Shepherds, Hands off Those Sheep

Giotto: Jesus clears the moneylenders from the temple.

It has come to this: two priests arrested for indecent exposure.

To be clear, the current crisis in the US church is not about any new revelations of child sexual abuse. That problem was never worse inside than outside the Catholic clergy, and by all accounts it has been drastically reduced by policies in place for decades. The charges of child abuse in the recent Pennsylvania report are almost all quite old. Consistently, abusers have been in the generation born in the 1930s and ordained in the 1960s—not since.

The problem is hypocritical clergy. The very problem the New Testament cared most about: Pharisaism. There were cynical coverups, and those responsible for the coverups are still in place, protecting and promoting one another. The generation born in the 1930s, after all, have now reached the top of the hierarchy. 

There is also now, thanks to their influence and example, a large body of priests who are priests not because they have a vocation, but because it is a convenient cover and platform to practice an actively homosexual lifestyle. Because, hey, nobody here really takes this religion thing seriously, do they? And the cynical here drive out the good.

There is also a likelihood that such actively homosexual priests will prey sexually on teenagers, destroying their faith.

Time to clean house.

Pope Francis on the Family

The real emergency.

Pope Francis has spoken again, apparently referring to the current scandal in the US Church and the call for him to resign. In a sermon at mass in Rome, he said:

“With people who lack goodwill, with people who seek only scandal, who seek only division, who seek only destruction, even within the family: (there is nothing but) silence. And prayer.”

This sounds like an intended justification of his refusal to answer the current charges against him, of ignoring abuses within the American Church.

Does this make sense? Is this the Christian response?

Surely it is not. There have been specific charges made. They are either true or false.

The motives of those making the charges are not relevant to the truth or falsehood of the charges.

In other words, this is a classic ad hominem attack in order to avoid the issue.

Nor is it Christian to cast aspersions on another's motives. That smacks of the sin of detraction or of calumny; like calling your brother “Raca.”

Matthew 5: 22:

Anyone who says to a brother or sister, “Raca,” is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, “You fool!” will be in danger of the fire of hell.

Pope Francis cites the family as model. He gives advice on how to handle disputes within a family: silence.

How well would that work in a marriage? If you disagree you stop talking, and condemn the motives of the other person? Isn't this the opposite of what any marriage counsellor says?

And what does the Bible say about disputes within a family?

Matthew 5:

23 Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.

Are Francis's words here words of reconciliation? Is he seeking concord?

The passage quoted from Matthew is, of course, advice to someone who has sinned against their brother. What about looking at it the other way? Suppose that Francis is really the innocent victim. He has been sinned against. How then should he react?

Matthew 18:

15 If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. 16But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that “every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.” If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

This sounds a lot like what the folks calling Francis out have done. If Vigano is truthful in his depositions, he spoke first to Francis privately, then with witnesses, and now has moved on to speaking to the Church. The cardinals who issued the dubia two years ago seem to have followed the same path precisely, following established church procedure; first submitting their concerns to him privately; publishing them only when they received no response; and have still never received a response.

In other words, at each stage, it seems as though Francis simply would not listen.

And Francis, in turn, if he is the innocent party here, has clearly not followed the Biblical procedure. If the current charges are unfounded and come from the blue, he has made no effort to discuss this privately with those making them. Instead, he is attacking them publicly, and ad hominem.

It is painful to see this model being set by the head of the church. Francis's concerns here seem to be always political, never moral. Just like those of the bishops and cardinals in the American coverups. It's all politics to them.

Ironically, many of his defenders, and many in the press, claim any opposition to Francis now is purely political.

This is self-evident nonsense: either the charges are true, or they are not.

But if Francis's papacy has become embroiled in political issues, who did that? Who has been engaging in politics?

Only a day or so ago, Pope Francis issued an urgent call on world governments to do something about plastics pollution in the oceans. Isn't that a political issue?

He even seemed to speak against the building of a wall on the US southern border during the last US election, when this was an election issue. Isn't that injecting the church into politics?

The opposition to Francis looks political to some, because to them, everything is political.

That's the problem.

It Speaks for Itself

What did he know, and when did he know it?

I think Pope Francis will resign.

Nobody can make him. But I assume in the end he has the best interests of the Church at heart.

Cardinal Vigano's accusations have now been confirmed by Monsignor Jean-François Lantheaume, the former first counsellor at the apostolic nunciature. The National Catholic Register claims they also have confirmation of some of the claims from anonymous sources close to Pope Benedict.

When Pope Francis was asked about the Vigano claims on his flight home from Ireland, I think his response was telling:

Read the statement carefully and make your own judgment. I will not say a single word about this. I believe the statement speaks for itself. And you have the journalistic capacity to draw your own conclusions.

Francis did not deny anything. Presumably he could not. “The statement speaks for itself” could even be read as an admission that it is all true. He is just hoping that journalists will not find anything further, and the matter may die down. That it may not require his resignation. Are we really going to make such a fuss over sexually active gay clergy?

Another reporter soon after asked him when he first knew of the accusations against McCarrick, and Francis ignored the question, speaking instead in excessive detail of when he first learned of the Magdalene laundries in Ireland. This again seems telling.

I think Benedict tried to fight the rot, and it was too much for him. So he resigned. Francis came in intending to accommodate it.

Conspiracy of Denial

Edward Mechemann, over at the NY Archdiocese web page, makes the same point as I have here about the impossibility of forgiveness without repentance. He quotes this passage from a bishop's letter:

“This is a very difficult time in your life, and I realize how upset you are. I too share your grief.” 

Problem: the letter was to a priest who had raped a girl, then procured an abortion once she became pregnant. 

No hint here of moral responsibility. 

In general, of the official corresponsence in the Pennsylvania report, Mechemann says, 'Terms such as “inappropriate sexual relationship”, “boundary issues”, “this difficult time”, and priests being “reassigned” or “out on sick leave” were used to conceal the true nature of what was happening.'
'All the priests were treated as if they had an illness to be treated quietly, not as if they had committed grievous sins for which they needed to repent and do reparation.' 

This may be the whole story. We have lost our sense of sin.

To begin with, it is human nature to want to deny the existence of evil. The moment we admit that good and evil are a thing, if we are ourselves conscious of doing anything wrong, it feels like an accusation.

It is more comfortable for most of us to just deny that there is any evil, and accept that everyone—certainly all present company—is a decent guy. If there is evil, it is safest to see it only somewhere else, among very different people, or in the less than recent past. The Catholic clergy serve as a useful scapegoat in this regard—they are a distinct and recognizable “other” to most of us, like the Jews. They are not likely to be present company; if they are, they are likely to be noticed, so the subject can be changed. The bottom line here, that everyone ignores: child sex abuse is no more common among the Catholic clergy than the general population.

This does not work for bishops, however; for they are themselves Catholic clergy. For them, too, evil must be elsewhere, outside the circle they see every day. For the rest of us, similarly, to see evil in a typical middle-class family living next door is a great threat toour own conscience, and to social harmony generally.

This is why we use such polite euphemisms as “inappropriate,” “negative,” or “misunderstanding.” We are dodging disturbing terms like “wrong,” “bad,” “immoral,” or “selfish,” stripping out any hint of morals.

An example is the common insistence that Hitler was “insane.” After all, no sane man would have done those things. Right?

The idea is absurd on its face. Nobody at the time believed Hitler was mad, or no one would have obeyed his orders. At the time, instead, everyone insisted on seeing him as perfectly reasonable, and a man you could do business with. Declaring him “mad” is a desperate fallback position. Both seek to avoid the simple reality: not mad, but bad.

We see the same with the standard response to mass killers: that they must be mad. In reality, to be so genuinely mad that they did not understand the moral implications of what they were doing would also, more or less automatically, render them incapable of the advance planning needed to commit a mass shooting.

This tendency to avoid moral issues is aided and abetted by psychiatry, which seems increasingly to medicalize moral issues. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, for example, the “Bible” of North American psychiatrists, lists arson as “pathological fire-setting,” and theft as “pathological stealing.” Then there is the generic “Conduct Disorder.”

The spontaneous social consensus, therefore, tends to be that there is no evil anywhere near us, nor among us, wherever we are, and whoever we are. Even if we are at some conference in Munich. Somewhere, theoretically, there may be dragons, but only in places we do not go, on the unvisited edges of our maps. This keeps everyone feeling safe and secure—from being called to account.

Homosexuals in the Priesthood

Dominic Legge, OP, makes some good points on the clerical sex abuse scandals over at First Things. He agrees that the essential problem is homosexuality in the priesthood. “Every diocese and religious order needs to implement an affirmative program to screen out vocations applicants with a history of deep-seated same-sex attraction.” But he notes a consideration I did not think of: if a heterosexual priest finds himself unable to keep his vow of celibacy, he rather naturally leaves the priesthood to marry. If a homosexual is unable to keep his vows, he does not.