A Hillarian lesson for Church leaders
by GEORGE WEIGEL
May 17, 2017
Perhaps it was being "overcome with Paschal joy" (as the Prefaces for Easter put it). Maybe it was my guardian angel whispering in my ear. Perhaps I'm just getting older and thus less crotchety. But for a brief moment, at around 0730 EDT on the morning of May 3, I felt a blush of sympathy for Hillary Clinton for the first time in twenty-five years.
The material cause of this unprecedented emotion was that day's
Washington Post where, on p. A4 below the fold, I read this headline:
"Clinton blames Russia, FBI chief for election loss." As for the frisson of sympathy, it went something like this:
"The poor woman. She still doesn't get it."
Get what? Get that she herself was the reason she lost.
The case for that judgment is made at length in
Shattered: Inside illary Clinton's Doomed Campaign, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes (Crown), which I had just read on a long flight and which has had
tout Washington in a tizzy for weeks.
Political junkies will relish the book's story of the infighting between data-driven analysts on the Clinton campaign staff and the on-the-ground pols in the field; the latter sensed that something seismic was shifting in the electorate, which the former refused to believe because of their "models."
But according to
Shattered, the fundamental reasons for one of the greatest upsets in American presidential history were that
- Hillary Clinton was unable to articulate a compelling reason for her candidacy;
- her staff couldn't come up with a reason that resonated with voters; and
- no one on that staff had the nerve to tell her that she was the basic problem.
In choosing senior campaign workers, Hillary Clinton evidently valued loyalty above all other virtues, and defined loyalty as never being critical of the boss.
Shattered's most lurid revelation is that, after her 2008 loss [for the Democratic presidential nomination] to Barack Obama, Mrs. Clinton and her husband devised a loyalty scale by which they measured Democratic members of Congress -- and then took systematic revenge against those who were either not supportive in the 2008 primary contest with Obama or insufficiently supportive.
Thus the word got out: it you want to work for HRC, check your critical faculties at the door. Or as Allen and Parnes put it, while a lot of insiders knew last year that the Clinton campaign's biggest liability was the candidate, "no one who drew a salary from the campaign would tell her that. It was a self-signed death warrant to raise a question about Hillary's competence -- to her or anyone else -- in loyalty-obsessed Clintonworld."
In all of which, I suggest, may be found a cautionary tale for Church leaders, especially bishops.
An old wheeze of Catholic black humor has it that, after a man is ordained a bishop, he'll never again eat a bad meal or get a straightforward answer. It's not true, of course, but there's enough truth lurking inside the clerical cynicism to bear reflection.
The Church's unique, Christ-given structure invests great authority in bishops. And that, in turn, puts a high premium on the ability of the bishop to know his weaknesses and learn from his mistakes. But
to know and learn from his weaknesses and mistakes, the bishop has to recognize them -- or be invited to recognize them, if one of a number of vices prevents him from seeing himself making mistakes.
Wives and children do this charitable correction for husbands and fathers. But Catholic bishops don't get that form of correction because they don't have wives and children. So it has to come from somewhere else.
"Fraternal correction" among bishops is an ancient and honorable tradition in the Church. Patristic-era bishops practiced it with some vigor, the most famous case being the controversy between Cyprian of Carthage and Stephen, Bishop of Rome.
Today, bishops' respect for each other's autonomy tends to mitigate against the practice of fraternal correction. Still,
if "affective collegiality" means anything, it ought to mean having enough care for a brother-bishop, no matter his position in the episcopal college, to suggest to him that he is off-course, if that is one's conscientious judgment, tempered by prayer.
Fraternal correction is a delicate instrument, to be used with care. If its use completely atrophies, however, the Church risks becoming an ecclesiastical version of Clintonworld.
Are we to think that Weigel, who has thus far maintained utter loyalty to the current pope, is maybe relenting somewhat, and that his warning is addressed above all to the pope, whose great popularity among Catholics polled apparently continues to be 'confirmed' by available surveys today?
I find it amusing and stupid at the same time that 99.9% of American media continue to cite polls showing Donald Trump as no less than the most unpopular US president one could possibly imagine - surveys made by the same people who predicted up to election night 2016 that Hillary Clinton had a 95% chance of winning the presidency. Are they still surveying the same carefully and scientifically chosen people who so skewed the surveyors and the media's objectivity that they deluded Hilary into thinking she was going to be the first US woman president just because she is Hilary Clinton? [Blame all those Americans who for more than 20 years have been choosing her as the most popular American female for no other reason that she managed to maintain such a high media profile since she was the First Lady. And today high media profile = ]
Sometimes I find it hard to decide which contemporary figure I most despise - Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton or Jorge Bergoglio (with apologies to the Papacy as institution). What they all share other than terminal narcissism is their incredible PHONINESS, each in his/her own way.
On the other hand, Donald Trump is so completely 'genuine', it appears, that he is allowing his worst character faults (having to do with egocentrism and narcissism, just as with Obama, Clinton and Bergoglio) to seriously get in the way of his good intentions and undermine his overall credibility, so that at this point, the 'conventional' view is that he is even more unprincipled than Richard Nixon, and some Democrats, of course, are already calling for his impeachment! (However, a recent poll taken among those who voted for Trump shows he continues to be supported unconditionally by 92% of them.)
At least, he succeeded to make Neil Gorsuch a Supreme Court Justice, an action whose positive consequences will potentially endure over the next critical decade, at least. How Trump will do on the other major promises he made during the campaign remains very much to be seen.
Not to unnecessarily open a new post on the pope, here is a lengthy commentary by Donald McClarey on a Bergoglio text that appears to have passed unnoticed before he left for Fatima last week...
This pope and his view of history
May 17, 2017
The Pope has an interesting conception of History as he displayed in a homily he preached before he left for Fatima last week:
During the course of history, Pope Francis said, many of our conceptions have changed. Slavery, for example, was a practice that was accepted; in time we have come to understand that it is a mortal sin.
“God has made himself known throughout history,” he said. “His salvation” goes back a long way in time. And he referred to Paul’s preaching in the Acts of the Apostles when he tells the God-fearing children of Israel about the journey of their ancestors, starting with the Exodus from Egypt until the coming of the savior, Jesus.
The Pope said salvation has a great and a long history during which the Lord “guided his people in good and in bad moments, in times of freedom and of slavery: in a journey populated by “saints and by sinners” on the road towards fullness, “towards the encounter with the Lord”.
At the end of the journey there is Jesus, he said, however: “it doesn’t end there”.
In fact, Francis continued, Jesus gave us the Spirit who allows to “remember and to understand Jesus’s message, and thus, a second journey begins.
This journey undertaken “to understand, to deepen our understanding of Jesus and to deepen our faith” serves also, Francis explained, “to understand moral teaching, the Commandments.”
He pointed out that
some things that “once seemed normal and not sinful, are today conceived as mortal sins:
“Think of slavery: at school they told us what they did with the slaves taking them from one place and selling them in another…. That is a mortal sin” he said.
But that, he said, is what we believe today. Back then it was deemed acceptable because people believed that some did not have a soul.
It was necessary, the Pope said, to move on to better understand the faith and to better understand morality.
And reflecting bitterly on the fact that today “there are no slaves”, Pope Francis pointed out there are in fact many more of them…. but at least, he said, we know that to enslave someone is to commit a mortal sin.
The same goes for the death penalty: “once it was considered normality; today we say that it is inadmissible,” he said.
[Who, exactly say that it is inadmissible? Bergoglio uses the royal 'we' to imply that his own personal and absolute opposition to the death penalty is shared by everyone else. As if the Catechism of the Catholic Church had not laid down the Catholic Magisterium on the death penalty!]
The same concept, he added, can be applied to “wars of religion”: as we go ahead deepening our faith and clarifying the dictates of morality “there are saints, the saints we all know, as well as the hidden saints.”
The Church, he commented, “is full of hidden saints”, and it is their holiness that will lead us to the “second fullness” when “the Lord will ultimately come to be all in all”.
Thus, Pope Francis said “The people of God are always on their way”.
When the people of God stop, he said, “they become like prisoners in a stable, like donkeys”. In that situation they are unable to understand, to go forward, to deepen their faith – and love and faith do not purify their souls.
And, he said, there is
a third “fullness of the times: ours”.
Each of us, the Pope explained, “is on the way to the fullness of our own time. Each of us will reach the moment in which life ends and there we must find the Lord. Each of us is on the go.”
“Jesus, he noted, has sent the Holy Spirit to guide us on our way” and he pointed out that the Church today is also on the go.
Pope Francis invited the faithful to ask themselves whether during confession there is not only the shame for having sinned, but also the understanding that in that moment they are taking a “step forward on the way to the fullness of times”.
“To ask God for forgiveness is not something automatic,” he said.
“It means that I understand that I am on a journey, part of a people that is on a journey” and sooner or later “I will find myself face-to-face with God, who never leaves us alone, but always accompanies us," he said.
And this, the Pope concluded, is the great work of God’s mercy.
[I don't think any minimally-catechized Catholic disputes that we seek God's forgiveness when we make a valid confession - but this includes the resolve "to amend my life and to do penance" as we say in the Act of Contrition - the part of it that seems to be completely ignored in the 'welcome-discern-accompany' formula advocated in AL Chapter 8. A part implicit in the Message of Fatima which urges prayer, penitence and suffering to help keep souls from Hell - all those themes avoided by Bergoglio who has reduced the Message of Fatima to a message for world peace!]
As Cardinal Newman noted, Doctrine can develop. He proposed tests to determine whether a proposed change is a development of doctrine -
Newman posited seven notes, I would call them tests, for determining whether something is a development of doctrine or a corruption.
1. Preservation of type
2. Continuity of principles
3. Power of assimilation
4. Logical sequence
5. Anticipation of its future
6. Conservative action upon its past
7. Chronic vigour
Go here to read an explanation of these tests.
http://the-american-catholic.com/2014/11/16/cardinal-newmans-theory-of-development-of-doctrine-and-the-synod/
PopeWatch doubts if Pope Francis has ever heard of these tests of Newman. If he has, he obviously is unconcerned with them.
The Pope seems to believe that the Holy Spirit provides us with free flowing continuing revelation, revelation that is free to contradict Church teaching, and even prior divine revelation. This is a common stance of many heretical groups throughout the history of the Church. It is odd and alarming to here it now being echoed by the Vicar of Christ.
In reference to the death penalty the late Cardinal Avery Dulles, a Jesuit, noted the weight of authority in reference to the death penalty:
In the Old Testament the Mosaic Law specifies no less than thirty-six capital offenses calling for execution by stoning, burning, decapitation, or strangulation.
Included in the list are idolatry, magic, blasphemy, violation of the sabbath, murder, adultery, bestiality, pederasty, and incest. The death penalty was considered especially fitting as a punishment for murder since in his covenant with Noah God had laid down the principle, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in His own image” (Genesis 9:6).
In many cases God is portrayed as deservedly punishing culprits with death, as happened to Korah, Dathan, and Abiram (Numbers 16). In other cases individuals such as Daniel and Mordecai are God’s agents in bringing a just death upon guilty persons.
In the New Testament, the right of the State to put criminals to death seems to be taken for granted. Jesus himself refrains from using violence. He rebukes his disciples for wishing to call down fire from heaven to punish the Samaritans for their lack of hospitality (Luke 9:55). Later he admonishes Peter to put his sword in the scabbard rather than resist arrest (Matthew 26:52). At no point, however, does Jesus deny that the State has authority to exact capital punishment.
In his debates with the Pharisees, Jesus cites with approval the apparently harsh commandment, “He who speaks evil of father or mother, let him surely die” (Matthew 15:4; Mark 7:10, referring to Exodus 2l:17; cf. Leviticus 20:9).
When Pilate calls attention to his authority to crucify him, Jesus points out that Pilate’s power comes to him from above - that is to say, from God (John 19:11). Jesus commends the good thief on the cross next to him, who has admitted that he and his fellow thief are receiving the due reward of their deeds (Luke 23:41).
The early Christians evidently had nothing against the death penalty. They approve of the divine punishment meted out to Ananias and Sapphira when they are rebuked by Peter for their fraudulent action (Acts 5:1-11).
The Letter to the Hebrews makes an argument from the fact that “a man who has violated the law of Moses dies without mercy at the testimony of two or three witnesses” (10:28). Paul repeatedly refers to the connection between sin and death. He writes to the Romans, with an apparent reference to the death penalty, that the magistrate who holds authority “does not bear the sword in vain; for he is the servant of God to execute His wrath on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13:4). No passage in the New Testament disapproves of the death penalty.
Turning to Christian tradition, we may note that the Fathers and Doctors of the Church are virtually unanimous in their support for capital punishment, even though some of them such as St. Ambrose exhort members of the clergy not to pronounce capital sentences or serve as executioners. To answer the objection that the first commandment forbids killing, St. Augustine writes in The City of God:
The same divine law which forbids the killing of a human being allows certain exceptions, as when God authorizes killing by a general law or when He gives an explicit commission to an individual for a limited time.
Since the agent of authority is but a sword in the hand, and is not responsible for the killing, it is in no way contrary to the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill” to wage war at God’s bidding, or for the representatives of the State’s authority to put criminals to death, according to law or the rule of rational justice.
In the Middle Ages a number of canonists teach that ecclesiastical courts should refrain from the death penalty and that civil courts should impose it only for major crimes. But leading canonists and theologians assert the right of civil courts to pronounce the death penalty for very grave offenses such as murder and treason. Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus invoke the authority of Scripture and patristic tradition, and give arguments from reason.
Giving magisterial authority to the death penalty, Pope Innocent III required disciples of Peter Waldo seeking reconciliation with the Church to accept the proposition: “The secular power can, without mortal sin, exercise judgment of blood, provided that it punishes with justice, not out of hatred, with prudence, not precipitation.”
In the high Middle Ages and early modern times the Holy See authorized the Inquisition to turn over heretics to the secular arm for execution. In the Papal States the death penalty was imposed for a variety of offenses. The Roman Catechism issued in 1566, three years after the end of the Council of Trent, taught that the power of life and death had been entrusted by God to civil authorities and that the use of this power, far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to the fifth commandment.
In modern times Doctors of the Church such as Robert Bellarmine and Alphonsus Liguori held that certain criminals should be punished by death. Venerable authorities such as Francisco de Vitoria, Thomas More, and Francisco Suárez agreed. John Henry Newman, in a letter to a friend, maintained that the magistrate had the right to bear the sword, and that the Church should sanction its use, in the sense that Moses, Joshua, and Samuel used it against abominable crimes.
Throughout the first half of the twentieth century the consensus of Catholic theologians in favor of capital punishment in extreme cases remained solid, as may be seen from approved textbooks and encyclopedia articles of the day.
The Vatican City State from 1929 until 1969 had a penal code that included the death penalty for anyone who might attempt to assassinate the pope. Pope Pius XII, in an important allocution to medical experts, declared that it was reserved to the public power to deprive the condemned of the benefit of life in expiation of their crimes.
Summarizing the verdict of Scripture and tradition, we can glean some settled points of doctrine. It is agreed that crime deserves punishment in this life and not only in the next. In addition, it is agreed that the State has authority to administer appropriate punishment to those judged guilty of crimes and that this punishment may, in serious cases, include the sentence of death.
Go here to read the rest.
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2001/04/catholicism-amp-capital-punishment
[I doubt Bergoglio has even bothered to read any of the above - one has the impression that when he has his mind made up about anything, he will not bother to research it or analyze it objectively - no matter how venerable and indisputable the provenance as with the Church's teachings on the death penalty - because it is enough for him that he thought of it, even if he will seek to camouflage his hubris by claiming that it is 'the spirit' talking through him - and most Catholics may conclude he means the Holy Spirit, not imagining it could possibly be a malign and Satanic spirit.]
If the Pope is seeking to reverse the traditional teaching of the Church, rather than simply call for the non-use of the death penalty in most circumstances, than his action raises grave questions indeed, questions that PopeWatch is certain the Pope has not given a second to ponder.
[He does not have an apparent history of pondering his pronouncements in any way (much of it is rote formulation in the spirit of Vatican II and incresingly, of Martin Luther), with the possible exception of the long groundwork he laid for AL Chapter 8 starting when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires.]
I feel I must add at least the first comment in McClarey's combox and McClarey's reply:
Dave Griffey
Wednesday, May 17, AD 2017 at 4:51am
There seems to be debate about whether Pope Francis is trying to say the death penalty is now a mortal sin or not. I’m no expert, but if the Pope can say that what wasn’t mortal sin is now mortal sin, does that mean he could argue that what was mortal sin now isn’t?
Donald R. McClarey
Wednesday, May 17, AD 2017 at 4:59am
I fall along the lines that he was not saying the death penalty is a mortal sin now, but with his stream of consciousness style when going off text, who really knows for certain?
The Pope seems to believe his role is to be a prophet led by the Holy Spirit - prior Church teaching, or Divine revelation, be hanged. That is a view of the papacy not held by any of his predecessors. Turning non-sins into sins, and sins into non-sins, would be no problem for a man who has such an exalted role of his office.
The alarming feature of the current pontificate is not that the Pope is a bad Pope, or even a deranged Pope, but that so few Catholic ecclesiastics have the courage to say that much of what the Pope spouts is pernicious nonsense and that he needs an intervention, STAT. [For those who may not be familiar with 'STAT', it is short for the Latin 'statim', which means immediately, and is used by health practitioners to indicate urgent priority for any test or procedure they order.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/05/2017 01:48]