Tuesday, March 12, 2019
Friday, March 8, 2019
Thursday, March 7, 2019
Tuesday, March 5, 2019
On Concern for the Church: The Crucial Difference Between Medieval and Modern
I try to read from Church writings in different eras when I study. In the medieval period, I’m currently reading On Consideration by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and Letters 31-60 by St. Peter Damien [§]. Both works have material written to the Popes of their times expressing great concern for moral corruption that existed at the time. I contrast this with the modern material directed to Pope Francis: The Vigano letters, the “correction,” the dubia, and the number of “open letters” out there. When I do, I see a vast difference between the eras.
In the medieval times, these saints—like the modern critics—had strong views on what needed to be done. They brought up cases where the teaching of the Church had been cast aside and urged change. BUT, there was always respect and love for the Pope being addressed, regardless of what they thought of the specific Pope at the time. These appeals were along the line of, “These evils exist contrary to Church teaching. Please take action against them.” In contrast, the tone of modern material tends to be, “You’re an idiot and/or a heretic. These problems are your fault. Resign!” It’s the antithesis to the attitude of the saints [*].
I think the difference between these times and the past is Catholics have lost sight of what the Church is and what the Pope is. The medieval saints could recognize that the individual man serving in the office of Pope was a sinner while recognizing that, in his office of Pope, he was to be loved and respected as the successor of Peter and the visible head of the Church. The modern critics only see that the Pope is a sinner, and do not show love and respect to the office unless the Pope uses it in the way they want. If they want condemnation of enemies and the Pope shows mercy, it’s a “proof “ of error. When the Pope rebukes pharisaical attitudes in the Church, it’s “proof” he’s a hypocrite... since the Pope is denouncing their attitudes.
So, what are we to do? I think we need to recover the distinction that the medieval saints knew: that the man who is Pope is always a sinner in need of salvation, but he is also carrying out the office Christ gave to Peter and his successors. We love the former as a fellow Christian. We love and honor the latter as our way of loving and serving Christ in His Church. This was a point Ven. Fulton J Sheen made in his autobiography, A Treasure in Clay:
Another year when granted an audience, I seated myself in an outer room very near the Holy Fathers private office. During a wait of about fifteen minutes, I made a quick re-view of my life, asking: “Have I really served the Church as well as I should? Have I used the many talents the Lord has given me? Have I cast fire upon the earth as the Lord asked His bishops to do?” I finally came to a negative conclusion. I had done little. At that moment the door was opened; I was ushered before His Holiness. I said: “Your Holiness, I have just discovered how easy Judgment is going to be.” “Oh,” he said, “tell me, I would like to know.” “While I was waiting to come into your presence I had come to the conclusion that I had not loved the Church as much as I should. Now that I come before Your Holiness, I see the Church personalized. When I make my obeisance to you, I make it to the Body and to the invisible Head, Christ. Now I see how much I love the Church in Your Holiness, its visible expression.” He said: “Yes, Judgment is going to be that easy for those who try to serve the Lord.” [Emphasis original]
He recognized what the saints recognized in times worse than this one. We would be wise to recognize it too, rejecting the criticism that fails to show that love and respect they did.
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[§] I’ve previously read similar works like St. Catherine of Sienna—who was much more respectful to the Pope than popular accounts today claim.
[*] It’s not different from the attitude of medieval critics that the Pope rebuked for error. For example, most of the “Pope is a heretic” attacks directed against Pope John XXII were from heretical groups like the “Spiritual Franciscans” who were disciplined by the Pope.
Saturday, March 2, 2019
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
What is Perceived and What Is are not Always the Same Thing
I can understand that abuse survivors and their families have seen the Church at her worst. So it makes sense that they will have a negative interpretation of the recent Summit and how the proposals will be applied. Once trust is damaged, it’s hard to repair it. The problem is, the obligation to seek out the truth and respond proportionately remains. This means one is not punished on suspicion of wrongdoing, but on evidence. It means that the Church cannot laicize a member of the clergy based on accusations, but evidence.
And in the Church, being led on earth by human beings, those investigating can be deceived by those who do evil. So, if one is accused of a heinous crime but no evidence is available to prove it, it is possible that the accused will convince those investigators of his innocence. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the investigators are free of negligence charges. Before the child abuse charges against McCarrick were made public, I had never heard of the “Uncle Ted” accusations. But apparently they were known in his archdiocese [§]. If they were properly reported with evidence, there should have been some sort of investigation that might have stopped this earlier. Abuse victims will reasonably want to know why there was none.
I’ve read articles about how survivors were disappointed by the Summit. It seems they wanted more bishops laicized, and were disappointed that the focus was on “talk.” The problem is, this Summit wasn’t an Inquisition or an Ecumenical Council. It was about getting bishops—especially in places that thought abuse was an “American problem” [#]—to understand their duties. We will see a Motu Proprio from the Pope and a Vademecum for confessors aimed at removing false understanding on the obligations for reporting abuse.
In other words, the point of the Summit was not vengeance, but on making sure the bishops know their jobs in preventing future abuser priests from getting away with a vile evil—especially before they become bishops. No doubt there are bishops out there who covered up. No doubt there are priests who abused. There may be more bishops who did what McCarrick or Apuron did. The Church will have to find them to make sure justice is done. Some of them may escape detection, but God is not mocked (Galatians 6:7).
Even so, we must remember that we cannot assume from the guilt of some that all are guilty of abuse. We cannot assume from the fact that some covered up that all are guilty of coverups. That is the Fallacy of Hasty Generalization. The bishops who did not cover up should not be targeted. Bishops who used sincere but bad judgment should not be treated like those who deliberately chose wrong. We certainly cannot defrock by quota.
Ultimately, this is something where we must provide justice for the victims... but that justice must never be allowed to turn into vengeance. If vengeance is misperceived as justice, the Church cannot grant that any more than she can treat laxity as mercy.
We certainly should pray for the Pope and bishops that they find the way to meet God’s requirements of justice and mercy without them being corrupted.
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[§] The question, of course, is how well they were known outside the archdiocese. Who was informed, and with what evidence?
[#] That error is understandable. With the majority of reported cases coming from the United States and Western Europe, it was easy to think of it as a “Western problem.” Even I thought that way once—and more recently than I want to admit.
Friday, February 22, 2019
Thursday, February 21, 2019
Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Monday, February 11, 2019
Saturday, February 2, 2019
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
Deafening Our Conscience Through Outrage
Everyone notices the wrongdoing done by other people. We see something that seems unjust and we are outraged. We demand instantaneous retraction and until that is done, the one we see as guilty loses all rights to being treated as a human person. If that person is a member of the clergy, he is treated as if he forfeits all rights to the respect and submission due his office.
Meanwhile, more often than not, people refuse to consider their own wrongdoing as anything worth considering. Refusing obedience to the Church because their teachings and actions do not mesh with one’s own beliefs is not recognized as disobedience. Instead it’s treated as “standing up against evil,” where everyone imagines they are a miniature St. Paul, withstanding an erring Peter to his face.
The problem is, we are not like St. Paul. We’re more like the Pharisee who treats the sinner—or the one we think is sinning—as beneath contempt while thinking we’re superior because we don’t sin... or, if we do, at least we don’t sin as badly as them.
That’s a dangerous attitude. It shows we’ve forgotten or ignored our own guilt. As long as we aren’t as bad (in our own eyes) as them, we’re the good ones, the wise ones. That’s a dangerous attitude because it shows we we have become deaf to our conscience. As Benedict XVI put it:
“The Pharisee is no longer aware that he too is guilty. He is perfectly at ease with his own conscience. But this silence of his conscience makes it impossible for God and men to penetrate his carapace—whereas the cry of conscience that torments the tax collector opens him to receive truth and love. Jesus can work effectively among sinners because they have not become inaccessible behind the screen of an erring conscience, which would put them out of reach of the changes that God awaits from them—and from us. Jesus cannot work effectively among the righteous because they sense no need for forgiveness and repentance; their conscience no longer accuses them but only justifies them.”—Values in a Time of Upheaval, p. 82
When we are deaf to conscience, we justify the evil we do, saying it’s not as bad as the evil they do, therefore it’s unimportant. We protest, asking “Why does the Church focus on us when those people are doing worse? What we forget is that the deadliest sin for an individual is the one that sends that individual to hell.
So you don’t support abortion? Congratulations. You’ve none nothing more than demanded of you. But if you’re committing other sins while refusing to acknowledge and repent of them, you might be no better off in the eyes of God—even if the magnitude of your sins are objectively less.
Our Lord shocked the Pharisees when He said, “Amen, I say to you, tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you.” [Matthew 21:31 (NABRE)]. If He wanted to shock us equally today, He might say, “the pro-abortion politicians and cowardly bishops” (to name two popular targets of revulsion). If they repent but we do not, then they are in the same situation as the tax collectors [§] while we are in the same situation as the Pharisees. This doesn’t mean, “treat sins as unimportant.” It means “don’t exalt yourself just because you haven’t done that.”
Or, as St. John Chrysostom, (Homily III on 2 Timothy), discusses on our focus on the great sins of others:
“Let each therefore, with an upright conscience, entering into a review of what he has done, and bringing his whole life before him, consider, whether he is not deserving of chastisements and punishments without number? And when he is indignant that some one, who has been guilty of many bad actions, escapes with impunity; let him consider his own faults, and his indignation will cease. For those crimes appear great, because they are in great and notorious matters; but if he will enquire into his own, he will perhaps find them more numerous.”
So, when we see sin in the Church—especially when it seems to go unnoticed—it’s not wrong to want justice and reform. But it is wrong to play the Pharisee, using the sins of others to justify ourselves. We might be risking our souls by using another’s sins as an excuse to ignore our own wrongdoing.
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[§] To put it in historical context: Tax collectors (publicani) of the Roman Empire were not the equivalent of the modern IRS. Their greed and corruption ruined and destabilized entire provinces.
Sunday, January 27, 2019
Friday, January 25, 2019
A Little Knowledge is Dangerous
After New York passed its barbaric abortion law, Catholic Social Media attacked Cardinal Dolan for not excommunicating Cuomo. There were two problems with this. First, it’s not Cardinal Dolan, but the bishop of Albany (Bishop Scharfenberger) who has jurisdiction over Cuomo. Second, Excommunication for abortion is for those involved in the act of procuring [brings about, achieves] abortion. Canon 1398 states
A person who procures a completed abortion incurs a latae sententiae [automatic] excommunication.
When it comes to the Catholic politicians that legalize abortion, the proper canon is 915:
Those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion.
In most cases, the individual is told by the bishop not to present themselves for Communion and the appropriate pastors are notified. Usually this is done privately. In rare cases (e.g. Sibelius, during the Obama administration), this is made public.
So, the attacks on the Cardinal Dolan were doubly wrong. First, because they demanded action from someone who could not perform it. Second, the action demanded was not the action that the Church applies. All excommunications involve grave sin, but not all grave sins have the penalty of excommunication. The bishops cannot arbitrarily go beyond the penalty set. This is a safeguard against abuse of power. Otherwise a bishop could excommunicate someone for any minor irritation.
This incident is an example of one problem in the Church. Many people do not know how the Church governs herself. The Church is not a tyranny (rule by the whim of one with dictatorial powers). She is governed by canon law which lists rights, responsibilities, and procedures. The Pope can amend canon law when needed (it is a human law, after all) to serve justice, but he doesn’t do so arbitrarily.
So, it is unreasonable for a Catholic to get angry with a bishop when the bishop doesn’t have the authority to do something through jurisdiction or the obligations of law.
So, the Catholic must ask whether he or she understands how the Church handles things in general and whether he or she has all the information needed to correctly judge what is going on. If the Catholic does not, he or she has no right to condemn the bishop.
If, however, a Catholic should do the required study, and remain concerned that wrong is being done, he or she has an obligation to convey that concern properly. As Canon 212 §3 puts it:
According to the knowledge, competence, and prestige which they possess, they have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons.
Even if you’re concerned that a bishop made a “bad call,” you have the obligation to be reverent and respectful. That means no snide comments about “backbone” or insults. The bishops are successors to the Apostles and must be treated as such.
This is an example of why the adage, “a little knowledge is dangerous,” is true. A person ignorant of what the Church requires, accusing the Pope or bishop of doing wrong, is risking committing schismatic or heretical behavior because they don’t understand the responsibility and obligations of their office. They are effectively picking a needless “hill to die on.”
Understanding what the Church does and why is essential for assessing the actions of the Pope and bishops. Without that knowledge, those clamoring for “justice” are merely committing rash judgment.
Thursday, January 24, 2019
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