Category: Old Dish

CRISIS IN FAITH

My extended take on the current conflicts within conservatism can be read here.

THE MACIEL TIME BOMB: Now, this is interesting. Why on earth would then-Cardinal Ratzinger re-open an investigation of Father Marcial Maciel’s alleged child-sex racket last December, having suppressed any kind of inquiry for many years? A critical piece of television footage – which I was surprised wasn’t aired over the last week – shows then-Cardinal Ratzinger prissily slapping the wrists of an ABC News reporter who dared to confront him over the issue in public. Maciel founded a crucial ultra-conservative order, the Legion of Christ, which was given special recognition by John Paul II. Maciel was also a very close friend of John Paul II. The evidence for a pattern of wide-scale sex abuse under Maciel is voluminous. The Vatican was sent a frank and angry dossier of accusations in 1997. John Paul II and then-Cardinal Ratzinger did nothing. There are a few possible explanations for last December’s volte-face: that it took seven years for Ratzinger to appreciate the scale of the scandal and that he gets it now (the new Vatican spin); that Ratzinger knew all along that Maciel was guilty but also knew that John Paul II would never allow his friend to be brought to justice; or that, last December, Ratzinger knew that the Maciel case could explode on the Vatican, and that if he didn’t initiate the investigation, he would be implicated in the cover-up as well. But, of course, Benedict XVI had already been deeply involved in the cover-up; and even re-opening the investigation cannot expunge that record. London’s Independent newspaper reports that Ratzinger once said that “one can’t put on trial such a close friend of the Pope’s as Marcial Maciel.” I’ve never read that before and don’t know the source. But if true, it’s a pretty damning statement.

BENEDICT = LAW? The critical queston, then, is: what is the difference between Cardinal Law and Pope Benedict XVI? Benedict never had the kind of administrative authority over parish priests that Law had. But he did have authority over the Maciel matter; it was reported to him; he ignored it and suppressed investigations. The personal connection to Maciel is crucial – and Maciel is also integral to the new ultra-conservative establishment. His running a gay teen sex abuse ring was not encouraged by liberal theological deviation (as it might have been elsewhere). It was old-style Catholic sex abuse: highly conservative closeted gay priests, psychologically crippled by decades of self-loathing and struggle against their homosexual orientation, acting out their stunted sexual development by abusing their clerical power over younger men and boys. And this pattern has long been known – and accepted – by much of the Church hierarchy. While they excoriated openly gay lay couples struggling honestly and openly with how to live moral lives as Catholics, they protected closeted, psychologically damaged gay priests who engaged in sex abuse. Benedict is therefore caught between two very difficult places – blaming John Paul II for protecting Maciel for too long; or admitting that he too turned a blind eye to investigating credible claims of sexual abuse. Last December’s decision suggests to me that Benedict knows what’s coming. And he’s doing what he can simply to control and stay ahead of the damage.

BENEDICT AND THE SEX ABUSE CRISIS: More damaging revelations. Then-Cardinal Ratzinger asserted in a 2001 letter that the Church had the right to investigate all sex abuse cases in complete secrecy and that its jurisidiction “begins to run from the day when the minor has completed the 18th year of age” and lasts for a decade. Those who believe and hope that Benedict will be the man to cope with the problem of the Church’s cover-up of sex abuse will soon have to concede that Benedict himself has been a central part of the problem. Will Church conservatives give Benedict a pass?

QUOTE FOR THE DAY I

“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute — where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote — where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference … I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source — where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials.” – president John F. Kennedy. At the time, the speech was regarded as an attempt to refute anti-Catholic prejudice. Today, wouldn’t the theocons regard it as an expression of anti-Catholic prejudice? Wouldn’t Bill Frist see president Kennedy as an enemy of “people of faith”? Just asking.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY II: “I worry that Pope Benedict sees liberal Catholics primarily as products of the worst excesses of the ’60s and not as people who are genuinely grateful for the Catholic tradition and the Church’s efforts since Pope John to interpret it anew for our times. Many of us know that modernity urgently needs criticism and agree with the new Pope on the importance of asserting that truth exists. We remain Catholic precisely because we think that the Church’s emphasis on the sacramental and the communal provides a corrective to a culture that overemphasizes the material and lifts up the narrowest forms of individualism.
But we also think that not all that is new is bad. Our Church was soft on slavery. It was terribly slow to embrace democracy. It still does not seem to understand that the desire of women for power in the Church reflects legitimate–and, yes, Christian–claims to justice, not weird ideological enthusiasms. Those who say that change in the Church is simply capitulation to a flawed culture must explain whether they really think the Church would be better off if it had not come to oppose slavery, endorse democracy, and resist anti-Semitism and other forms of religious intolerance.” – E. J. Dionne. Amen to that. I am tired of being told that we have two options: complete submission to everything Pope Benedict believes or moral nihilism. That’s a false choice. Modern Catholics are not relativists or nihilists. But we have seen in our own evolving lives some moral truths: that women deserve equal dignity in work and society, that gay people can construct moral relationships, that contraception can support marriage and the family, that respectful discussion is not the same as doctrinal nihilism. We have a Catholic duty to bear witness to these truths. And we will.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “I am a 67 year old gay man (born in the reign of Pius XI and have suffered under 5 popes – John XXIII being a breath of clean air – and Benedict XVI promises to continue the tradition of the others). I read and sympathize with your agony; may I offer some advice?
1) If you want to be a Catholic, be one. Let no one define your Catholicity for you. Conservative Catholics, alternating between crowing and fulminating, do not speak for the whole church as it has marched down through the ages. (Think Dorothy Day, Bernadette Soubirous, Francis of Assisi, the fathers Berrigan, GK Chesterton, to name but a few.) Although I don’t have precise figures, my guess is that, in the Western hemisphere, they are in the minority. In America, they make “majority” noises because they have united with evangelical Protestants to vote for the Bush Imperium. It is a dangerous liaison; to the fundamentalists, the Church of Rome has always been the Whore of Babylon.
2) Decide why you want to remain a Catholic and pay attention to that.”

ONE MORE PLUG: For my 1988 essay on Ratzinger’s theology.

TWO DAYS LATE: Why 4.20? A formal explanation.

DEFICITS DON’T MATTER

Yeah, right.

MARRIAGE AND DEMOCRACY: I live in a city which has the highest proportion of gay people and gay couples in the country, after San Francisco. The issue of marriage rights is obviously pertinent; and our elected officials tend to be for it. The social right has always argued that the people and their elected representatives should be able to decide these questions. So I look forward to their condemning a Kansas senator who is threatening to impose a ban on all our legal benefits and protections, if we dare to seek equality through the democratic process. The scandal of D.C. – a place with less democracy than Kirkuk – continues. But to have our lives and the internal workings of our own families dictated by a Kansan who would never win more than a handful of votes in this city is just maddening.

MORAL EQUIVALENCE WATCH: If you want to see how some of the most extreme theocons regard liberal democracy, read this paragraph:

In this regard, the consumerism and relativism of the West can be just as dangerous as the totalitarianism of the East: It’s just as easy to forget about God while dancing to an iPod as while marching in a Hitler Youth rally. There’s a difference, to be sure, but hardly anyone would contest the observation that in elite Western society, as in totalitarian Germany, the moral vocabulary has been purged of the idea of sin. And if there’s no sense of sin, then there’s no need for a Redeemer, or for the Church.

A free society where people can listen to iPods and freely debate their own ideas of truth and the good life is all but indistinguishable from a Nuremberg rally? And we have no notion of sin? None? That’s just bizarre. We simply have a somehwat different idea of sin and immorality than the theocons. But from the theocon point of view, the glorious achievement of the secular West is as nihilistic and as dangerous as the Nazis. That is Benedict XVI’s view. I don’t think people have a clue how radical this man is. And how ferocious a culture war he is about to unleash.

THE CHURCH NEVER CHANGES?

The response of some non-Catholics to those of us who are appalled by the selection of the new Pope goes something like this: What did you expect? The Church never changes. Having a new Pope who adheres to doctrine is not a big deal. Expecting big changes in a church whose main selling point is eternal verities is stupid. All these non-Catholics like their Catholic church authoritarian, unchanging, eternal. All I can say is: what would they have said about, say, John XXIII or even John Paul II? In the last forty years or so, the Church has officially revoked its previous anti-Semitism, it has changed the very structure and vernacular of the mass, it has doubled the number of saints in heaven, it has shifted its position on religious and political liberty, it has apologized for the Inquisition, it has declared that homosexuality is innate and without sin as a condition, it has ordained married priests, it has innovated a new policy against all forms of artificial birth control, and dramatically strengthened its teachings against the death penalty. If you were to believe James Lileks, none of this would have been even faintly possible.

THE ISSUE IS OXYGEN: The issue is not change itself. The Church has changed dramatically – and will continue to change dramatically. The issue now is whether the Church can even debate its own issues and future. Some caricatures of my position, for example, say that I oppose this Pope because I want the Church to endorse gay marriage. Puhlease. I cannot see any basis within Catholic theology for granting the sacrament of marriage to gay couples. Such a simple inclusion strikes me as completely out of bounds. What many of us are asking for is simply the ability for lay Catholics and indeed priests and theologians to be able to debate respectfully such pressing issues as mandatory celibacy for the priesthood, a less rigid biological understanding of the rights and dignity of women, and a real dialogue with gay Catholics about how we can practically live lives that reflect our human dignity and our profound human need for intimacy and sexual expression. We’d also like to see greater autonomy for national churches, a respect for political secularism, and a more open hierarchy that cannot get away with a criminal conspiracy to hide the widespread sexual abuse of children and teens. None of this is that radical in the context of change in the last fifty years. None of it is subject to infallibility. And what we object to is the arrogant notion that lay people – let alone theologians or priests – do not even have the right to raise these questions within a formal church context. But our opponents want to construct a straw man in which Ratzinger presents orthodoxy and critics represent revolution. The truth is almost the direct opposite. Ratzinger’s views on freedom of thought within the church are deeply authoritarian; his views on what conscience is are totalitarian; his conflation of his own views with the Holy Spirit are offensive. But he is Pope now. And fairness suggests we should wait and see. I can only say that I do so with dread and fear.

RATZINGER ON SEXUAL ABUSE: “I am personally convinced that the constant presence in the press of sins of Catholic priests, especially in the United States, is a planned campaign, as the percentage of these offences among priests is not higher than in other categories, and perhaps it is even lower… One comes to the conclusion that it is intentional, manipulated, that there is a desire to discredit the church,” – Pope Benedict XVI, 2002. He has also written about the need to rid the Church of “filth.” By “filth,” I suspect he means gay people, regardless of their conduct or holiness. My prediction: the pedophiles and their protectors will remain. (I have a pretty good idea whom Cardinal Law voted for.) The gay men will be scapegoated and purged.

THE POLITICAL ANALOGY

I was trying to explain last night to a non-Catholic just how dumb-struck many reformist Catholics are by the elevation of Ratzinger. And then I found a way to explain. This is the religious equivalent of having had four terms of George W. Bush only to find that his successor as president is Karl Rove. Get it now?

ME ON RATZINGER: From back in 1988, when I became interested in the man’s theology. It’s a PDF and can be found here. I just re-read it after many years. It’s closely focused on Ratzinger’s Augustinian theology and how his exercise of power came to corrupt the idealism of his earlier thought. And it benefits from not being clouded by the inevitable emotions of the present. Money quote:

The most telling difference between the pope [Wojtila] and the prefect [Ratzinger] is John Paul II’s more successful blend of Augustinian otherworldliness and Thomist trust. His admonitions, while increasingly firm, have never lacked the compassion and optimism that ally themselves with a countervailing confidence in God’s will working its way through nature. Ratzinger is an altogether more jaundiced figure … His bleakness, while theologically a way in which the extremity of grace can be radically described, is – once in power – a recipe for authoritarianism… What Ratzinger’s elevation [to chief enforcer of orthodoxy in the Church] unleashed – the wild card in Ratzinger’s development – was the factor of power. His theology did not change. But its new context was to tansform the purity of its intent.
The Dostoyevskian ironies are acute, and they are getting sharper. The theologian who stressed the apolitical as Christians’ first resort has become an official who has sacrificed theological argument for political coercion and control. The otherworldly cleric has become the first prefect to give an extended, published interview to the international press. The thinker who wrote above all about the central conceptions of the faith, of the mystery of the Incarnation, of the Last Things, of the core truths of Christianity, has begun to show signs of a creeping obsession with sex and concern with the passing phenomena of a secular agenda.

Since I wrote those words, Ratzinger’s immersion in political culture wars has become even deeper. I also cover his radical innovations on the role of women, gays and conscience. A woman should follow the “roles inscribed in her biology”; gays are inherently disposed to “intrinsic moral evil”; conscience as the modern world understands it is illusory. Yes, we have a new Pope. Just like the old one, but without any of his redeeming features.

A POLITICAL THEORY: I have no idea how this insular and regressive choice was made. But I would not be surprised if John Paul II’s electoral rule change had an effect. The change was to ensure that a pope need not get the two-thirds of cardinals’ support if such a super-majority hadn’t emerged after a long series of votes. At that time, a mere majority would be all that was needed. My hunch is that Ratzinger carefully lined up a narrow majority of cardinals who pledged they would never vote for someone else. He had enough power in the waning years of John Paul II to ensure that kind of loyalty. So the conclave knew after the first couple of votes that at some point, therefore, Ratzinger would prevail. And that he was so intent on maintaining control of the Church that he would sit through as many votes as necessary to get it. Under the old rules, after too many votes in which Ratzinger had failed to make the two-thirds, his name would have been withdrawn. Under the new rules, time was on his side. So the cardinals caved early. Why prolong the agony? Just a theory.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY: “The Church must make claims and demands on public law and cannot simply retreat into the private sphere.” – pope Benedict XVI, in “Church, Ecumenism and Politics,” 1988. This was as much a political decision as a pastoral one.

JUST LEAVE: An arresting email:

I can understand your sense that you cannot leave the church. But I know from experience that it is just that–a sense. You have felt the presence of God at Mass? I have too. You can feel it elsewhere but you cannot know that until you look. The gospels speak to you? I know you don’t seriously think they speak only though the Catholic Church. As for the family/mother analogy, it simply isn’t a good one. There is no biology here no matter how like that it may feel. Still, it can be valid in this way: If the church is your mother you have been, still are, and if the events of today are any indication, will increasingly be abused by her. Mentally, spiritually, and perhaps even physically abused. I feel for the pain I see in your writing. I have felt it too. But you have to take the advice you would give to anyone in an abusive relationship: get out.
It may be difficult, seem almost impossible, but that is the bottom line. I got out myself. I can assure you there is a rich and rewarding spiritual life to be had elsewhere. Religion is a choice. Please, for your own sake, choose a non-abusive one.