Monday, March 2, 2015

The Missed Opportunity -- VIII

I've had several e-mails raising pertinent questions about how one might explain the Ordinariate's behavior. One might be called the incompetence truism, sometimes attributed to Napoleon, "Where incompetence alone is a sufficient explanation, no other explanation is necessary," or perhaps Hanlon's razor, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

I spent a career in corporate life trying to navigate around and under incompetence, so I know a little bit about it. Not all that many sins are solitary. Most actually need enablers of one kind or another. It takes one person to tell a lie and another to want to believe it. The kind of incompetence you see in corporations, the military, government, or for that matter the Church, has always got to be some sort of a conspiracy. Someone has to promote an incompetent and keep him in his position. Someone has to benefit from the incompetent's bumbling.

So I can't really go along with either Napoleon or Hanlon. People have reported numerous instances of lost paperwork, frustrating delays, and things left undone in the Ordinariate. Yes, you can say they're indicators of incompetence, but they're neither a root cause nor an explanation. Someone has to protect the clueless people running the show, and someone has to benefit from the cluelessness. I got an e-mail asking what my issue was with the Houston clique, and that's my answer. They protect each other and benefit from each other's incompetence. C.S.Lewis describes much the same situation in his essay "The Inner Ring", and he calls it what it is, sin.

If some ecclesiastical General Patton were to come on the scene, he'd clean house. If that doesn't happen, something else eventually will: the store will close, the corporation will go bankrupt, the ship will sink, the plane will crash, the war will be lost. The only positive thing is that we're assured the war in which the Houston group is enlisted to fight will not ultimately be lost -- although that bunch will eventually answer to someone besides Jeffrey Steenson.

There's always prayer.