Posted on 06/12/2002 10:09:45 PM PDT by ELS
by Robert Moynihan, Editor, Inside the Vatican
Conflicts Over US Sex Scandal and Church Freedom
Conflicting currents -- from Rome, from the US media and legal system, from progressive Catholics and from victims of clerical sexual abuse -- will trouble the upcoming US bishops meeting in Dallas June 13-15
VATICAN CITY, June 8, 2002 -- Tensions are mounting, and the battle, far from nearing its end, is just beginning. From Rome to Dallas, the US sexual abuse scandals are crystallizing positions on matters central to the future of the Christian faith. Opinions about the root causes of and the needed remedies for the unprecedented US clerical sexual abuse scandal are increasingly polarized in the days leading up to the US bishops' meeting in Dallas June 13 to 15. An examination of the questions raised by these conflicting voices suggests that three main questions are being posed:.
(1) Is the main problem in the US that of pedophilia and administrative cover-ups, or is it an increasingly widespread culture of active homosexuality in the priesthood, with the cases of pedophilia one manifestation of this phenomenon?
(2) Is the treatment of the scandal by the US media an ordinary and in fact salutary probing and publicizing of terrible abuses and crimes, or is it that but also something more, an intentional exaggeration of these evil actions in order to blacken the reputation of all priests and in so doing to destroy the moral authority of the Church?
(3) Is this scandal creating a situation in which one of the Church's most precious attributes -- her freedom from state or secular power ("libertas ecclesiae") -- will be compromised?
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Here is a summary of some of the most important of these interventions:(1) In Rome, a leading cardinal -- Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras, who is thought of as "papabile" -- has just given an explosive interview in which he compares the US media coverage of the scandal to a "persecution" of the Church by Stalin and the Nazis.
(2) An influential US lay Catholic -- Deal Hudson, editor of "Crisis" magazine -- has just sent an email letter following a visit to Rome in which he says he finds little understanding in the Vatican of "the real problem -- namely, predatory homosexuals in the priesthood" and therefore has little hope that the June bishops meeting will be a successful one.
(3) An American Jesuit priest -- Father Paul Shaughnessy -- has written a bombshell review of a new book on the Society of Jesus in which he makes clear that homosexuality has become widespread, and widely accepted, in the order founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola almost 500 years ago.
(4) A Croatian Jesuit moral theologian who works in the Vatican -- Father Ivan Fucek -- has argued that no homosexual who has engaged in homosexual activity should be ordained a priest, and that this policy should be adopted by the US bishops.
(5) An influential Jesuit Catholic magazine in Italy -- "La Civilta Cattolica," whose texts are reviewed in the Vatican prior to publication -- has recently published articles on the US scandals in which the US media is faulted for its "morbid curiosity" in covering this scandal over the past five months.
(6) An overview of the entire situation by Father Leonard Kennedy.
(7) A prayer and consecration being circulated on the internet.
(8) A note in w`ich the Pope denies the rumor that he may decide to resign.
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The "J'accuse" of the Honduran Cardinal
On Friday, June 7, the Italian magazine "30 Giorni" (of which I was once the editor for the English-language edition) distributed in the Vatican press office a 3-pages press release containing excerpts from an interview with the cardinal archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga in which the Latin American cardinal called the press coverage of the US scandals "a anti-Catholic persecution."
Now, Rodriguez Maradiaga is not an isolated, unimportant cardinal. He was for many years the president of CELAM, the bishops' conference of all the Latin American countries. And he is widely "mentioned" in Vatican circles as a poewerful candidate to be the next Pope. In this sense, his remarks can almost be viewed -- if one were to look at the matter in worldly political terms -- as a type of "position statement" on this issue by the man who may be the next Pope.
This statement must also be seen as a reflection of the views of some in the Roman curia, where Rodriguez Maradiaga has a number of friends with whom he is in close contact.
And Rodriguez Maradiaga's position is unequivocally hostile to the US media.
Here are excerpts from the Reuters report filed June 7 on Rodriguez Maradiaga's interview:
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June 7, 2002
Cardinal Attacks U.S. Media as Stalinist, Nazi
By REUTERSFiled at 2:42 p.m. ET
ROME (Reuters) - A leading Latin American cardinal considered a possible successor to Pope John Paul has attacked the American media for what he called Stalinist and Nazi tactics against the Catholic Church in coverage of child sex scandals.
In an interview with the Roman Catholic monthly magazine 30 Giorni (30 Days), Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga accused much of the U.S. media of being anti-Catholic and of persecuting the Church in their cover of the pedophilia scandals.
He accused Ted Turner, vice-chairman of AOL Time Warner Inc. and founder of news network CNN, of being "openly anti-Catholic."... "Not to mention newspapers like the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe which were protagonists of what I do not hesitate to define as a persecution against the Church," said the cardinal...
The 30 Giorni article seemed to be part of concerted efforts by Catholic media in Italy to take a stand against American criticism of the Church ahead of a meeting in Dallas next week among U.S. bishops to discuss child sex abuse by priests.
Recalling vicious Roman emperors and 20th-century tyrants, Rodriguez Maradiaga accused the American media of acting with "a fury which reminds me of the times of Diocletian and Nero and more recently, Stalin and Hitler."
The cardinal said that those priests and bishops who had committed grave errors had to be brought to justice by Church tribunals and even civil courts...
Rodriguez Maradiaga defended Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law, in whose diocese the scandal started and who has refused calls to step down despite revelations that he moved pedophile priests from parish to parish instead of sacking them...
In the interview, Rodriguez Maradiaga called Law a friend of Latin America and said the cardinal had been "questioned with methods that recall the dark days of Stalinist trials of churchmen of Eastern Europe."
He added: "What is happening now, for example to Cardinal Law, is a scandal."
Rodriguez Maradiaga accused the American media of concentrating on the pedophilia scandal in part to get back at the Catholic Church for its support for a Palestinian homeland and for its opposition to abortion, euthanasia and the death penalty.
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Here is an "Inside the Vatican" translation from the original Italian of the Cardinal Rodriguez Maradiaga "30 Giorni" interview. We only include what he says on pedophilia (he also talks about economic development of Latin America being hindered by US and Europe):
"We all know that Ted Turner is openly anti-Catholic and he is the head not only of CNN but also of TimeWarner. Not to mention other dailies like the New York Times, the Washinton Post, the Boston Globe that have made themselves protagonists in what I don't hesitate to call a persecution of the Church. It is curious (mi fa molto pensare) that in the moment when all of the attention of the mass media was centered on what was happening in the Middle East, with the many injustices against the Palestinian people, the US press and TV have obsessively remained on the story of sexual scandals that occurred 40 years ago, 30 years ago.
Why? For the following reasons amongst others, I think: Which is the Church that has received Arafat many times and many times has stressed the necessity of the creation of a Palestinian state? Which is the Church that will not accept that Jerusalem is the indivisible capital of the State of Israel but that must be the capital of the three great monotheistic religions? Which is the Church that opposes abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty? Which is the Church that will not accept family structures that do not conform with God's plan? It is the Catholic Church. It is the only one that, let me put it like this, obstructs a de-humanized politics (ostacola una politica disumanizzante).
This is the only way I can explain this persistent attack against the Catholic Church in the United States. An attack that brings to mind (che mi ricorda) the times of Nero, Diocletian, and more recently of Stalin and Hitler.
If there are priests, or even bishops, that are stained by grave sins (macchiati di gravi colpe) they must be punished by the relevant canonical censures and if necessary they must confront civil justice. But without a witch hunt, including a witch hunt from within the Church.
We bishops should not forget that we are merciful pastors and not agents of the FBI or CIA. The accusations must always be proven through a just process. And without persecutorial methods on the part of civil authorities, as is happening.
That which they are doing (che si sta facendo), for example, to Cardinal Law is a scandal. I know Law well. He is a man who has done much good for all of us in Latin America. Normally, investigations in the United States are quite long, but Cardinal Law was immediately interrogated with methods that recall the dark times of Stalinist procedures against clerics of Eastern Europe. Then, the testimony (i verbali) from these interrogations was immediately circulated on the Internet and published with great emphasis in all the major newspapers.
This is not justice, this is persecution."
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The Deal Hudson Email
On June 4, Deal Hudson -- editor of "Crisis" magazine and one of the advisors of the Bush administration on Catholic matters (and with whom I met when he was in Rome in the second half of May) -- sent out an email to "Crisis" readers.
He did so only days after the American president, George Bush, while visiting Rome, had raised Curial eyebrows by publicly expressing his "concern" to the Holy Father over the pedophilia scandals in the Catholic Church in America. Bush sais he was "concerned" because of the "importance" of the Catholic church in American life.
Hudson's email has an oddly ethereal quality. None of the Vatican sources cited in named. And none of the Vatican sources is as bold and clear as Rodriguez Maradiaga is in his statements above. One is left feeling that the Vatican's concerns about what is happening in America are inexplicable and unreasonable -- that the Vatican "just doesn't get it."
What one senses in this email is the growing gap between the thinking of Rome and the thinking of American Catholics on BOTH sides of the pedophilia issue.
Both the "liberals" (who propose responding to the scandal by allowing priests to marry, ordaining women priests, etc.) and the "conservatives" (who propose reforming the seminaries to eliminate homosexuals) seem un-moved by Rome's evident concern that there has been a "media circus" surrounding this scandal for five months incommensurate with the (admitted) horror of the acts committed (and covered up).
More importantly, both groups seem curiously un-interested in Rome's ever-more loudly expressed concern that "libertas ecclesiae" ("the freedom of the Church") must be preserved as a consensus seems to grow that various levels of new state interference in the Church's life must be accepted, beginning with the reporting of all abuse allegations to state prosecutors, as the "price" a humiliated Church in America must pay to end the media characterization of the Church as an abusing and abusive institution, dangerous to children and to society.
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The email quickly circulated around the internet. Here is a copy of the text:
============ CRISIS Magazine - e-Letter June 4, 2002 *************
Dear Reader,
I have some bad news for you. I know, you've gotten all you can take for a while. But still, this is important, and you won't be hearing it anywhere else.
I just got back from a visit to Rome and the Vatican. On the bright side, the weather was great and the city is as beautiful as ever. Unfortunately, that's where the good news ends.
My reason for the trip was to talk to Vatican officials about the sexual abuse scandal in the United States. Just like you, I've been wondering why Rome doesn't seem to be doing anything about it.
Well, I found out. And the report isn't so good.
Here's what I learned...
Most of the high-level Curia officials think there really IS no scandal. They told me it's just another case of media bias against the Church... that secular news reporters are just blowing things out of proportion. They say, rightly enough, that the Church doesn't have any more pedophiles than any other institution. In fact, one official commented that there have always been sexual scandals in the Church, and the Church is always going to be subject to sin, so why are we so concerned?
Why are we so concerned?! Let me see... It might have something to do with the Church authorities' denial of the real problem -- namely, predatory homosexuals in the priesthood. Or we might be concerned because no one in the Church seems to be stepping up to the plate to lead us out of this mess. Or maybe we're a little upset by the cover-up culture that's been growing in the chancery offices. And when you throw in the fact that the Curia doesn't think there's a scandal to begin with... well... I'd say we have a pretty good reason to be concerned.
But it gets worse. Apparently, the scandal in the U.S. didn't even register with Vatican leadership until an Italian newspaper happened to mention it in May. May! That's almost 6 months after the crisis erupted on the front page of the Boston Globe (and became the lead story on all the major news programs).
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I asked if the Curia ever followed the news in the U.S. and was told about the Vatican's "peninsula thinking." That means that if an issue doesn't affect Italy, it doesn't affect them.
I tried to explain things from the American Catholic perspective, but they tried to shush me by repeating again that the Catholic Church has no more pedophiles in the priesthood than any other group of males.
"Fine," I said. "But the problem ISN'T pedophilia... The real problem is active homosexuals preying on post-pubescent children and bishops covering it up."
No response.
Needless to say, I came away from Rome with little hope for the upcoming Dallas meeting of the bishops. The April 24th Vatican communique, following the Pope's meeting with the American cardinals, put the ball squarely in the U.S. bishops' court. Of course, there has been no real leadership here, either.
"The bishops are divided on these issues," I was told by a high-level official, who wanted to remain anonymous. "Their divisions are going to become even more apparent at that meeting."
Another member of the Curia predicted that "unless some bishop or group of bishops takes firm leadership at that meeting, the results will be very disappointing."
After my meeting with the Curia, I'm not holding my breath.
Best, Deal
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The Shaughnessy Review
In the June 3 issue of the American neo-conservative political journal "The Weekly Standard," Jesuit Father Paul Shaughnessy, a tough-minded military chaplain in the United States (I met him a decade ago when he was studying in Rome) and a frequent contributor to Father Joseph Fessio's "Catholic World Report" (of which I was the first editor), published a review of a new book on the Jesuit order which argues that the Jesuits have declined dramatically in the past generation, in large measure due to sexual license, especially with regard to homosexuality. (Shaughnessy cites the phrase "the gaying and the graying of the Jesuits.")
This essay, too, immediately began to fly around the internet. We reproduce it here, and encourage our readers to visit the magazine web site listed at the end of the article.
(We also note that some of the language of Jesuits cited in the review may be a scandal to some readers.)
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Are the Jesuits Catholic?
A review of "Passionate Uncertainty."
by Paul Shaughnessy
06/03/2002, Volume 007, Issue 37
Passionate Uncertainty
Inside the American Jesuits
by Peter McDonough and Eugene C. Bianchi
University of California Press, 380 pp., $29.95
"MY DEAR FELLOW, we all see the difficulties that beset any notion of a revealed religion," says an Oxford philosopher in Ronald Knox's "Let Dons Delight." "You draw a blank check, as it were, by assenting beforehand to its doctrines, not knowing whether there will be enough assets to meet it when you come to look into your account."
The Catholic Church understands herself as the legatee of universal and immutable truths about God and man, claiming a divine guarantee that she never has taught, and never will teach, error. As a Basque soldier named Ignatius Loyola came to realize with particular clarity, this position is either true or insane: Only moral cowardice or intellectual muddle could make room for a middle ground. Hence no faith is more radically vulnerable than Catholicism to the shortfall intimated by Knox's skeptical don, no religion more in need of a nimble, adaptable, and ever vigilant defense.
Loyola's companions, given the sarcastic name "Jesuits" by their opponents, organized themselves on military lines with a military love for a clear chain of command, as their founding document attests. The Jesuit is to "serve as a soldier of God beneath the banner of the Cross, and to serve the Lord alone and the Church, his spouse, under the Roman pontiff, the vicar of Christ on earth." The Jesuit's mission is "to strive especially for the defense and propagation of the faith and for the progress of souls in Christian life and doctrine."
It's a risky business. The blood-curdling vows by which the Jesuit binds himself perpetually to poverty, chastity, and obedience are typically made for the first time when the novice is twenty or twenty-five years old--not at the conclusion but at the outset of the ten years of training in which he will learn what precisely he has committed himself to defend. The more intelligent and idealistic the aspirant, the more spiritually precarious his position, as he comes to grips with the full power of the Church's adversaries and the all-too-human frailty of her defenders. Loyola's gamble was that, if a man's own desire for God could be made present to him, he would willingly endure the required sacrifices until he saw the truth "from inside," and was motivated no longer by discipline but by love. For four centuries the gamble worked.
No more. The recently published "Passionate Uncertainty: Inside the American Jesuits" is a quirky yet convincing depiction of the collapse of the renegade Society of Jesus: papists who hate the pope, evangelists who have lost the faith. Deprived of their reason for existence as Jesuits, they respond either by putting an end to their existence as Jesuits (deserters outnumber active members in the United States) or by indulging a willed imbecility in which the explosively divisive questions are never permitted to surface.
The authors of "Passionate Uncertainty, "Peter McDonough and Eugene Bianchi (a political scientist and professor of religion, respectively), portray the Jesuit crack-up most vividly by quotation from the interviews and written statements they took from more than four hundred Jesuits and former Jesuits. Both the spectrum of the speakers presented and the content of their opinions accurately reflect the current situation. Not that the speakers themselves are always balanced, fair, or magnanimous--the resentments run too deep for that--but taken as a whole the voices give us a true picture of the quandary of America's Jesuits: able yet aimless men, hopelessly compromised by perjury.
THE TRAJECTORY of the decline is not hard to trace, and the Jesuit story, though more dramatic, differs little from that of other progressive religious orders in the decades following the Second Vatican Council. Liberalism had been seen to foster tolerance and mutual respect in pluralist secular communities. Yet, being purely negative in content and procedural in application, it proved lethal when imported into an intentional association like the Society of Jesus, one both doctrinally exclusivist and rigidly hierarchical. Almost overnight the pope's light infantry became a battalion in which every man decided for himself which war he was fighting. The result was an institutional nightmare: confusion and cowardice at the top; despair, rage, and disillusionment in the ranks. American Jesuits went from 8,400 members in 1965 to 3,500 today. Entering novices declined from a peak one-year total of 409 to a low of 38. Worse, the number of priests who jump ship each year roughly equals the number of entering novices; the number of Jesuits who die annually is twice as high as either.
Yet at its heart, the crisis is not one of size but of allegiance. One of the signal services performed by "Passionate Uncertainty" is that it lets us hear influential Jesuits--those who shape policy--speak their minds frankly, in words unsoftened by the public relations personnel in the fufd-raising offices. "I am appalled by the direction of the present papacy," says a university administrator. "I am scandalized by Rome's intransigent refusal to re-examine its doctrines regarding gender and sex. . . . Frankly I think the church is being governed by thugs." "The church as we have known it is dying," a retreat master insists. "I hope and pray that the Society will help to facilitate this death and resurrection." An academic gloats, "The Society has not sold its soul to the 'Restoration' of John Paul II." Another Jesuit scholar, a church historian$ ranks John Paul II as "probably the worst pope of all times"--adding, "He's not one of the worst popes; he's the worst. Don't misquote me." The respondents eake it clear that their contempt for the pope is based almost entirely on his intransigence, his unwillingness to imitate their own adaptability in the matter of doctrine.
As do all priests, the speakers above took a solemn oath swearing that they "firmly embrace and accept all and everything concerning the doctrine of faith and morals" proposed by the Church. It must not be assumed that they fail to see the discrepancy. Their willed imbecility derives not from a lack of brainpower or ingenuity but from a deliberate decision to ignore the clash of commitments and to suppress insurgent attempts to throw light on what, for tactical reasons, is better left in darkness.
THIS "PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY" is the motto of the new Jesuit nomenklatura, and the men who made themselves superiors in the 1970s understood clearly that you can write or say pretty much anything you want, provided you keep open your semantic lines of retreat. Thus the German theologian Karl Rahner was able to exhort his fellow Jesuits: "You must remain loyal to the papacy in theology and in practice, because that is part of your heritage to a special degree, but because the actual form of the papacy remains subject, in the future too, to an historical process of change, your theology and ecclesiastical law has above all to serve the papacy as it will be in the future." See the move? Our current Jesuits are all loyal to the papacy, but to the future papacy--that of Pope Chelsea XII, perhaps--and their support for contraception, gay sex, and divorce proceeds from humble obedience to this conveniently protean pontiff.
There was a price to pay, of course. Plausible deniability allowed the Society of Jesus to emancipate itself from the Holy See, but in the same stroke robbed Jesuit leadership of its ability to lead, to articulate a lucid vision, and to give unambiguous marching orders. Not surprisingly, in the absence of a clear objective, the discipline traditionally accepted as a means to the objective begins to chafe. As the authors explain in their own jargon: "The incentive structure of sainthood has changed. Ascetical practice has undergone demystification and has taken on more than a whiff of the pathological." The result, quite simply, is widespread infidelity to the vows: slackening in poverty and obedience, but, most dramatically, failure in chastity.
IN "PASSIONATE UNCERTAINTY" McDonough and Bianchi cite one Jesuit in his fifties who--admitting to bafflement over the question "what constitutes adherence to celibacy?"--says that this uncertainty "puts priests in a damned if you do (no coherent moral posture) and damned if you don't (old-fashioned repression) dilemma." His further remarks suggest that repression is the road less taken: "Now everybody (with brains) realizes that the rules have changed. Can I work closely with a woman colleague? Go to lunch? . . . Can I kiss her good-night? Spend a night once in a while, as long as it does not interfere with my priestly role? Vacation together?"
Though I align myself with the brainless in this man's typology, I have no doubt that he is right to believe that most of his Jesuit colleagues are of his thinking, and that they live not by their vows but by their own new rules. His account is misleading, however, in suggesting that most of the new breed seek the companionship of women.
"I entered as a way to cope with being gay," says a thirty-six-year-old Jesuit, "although that would not have been the way I put it then." He is not alone. Roughly half of the Society under the age of fifty shuffles on the borderline between declared and undeclared gayness. In 1999 the American Jesuits decided to give priority to the recruitment of gays (under the rubric of "men comfortable with their sexuality"), and the majority of American formatores, Jesuits in charge of training, are homosexual as well.
There is a good deal of dissembling among superiors here: some denying the accusation of the gay influx, some admitting it but insisting that it is a boon, most perhaps shifting from one stance to the other depending on the sympathies of their audience and the exigencies of the moment. Overall, superiors have cautiously abetted the transformation of the gay subculture into the dominant culture within Jesuit houses. The website of the California Province portrays its novitiate in frankly camp terms (a photo showing two novices in Mardi Gras masks was captioned "Pretty Boy and Jabba the Slut"). On the other coast, Boston Magazine recognized the downtown Jesuit parish as the "best place to meet a mate--gay" in its "Best of Boston" awards.
The cost is not negligible. As Neuhaus's Law (propounded by First Things editor Richard John Neuhaus) has it, "where orthodoxy is optional, it will sooner or later be proscribed." In the Society of Jesus, this applies to diversity of lifestyle as well as of doctrine. One man observes: "Several of my former Jesuit friends would mention the large number of gay Jesuits and the impact that had on community life as being a big reason they left. As a relatively young Jesuit who is heterosexual, I believe I am in the minority, and that raises questions." A thirty-five-year-old Jesuit adds: "My novice master left to marry, my formation director left for a relationship with another man, et cetera. One cannot help but get the sense that we of this generation of Jesuits may be the 'last of the Shakers.'"
IT WOULD BE an exaggeration to say there is no concern among superiors at what "Passionate Uncertainty" calls--in a memorable phrase--"the gaying and the graying of the Jesuits." But quite clearly they are willing to tolerate the graying in order to expedite the gaying. The pro-homosexual sympathies of men placed in the gatekeeping positions make it especially difficult for heterosexual--and doctrinally orthodox--candidates to survive the selection process. Men of the type regarded as choice Jesuit material in the 1950s are frequently weeded out before they enter the novitiate. Some years ago an undergraduate at Harvard told me, "From my reading of history I had this idea of Jesuits as bright, kick-ass guys who love the Church. So I thought I'd check them out, and went to talk to the vocation promoter. In the whole hour we spoke he never once asked me about my prayer life or anything like that. He just stared at my crotch and kept after me about how often I masturbated. So long to that." So long to you, my friend, and hello to Jabba the Slut.
GIVEN THEIR AREAS of scholarly interest, it is surprising that McDonough and Bianchi fail in "Passionate Uncertainty" to touch on the single most important post-conciliar change in the command structure of American Jesuits: the shift of de facto power from the formal hierarchy (rectors, provincials) to university presidents. On paper, the presidents remain subject to their religious superiors; in reality the presidents set the tone by which Jesuit life is lived and, on the occasions of a conflict between presidents and superiors, the presidents win hands-down. The fate of Father Joseph Fessio, a former student of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and director of Ignatius Press in San Francisco, is a good illustration. When Fessio made himself a nuisance to University of San Francisco president Father Stephen Privett earlier this year by assisting in the founding of a two-year Catholic college in the vicinity, he was promptly reassigned as a chaplain at a tiny hospital in Duarte, California. Few Jesuits were surprised; none failed to get the message.
The social typology of the new leadership class is also an important dimension of the current reality. Prestigious positions, like university and theologate administrators, are filled for the most part from a group informally known as the "Gallery Owners": discreet, well-spoken, well-dressed gay priests in their fifties and early sixties. Where the older Jesuits are notable for the heat of their anti-papal passion, the Gallery Owners display a nearly complete apathy toward religion in all its forms. Conventionally liberal, they support condoms and women priests less as a matter of faith than a fashion statement--rather like wearing a baseball cap backwards. Last year eleven of the twenty-seven American Jesuit universities hosted productions of Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues," while more humbly employed Jesuits, often inclined to puzzlement at these developments, were officially assured by headquarters that "the Catholic ideftity of [Jesuit] colleges and universities has never been stronger." The teachings of the Church, being largely an irrelevance, has minimal importance in shaping the opinions of the Gallery Owners, who tend to regard orthodox Catholicism--like boxing or heterosexuality--as one of the coarse amusements of the working class.
One early reviewer of "Passionate Uncertainty" (himself a member of the Jesuit nomenklatura) glanced briefly at the indicators of decline given by McDonough and Bianchi--but concluded cheerfully, "The overall portrait is one of men content in their vocations, who have drawn closer to the person of Jesus while leaving an earlier Almighty God figure behind."
This remark, paradoxical though it seems, is a deft expression of the characteristic disconnection between Jesuit identity (in the new mode) and priestly service of God (in the old). In McDonough and Bianchi's chapter on "Ministry and the Meaning of Priesthood," we hear another man languidly dismiss the notion of sacerdotal duty as an instance of emotional immaturity: "Formal sacramental action is less central, as are religious 'practices,' than they had been in earlier years--but frequently much more engaging. To celebrate daily Mass, simply because it's there or expected, is no longer part of my way of thinking. It would be like an every-night-is-sex approach to a marital relationship."
"NONE OF THE MEN I know cares about being a priest," reports a man in charge of theological training. "What matters is being a Jesuit." A spiritual director in his fifties concurs, "If I could remain a Jesuit while joining the Quakers, I could be tempted." It should not be imagined that these are the voices of passed-over malcontents; on the contrary, this is fast-track Jesuit chic. In the New York Times, Maureen Dowd wrote of a television drama in which a "hip, glib, cute young priest" drives his penitent to get an abortion: "I didn't think the show reflected the point of view of the entertainment elite or, as some critics have ranted, of its 'non-practicing' Jewish producers. I recognized the point of view of the Jesuit elite. Jesuits are the flyboys of the church, the teaching intelligentsia most likely to be found drinking pricey wine and traveling abroad and devising interpretations of church dogma." As it turns out, she was right: The co-creator of the program and one of the paid consultants were Jesuits--Jesuits, we may surmise, who have successfully left an Almighty God figure behind.
Obviously such forward-thinking men neither have nor wish any part of the retrograde religious world of the Jesuit saints and martyrs. Edmund Campion, Jean de Brebeuf, Miguel Pro, and their company all died for convictions the new breed finds adolescent and embarrassing. Of course, among the 3,500 American Jesuits there are a few recusants: men who are not interested in joining the Quakers, who still feel bound by their vows, who celebrate Mass, who wish, in their unimaginative way, some kinship with the simplicity and zeal of St. Ignatius Loyola. They tend to speak little and write less: keeping their heads down, for the most part, and carrying bedpans when they don't.
SO, IF THE SITUATION in the Society of Jesus is really as McDonough and Bianchi describe it in "Passionate Uncertainty," why doesn't the pope intervene and make radical changes? Two reasons suggest themselves. On the one hand, the attitude of Pope John Paul II towards religious congregations, female as well as male, is somewhat Darwinian. He is content to let the healthy groups prosper--Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity are a parade example--while letting the unhealthy ones die out of their own accord, like sick caribou amid the permafrost. On the other hand, recent popes have judged the political cost of intervening to reform failing congregations as excessive in view of the likely benefits to be gained. A close analogy can be drawn with the moles that surfaced in the British Secret Service in the 1950s. Their treachery was known long before action was taken against them; bit by bit they were denied access to sensitive material, simply so that they'd have less to betray. In the same way, and for the same reasons, the popes have declined a dramatic showdown with the new Jesuits, preferring ifstead, without calling attention to the fact, to give the really important business to more dependable agents.
"As I get older, I find myself less church centered," says a senior academic. The hero of McDonough and Bianchi's story, the passionately uncertain Jesuit, like a man separated from a wife of thirty years, preserves an icy courtesy in referring to his spouse and fulfills the bare minimum of social duties. He may be convinced that he has arrived at the best possible truce given his rocky personal history; but no young man--at least no young man with real options--chooses to give his life to a truce. It is a lonely senescence. Here and there are rumors of courage, devotion, even faith. But the passionately uncertain Jesuit finds himself enclosed in a small corner of a small world, with the waning consolations of sodomy and single-malt whiskey, tottering down the corridors of an increasingly ominous twilight.
Paul Shaughnessy, S.J., is a Jesuit priest and frequent contributor to Catholic World Report. http://www.weeklystandard.com. Subscribe to the magazine https://www.neodata.com/ITPS2.cgi?OrderType=Reply+Only&ItemCode=WSTD&iResponse=WSTD.NEW
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The Fucek Interview: "The Problem Is In the Seminaries"
In Rome on June 7, a Jesuit moral theologian who has taught for many years at the Gregorian University gave an interview to my colleague Antonio Gaspari which was published by the "Zenit" news agency, founded by my colleague, the Spanish journalist Jesus Colina. Here is the text.
U.S. Scandals Are Rooted in Seminaries, Says Theologian
Father Ivan Fucek of the Apostolic Penitentiary Views the Problem
ROME, JUNE 7, 2002 (Zenit.org) -- An underlying problem facing the Church in the United States is that of excessive "tolerance," which has allowed conduct and teachings among seminarians that go against what the Pope says, a Vatican adviser says.
Jesuit Father Ivan Fucek, theologian of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Church's highest tribunal for "inner forum" questions (matters of conscience), made his comments as the U.S. bishops' conference prepares to meet in Dallas, Texas, next week.
The bishops' June 13-15 meeting will aim to respond to the crisis over cases of sexual abuse of minors by priests.
The assembly is taking place, following John Paul II's meeting in April with representatives of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the country's cardinals and Vatican officials.
ZENIT interviewed Father Fucek about the dimensions and implications of the problem.
Q: From your point of view, what is the characteristic of the North American case?
Father Fucek: I have been in the United States on several occasions, where I met with excellent priests and bishops. But at the same time I noted a certain passivity in accepting candidates to the priesthood with problems of sexual disorder and homosexuality -- an excessive "tolerance" dictated especially by the prevailing cultural model.
The greatest weakness was not to address the problem immediately, when it appeared. In this connection, the Holy Father's intervention was providential, a strong and clear call.
Q: Some observers in Europe think that the Pope's intervention was too energetic, because these are questions that, to a great extent, affect the bishops' decisions and ways of acting.
Father Fucek: It was necessary, because it is imperative to change in a clear way behavior that has spread in the seminaries.
Although it is obvious that behind all the noise made by the media, there is the intention to denigrate the Church, at the same time it is most important that the Church in the United States no longer tolerate certain lax attitudes and criticism of the Holy Father's moral teaching.
The possibility exists of emerging purified and strengthened from this experience, provided that there is a return to the good road. In this connection, John Paul II's intervention was perfect. There was need to intervene in a clear way. There is a good clergy in the United States, but the attitude of tolerance in face of certain problems is not marginal, but rather widespread.
The Holy Father's intervention is not a simple reprimand. It is an occasion for all that is good in the Church in the United States to emerge.
Q: But how could such a phenomenon occur?
Father Fucek: What happened in the United States reveals a serious problem of preparation and formation. Many, too many candidates to the priesthood are not sufficiently knowledgeable in Catholic morality.
However, in this connection the doctrine is clear. If the candidate is a practicing homosexual, he must not be ordained. If there is only a homosexual tendency, this must be discerned.
If during all the years of his youth and later as a candidate to the priesthood he has not had homosexual relations (he has not seduced nor allowed himself to be seduced by a man), then that tendency can be regarded as a temptation, which must be conquered with the grace of God.
However, if that tendency is strong, if the candidate at times has fallen, then he must not be ordained.
If the tendency is so strong that the candidate to the priesthood is afraid he will be unable to resist, then he must not be ordained.
In this sense, the doctrine is clear. In particular, I suggest reading the "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons" (see ZENIT Documents) of Oct. 1, 1986, a document of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which makes explicit reference to the way one must behave in this respect.
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The Civilta Cattolica Article: "Morbid Curiosity" of the Press
In late May, an article appeared in the Italian Jesuit journal "Civilta Cattolica" which also made the argument that the way the press has covered this scandal suggests that some in the media desire to destroy the Church's moral authority.
Because the journal is read in the Vatican's Secretariat of State prior to publication, it is considered a "semi-official" source for the Vatican's view of controversial matters.
The article, which was to appear in the June 1 issue of the magazine, was labeled a news story about the April 22-23 meeting of top U.S. Church leaders with Pope John Paul II and Vatican officials.
The article by Jesuit Father Giovanni Marchesi emphasized Pope John Paul's remarks to the U.S. leaders, including his statement that sexual abuse of children is a crime and "an appalling sin in the eyes of God."
The Pope, it said, also did not hesitate to criticize some bishops' lack of rapid "pastoral interventions to uproot the problem and prevent the scandals."
But it also reported a comment it said the Pope made during `is April 23 lunch with the U.S. leaders, when they began expressing their support of a "zero tolerance" policy that would remove priests guilty of sexual abuse from the priesthood.
"We must be severe, but we can never accept summary trials like they had in the communist countries," the article quoted the Pope as telling the U.S. leaders.
Much of the article was devoted to reporting available statistics on the rate of sexual abuse among priests and to questioning why the crisis has been given so much attention in the U.S. media.
The latest edition of the Vatican's Statistical Yearbook of the Church reports 49,288 diocesan and religious order priests in the United States.
"Even if some speak of about 3,000 priests implicated in cases of pedophilia -- of whom, however, only about a hundred are certain -- is it just or correct to accuse the entire corps of priests?" the article asked.
The massive presence in Rome of U.S. television, radio and print journalists covering the April meeting "gave the impression that, beyond the objective, serious and dramatic facts and the legitimate and proper reaction to the phenomenon, the whole event also was accompanied by much morbid and scandalizing curiosity," the article said.
Some coverage, it said, gave the impression of beating up on "the monster of the week, this time identified from among the Catholic clergy."
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The Father Kennedy Overview
In May, the Canadian Catholic publication "Catholic Insight" (http://www.catholicinsight.com/) hosted an article by Father Leonard Kennedy which did not break new ground, but provided a convenient summary of the articles which over the past year or two have marked critical turning points in this controversy. Here is Kennedy's article, preceded by a breif editorial comment by the magazine's editor, Father Alphonse de Valk.
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Homosexuality among Catholic clergy
by Fr. Leonard A. Kennedy, C.S.B.
In December, 2001, the National Post devoted a third of a page to a 79-year-old Irish priest living in Toronto accused of molesting boys in Ireland some thirty years earlier. Because there is no extradition treaty between Canada and Ireland, the priest cannot be forced to return there to face charges. The next day the paper devoted another article to the same subject.
On January 18 and 19, 2002, the same paper presented first the case, and then the initial conviction, of John Geoghan, 66, a "defrocked priest" in Boston. The first article's main focus was Boston's Archbishop Cardinal Bernard Law, who admitted that he had known of Geoghan's predilection for boys since 1984 but had simply warned him and moved him from parish to parish, thinking that would end it. Today Geoghan and the Archdiocese faces 3 criminal cases and 84 civil lawsuits, with 130 men claiming homosexual molestation or rape.
As the trial continues, news coverage revealed other surprises. The Archdiocese was discovered having quietly settled child sex abuse claims against at least 70 priests in the last ten years. This came about when the diocese handed over to law officials the names of all priests who have been accused over the past four decades of sexually abusing young boys. In all cases the diocese fought hard to keep the settlements secret, extracting confidentiality agreements from many claimants (N. Post, Feb. 1, 2002). This put everyone to sleep with respect to the enormity and frequency of the crimes.
Our first reaction is to say that this simply cannot be true. But alas, it is. Reports from all over, many printed in the American Catholic weekly The Wanderer, demonstrate that priestly pedophilia is widespread. One such priest in Dallas, Texas, cost the diocese there $120 million in settlements. The John Geoghan case in Boston may well surpass this.
The time has come for Catholic Insight readers to be aware of what is going on. Bishops are still moving pedophile priests, even convicted ones, from one diocese to another without telling anyone what is going on. Even as I write, the Calgary diocese has appointed such a priest to a parish without telling the parishioners (Calgary Herald, Feb. 1 and 3, 2002).
The following article has some suggestions of what truly repentant priests can do to halt this ever growing scandal.
--Editor.
Kansas City Star Over the last 15 years, many stories have been published about clerical sexual abuse. Should we speak of a crisis? Certainly the Kansas City daily paper the Star thought so when in January 2000 it created a stir by claiming that priests were dying of AIDS at four times the rate of the general population.1 Some Catholics, probably rightly, denied the statistic, which was based on a narrow survey. The truth of the matter is that there shouldn't be any priests dying of AIDS, and the newspaper article should have caused widespread concern. But almost the opposite seems to have taken place.
One paper, concerning the Kansas story, interviewed Auxiliary Bishop Gumbleton of Detroit who is known for his support for homosexuals; on the Kansas story, he stated (what every priest knows to be false) that in the seminary, priests are not taught how to be chaste. The comment of Bishop Boland of Kansas City was not helpful either. He pointed out that priests are human like anyone else, as if to say that sexual sins by priests are not much to worry about, or that they are par for the course. He added that priests who have contracted AIDS are good priests. How he knows that is another puzzle. Certainly with him, false compassion triumphed over truth. It proved that he does not think there is much to worry about.
Yet Catholics continue to read of priests sentenced to prison for sexually abusing boys, and even of bishops involved in homosexual scandals. Two years ago, we were told of an international internet connection of homosexual clergy (priests and at least one auxiliary bishop in South Africa) discussing in obscene, irreligious language what one critic says is only "me, me, me, and sex, sex, sex." Yet this man's fellow bishops have not distanced themselves from him.
It should be made clear that we're dealing here only with Catholic clerical homosexuality and, at this point, primarily with sexually active clerical homosexuals (whom we will refer to as "gay" since that seems to be the current meaning of this previously innocent word). We know that a number of Catholics who are homosexual are not "gay".
It seems impossible to find out with exactness what percentage of clergy is homosexual, not to speak of what percentage is "gay". Clergy who are themselves homosexual claim that both percentages are very high, but like homosexuals in general they tend to exaggerate their number. The often-quoted 10% of the general population is completely false. In reality their numbers today are between 1% and 2%, and that after three decades of propaganda. When 1%-2% of the general population is homosexual, a National Broadcasting System report that estimates the percentage of homosexual priests as ranging from 23 to 58% is incredible.
Yet the Catholic homosexual clergy problem is so serious that on May 8, 2001, the Doctrinal Congregation of the Vatican wrote to bishops and heads of religious congregations that, from the end of 2001 on, they must inform the Congregation of all cases of priestly pedophilia.
Dr. Barry Coldrey
What appears to be a well-researched and even-handed book is Religious Life Without Integrity: The Sexual Abuse Crisis Within the Catholic Church, by the Australian Brother Dr. Barry Coldrey. Coldrey was assigned the task of producing a report on his own community, the Christian Brothers in Australia, concerning sex scandals. He deals also with other English-speaking countries. He speaks of a crisis, but what constitutes a crisis has not been defined. He estimates that 12-15% of United States clergy indulge in homosexual acts, that 5-7% are pedophiles, and that at least 20% of seminarians report that they have "experienced" homosexual activity in their seminary. Dr. Coldrey reports also that priests have experienced advances from bishops, and have been quietly discriminated against when they rebuffed them.
Monsignor Timothy Dolan, while he was rector of the North American College in Rome, just before he was named Auxiliary Bishop in St. Louis, Missouri, questioned the frequently stated high percentage of homosexual or "gay" clergy, saying that it was probably the same as the percentage for men in society generally, but this was simply his own conviction.
A Survey
Over ten years ago I reviewed a book called Gay Priests.5 It reported on a survey of 101 homosexual priests, over half of whom belonged to religious congregations, and who were approached through sacerdotal homosexual networks. 73% of them said that they were sexually active either frequently or occasionally. Only 12% admitted that a vow or promise of celibacy means total sexual abstinence. 59% claimed that celibacy is an ideal, not a law that must be obeyed. Not one said that homosexual activity is against the will of God.
These priests justified homosexual activity because it is "demanded" by love of others and helps to overcome stress: "There is no guilt; the Church is wrong." "I don't think I can survive as a human without a lover." Why single men and women can live their celibacy but not persons who are homosexual is a question that didn't seem to have occurred to these "gay" priests.
The priests often claimed that their homosexuality is a "gift". They do not look on chastity as a gift, however; it is a burden imposed on them not by Christ but by an uncaring Church, a "commitment to an institution rather than an individual spouse," as one put it.
They admitted that their dissenting views are passed on to their parishioners and penitents. Only 9% said that they advise the faithful to follow the teaching of the Church in sexual matters. As well, these priests are also much more troubled than other priests. They experience three times as much difficulty with loneliness, with relationships with superiors, with the value of priestly work, and with personal fulfillment; and twice as much difficulty with the teaching authority of the Church.
The purpose of the book was to advocate the acceptance of "gay" clerical sexual activity. The book insisted that "gay" priests can be good priests, even though the evidence from their own words contradicted that claim.
Fr. Paul Shaughnessy
In a lengthy article in the November 2000 issue of the magazine The Catholic World Report, published in San Francisco, Father Paul Shaughnessy says that, "in a sociological sense, any institution that has lost the capacity to mend itself on its own initiative and by its own resources, an institution that is unable to uncover and expel its own miscreants," is corrupt.6 Shaughnessy then accuses the episcopacy in the United States, and the majority of religious orders, of being corrupt as defined sociologically.
He mentions an example of seven priests ordained in one group; one is now openly homosexual and approves of sodomy; and three have died of AIDS; nothing pertinent is know of the other three. And he says that homosexuals boast that there are clergy nights in homosexual bars and clergy hideouts in homosexual resorts; that in certain places the diocesan apparatus is controlled entirely by homosexuals; and that they can blackmail bishops by threatening to "out" those who are homosexual.
Shaughnessy claims also that bishops have not taken leadership in dealing with the crisis. Indeed, almost always it has been the police and the media who have sounded the alarm. This has been followed by the bishops' attempt to protect themselves from critics and to hand over the problem to "experts" rather than act themselves.
According to Shaughnessy, bishops have appointed "gay" priests to minister to the "gay" and lesbian community in their diocese. They have appointed "gay" priests as vocation directors and seminary rectors. They have appointed "gay" priest therapists to counsel "gay" priests. Now that the [American] National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries is pushing to have homosexuals conduct "safe school" programs, "tolerance" education, and "stop the hate" campaigns, which teach acceptance of the homosexual life-style, we find bishops and priests helping its representatives to get into Catholic schools where they teach that homosexuals are specially blessed by God, where they say that they have a commission from God to tell the Church the truth about homosexuality, and where they tell parents of homosexual and lesbian youth how blessed they are. How widespread is all this? Shaughnessy doesn't say. However, the number of court cases of sex abuse, and the fines dioceses and religious congregations have paid and are paying, suggest that it occurs throughout the American continent.
Shaughnessy also reports that certain bishops have said that "gay" priests can do good in their Church assignment, but these bishops do not admit that, in addition to a deviant compulsion, these men suffer from immaturity, hostility, and irresponsibility, all of which lead them to sacrifice the common good to their own agenda.
How to face the crisis?
Shaughnessy offers suggestions for facing the crisis. As for Rome, he says, it should appoint a bishop, or promote a bishop, only if he has previously demonstrated leadership in attacking abuses. As for bishops, they should not admit homosexuals into the seminary; they should require homosexual priests to seek reparative therapy or else leave the priesthood; and they should encourage their priests to lead a simple life in order to avoid self-indulgence. As for laymen, they should send an encouraging note to clergy who have stood up for what is right. And they should divert contributions from scandalous organizations to good ones.
Shaughnessy thinks that, in the short term, things will get worse. Bishops don't want to admit that there is a crisis. Instead of "bishoping," they take out their anger at the message by attacking the messenger.
Fr. Paul Mankowski, S.J., has also offered a suggestion to bishops: "At the very least, bishops whose priests have confessed to sexual abuse would require . . . testimonials and make known to their clergy and seminarians, honest accounts by the offenders of their degradation and the cause-and-effect relationships as they understand them.
"Think of the warnings a disgraced priest could offer: 'Here is how I first went wrong; here is the bad advice I got in the seminary; here was the priest who put me on to the game; here was the cowardly pastor who looked the other way; here was the way our little clique formed; here was the way we diverted suspicion; here is the way we cut the legs out from under fellow priests who complained or who had guessed what was happening; this is how we lied to our parishioners and saw that the complainers were frozen out; this is how we rigged things at the chancery; this was the workshop that helped me rationalize my behaviour; this is the theologian who took away my faith; this is the first moral teaching I abandoned; here's how the first forfeiture led to other denials; this is the television program that I used to feed on; these are the magazines I started to read and the videos I started to rent; this was the first year I stopped saying the breviary; here I stopped saying Mass when I wasn't on rotation; here I stopped going to Confession; this is a family I cultivated as an ally; these are the stories I fed them about being the victim of hate mail and rumours; these are the bars I started to go to; here is the dirt I found on so-and-so to blackmail him into going to bat for me when I needed it . . . .' And so on.
"Fifty or sixty of these personal histories in circulation around rectories and seminaries would make a considerable difference in the life of the Church."
Fr. Donald Cozzens
The recent American book The Changing Face of the Priesthood by Donald Cozzens, a priest rector and professor at the diocesan seminary in Cleveland, discusses in part the question of homosexual clergy. Cozzens says that very few of the clergy have been pedophiles; that is, those who abuse young people under the age of puberty (about 13-14); the vast majority of the 600 named in abuse cases were ephebophiles; that is, abusers of young men (between 13-14 and 18). 90% of clerical abuse was with boys. And typically, he says, the abusers had little or no remorse for their actions. These 600 men have cost the Church in the United States about a billion dollars in jury awards, settlements, legal fees, and therapy for abused and abuser.
Dr. Judith Reisman, using 1992 statistics, has calculated that, per capita, homosexual men abuse boys fifty times as frequently as other men abuse girls.
Cozzens is quite concerned about the problem which he considers a crisis, but is unsure of what to do about it even though he is a seminary rector. For that reason, we should consider a remedy that Shaughnessy recommends; that is, that no homosexual men be ordained to the priesthood.
Fr. James Martin
There have been a number of articles lately on this topic of whether they should be ordained. One is by Father James Martin, S.J., an associate editor of the Jesuit periodical America, who presented the question in September, 2000. He claims to have read the available literature on the subject and also interviewed homosexual priests from across the United States.
On the one hand, he says that men with homosexual inclinations are bothered by the problem of accepting their homosexuality, which the Church says is "objectively disordered." And also that homosexual clergy are attracted to other homosexual clergy. They can form cliques which often exclude, either consciously or unconsciously, other clergy, which is a deadly thing in parishes, religious communities, or seminaries.
On the other hand, he claims that, since "gays" suffer because of their sexual attraction, they are more appreciative of the sufferings of Christ and can sympathize more readily with the marginalized in society. And he considers it an asset that they are more attracted to the fine arts and performing arts.
Another writer on the subject of the ordination of homosexual men, Fr. Cozzens mentioned above, believes that homosexual priests are sensitive and nurturing, and adds that they are gifted at preaching and at celebrating liturgy. But he agrees with Martin that they have a need to be with other homosexual clergy and often form a sub-culture in the seminary and turn off other seminarians. Besides, sexuality occupies their minds more than is the case with others, and they are always afraid of being found out, and in the seminary they have to deal with the problems of sexual attraction and jealousy. Neither Martin nor Cozzens offers a clear answer to the question whether homosexual persons should be ordained.
Martin seems to think they should be since, he says, "one can state that God has called, and is continuing to call, homosexuals to serve as priests in the Church and that the Church confirms this call through ordination. The question, then, is not whether God is calling homosexual men to the priesthood, but why. Theologically, how might one understand these 'signs of the times'"? Martin does not consider that no one can say that someone is called to the priesthood until a bishop makes a final decision.
Fr. James P. Colligan
A very decisive view about ordaining homosexual men is held by Father James P. Colligan, M.M. In the discussion of this question, he says, often "the political, social, and moral implications for other priests and for the Christian community are downplayed, denied, or ignored. The political aspect of homosexuality manifests itself in religious communities in the formation of cliques, in election of homosexual superiors, in prejudice and favoritism in appointments, in the manipulation of existing legislation to effect desired ends, in policy-making and community practices that serve homosexual preferences, and in suppression of information and open debate in and out of the organization. If the defence of homosexuality necessitates rejecting advisories from higher ecclesiastical authority, that too will be done. "I am suggesting that even many non-"gay" homosexual priests are insecure in their male community unless and until homosexual representation has the complete sympathy of the authorities. Social traditions and Church teaching underlie this insecurity. "I am suggesting that straight priests, even in the majority, suffer what might be termed reverse discrimination in matters of lifestyle, career, and reputation, if not something akin to sexual harassment. I would warn straight candidates away from such religious societies . . . . "I am inclined to believe that we have today an inordinately high percentage of homosexuals in the priesthood, a minority who can and, I believe, do politically dominate some dioceses and religious organizations." Father Colligan goes on to ask: "How then will the laity perceive celibates? Most likely as a group of homosexuals who, since they are attracted to men rather than to women, band together on the pretext of a supposedly sacrificial foregoing of wife, children, and erotic sexual activity, who in fact get their kicks in being together. An odd bunch that you wouldn't want your son to join . . . . "I pray for legislation that will exclude homosexuals from the ordained priesthood to which they have no claim as a right."
Seminarians
Early in 2001 Michael Rose, the editor of the St. Catherine's Review in Cincinnati, announced that he was writing a book about seminarians.11 He had conducted interviews with 75 of them and was ready to draw some conclusions, especially concerning sexual and liturgical aspects of seminaries. Concerning the sexual aspects, he asks, "What if the young man is not ready to accept homosexuality?" He answers that the situation is so bad that, if he accepts Church teaching against sodomy, "the [seminary-hired] psychologist is liable to report that the applicant has an 'unhealthy sexuality,' is 'sexually immature,' or has 'sexual hang-ups.' The applicant who is 'open-minded on the question of homosexuality,' on the other hand, is deemed healthy and mature with an 'integrated sexuality.'"
Rose says that there is overwhelming evidence that most of the psychologists retained by dioceses are "very supportive of the homosexual lifestyle and put prospective seminarians through a very rigorous process. The orthodox seminarians get the psychological screws put to them . . . . They are told they must have counselling. Some seminarians are only accepted provisionally, and are required to remain in ongoing therapy with a psychologist throughout their seminary training . . . . For example, a seminarian who says he agrees with Church teaching on masturbation is just setting himself up for a long period of treatment."
Rose adds: "Seminarians who accept the Church's teaching on sexual morality have also been threatened by classmates and faculty who have warned them that if they did not submit to homosexuality-at least to defend the morality of homosexual acts, if not actively take part in them - their priestly careers would be in jeopardy . . . ." Rose identifies the seminaries he is talking about, and adds that "those dioceses which have consistently promoted orthodoxy both in their parishes and in their seminaries have been affected little, if at all, by any 'vocational crisis' or shortage of priests."
The well-known Father Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R., of New York, commenting unfavourably on Cozzens' work, wrote in a letter to the editor: "I have been working full time with priests as a spiritual director and psychologist for 30 years, and it is my profound conviction that this crisis has been caused by substituting secular values and shaky psychological theories for the teaching of the Gospel and the traditions of the Catholic Church."
Conclusion
My own opinion about admitting homosexuals to the seminary is as follows. Weighing the advantages of admittance against the disadvantages, I believe that the climate for dealing with this question is totally different from what it was, say, fifty years ago. At that time few young men with homosexual tendencies entered the priesthood, and they didn't go public about their sexual inclination. They also remained chaste. Today, however, society's moral code has changed very much for the worse. Contraception, abortion, pornography, and homosexual activity are no longer restrained by the force of law. Homosexual activists for the most part regard these lapses as victories and advances in culture and society. They demand more; they now seek complete equality under the law. They claim that homosexual activity is perfectly normal, acceptable, even beneficial. Young men with homosexual inclinations are bound to be influenced adversely. Besides, homosexuals have now changed the nature of several seminaries. They have also gained power in many key offices in dioceses, and their sexual bias has often resulted in biased decisions. In the general society, homosexuals have become aggressive and intolerant, and this has affected the conscious or subconscious attitudes of homosexual clergy. There need be no general statement that homosexuals will not be admitted to the seminary. Bishops should simply not accept their applications. Perhaps bishops might be afraid that such a policy would result in more priestless parishes for them, but this would not be the case in the long run, since more non-homosexuals would be attracted to the priesthood, as Colligan points out. Even Cozzens agrees with him, saying that "the disproportionate number of homosexually oriented priests and seminarians may well be a significant factor" in the present low number of candidates for our seminaries.
Fr. Leonard Kennedy, PH.D., C.S.B., is a priest of the Congregation of St. Basil, and a retired professor of philosophy. He taught in Toronto, Windsor, and London, ON, Saskatoon, SK, and Houston, TX.
Notes
1. The Toronto Star, Jan. 31, 2000, p. A2. See also The Wanderer, Nov. 16, 2000, pp. 1, 8.
2. See note 9.
3. The Wanderer, May 31, 2001, pp. 1, 7.
4. Zenit (an International News Agency), June 25, 2001.
5. J. G. Wolf, ed., 1991. See the review in Crisis, Mar., 1991, pp. 49-50.
6. "The Gay Priest Problem," The Catholic World Report, Nov., 2000, pp. 52-58.
7. Catholic World Report, Oct., 1995, p. 48.
8. Lifesite, Nov. 15, 2001.
9. "The Church and the Homosexual Priest," America, Nov. 4, 2000, pp. 11-15.
10. A letter to the editor of Crisis, Jan., 1992, p. 12.
11. The Wanderer, Feb. 15, 2001, pp. 1, 9.
12. America, Dec. 2, 2000, p. 21.
13. The Tablet, Aug. 5, 2000, p. 1044.
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Prayer and Consecration
On June 8, we received this notice:
Happy Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary! I just discovered last evening that the enclosed Act of Consecration is being made today at Mother Angelica's Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament today in Hanceville, Alabama... I enclose the prayer for your use at Mass and throughout the week. It can be found at www.latria.org and www.ewtn.com.
***
Please join countless Catholics around the world by praying for our bishops and reconsecrating America to Immaculate Mary during the week of June 8 through June 17th. Please pray with us this very minute and please forward this to everyone you know. The Catholic Church needs your help right now as the bishops of the United States prepare to meet in Dallas next week. If you pray this prayer with all your heart and forward it to your Christian friends around the world, the future of the Catholic Church in America will change forever. (The prayer below is adapted from one used by August Cardinal Hlond of Poland in 1946 when he renewed Our Lady as patroness of Poland as originally done on 1656 by King Casimir. Our own bishops formally consecrated the United States to Immaculate Mary as our Patroness in the mid-1800s.)
"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit... "
Immaculate Mary, most Holy Mother of God and of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we the people of the United States of America at this historic moment stand before you in a humbled condition of love, loyalty, affection, and thankfulness. To your Immaculate Heart we recommit and dedicate ourselves throughout the entire American nation. To your Son Jesus Christ we pledge to serve His teaching, His church, and to work for His kingdom on earth. O Mary, to you do we flee for protection. Surround the American family with your maternal care; enfold us in your arms. Give to this American land, built on the blood and tears of so many faithful forebears, a peaceful and praiseworthy existence in truth, love, justice, and freedom. O Mary, we submit to you as the Patroness of our beloved country. O Mary, Help of Christians, enfold the Holy Father and the Catholic Church within your protective cloak; be our shield in the days ahead. Give to the Church true holiness and freedom. Obtain for our leaders holy zeal, the ability to face the truth, and the courage to correct all abuses. Stop the flood of atheism, greed, heresy, impurity, lukewarmness, materialism, and selfishness that threaten our nation. Show to those who have strayed from the Church the way to Our Lord Jesus Christ. Mother of God, accept our personal consecration to you and, through you, bind us forever to the Holy Trinity. Gather us all into your Immaculate Heart and unite us forever with Jesus. O Mary, we love you. Amen."
The message ends with this exhortation:
"Thank you for joining us in prayer. Please forward this to everyone you know. God bless!"
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Pope's Resignation?
Finally, we report a brief news note: a German cardinal who says he's talked to the Pope, who advised him that he has decided to remain at his post until death, and will not resign. The story was reported on June 7 by Catholic News service, as follows:
COLOGNE, Germany (CNS) -- Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Cologne has rejected any speculation that Pope John Paul II might resign as a result of ill health. The cardinal told the Cologne newspaper, Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger, "I have spoken to the Pope, and he told me that he would continue his service to the church 'until death do us part.'" In mid-May another German, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Vatican's doctrinal congregation, said that the Pope might resign if he felt he could no longer carry out his task. The Vatican has dismissed rumors that the Pope would resign as head of the church and remain in Poland at the end of his Aug.16-19 visit. Cardinal Meisner, considered to be close to the Pope, questioned the reliability of some "Vatican circles" quoted in various media reports. The cardinal said it was precisely because of the Pope's fragility that he was a symbol for the Church and the world.
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I will be back tomorrrow. I need to get some sleep.
The review of the book on the Jesuits was new to me, as was the book, but is consistent with my anecdotal observations over the past 40 years. In the mid-1960s, I was shocked by a friend's description of a Jesuit feast day dinner in San Francisco (at which he served as a waiter) that turned into a drunken (on large quantities of very expensive wine) homosexual orgy. I also at about the same time knew of an incident at the University of San Francisco where the Jesuit Dean of Students refused to move a black freshman out of a room with a predatory homosexual and threatened the kid with loss of his scholarship if he complained further. Since then, I would say between half and two-thirds of the Jesuits I've met have given me the creeps, a bad uncomfortable, unclean feeling.
So, overall, it's not encouraging. Bah, I'm going to wash this stuff off.
As disillusioning, disconcerting, and disappointing as the current state of the Catholic Church is, I cling to His words that the gates of hell will not prevail against His Church. He has given Lucifer and his minions apparent free reign in the Church for some time. I hope this is the beginning of a much needed purification. Yes, the Church will always contain sinners, but hopefully those who celebrate and defend sin will be an infinitesimally small minority.
Many American Catholics do not understand that in many ways the United States is blessed with one of the more responsive political systems, and therefore do not understand the ropes of dealing with the obstensibly less responsive systems. In Europe the laity has a long tradition of not tolerating depredations on the part of the clergy. Spain for example, had a long tradition of the faithful burning their own churches down, as a protest against excesses by the clergy. The bishops, who didn't admit commoners into their ranks by and large didn't get it, and continued their snotty mismanagement, which I feel contributed to Spains calcification and loss of the Phillipines, Cuba, and perhaps the civil war.
Another tradition was that when priests were not wanted, the organist would play an interludium during their homily, signalling the loss of confidence in the priest. Nunc dimittis servum tuum. The bishop would be apprised of this, and transfer him. (And, until V2, most priests stayed with one parish for their entire life. Quickie transfers other than to the missions in places like the Congo were simply few and far between.) And in much of Europe lay organizations akin to the Knights of Columbus are much more organized and influential. The likes of a Shanley would not be tolerated by them for long. When the Church of England tried to introduce its Book of Common Prayer, to eternally sunder itself from the Catholic church in Rome, more than a few priests were physically attacked on the altar.
Much of the American church was constituted as missionary territories well into the 50s, and as such, the notion was that any priest was better than no priest. As such, the present crisis, (crisis being the Greek for time of change) is nothing but the coming of age of the American church. We're beyond the Schande for the goyim stage, and doing some public accounting.
Human nature being what it is, sometimes things have to deteriorate before able leaders are chosen who cut through the dead wood, and create a renewed and vibrant community.
The Jesuits, as they currently exist, need to be suppressed. Again. (But for a good reason, this time.) Either God will raise up a great saint to found a reformed Jesuit order, or the Jesuits have served their purpose and should vanish into history.
And I think my namesake would agree with me on that score. :-)
That's interesting (and humorous - I smiled when I first read it). I like the subtlety of it. Thanks for your thoughtful and informative reply.
Thank you Registered!
If this drags out, the laity can begin to organize and target contributions to a much greater degree than is done now. A Catholic Consumer's Digest would already do a whole lot.
The Boston Herald today reports that Law is going to apologize to the bishops. My first thought was, "What is he going to say? 'I'm sorry my coverup wasn't as effective as your coverups'?"
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