide for ourselves how to organise our relationships and how to enter into agreements with others . . . . We can and should take steps to encourage decision-making at lower levels of the economy, and to empower the greatest number of people to participate as fully as possible in economic life.” (Economic Justice in South Africa, page 14).

Applied to the Church, the principle of subsidiarity requires of its leadership to actively promote and encourage participation, personal responsibility and effective engagement by everyone in terms of their particular calling and ministry in the Church and world according to their opportunities and gifts.

However, I think that today we have a leadership in the Church which actually undermines the very notion of subsidiarity; where the minutiae of Church life and praxis “at the lower level” are subject to examination and authentication being given by the “higher level”, in fact the highest level, e.g. the approval of liturgical lang-uage and texts; where one of the key Vatican II principles, collegiality in decision-making, is virtually non-existent. The eminent emeritus Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Franz König, wrote the following in 1999 – al-most 35 years after Vatican II: “In fact, however, de facto and not de jure, intentionally or unintentionally, the curial authorities working in conjunction with the Pope have appropriated the tasks of the episcopal college. It is they who now carry out almost all of them” (“My Vision of the Church of the Future”, The Tablet, March 27, 1999, p. 434).

What compounds this, for me, is the mystique which has in increasing measure surrounded the person of the Pope in the last 30 years, such that any hint of critique or questioning of his policies, his way of thinking, his exercise of authority etc. is equated with disloyalty. There is more than a perception, because of this mystique, that unquestioning obedience by the faithful to the Pope is required and is a sign of the ethos and fidelity of a true Catholic. When the Pope’s authority is then intentionally extended to the Vatican Curia, there exists a real possibility that unquestioning obedience to very human decisions about a whole range of issues by the Curial Departments and Cardinals also becomes a mark of one’s fidelity as a Catholic, and anything less is interpreted as being disloyal to the Pope who is charged with steering the barque of Peter.

It has become more and more difficult over the past years, therefore, for the College of Bishops as a whole, or in a particular territory, to exercise their theologically-based servant leadership to discern appropriate responses to their particular socio-economic, cultural, liturgical, spiritual and other pastoral realities and needs; much less to disagree with or seek alternatives to policies and decisions taken in Rome. And what appears to be more and more the policy of appointing “safe”, unquestionably orthodox and even very conservative bishops to fill vacant dioceses over the past 30 years, only makes it less and less likely that the College of Bishops – even in powerful Conferences like the United States – will question what comes out of Rome, and certainly not publicly. Instead, there will be every effort to try and find an accommodation with those in power, which means that the Roman position will prevail in the end. And, taking this further, when an individual bishop takes issue with something, especially in public, the impression or judgement will be that he is “breaking ranks” with the other bishops and will only cause confusion to the lay faithful – so it is said - because it will appear that the Bishops are not united in their teaching and leadership role. The pressure, therefore, to conform.

What we should have, in my view, is a Church where the leadership recognises and empowers decision-making at the appropriate levels in the local Church; where local leadership listens to and discerns with the people of God of that area what “the Spirit is saying to the Church” and then articulates that as a consensus of the be-lieving, praying, serving community. It needs faith in God and trust in the people of God to take what may seem to some or many as a risk. The Church could be enriched as a result through a diversity which truly integrates socio-cultural values and insights into a living and developing faith, together with a discernment of how such diversity can promote unity in the Church – and not, therefore, require uniformity to be truly authentic.

Diversity in living and praxis, as an expression of the principle of subsidiarity, has been taken away from the local Churches everywhere by the centralisation of decision-making at the level of the Vatican. In addition, orthodoxy is more and more identified with conservative opinions and outlook, with the corresponding judge-ment that what is perceived to be “liberal” is both suspect and not orthodox, and therefore to be rejected as a danger to the faith of the people.

Is there a way forward? I have grappled with this question especially in the light of the apparent division of as-piration and vision in the Church. How do you reconcile such very different visions of Church, or models of Church? I do not have the answer, except that somewhere we must find an attitude of respect and reverence for difference and diversity as we search for a living unity in the Church; that people be allowed, indeed enabled, to find or create the type of community which is expressive of their faith and aspirations concerning their Christian and Catholic lives and engagement in Church and world….and which strives to hold in legitimate and construc-tive tension the uncertainties and ambiguities that all this will bring, trusting in the presence of the Holy Spirit.

At the heart of this is the question of conscience. As Catholics, we need to be trusted enough to make informed decisions about our life, our witness, our expressions of faith, spirituality, prayer, and involvement in the world……on the basis of a developed conscience. And, as an invitation to an appreciation of conscience and conscientious decisions about life and participation in what is a very human Church, I close with the formula-tion or understanding given by none other than the theologian, Father Josef Ratzinger, now Pope, when he was a peritus, or expert, at Vatican II:

“Over the Pope as expression of the binding claim of ecclesiastical authority, there stands one’s own con-science which must be obeyed before all else, even if necessary against the requirement of ecclesiastical autho-rity. This emphasis on the individual, whose conscience confronts him with a supreme and ultimate tribunal, and one which in the last resort is beyond the claim of external social groups, even the official Church, also establishes a principle in opposition to increasing totalitarianism”.

(Joseph Ratzinger in: Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II,Vol. V., pg. 134 (Ed) H. Vorgrimler, New York, Herder and Herder, 1967).

Cape Town, 1 June, 2010

Beneath the child abuse scandal--A.W.Richard Sipe

http://ncronline.org/news/accountability/beneath-child-abuse-scandal


Many people, including bishops, date and lable the "Crisis in the Catholic Church" to Jan. 6, 2002 when The Boston Globe began publishing its series about sexual abuse of minors by priests and revealing the conspiracy of bishops in covering up crimes. That was the flash point of a worldwide scandal. The crisis it epitomizes is more profound.

The uncontrollable public exposure and sharp focus on clergy sex abuse shocked everyone, but the fact of a church and priesthood in crisis did not come as a surprise to the United States hierarchy. "It is clear that we are in some kind of a crisis of priestly ministry. The nature of the crisis is not at all that clear." Those were the words Daniel Pilarczyk archbishop of Cincinnati directed at his fellow bishops on June 14, 1986. He went on to provide a checklist of possibilities: "Is it a crisis of image? Is it a crisis of numbers? Is it a crisis of celibacy? -- change? -- lay ministries? -- prayer? -- secularism? -- confidence? It is probably all of these and perhaps other things as well. And we have to respond to the crisis."(1)

Already in 1972 sociologist Fr. Andrew Greeley reported to the five bishops and the twelve priest consultants of the Ad Hoc Committee on Priestly Life and Ministry set up by the NCCB. He explained his Sociological Investigation of American Priesthood that he instigated at the request of the bishops. "There appears to be a crisis in vocations to the priesthood." (2)    His suggestions for supporting clergy development were presented in juxtaposition with the findings of Father Gene Kennedy and Doctor Victor Heckler who had been commissioned by the bishops to produce a Psychological Investigation of the priesthood in the United States. (3)  

The Kennedy-Heckler Report did not use the word crisis, but the conclusions they presented had "crisis" written all over them. They concluded that over two-thirds of priests in their representative psychological study were psychosocially either underdeveloped or mal-developed.

After more than a quarter of a century of evidence of corruption -- and if a record of 6 to 9 percent of U.S. priests having abused minors (4)   and 66 percent of bishops covering up for abusing clerics (5)   is not corruption I do not know what is -- Pope Benedict admits that "sin is in the church" and says publicly that we are facing a "cultural and spiritual crisis." (6)  

Certainly culture in the broadest sense is immersed in ungodly problems where the physical and sexual abuse of minors and women is epidemic. However, the economic, cultural, and spiritual crisis challenging societies in no way mitigates the core problem of the Catholic church today.

In the simplest and most accurate terms possible, the Catholic crisis is the widespread sexual activity of Catholic clergy publicly promised to celibacy, and a morally and doctrinally underdeveloped understanding of human sexual nature.

Without doubt many good and dedicated priests (and nuns) still serve. Pope Benedict XVI could justly say, "The priest is a gift from the heart of Christ, a gift for the church and the world. If we look at history, we can observe how many pages of authentic spiritual and social renewal have been written with the decisive contribution of Catholic priests…" (7)   That is true. There have also been, and always will be, some miscreant clergy in active ministry who do not contribute to renewal. That does not constitute a crisis. A crisis explodes when there is no longer a large enough reserve of psychologically well balanced and observant (saintly) and honest bishops and priests to counter the influence and power of corrupt and hypocritical men in power.

It is a serious mistake to assume that the pope, bishops and priests operate just like everybody else and are "just like" everybody else. Three qualities make them unique: "habits different from those of secular men, protection of the sacred, and pursual [sic] of clerical ritual." (8)   Priests are part of a culture -- a clerical culture -- that is woven into whole, if tattered, cloth by the presumption of celibacy. The celibate requirement for inclusion into the culture is of primary importance. That requirement by law involves "perfect and perpetual chastity." (9)   The presumption of clerical celibacy is the fabric of the culture; to remove celibacy as a requirement means the disintegration of the culture -- loss of the control and power of the whole authoritarian system. As medieval historian Mayke de Jong writes, "It was from sexual purity that the priesthood was believed to derive its power."

The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterize the priesthood are not simply those articulated by papal pronouncements that outline the ideals and the positive accomplishments of the institution and organization. The legislation on celibacy is central to keeping clerical culture together. Catholic clerical celibacy separates a man from all other societies, makes him dependent on a homo-social group, confers status, insures employment and care, and subsumes his identity into a powerful ancient institution, and allies him with the divine. The requirement for inclusion is obedience, conformity and presumed celibacy.

Sexual activity of the widest variety is tolerated within the system if it is kept secret. Submitting sexual activity to the seal of confession is a major vehicle to solidifying the power of the culture and forming a clerical identity (too frequently pathological).

The attitudes, values, and practices of clerical culture are bound by secrecy. Sexual secrecy is the key to the clerical culture. It beats at the heart of the crisis. Currently clerical culture, on balance, is corrupt. Priests -- even good priests -- live, breath, and have their being in a culture of hypocrisy. Sexual secrecy dominates the culture from seminary training through the episcopacy to the Vatican. There is a great deal more at work in the operation of clergy and the clerical system than "passion for the Gospel" that the pope extols.

Few people want to dirty their hands with the crisis. Who from inside the clerical culture has spoken up and reported abuse? (10)   Many folks are sick of hearing about clergy abuse. Fr. James Martin, an editor of the Jesuit magazine America told The New York Times, "I don't think editors realize how tired Catholics are of seeing the church portrayed through the lens of sex abuse." (11)   

That poses the real conundrum: percolating behind the scandal of priests preying sexually on minors and vulnerable women and men only waiting to be served up steaming hot is the secret system where priests and bishops enjoy the sexual favors of willing adult women and compatible adult men; (to say nothing about pornography and masturbation).  The questions about clerics' mistresses, their children, the abortions of their companions (often instigated by them) and widespread homosexual activity cannot long be ignored. (12)   A more powerful lens is waiting to focus on the clerical culture that will render the crisis in ever more precise dimensions.

Beneath the child abuse scandal is a clerical world of sexual reality. Besides avoidance and denial of that reality is a system of moral disbelief sustaining the crisis. Many priests simply do not believe a host of church moral dictums about human sexuality. A more perfect example is not possible than a top official in the Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy who was caught on television in 2007 claiming he "didn't feel he was sinning" by having sex with gay men (13) --  unless it is a monsignor acting out in his Vatican office, or a Vatican chorister in 2010 allegedly procuring male prostitutes for papal gentleman-in-waiting.

Yes, there is a major Roman Catholic crisis -- from the papal household and curia to regional and pontifical seminaries, to our neighborhood parishes, in religious communities and monasteries. The name of that crisis is sex. It is time that we all move beyond public relations to counteract the attached scandal and move to embrace what sociologist Tom Westrum calls a "fix." (14)  

Forgive Not: A Catholic Struggles with the Sins of His Church--Gary Wills

The New Republic

This early in the twenty-first century, the rulers of the Catholic Church have suffered an earthquake of crumbling credibility. Nearly ten years ago, with the initial revelations about sexual abuse of the young by priests, some argued that the problem was limited in time and place, since most of the abuse cases had occurred 30 or 40 years before, and they took place in the United States. There was hope that an investigative and reformist effort would restore the U.S. Church’s authority. An emergency Dallas meeting of American bishops in 2002 and a lay inquiry with its recommendations in2004 were supposed to make the problem go away.

But, ten years later, all across the globe, the problem has shown a stubborn refusal to subside. Pedophile scandals have devastated the Church in Ireland. Fresh horrors have come to light in the United States, especially in Wisconsin and Arizona. There are urgent investigations in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Australia, and Italy. And the Pope himself has been implicated in the scandals, some of which occurred when he was Archbishop of Munich and some when he oversaw the treatment of pedophile reports at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This has led to calls for the Pope’s resignation, or arrest, or criminal indictment—things not even imaginable ten years ago.

It should come as no surprise that a world scandal has succeeded the American troubles. Leading members of the hierarchy in country after country dismissed the U.S. reports of abuse by priests as a thing made up by the hyperthyroid American press, out of an anti-Catholic animus, a pro-Jewish zeal, or the hope to cash in on Church wealth. It is no wonder these foreign cardinals have been blindsided by their own neglected scandals. At first, the Vatican rejected the measures taken by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, after their meeting in Dallas, as not being fair to accused priests, giving too much scope to lay panels of critics, and violating the confidentiality of confessions.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, at the time a second-in-command to Cardinal Ratzinger at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and later the second-in-command (secretary of state) to Ratzinger as Pope Benedict, set the tone in an interview with an Italian magazine: “ [T]here is a well-founded suspicion that some of these charges [of abuse], that arise well after the fact, serve only for making money in civil litigation. ... In my opinion, the demand that a bishop be obligated to contact the police in order to denounce a priest who has admitted the offence of pedophilia is unfounded. ... If a priest cannot confide in his bishop for fear of being denounced, then it would mean that there is no more liberty of conscience.”

Bertone was soon chosen by the Vatican to serve on a panel that would soften the directives adopted by the American bishops for punishing pedophile priests. Another member of this panel, made up of eight bishops, was Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, the head of the Congregation for the Clergy, which handled all issues having to do with priests. Castrillon Hoyos was delegated to read a papal letter that mentioned the scandals, where he defended a policy of “keeping things within the family.” A third member of the panel was Archbishop Julian Herranz Casado, who attributed the pedophile scandal to American “exaggeration, financial exploitation, and nervousness.”

Some critics of the American bishops’ treatment of the pedophile problem cited an article from the Vatican-monitored newspaper Civilta Cattolica, written by the dean of the canon law department at Rome’s Gregorian University, famous for training the clergy. It said that “the bishop and the superior [of religious orders] are neither morally nor judicially responsible for the acts committed by one of their clergy.” Among those attacking the Jewish press in the United States for causing the scandal was Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, who said that the Vatican’s reception of Yasir Arafat had offended the media, that a supporter of feminism was judging the priests’ cases in Boston, and that Cardinal Bernard Law had been subjected to “Stalinist processes against Churchmen.” At a press conference in Rome, Rodriguez called the emphasis on the scandals by U.S. newspapers an “obsession [that] is a mental illness,” and a trick to get money from the Church:

When I was in the United States in the 1970s, there was a fashion when one slipped on a sidewalk to sue the owner of the house for millions. This became a kind of industry. I remember that people used to put on a neck brace and go find a lawyer. ... So why now is there such interest in taking up these [pedophile] cases from the past? Because there is money in play. But we know that money doesn’t heal any wound. ... If it were up to me, I would give the money neither to the lawyers nor even to the victims. ... For me it would be a tragedy to reduce the role of a pastor to that of a cop. We are totally different, and I’d be prepared to go to jail rather than harm one of my priests. The harm, you notice, was to the priests, not to the children they preyed on. The priests, Rodriguez said, can “also be victims.”

Members of the hierarchy outside the United States regularly called accusations against priests the real scandal. Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera of Mexico City said there was “an orchestrated plan for striking at the prestige of the Church” that constituted a “ferocious persecution.” Cardinal Jan Schotte of Belgium (where new scandals have now been reported) cited with approval the Civilta Cattolica article by Father Gianfranco Ghirlanda, saying that the priests should not be accountable to secular authorities and noting that the Belgian bishops had successfully avoided turning over their records on the grounds that they were official Church documents. Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniguez of Guadalajara claimed that the Church was being persecuted for its opposition to abortion and its support of Palestinians:

The powerful don’t like what the Church affirms and testifies to regarding the defense of life and of the family. For the powerful of the world, the positions of the Church against the financial strangulation of the countries of the Third World and in favor of the millions and millions of robbed and exploited poor don’t go down well. The powerful also won’t tolerate the balanced position of the Church regarding the dramatic situation in the Holy Land.

Most of these reactions by the hierarchy date from two to four years after my book, Papal Sin, was published. But they show the same patterns of denial, evasion, defensiveness, accusation, and protestations of innocence and holiness that I had already analyzed. The U.S. scandals had not reached their height in 2000, and they did not lead me to write the book. The occasion for my doing so was a careful reading of Lord Acton’s collected historical writings. Though Acton was a lifelong Catholic, he had been a scathing critic of the First Vatican Council, and of the dishonest way Pius IX extracted from it a definition of papal infallibility. But he assured William Gladstone that a papacy that had survived the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and had based its claims on fraud and forgery for centuries was just acting true to form.

Acton’s most famous criticisms of the papacy occurred in his dealings with Mandell Creighton in 1887. Creighton would later become the Anglican bishop of London, but, at the time, he was a professor of history at Cambridge University and the editor of the English Historical Review. He asked Acton to review in that journal volumes three and four of The History of the Papacy, which Creighton had just published. Acton attacked the volumes for whitewashing papal crimes. Creighton honorably published the review, despite its criticism of him, but, when Creighton wrote objecting to certain matters in the review, Acton sharpened his attack. His letter of April 5, 1887, contains this famous passage:

I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way, against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. ... There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.

Though Acton lived before the Second Vatican Council defined the Church as “the people of God,” the entirety of Acton’s writings prove that he never equated Catholicism with the papacy. He was too good a historian for that. The Pope is a freak of history—specifically, of medieval history. His office does not date from the early history of the Christian community. Peter was not a Pope, or a bishop, or a priest—offices that did not exist in his lifetime. There are no priests in the New Testament. Peter was not the leader of the Church in either Jerusalem or Rome—communities led, respectively, by James, Jesus’s brother, and Clement. Paul, at the famous clash in Antioch, showed that he did not think Peter a sound interpreter of Jesus’s message. Males were not the only ministers at the outset, as the apostle Junia proves. In fact the early preachers of the Gospel were often a husband-and-wife team.

When the current Pope was Cardinal Ratzinger, he was asked how so many Catholics could disregard official teachings of the hierarchy. He answered that doctrine is not set by majority vote. But that is precisely how creeds and doctrines were formulated. At the great Eastern councils, like that of Nicaea, hundreds of bishops from around the world voted on the deepest mysteries of the faith—the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Resurrection. And there was no Pope at any of those councils. The democracy that would be denounced by Pius IX had been practiced in the early Church, where priests and bishops were elected by the people, and bishops could no more leave a people, once elected, than a man could leave his wife. (That is why, for a long time, no bishop could become a Pope—he could not leave his diocese.)

In the Middle Ages, it was the worldly assumption that all authority had to be feudal or monarchical in character. So the Pope became a monarch. He ruled territories. He had armies, prisons, spies. These things were finally stripped from him, but not until the nineteenth century, and despite the frantic efforts of Pius IX to retain them. Even now, the vestigial papal state is being invoked to show that the Pope, as ruler of a sovereign government, cannot be called to account for priestly sins.

In keeping with its historical and medieval roots, the papacy has been reflexively opposed to social changes. Pius IX condemned democracy as an evil and illegitimate form of government. The papacy has historically been at war with science—against the Enlightenment, against textual criticism from Erasmus’s time onward, against cosmology and astronomy in Galileo’s time, against the “liberalism” of Lamennais and others, against biology and geology in Darwin’s time, against psychology in Freud’s time—and, at present, against prenatal scans, in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, surrogate motherhood, fetal stem-cell research, and condoms to prevent AIDS in Africa.

In order to protect what are considered timeless truths, for centuries, the papacy prevented the study of the Bible in its original Hebrew and Greek forms, insisting that only the Latin Bible of the Catholic liturgy be considered authoritative. It made it a condition of ordination that would-be priests take an oath against modernism, subscribing to the biblical simplisms of Pius X’s encyclical Pascendi. It tolerated when it did not encourage—until the 1960s!—the idea that the Jewish people were guilty of deicide.

Since the papacy has been frozen in a defensive crouch, defying historical fact and free inquiry, it has been opposed to anything that might diminish the power of the Church to define reality. The authority of the bishop, of the priest, of the papacy, was more important than the Gospel. It was considered the only power that could say what the Gospel is or demands. Thus, the covering-up of sacerdotal sins and errors was a given in the Church. The infantilism of priests, the combined sexual inexperience and prurience resulting from celibacy, the belief that a celibate male is more attuned to spiritual reality than a married man—all this created a framework where sins, when they occurred, had to be denied, the victims had to be blamed, the solution to the problem was simply one of praying harder. Where therapy failed, the confessional would take the sinner with spiritual force beyond the worldly wisdom of psychiatrists.

Even now, as Church leaders belatedly try to repent and repair things, the mythical underpinnings of the priestly system continue to be taught—that only celibates can be priests (the apostles were married, all but Paul), that refusal to marry gives a man a superior caringness, that it makes him unworldly and concerned with other souls. What real change can occur when such myths are clung to with a blind ferocity? The resistance to change can be seen in the fact that the papacy has not faced the facts of a priesthood dwindling in both numbers and quality, of a financial base eroding as Church attendance goes down and donations dry up, even as damages in the billions must be paid to victims of “holy” predators. The wonderful teaching and nursing services of the nuns have evaporated.

The reaction of the hierarchy has been to dig itself even deeper into the past—to blame the Church’s troubles on such old evils as secularism, relativism, positivism, pluralism, and a “permissive” culture. The Second Vatican Council is blamed as well, and the Popes have tried to blunt or reverse its changes. Pope Benedict wants to go back to the Latin mass, with the priest turned from the people. He has cut back ecumenical initiatives, denying again the validity of Anglican orders, forbidding concelebration of Mass with Protestants, declaring (in Dominus Iesus) that all other churches are “gravely deficient.” He wants to put nuns back in their habits. He is driving to canonize the anti-Semitic Popes Pius IX and Pius XII. These are further signs of the structures of deceit—of self-deception as the first step to defying “worldly wisdom.”

I am asked, if I believe this, why I remain a Catholic. I do that precisely because I do not equate the people of God with the papacy. Well, I am told, other churches honor the Creed and the Gospel without the burden of a papacy as outdated as the medieval costumes it affects. I want to be at one with Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and others; but I want all of these communions to come together, and I cannot do that by renouncing the Catholic membership in such an ecumenical Christianity, saying some churches are better than others. When the disciples of Jesus came back from their first mission away from him, the apostle John reported, “Master, we saw a man driving out evil in our name, and he was not one of us, we tried to stop him.” Jesus asks why they did that: “No one who does a work of divine power in my name will be able the next moment to speak evil of me” (Mark 9:38-39). All of us who honor his name must come together. When a Catholic tells me—often these days, it is a young woman—that she can no longer put up with the male monarchical Church, I tell her, “Stay with us, we need you. The people of God need you.”

All those who honor the name of Jesus are engaged in a joint search for the Jesus who will not be found in marble halls or wearing imperial costumes. He is forever on the run. He is the one who said, “Whatever you did to any of my brothers, even the lowliest [elackistoi], you did to me” (Matthew 25:41). That means that the priests abusing the vulnerable young were doing that to Jesus, raping Jesus. Any clerical functionary who shows more sympathy for the predator priests than for their victims instantly disqualifies himself as a follower of Jesus. The cardinals said they must care for their own, going to jail if necessary to protect a priest. We say the same thing, but the “our own” we care for are the victimized, the poor, the violated. They are Jesus.