[CATHOLIC CAUCUS] Can we Correct the Leadership Gap in the Catholic Church?

Master of Divinity ^ | 7/20/2010 | Father Michael Venditti, M. Div.

[Balt]

As one who has made a point of actively persuing and personally instructing converts to the Catholic Faith,—rather than simply waiting for them to appear then throwing them into some “program” in which I am minimally involved—I have observed that one of the most attractive aspects of Catholicism drawing Protestant Christians as well as the “unchurched” to the Faith is the certainty and unmitigated intransigence of Catholic dogma. For the most part, the converts—and I am not ashamed of using that word, even for baptized Protestants entering the Church, inasmuch as anyone making such a change in his or her life must experience “conversion” of mind and heart—whom I’ve had the privilege to receive, are here because they were seeking answers to life’s questions, and found a group of people not afraid to give clear and postive answers.

Which is why a certain amount of damage control must be done whenever the visible leadership of the Catholic Church lapses into the human fault of “wishy-washiness” in matters of moral teaching. One of the prime examples of this would have to be the divergent responses given by bishops across the country regarding whether a pro-abortion politician should receive Holy Communion. Some bishops have been forthright in refusing the Sacrament to such people, even in a public way; others have been just as forthright in declaring that it is improper to do any such thing; and, while the Holy See’s answer to the question has been clear and unambiguous, that clarity has been dissolved by an apparent inability (or unwillingness) to correct one side or the other.

The question of abortion and Holy Communion is given only as an example; but, in general terms, one can’t help but notice that, for the most part, the difference between one kind of bishop and another has a lot to do with hand-wringing over the image of the Church in the secular press or, what the spiritual doctors of a previous age called “human respect”; and a lot of it has to do with the particular generation from which the bishop in question comes. Here’s how the scenario, more often than not, plays out:

1. A prominent Catholic living or working in the diocese makes a public statement or publically supports an action which is contrary to Divinely revealed Catholic teaching.

2. The bishop begins to weigh in his mind the conflict between obfuscating scandal against the prospect of propelling his name and that of his diocese into the public eye. On the one hand, the bishop is mindful of his responsibility to "confirm the faith" of the souls entrusted to his care, conscious that failure to speak out in a forceful way could lead many of the faithful to conclude that the onerous opinion being expressed is acceptable or, at least, not that important; on the other hand, the bishop comes from a generation of priests who were taught that the cause of Christ is best served when the Church is not in the headlines, and that controversy of any kind is always bad.

3. Unable to resolve the conflict in himself, the bishop decides that the best course is to find a way to make the whole situation someone else's responsibility; so, he regretfully laments that the individual in question is not really a subject of his diocese (even though the offense occured there), and that he is powerless to do anything without clear instructions from the individual's "proper" bishop—knowing, of course, that his brother bishop is of the same generation and mind-set as he is, and that this reasoning process will be repeated "over there," hopefully drawn out long enough until the news cycle has run it's course and the matter is no longer "front page" material.

The end result of all this is that the whole problem just fades away with time, and everyone can get back to pretending that all is sweetness and light—at least that's what the two bishops would like to believe, with an "off screen" nod and wink between them.

To a priest of my generation, this is all perfectly horrific, and explains a whole host of things, including the sex abuse crisis and the poor response of the bishops in general to it. To a priest of the current "ruling" generation, it's priests like me and my generation which are the problem, because we don't undertand the absolute necessity of playing the game of projecting the Home-on-the-Range image of the Catholic Church to the outside world: "...where never is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day."

The problem really is generational; and, for proof of that, I invite you to visit my alma mater, St. Joseph's Seminary in Dunwoodie, New York. It's one of the oldest in the country. As soon as you walk into the main corridor of the ancient building, take a left and walk to the end. Take another left, toward the room labled "Large Theology." On the right hand wall begins the group portraits of the classes, beginning in the late 1800s and stretching all along the wall down to the opposite end of the building. The portraits of those early classes—some with as few as five or six priests in them—are inspiring. There they all sit, in hopelessly wrinkled cassocks and unkempt hair, with fire in their eyes. These, after all, were the men who would have to "create" the Catholic Church in this country—a country which, for the most part, believed that Catholics were worshipers of Satan. They were trained to resist persecution, defend the faith against all manner of attack, work independently without contact with higher authority, and support an immigrant faithful which was mistrusted and persecuted themselves. They had to be men! Thay had to be fighters! They had to be individuals! They had to stand out from the crowd! And you can tell they were all that and more just by looking at their pictures.

Now, stroll down to the other end of the building, where you'll find the portraits from the 1950s, '60s and '70s. The classes here are much larger, some with as many as thirty priests in them; but there is no fire in their eyes. Sometimes it's hard to even distinguish between the men in them: all the same hair cut; all the same style of perfectly pressed suit and collar; all the same dull, blank, expressionless stare. Here you have found the current ruling generation of Catholic clergy in the United States, all with spine neatly and surgically removed. They, after all, were not ordained to defend the faith, but to make it seem harmless to a well ordered Protestant society. They were not intended to help an immigrant community survive a vicious persecution, but rather to help the Catholic Church in America "blend in"; and, to that end, they were formed and trained to blend in themselves. If there were originally any individuals and strong personalities—any "characters"—among them, they were weeded out of the formation process by the new tool of psychological evaluation. Their lack of individuality and self-determination, it was thought, was necessary to ensure their obedience; their ability to blend in and not stand out from the crowd was thought necessary to ensure that the Catholic Church was not perceived by anyone as a threat.

And the Church got exactly what she wanted. This latter generation, with their sexuality thoroughly repressed, their emotional development frozen somewhere in adolescence, their "fighting Irish" spirit boiled out of them, and their blind obedience to authority thoroughly ensured, were unleashed into a society which, within a few decades, would turn against the Church again—a Church which would look to her priests to fight for her—but there was no fight in them. Humanae Vitae came and went, and the number of priests and bishops willing and able to stand up and defend the doctrine could be counted on one hand. The repression of their psycho-sexual development exploded in a flurry of improper and horrific abuses of young boys; and the ones charged with protecting the young and restoring order had not the strength of character—or the ability to even see the need—to take the bull by the horns and deal with it. Instead they chose to try and "smooth it over" by cryptic transfers to other assignments, hoping it would all go away. Then, when the poop hit the fan, they placed the whole problem in the hands of a lay review board, to which they subordinated their Divine commission, inventing slogans like "Promise to Protect, Pledge to Heal," actually believing that marketing and image were part of the solution. They convinced a dazed and confused Holy See to sign off on a policy of "norms" that would allow them to rid themselves of any priest who embararssed them, while protecting themselves from any liability.

And when a Catholic politician openly supports policies which are abhorrent to fundamental Catholic dogma, they pass the buck. Is it any wonder why?

Back when I was was a seminarian, the formation program was different than it is today. Your summers were your own, so long as you did something within the Church. I spent one summer living and working in the cathedral parish of a Roman Catholic diocese down in Louisiana. The rector of the cathedral was the Vicar General of the diocese, one of the most brilliant, talented and oddest men I ever knew: a musician, a scholar, a veteran who had served in two wars (and, on and off, in every single branch of America's military before becoming a priest), and with the colorful vocabulary of a drunken sailor. Once at dinner he told me about his first assignment as a priest in a parish in the bayou, and about his pastor who used to sit at the dinner table with a revolver by his plate (the particulars of the story are unimportant). In the middle of his story he stopped and let out a deep sigh; then, after a pause he said in a sad voice, "There are no more characters in the priesthood."

Indeed there aren't. And it seems that the Catholic Church in this country—and the Catholic Faith itself—will be suffering from this deficiency for many generations to come. Where will we find the priests who will be needed to rebuild the Catholic Church in America? The men in those early portraits are all dead, and the generation currently running the show doesn't want anyone like them ordained any time soon. Yes, there's my generation ordained in the early and mid-'80s; but there are so few of us—ordained, in some cases, in classes of two or three or even one. And we're already in our 50s and 60s; we'll be practically dead ourselves before the current ruling generation lets the reigns slip through their hands. To be sure, the Pope is a good man; but I haven't seen him make any moves to tell any bishop in this country to "excommunicate that politician or you're out of a job." How do you correct the leadership gap in the Catholic Church today? Do we emulate the previous generation and just hope it all blows over after the news cycle turns? Or are we man enough to choose a better way?

[Balt]

This essay was lifted and reworked from my previous blog, "Priestly Pugilist."