So, How Does An Authoritarian Regime Handle Dissent In The 21st Century?

I don't think it's venturing too far from the mainstream to suggest that, even if Pope Francis isn't a down-the-line Perón follower, he seems to take many cues from Latin American strongmen. His original response to Abp Viganò's testimony was to say he would have "not one word" to say about it. But even to respond that one would not respond says something about the limits of his authority. In a totalitarian regime, nothing needs to be announced, and Nacht und Nebel is the outcome.

This reminds me of a perceptive observation about the film Casablanca: in reality, Colonel Strasser would never encounter Victor Laszlo in a nightclub. Strasser would have had Laszlo eliminated before any such thing could take place. This is an indication of the limits a pope faces in a liberal society -- in past times, popes had more flexibility in these matters, and inconvenient figures were strangled. Even if Abp Viganò fears for his safety, he's nevertheless alive while he fears for it. Beria would not have been so feckless.

I notice over the past few days that, even if Francis is still saying nothing, the Vatican is at least trying to appear as if it's moderating its position.

Pope Francis has authorized a “thorough study” of Vatican archives into how a prominent American cardinal advanced through church ranks despite allegations that he slept with seminarians and young priests, the Vatican said Saturday.

Following on this announcement, The Prefect for the Congregation for Bishops issued an open letter to the same Viganò, scolding him "with pontifical permission". Even if Francis is not speaking himself, it seems to me that he's aware that not responding at all hasn't worked. It doesn't work unless you have the resources to stifle the questions before they're asked. The 20th century has established this.

According to the National Catholic Register,

Sources have confirmed to the Register that the Pope is to meet privately on Monday [today] with Cardinal Daniel DiNardo and Archbishop Jose Gomez, president and vice-president of the U.S. bishops’ conference.

This will play out over an extended period, I'm sure. But it looks as though the strategy of "not one word" hasn't worked.

UPDATE: There's a very similar take at The Catholic Thing:

Two statements came out from the Vatican over the weekend, basically during the pause in the Synod for the Sunday observances. Both dealt with the McCarrick case, and were partly a reaction to the constant presence of that case and – indirectly – other abuse cases in synodal conversations about the Church and young people.

. . . The Holy See is suffering under a severe trust deficit at the moment, partly deserved, partly not. But it exists and must be dealt with, lest it become even worse. We’ve just seen sharp criticism of the Vatican-China agreement by many observers – so sharp that Cardinal Zen has called on Cardinal Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State (and the person responsible for the details of the agreement), to resign for his betrayal of the underground Church in China.

So in a short period, an archbishop (Viganò) has called on a pope (Francis) to resign, and a cardinal (Zen) has called on another cardinal (Parolin) to resign. There’s been nothing like this in modern times.

The "Second Crisis" And The John Jay Report

My regular correspondent sent a comment that illustrates how quickly the current crisis is developing:

Cardinal McCarrick was born in 1930. Blaming his behaviour, or that of Fr Maciel (born 1929), Fr Cunningham (born 1931), Fr Shanley (born 1931) or many other serial predators on a culture which is accepting of sexual deviance and promiscuity is looking at the 1950s through the lens of a sexual revolution that arrived much later. That revolution is no doubt behind many other pastoral problems in the Church. . . . But I think paedophilia and the sexual coercion of those in subordinate positions is a perennial human problem.

My correspondent is pretty clearly referring to the John Jay Report's 2004 conclusions on what might be called the "First Crisis" in the Church, the systematic protection of pedophile priests that culminated in Cardinal Law's 2002 departure from Boston for Rome, as well as a subsequent study released in 2011, also by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. A typical summary of the 2011 report reads,

The rise in abuse cases in the 1960s and 1970s was influenced by social factors in society generally,” said the independent report. The study found that some priests were unprepared for the pressures brought on by the social upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s, especially the influence of the sexual revolution. The study specifically rejected claims that the sex-abuse problem was fueled by clerical celibacy or by homosexuality within the ranks of the clergy.

However, we're now looking at what's sometimes being called a "Second Crisis" of sex abuse in the Church, and this is leading to a redefinition of the problem. For instance, at about 42:00 in this video, Bp Morlino of Madison, WI discusses the need for the US bishops to have the authority to investigate allegations against Cardinal McCarrick "and so much more".

He goes on to say, "I'm much more concerned now about situations that might be continuing, than I am about that one which has been stopped."

My immediate reaction to the Pennsylvania grand jury report that was issued in August was that it was basically rehashing the same issues that had been addressed in the John Jay studies, and which the Church had already moved substantially to correct via the Virtus program and increased vigilance by bishops.

But the focus of the current crisis -- less than two months old, if we cite the August 14 Pennsylvania report as its start -- quickly changed with the testimony of Abp Viganò on August 25, in which he raised allegations against Cardinal McCarrick not just of child abuse, but of active sexual predation against adults, which in turn was tacitly tolerated and covered up by the Vatican.

The problem Bp Morlino is referring to isn't one of child sexual abuse. At about 50:00, Morlino and Raymond Arroyo move to the more central question: the cases of child sexual abuse have been litigated and resolved, and they were actually less prevalent than in other institutions. The ongoing problem is same-sex conduct among adults -- Arroyo uses the term "consenting", but Morlino points out that "we're going to lose seminarians" if it continues. It's just a version of the casting couch, if we extend Morlino's implication, and if the culture is so widespread, it isn't really consent that's involved.

I can't remember where I first read this, but now and then I've seen references to the idea that the John Jay reports, funded as they were in large part by the US bishops, were a deliberate misdirection. The reports themselves, in fact, were careful to tread around the question of whether there was a "gay problem" rather than a "pedophile problem". In the "Second Crisis", I think were being forced back to a question of whether it's in fact a "gay problem". But as I've said here before, it's going to take more than one pope and more than one saint to work it through.

Abp Chaput's Intervention

Printed at the National Catholic Register:

Brothers,

I was elected to the synod’s permanent council three years ago. At the time, I was asked, along with other members, to suggest themes for this synod. My counsel then was to focus on Psalm 8. We all know the text: “When I look at thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast established; what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou dost care for him?”

Who we are as creatures, what it means to be human, why we should imagine we have any special dignity at all — these are the chronic questions behind all our anxieties and conflicts. And the answer to all of them will not be found in ideologies or the social sciences, but only in the person of Jesus Christ, redeemer of man. Which of course means we need to understand, at the deepest level, why we need to be redeemed in the first place.

If we lack the confidence to preach Jesus Christ without hesitation or excuses to every generation, especially to the young, then the Church is just another purveyor of ethical pieties the world doesn’t need.

In this light, I read Chapter IV of the instrumentum, grafs 51-63, with keen interest. The chapter does a good job of describing the anthropological and cultural challenges facing our young people. In fact, describing today’s problems, and noting the need to accompany young people as they face those problems, are strengths of the instrumentum overall. But I believe graf 51 is misleading when it speaks of young people as the “watchmen and seismographs of every age.” This is false flattery, and it masks a loss of adult trust in the continuing beauty and power of the beliefs we have received.

In reality, young people are too often products of the age, shaped in part by the words, the love, the confidence, and the witness of their parents and teachers, but more profoundly today by a culture that is both deeply appealing and essentially atheist.

The elders of the faith community have the task of passing the truth of the Gospel from age to age, undamaged by compromise or deformation. Yet too often my generation of leaders, in our families and in the Church, has abdicated that responsibility out of a combination of ignorance, cowardice and laziness in forming young people to carry the faith into the future. Shaping young lives is hard work in the face of a hostile culture. The clergy sexual abuse crisis is precisely a result of the self-indulgence and confusion introduced into the Church in my lifetime, even among those tasked with teaching and leading. And minors — our young people — have paid the price for it.

Finally, what the Church holds to be true about human sexuality is not a stumbling block. It is the only real path to joy and wholeness. There is no such thing as an “LGBTQ Catholic” or a “transgender Catholic” or a “heterosexual Catholic,” as if our sexual appetites defined who we are; as if these designations described discrete communities of differing but equal integrity within the real ecclesial community, the body of Jesus Christ. This has never been true in the life of the Church, and is not true now. It follows that “LGBTQ” and similar language should not be used in Church documents, because using it suggests that these are real, autonomous groups, and the Church simply doesn’t categorize people that way.

Explaining why Catholic teaching about human sexuality is true, and why it’s ennobling and merciful, seems crucial to any discussion of anthropological issues. Yet it’s regrettably missing from this chapter and this document. I hope revisions by the Synod Fathers can address that.

Married Priests And The Priesthood As Sacrifice

A visitor raises an intriguing question about married priests:

I hope that you don't consider marriage a lowering of the standards (for the priesthood or anything else). . . . The Baltimore Catechism published by Catholic Book Publishing is in a question/answer format with some pictures. I'm a homeschooling mom who has used it in conjunction with more up-to-date catechisms just so my kids would be aware of the different ways the faith has & can be taught. I can assure you that this format & its pictures stay with the kids MANY years after using it.

In the chapter on marriage, the explanation/picture about marriage are 2 pictures side by side. The wording underneath the couple getting married is "This is good." The wording under the picture of the man being ordained is "This is better". This is one of the tensions that has existed in the Church....is it really better to become a priest or religious if God "calls" you to the life of marriage? My "humble" opinion is that we're in this mess of abuse because some of the bishops & priests do think they're better than the married laity. We can be used for gratification & if it's found out, well, we're better than they because God called us to the better life.

I just think we have to be very careful when we make this such a simple choice between doing God's will or not. It's about being in relationship with God. I have no doubt that the loving God who made us will allow us to have a fulfilled life despite choosing marriage over the religious/ordained life & vice versa. I think we like to skip over question #3 in the Baltimore Catechism that reminds us that God made us because He wants to show forth His goodness & share the happiness of Heaven with us (great definition of love, uh?).

This brings to mind the YouTube I posted yesterday from Fr Wesley Schawe, the vocation director at the Diocese of Dodge City. On one hand, he stresses that the Church "needs men who are drawn to the priesthood, not because it's all that's left, but because it's all that's right." He goes on to say. "I am convinced that if a man is not walking away from something . . . then he cannot be fully and truly walking toward his call." In other words, he sees the priesthood as a sacrifice.

Bp Barron makes the point that if everyone were a celibate priest or religious, we wouldn't have a human race, so clearly not everyone is called to that state. As far as I can see, discerning what God calls us to do as individuals is one of our most important tasks in life. We're called to different things. Some of us are called to the sacrifice of priesthood. Some are called to martyrdom, for that matter. I can admire St Maximilian Kolbe without feeling called to sacrifice myself the way he did, though his example should encourage me to discern God's calling and follow through with the fortitude it requires.

But the Church says St Maximilian is already in heaven. I don't know how long I'll be in purgatory. On the other hand, there are married saints, including the parents of St. Therese of Lisieux, who had nine children, so the Church, as far as I can tell, has never said married people can't go to heaven.

And look at a converse: if a same-sex attracted man decides to go into the priesthood because he isn't into conjugal love, and in fact, the priesthood would give him a beard to pursue his real interests, then there's no sacrifice at all. This guy isn't "better" by any stretch. It seems to me the Church has traditionally held that there are states in life, and it's good if we behave according to the state in life to which we're called. Some of us have a tough row to hoe, and that's a mystery.

The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard raises a similar point, where the workers who put in a full day are paid the same as the ones who've worked just an hour. That's another mystery. I don't think the Church should be going out of its way to make it easier to become a priest, assuming the factors that draw sincere candidates to the priesthood are there.

Another Problem For Married Priests To "Solve"?

I can't locate the e-mail to quote it directly, but my regular correspondent recently observed that all the Protestant denominations have large surpluses of candidates for the priesthood, but the Catholic Church continues to have a shortage of vocations. But how, exactly, would allowing married Catholic priests (again, outside the circumscribed exceptions that exist) solve this problem?

Let's start with the question of who's in this Protestant surplus. Most of the main line denominations have long since ordained women, and in recent decades, they've ordained those in open same-sex lifestyles and even transsexuals. So a considerable part of the Protestant surplus would not be eligible for Catholic ordination on doctrinal grounds, which (let's hope) will not change. We must simply wish the Protestants well with that part of the candidate pool.

Let's also keep in mind that the current state of bourgeois culture, which is reinforced by a dysfunctional educational system, channels undergraduates into fields like law, media, art, "creative writing", the academy itself, and indeed the Protestant clergy, which generates huge and destructive surpluses in all those fields. These fields are thought to be prestigious, relatively high-paying, and at least in the popular imagination undemanding.

But let's look at the practical married straight male output of the Protestant surplus, which we can see closely in examining the OCSP's candidate pool. What we often encounter are individuals several years out of seminary who haven't been able to gain career footholds, let alone in main line denominations, but even in fringe ones, the various splinter Anglican groups especially, but not limited even to those. This is simply what we would expect. When there's a surplus, even the best candidates are being picked up by the main line denominations at bargain rates (there's a huge gender pay gap, for instance), leaving the rejects to scramble elsewhere.

Under such circumstances, a realistic appraisal of the market ought to encourage the most capable individuals to recognize their prior expectations hadn't been realistic, and it's time to recalibrate. This would be a reasonable part of a maturing process in early adulthood -- past a certain point, I had to recognize the academic field was too crowded for me to expect a good career, and I had to rethink my capabilities and find a way to move on. That some individuals would be building large families without this sort of situational awareness would call their suitability for any professional field into question.

So I just don't see how the crop of married ordinands from the last several years in the OCSP could offer anyone any sort of encouragement that allowing greater numbers of married priests in the Catholic Church would be much help.

But let's also consider the range of other problems married Catholic priests would present.

• Celibate Catholic priests actually receive a pay and benefit package that's at least comfortable for a single man. The US average is in the $25-30,000 range, although this does not factor in room and board, use of a car, and health benefits. Anecdotal evidence suggests this will allow fairly extensive vacation travel, as well as the ability to purchase a retirement or vacation condo.
• These amounts will not support a wife and multiple children, and the assumption is that this isn't part of the deal. OCSP priests, typically paid the same as celibate diocesan priests, whose incomes aren't supplemented by pensions must find additional work for themselves or their wives. How would this change if the Church allowed married priests more widely?
• In fact, bringing wives and children into the life of the priesthood would be profoundly disruptive to rectory culture. We saw in the case of the Stockport, UK parish that the rectory had to be vacated to accommodate Fr Kenyon's family, which clearly caused a level of resentment among the diocesan clergy who were affected -- but the Kenyon family didn't like the rectory anyhow. This will not be a recipe for large-scale success.
• But as Fr Ripperger points out, married clergy with their families bring in a whole range of parish issues that even Protestant denominations have never been able to handle well. These include affairs, not just with the priests themselves, but their wives (which we've already seen with the Reeses), but also the broods of often poorly supervised children who get into drugs and delinquency at early ages. Why would the Church want to borrow this sort of trouble?
• Another issue that I don't believe anyone else has raised is that OCSP priests themselves must often be given work in diocesan jobs to supplement their incomes. In the case of married priests, we might also expect their wives to be given equivalent lay diocesan jobs. The difficulty then becomes that, should the performance of either the priest or the wife be unsatisfactory, or should the bishop simply need to move the priest to a distant parish in the diocese, the welfare of the family would be held hostage to otherwise necessary personnel moves. If the wife works in the chancery, which is close to her husband's parish, what if the husband must move to a parish on the outer boundary of the diocese, for instance?

I still don't see how allowing married priests solves any particular problem, while it brings in a whole range of new ones. The way to increase vocations is not to lower the standards for the priesthood -- this will likely discourage the strongest candidates while otherwise lowering the quality of the candidate pool, something I think we already see in the OCSP, where strong candidates have already been screened out, with exceptions readily created for the most mediocre cases.

UPDATE: A visitor sent me a link to this YouTube from the vocation director for the Diocese of Dodge City, KS that echoes some of my views:

More On "New Age" Catholicism

I haven't heard yet from Fr Moons, the Passionist provincial to whom I wrote last week. I'm not especially optimistic, but I'll report on anything I receive. However, unless I hear a pretty specific disavowal of "centering prayer" at the Mater Dolorosa retreat center, I won't attend any further retreats there, and I've made our parish representatives aware of that.

I did run into a very specific YouTube video on the inroads of "new age" into Catholicism, by Susan Brinkmann, a secular member of the Third Order of Discalced Carmelites.

What I really like about her is her no-nonsense middle Atlantic accent. In the second half of her talk, she discusses Transcendental Meditation in explicit detail, with particular reference to "centering prayer". She points out, as I did with Dcn Valencia, that this is in conflict with CCC 2726.

I've mentioned this here several times, but I think it's even more applicable to the current context, a two-part presentation on "new age" by Dr David Campbell. Part I:

Part 2:

This is very rigorous and academically respectable. I wish I'd heard material this good as an undergraduate.

Anglicanorum Coetibus And Married Priests

I got to this subject via a twisted path. Last Sunday, in the US at least, was Commitment Sunday, in which parishes pass out pledge envelopes and little pencils during the homily for members to make or renew their annual pledges. In part, I reflected with gratitude on no longer having to put up with a four- to six-week pledge season in TEC, in which, during announcements, members got up to regale the parish with lengthy speeches on What The Parish Means To Me in singsong voices. I always pledged in spite of that, rather than because of that, but I assume the bishops said this was mandatory.

As part of the pledge homily, our pastor mentioned that people ask, "Father, do you tithe?" He says, "Yes." They ask, "Does it hurt?" He answers, "Not really. It's a habit I've had for many years." This brought me to recognizing once again that he's the sort of pastor who brings up things like habits of virtue, and this brought me to the question of married priests.

Before I became Catholic, I more or less reflexively ascribed to what I believe Tom Wolfe called the "steam boiler" theory of sexuality, that the sex drive continually builds up pressure, which if it isn't released, will result in explosion. Wolfe contrasted this with the "electronic circuit" theory of sexuality, in which current following particular pathways reinforces those pathways. Wolfe thought the "steam boiler" theory, on which Freudian psychology is based, was absurd. This intrigued me. In fact, I brought it up with TEC Fr David Miller in my 1981 confirmation class. Fr Miller, who was responsible for the formulation that Anglo-Catholics want the prestige without paying the dues, nevertheless became so exercised that he almost accused me of heresy -- clearly he was a committed Freudian.

A pastor who advocates developing habits of virtue, which I've heard several Catholic priests do, probably ascribes to the "electronic circuit" theory, which goes to one basis for not seeing anything wrong with a celibate and chaste priesthood. Chastity, I come to see, is a habit that's developed like any other. I've got to think that a successful priestly formation includes the resources by which men develop the habit of chastity. The priesthood is a sacrifice. Whether an individual is called to that sacrifice would include whether he's capable of developing the habits of virtue that go with it. Otherwise, this would be evidence that he doesn't have the vocation.

So next we come to the proposals that are made for Rome to allow married priests, at least, outside the exceptions that are currently made for married ex-Protestants. Fr Ripperger has basically asked the question I like to ask: "What problem are we trying to solve?" Is it the problem of pedophile priests? Married men are pedophiles, this doesn't stop them. Married Protestant pastors are pedophiles. Let's go farther. Is it the problem of predatory gay sexually harassing bishops? I think we need look only at the example of TEC Bp Paul Moore, Jr, who had nine children but was finally forced into retirement by a sexual harassment suit from a male priest in his TEC diocese.

In fact, it seems to me that the whole basis of the sixth commandment is to recognize that there's marriage, but that adultery happens, in a large number of possible forms. Having some men get married is not, logically speaking, a deterrent to adultery; it simply defines what then takes place. But theologically, the priests are already married to the Church, so if they engage in the wide range of adulterous conduct, they're already adulterous.

But let's look at Catholic permanent deacons. My understanding is that married men who want to become permanent deacons are allowed to enter formation only when it's plain that their children are nearly grown, and thus their families won't either be shortchanged by their duties, or impose too great a burden on their performance. There's apparently quite a bit of attention paid to forming the wives of deacons as well as the deacons themselves.

Yet following the Luke Reese affair, I saw comments on various blogs that far less attention is paid to forming the wives of OCSP priests than is paid to the wives of permanent deacons. And beyond that, the normative family photo of newly-ordained OCSP priests shows a happy-face group posed with children in the high single digits a la Paul Moore, Jr, ranging from teens to babes in arms. Frankly, is this prudent? If it's not a good idea for permanent deacons, why is it good for OCSP priests?

I've observed here many times that there's basically a two-tier acceptance path for OCSP clergy. For the married ones, there was at least previously a tendency to select men not too far from secular retirement age, which meant their children were largely out of the house. But now, the tendency is to bend whatever standards may once have existed and go to great lengths to find much younger men with large families still in progress. On the other hand, there's the much smaller number of celibate seminarians.

What problem are we trying to solve? What problems are we seeking out when we just don't need them?