What the crisis is NOT about
by Michael Sean Winters
April 6, 2010
One of the most surprising aspects of the reaction to the return of the clergy sex abuse scandal has been the way some commentators, especially those on the Left, have used the crisis to advance causes that do not actually have much to do with the underlying problems.
My colleague Father Martin has already explained below that celibacy is not the source of this problem, and ending the requirement for clerical celibacy would not end the scandal.
But, what has my back up this morning is the argument that because of the scandal, the entire hierarchical structure of the Church should be overturned and the most extreme liberal interpretation of Vatican II be accepted.
Exhibit A is an article in yesterday’s
Boston Globe by Mr. James Carroll. In the first paragraph, he tips his hand by calling Pope Benedict an "enabler bishop" which is something in contention not proved, at least not proven beyond the "show trial" quality of justice that the blogosphere metes out.
[My only misgiving about this post was that it necesssarily had to cite Mr. Carroll and his latest article.]
He goes on to accuse the Pope of "Catholic fundamentalism" in which the papacy functions the way the Bible does for Protestant fundamentalism. Carroll gives a brief history lesson about the emergence of the modern papacy that is a tissue of inaccuracies.
Carroll writes, for example, "In the past, bishops were elected by local churches." Certainly, the Vatican’s role in the selection of bishops has become steadily more pronounced in the past two hundred years. But, the role of the Congregation of Bishops and the nuncios in the selection of new bishops did not replace elections by the local church; it replaced nomination by local government.
And, one of the principal causes of the Vatican’s enhanced role in the selection of bishops was the emergence of the civil doctrine of church-state separation. That fact, alas, does not fit into Carroll’s imagined plot of reactionary bishops frustrating the effects of the Enlightenment, so it goes unmentioned.
But, if Carroll really prefers the old way, let him imagine the kind of bishops that would have been nominated by the U.S. government during the eight, long years of George W. Bush’s presidency.
In another section of his essay, Carroll writes: "Vatican II was a step toward the democratizing of the Catholic Church, which is why Catholic fundamentalists have been seeking to undo it ever since. Fundamentalist-in-chief has been Joseph Ratzinger."
I have searched the documents of Vatican II for evidence of this "democratizing" step Carroll perceives. It is not there. The phrase "People of God" is reclaimed, but the reclaiming is from the Hebrew Scriptures not from the Enlightenment.
As well, anyone with even a cursory awareness of Ratzinger’s writings would know that such a simplification of his thought is beyond unfair. Ratzinger certainly is more skeptical of modernity’s claims than Carroll who approaches "democracy" and "the laity" with the same discriminating sensibility exhibited by my St. Bernard when he approaches his dinner.
Ratzinger is no fundamentalist: His writings constantly face, they do not evade, the bumps in the modern road, the challenges of social and cultural pluralism, the complexities of dialogue in an age that is, after all, marked by relativism, the ugly, genocide-laden history of modernity.
And, it would be strange indeed to find any bishop who shares Carroll’s commitment to a liberal, Protestant ecclesiology, which is a fine ecclesiology to have, just not a Catholic ecclesiology.
Timothy Shriver, chairman of Special Olympics, writing in the
Washington Post yesterday, had a similar, albeit less grandiose, take on what the scandal demands. He writes that the Pope and bishops must "convert their culture to one that is centered on loving God from the depths of their souls and to leading a church that is as much mother as father, as much pastoral as theological, as much spiritual as doctrinal."
[The problem with Catholics by accident of birth - Shriver is a Kennedy-Shriver - who have become cafeteria Catholics of the make-your-own-salad kind, is that they presume to give lessons on Catholicism to the Pope himself! They do not see that you cannot profess a religion if you are unwilling or unable to follow its basic disciplines. To pit your own personal preferences against tenets and practices that have stood for over two millennia is the height of arrogance. An arrogance that mirrors their individual arrogance over God.]
It sure seems to me that the Pope who wrote those beautiful homilies last week was "centered on loving God" and I utterly reject as facile and misguided these false dichotomies between being pastoral and theological, and between spiritual and doctrinal.
For a Catholic, the sources of our spirituality are our doctrinal claims: You don’t make a crèche unless you believe in the doctrine of the Incarnation, you don’t pray the rosary unless you accept the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, and you do not invoke the protection of the saints, nor light a candle at their statues, unless you believe the dogmatic claims about the Communion of the Saints.
The sex abuse scandal is horrific and it should not be hijacked for ideological purposes. Some conservatives use the scandal to bash gays. Now, some liberals use it to advance their ecclesiological agenda. Shame on them both.
We honor the victims by addressing the real and the root causes of the scandal, not by making the same tired arguments about Vatican II that were being made before the scandal ever happened.
[Arguments for laissez-faire Catholicism, but a Catholicism that refuses to be bound by the disciplines of the faith, especially on life and death and bioethics, is no longer Catholicism nor even Christianity!]
I am surprised that Winters apparently rejects the false claims of the Vatican II 'spiritualists' [to use the term the Holy Father taught us for those followers of Joachin da Fiore], especially since he writes for AMERICA!
BTW, I will continue to use the Via Crucis panel to symbolize the attacks on Benedict XVI, becuase his Via Crucis does not end with Easter. The Way of the Cross is the daily way of the Christian following in the footsteps of Christ. Most especially, the day to day Via Crucis comes with the title and function of being the Vicar of Christ on earth.
From the very beginning of his Papacy, when all the liberal voices jumped on him literally as soon as Cardinal Estevez pronounced 'Josephus Ratzinger' following 'Habemus Papam...', it was obvious that the new Pope's daily Cross would not be physical illness as his predecessor's had been but the weight of militant secularism as espoused by the mass media and the weaker Church leaders who are willingly in bed with the secularists.
But Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is strong because he is pure of heart, and because he knows Christ is always there to take him by the hand, and he has the love and prayers of all the faithful who are both full of faith, as well as faithful in their loyalty to the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church.
Then there is this ambivalent article by Henri Tincq, a veteran religious correspondent who has not been kind to Benedict XVI in the past.
Benedict XVI's Way of the Cross
Accused of covering up priestly crimes, no one
in the Church has done more to combat the evil
by Henri Tincq
Translated from
April 4, 2010
If Easter is for all Christians the feast of the Resurrection of Christ, Easter 2010 is today marked with pain in the bosom of the Catholic Church shaken by a storm of rare amplitude.
From top to buttom she seems today to be corrupted by a cascade of disclosures about pedophile acts committed by some of her clergy.
It is placing Benedict XVI, 83, under a severe test of all the personal virtues he has been endowed with. The Pope is personally 'suspect' as former Archbishop of Munich, where serious scandales have erupted
[???? Is there anything else other than the Hullerman case that the press insists on hanging around his neck?] and as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to have been guilty of a strange passaivity with respect to sex abuse cases.
[Strange comment to make, since he was never passive, from the time in 2001 when the jurisdiction for canonical adjuication of these cases was given to the CDF!]
But the paradox is that Benedict XVI - who marks the fth anniversary of his eleftionas Pope on April 19 - will leave in history the memory of a man of the Church
who failed by his silence on certain matters [WNAT MATTERS????] but at the same time, as the Pope who did the most to combat this evil.
[Tincq then summarizes the 'charges' made against the Pope as Archbishop of Munich and as CDF Prefect, as the media see it - so I will not bother to translate.]
And so, the net is tightening around Benedict XVI. Many Catholics are today reeling, at a loss, from what they consider to be a pounding away by the media (See the Petition of intellectuals published in Figaro on April 2).
Several national episcopates, including that of France, have rushed to the Pope's aid. They all admit the
extent of the evil
[What extent? They admit it exists and must be fought, not that it is as 'extensive' as the media paint it to be when they never give a context for the numbers cited - in any case, a few hundred in Germany, and even in Ireland, about 2000 - accused priests, not yet found guilty], the damage and grief it has caused, and they call for the whole truth to be laid out.
No one disputes that the Church hierarchy has committed serious failures and 'dysfunction'. But they also acknowledge the Pope's desire to shed light on these scandals, they underscore the courage he has shown in assuming the weight of the priests's crimes and the failures of their superiors, and praise his compassion for the victims.
He is without a doubt the Church figure who has been most involved in efforts to confront the problem of sexual abuses committed by priests - at the level of prevention, reparation and determination that justice be rendered to the victims.
His earlier experience at the CDF has given him a familiarity with the cases filed. Shortly before he was elected in 2005, Cardinal Ratzinger expressed his disguest at the revelations that had come to his knowledge: "How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to him!"
This frankness may well have earned him votes in the Conclave. As Benedict XVI, he has multipled his isntructions and appeals to local episcopates int his matter and has not shown any indulgence.
In the United States in April 2008, to everyone's surprise, he met with some victims of priestly abuse. A few months later, in Australia, he renewed his condemnation of pedophile priests and said a Mass in private with some victims.
In February 2010, he called to order the bishops of Ireland whom he met at the Vatican, and on March 21, he published a touching letter to the Catholics of Ireland expressing his 'shame and remorse'.
It was he who in 2006, ordered the retirement to privacy and penitence of Fr. Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, virtually canonized in the eyes of his followers, supported against all odds by John Paul II, and who died in January 2008, under the weight of the most serious charges -a double life, committing sexual abuse on seminarians and concubinage with many women with whom he had children. A disciplinary inquiry into the ranks of the powerful and militant congregation he founded was ordered by Benedict XVI and he has received the report, expected to lead shortly to appropriate disciplinary measures.
But this part of Benedict XVI's record is rarely cited in news reports and commentary, in which he alone is made to carry the blame for a culture of suspicion that has insinnuated itself into every level of an institution which has too long preferred to stifle and cover up the offenses committed by some of its priests instead of acting.
Of an institution where the
members ignore or no longer understand the rules of discipline, as is evident from the revived debate over the possible connection between priestly celibacy and pedophilia.
But should we not point out that in France, although pedophilia represents more than 60% of cases currently in trial, which only a tiny minority of the accused are single?
Yes, some priests have destroyed the promise of life for many children who became victims of their odious crime. But it ought to be remembered as well that more than 90% of pedophilia is committed by a relative, a father or a neighbor, not a priest,
To present the marriage of priests as a solution to combat pedophilia among them is inane! One may be against priestly celibacy, but this is not an argument that belongs here.
More geneally, the culture of suspicion around the Church seems to be the expression of resentment against a Church which has chosen to remain counter to the evolutions of the modern world
[DIM]8upt[=DIM][only where it concerns ethics and morality, in which it will not deviate one iota from what Christ taught more than 2000 years ago.].
The gap is growing between, on the one hand, the efforts of this Pope to maintain a discourse with universal significance, in denouncing 'relativism' and 'nihilism' which, according to him, dominate the spirit of the times, and on the other hand, public opinion which is not impressed at all by calls to order nor by authoritative discourse.
An opinion that is witnessing - almost with as much delight as scorn - the eruption of this crisis at the summit of a Church which they consider backward and out of date. A crisis which the Church owes to its own failures and weaknesses. A crisis of credibility from which it will not emerge without extra efforts towards clarity, a change in its procedures, a closer collaboration with civilian authorities, and
a reflection on its place in society.
[She knows very well what her place in society is - but the secular society will not acknowledge that she has a place at all!]
The great injustice would be to extend the stain of pedophilia over the entire Church, to see a potential pedophile in every priest.
[But that is the impression given by the arguments Tincq has just laid out - as if the Church was nothing but an institution that makes pedophiles possible!]
One forgets the participation of priests in the fight against poverty, in defending human rights in those countries where they are not respected, in helping improve conditions of life and health for many disadvantaged people around the world.
However, there is reason
to demand that the Church show more modesty and relevance in its ethical discourse. Its mission should be to respond to the demand for 'values', meaning and moral references other than through prohibitions.
[Tincq, alas, has not been really listening to what Benedict XVI has been saying all along - even when he was a cardinal. That Christianity is a great Yes to the will of God, Yes to the positive ideas expressed in the Ten Commandments, Yes to the joy of life lived according to the one Great Commandment to love God and each other!]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 08/04/2010 16:15]