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.

How to End Clerical Sexual Abuse

Ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

A lot of Catholics are shaken by the recent revelations about Washington Cardinal McCarrick's resignation amidst allegations of sexual misconduct. This was someone exceptionally high-ranking and widely respected. The scandals and allegations just seem to go on and on. Can anyone be trusted? Will it ever end?

Aside from the appalling damage done to the victims of such abuse, physically, emotionally and spiritually, it is worth considering that financial settlements from such abuse risk bankrupting many dioceses. This is utterly unjust: money donated to the faithful for religious, charitable, and devotional purposes is instead being siphoned off to private pockets to pay for these misdeeds by those put in stewardship over the funds.

Every time a new scandal breaks, everyone editorializes that “we must no longer tolerate this. We must do something about it.” As if we had not seen this before, and said this before. Talk is cheap. But still the scandals go on and on.

To be clear, the incidence of sexual predation and abuse among Catholic clergy actually does not seem to be worse than that among other clergy of other denominations, or teachers, or the general public. But that is little consolation, if the scandals are destroying the faith of many and bankrupting the church. Can something be done?

Something can. Something rather simple.

The independent John Jay report in 2004 found that 81% of victims of abuse by Catholic clergy were male.

Consider that number. This necessarily means that the perpetrators were homosexual.

It is anyone's guess what proportion of Catholic clergy are gay, but nobody has suggested the figure is as high as 81%.

It seems likely that most of the problem could be eliminated at once by barring homosexuals from the priesthood.

This might seem unjust to gay men who want to be priests and are perfectly innocent of any misconduct. But nobody is entitled to be a priest; it is a calling. Accordingly, if it is for the good of the church and the flock, such a measure is justified.

And it would be possible to do. Psychological tests have been developed for the court system, to determine homosexual orientation.

Sadly, one can also see why, despite all protestations to the contrary, it must be difficult for homosexuals to avoid preying on the young.

Consider their situation. If 3% of the population has homosexual tendencies, the figure often cited, that automatically means, if you are homosexual, 97% of people to whom you are sexually attracted are repelled by the very idea of having sex with you. This is on top of the inevitable romantic rejections all the rest of us feel, trying to find a match among the other 97%. Enough of us often experience extreme sexual frustration and feelings of rejection. Just imagine what it is like for homosexuals; 97% of the time they can expect some expression of disgust, and quite likely to lose all contact with the object of their infatuation. The other three percent of the time, maybe a one in ten or one in twenty chance like the rest of us. And they have little way of knowing in advance who is who—unless, perhaps, by the coded message of a clerical collar.

What are you going to do? The temptation must be overwhelming to try to interest some young boy, someone too young yet to fully grasp what it is all about, and groom him to the practice.

It is just not credible to insist this cannot be going on. It must be.

This also suggests that, for the most part, homosexuality may well be a learned behaviour. Homosexuals probably often seduce others into homosexuality.

Why would it not be so? Aren't the rest of us deeply influenced by our first loves, and by our first sexual experiences?

Once a certain proportion of the clergy is gay, and sexually active, it will also naturally tend to poison the well. Other clergy who are not gay, in particular young men entering the seminary or starting out as altar boys, are going to be sexually accosted, and discriminated against if they do not play along. The more so if they go all moral and religious, and so seem likely to object to the conduct in others, or even be likely to report it.

And so, with due respect to all the decent people who are homosexual, it is time to ban homosexuals from the Catholic clergy. There are other career paths they can pursue.

Righteous Among the Nations

St. Maximilian Kolbe.

Wikipedia features a page listing those "righteous gentiles" recognized for helping Jews persecuted during the Nazi years. One subcategory is for "Religious figures." Here it is, in total:

• Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Zakynthos,[49] who, when ordered by the Axis occupying forces to submit a list of all Jews on the island, submitted a document bearing just two names: his own and the Mayor's. Consequently all 275 Zante Jews were saved.
• Archbishop Damaskinos - Archbishop of Athens during the German occupation. He formally protested the deportation of Jews and quietly ordered churches under his jurisdiction to issue fake Christian baptismal certificates to Jews fleeing the Nazis. Thousands of Greek Jews in and around Athens were thus able to claim that they were Christian and were thus saved.
• Archbishop Johannes de Jong, later Cardinal, of Utrecht, Netherlands, who drew up together with Titus Brandsma O.Carm. († Dachau, 1942) a letter in which he called for all Catholics to assist persecuted Jews, and in which he openly condemned the Nazi German "deportation of our Jewish fellow citizens" (From: Herderlijk Schrijven, read from all pulpits on Sunday 26 January 1942).
• Alfred Delp S.J., a Jesuit priest who helped Jews escape to Switzerland while rector of St. Georg Church in suburban Munich; also involved with the Kreisau Circle. Executed February 2, 1945 in Berlin.
• Rufino Niccacci, a Franciscan friar and priest who sheltered Jewish refugees in Assisi, Italy, from September 1943 through June 1944.

Archbishop Damaskenos of Athens.

• Maximilian Kolbe - Polish Conventual Franciscan friar. During the Second World War, in the friary, Kolbe provided shelter to people from Greater Poland, including 2,000 Jews. He was also active as a radio amateur, vilifying Nazi activities through his reports.
• Bernhard Lichtenberg - German Catholic priest at Berlin's Cathedral. Sent to Dachau because he prayed for Jews at Evening Prayer.
• Hugh O'Flaherty - an Irish Catholic priest who saved about 4,000 Allied soldiers and Jews; known as the "Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican". Retold in the film The Scarlet and the Black.
• Sára Salkaházi - a Hungarian Roman Catholic nun who sheltered approximately 100 Jews in Budapest.
• Andrey Sheptytsky - Metropolitan Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, harbored hundreds of Jews in his residence and in Greek Catholic monasteries. He also issued the pastoral letter, "Thou Shalt Not Kill", to protest Nazi atrocities.
• The Sisters of Social Service, nuns who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews; included Sister Sara Salkahazi, recognized by Yad Vashem as well as beatified.
• Archbishop Stefan of Sofia - Bishop of Sofia and Exarch of Bulgaria, actively supported Dimitar Peshev's pressure against the Bulgarian government to cancel the deportation of the 48 000 Bulgarian Jews.
• André and Magda Trocmé - A French pastor and his wife who led the Le Chambon-sur-Lignon village movement that saved 3,000-5,000 Jews.
• Omelyan Kovch - Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest who was deported to Treblinka camp for helping thousands of Jews. He was canonized by pope John Paul II[50]

Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty.

Now, isn't it troubling that there is only one member of the Protestant clergy on that list? It is just possible that the author of the Wikipedia post is deliberately suppressing actions of the Protestant clergy, of course. But this may say something about the Protestant clergy, too.

The world is too much with them. They tend to go along with whatever the popular or politically advantageous line is at the time, as opposed to standing firm for the eternal verities.

As they have generally done, in recent years, on subjects like abortion, or the ordination of women.

This may be because, unlike the Catholic or Orthodox clergy, they are entirely dependent on local popular approval for their livelihoods.

An argument against democracy in religion.