[CatherineSiena]

ping

I don't know if this has already been posted and commented upon, but this piece is well worth the time taken to read.

[BobCNY]

Good article that I have never seen before. Throw me on your ping list if you can. Thanks.

[johnb2004]

Excellent. I especially liked this part:

that one's duty was to keep silence and trust that those officially charged with the pertinent responsibilities would execute them in their own time; that delayed correction of problems was sometimes necessary for the universal good of the Church.

He better be careful or he may be called schismatic.

[CatherineSiena]

Rev Professor Paul Mankowski SJ
Fr Paul is Visiting Professor of Biblical Theology at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Melbourne. He holds a BA in Classics and Philosophy from the University of Chicago, a MA in Classics and Philosophy from Oxford, a Licentiate in the Old Testament from the Weston Jesuit School of Theology and a PhD in Semitic Philology from Harvard University. He is currently Lector in Biblical Hebrew at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome having been Language Instructor at Weston Jesuit School of Theology, in Massachusetts and Assistant Professor of Classics and Philosophy at Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio. He is the author of numerous articles and reviews and has a book "Akkadian Loanwords in Biblical Hebrew."

[johnb2004]

The Holy See now appears to treat national episcopal conferences, and the numerous religious orders, almost as foreign powers. Scrupulous correctness is observed at all times, formal verbiage masks barely hidden disagreements, and above all potential "incidents" are avoided. ... This endemic practice of diplomacy within the Church has yielded small results. Abuses have been tolerated not for the sake of unity but merely for the "appearance" of unity, which itself soon becomes an over-riding concern.


Because what matters most in this mindset is perception, the appearance of unity, it has become virtually impossible to remove a bad bishop without prior public scandal -- "public" here meaning notorious in the secular sphere, through the mass media.


When the scandal is sexual or financial, it seems the Holy See can move quickly to remove the offender. When the scandal is in the arena of heresy or administrative irregularity or liturgical abuse, there is almost never enough secular interest generated to force the Holy See's hand. Bishops Milingo and Ziemann and Roddy Wright have many brethren; Bishop Gaillot has few.


Intermediate reform measures like seminary visitations are doomed to failure for the same reason; there simply is no possibility in the present disposition for a hostile inspection, where the visitators try to "get behind" the administration and find the facts for themselves. To do such a thing would be to imply lack of trust in the administration and hence in the bishop responsible for it, and such an imputation is utterly impossible.


The same is true in bishops' dealing with universities, learned societies and religious congregations. The only permissible inspections are friendly inspections, where the visitators ask the institution under scrutiny for a self-evaluation, which, of course, will be overwhelmingly positive and which will render the chances of reform almost nil.


A priest official in a Vatican dicastery whom I trust told me that the needed reforms will never take place unless the Church undoes Pope Paul VI's restructuring of the Vatican curia, whereby the Secretariate of State has become a kind of super-bureaucracy -- no longer charged simply with the Holy See's relations to other nations but with de facto control over the relations of the Vatican dicasteries to one another of the Holy See to its own bishops.

In practice the Secretariate of State not only sets the tone for the Holy See's dealings but often sets the agenda as well, ensuring that the diplomatic concern for appearances will prevail over the need for reforms involving unpleasantness, and exercising indirect influence over the selection of bishops, characteristically men of diplomatic demeanor if not experience.


This profile goes far to explain why telling the truth is a problem for a large number of bishops, many of whom seem baffled and hurt when their falsehoods are not taken at face value.


All embassies, moreover, have a high number of homosexuals in their staffs, and the Vatican diplomatic corps in no exception. The combination of the physical comforts attendant on diplomatic service, the skill at bureaucratic manipulation and oblique methods of pressure, the undercurrent of homosexual decadence, and the alacrity with which truth is sacrificed to expediency do not make an environment conducive to reform.


The dominion exercised by the Secretariate of State means that many good-willed attempts to clean house go nowhere, and will continue to go nowhere in the future, being lost in its corridors or disfigured beyond recognition.

[ultima ratio]

Absolutely on target. My own experience in the seminary in the mid 80s confirms what this author says. It was far from what I had expected. Prayer life was minimal. Seminarians were deeply involved in decorating their rooms attractively, with all the modern conveniences. More attention was paid by the administration to making sure everybody had a phone line than to making sure everybody had a good spiritual director. My director was so bad I had to engage another, a Dominican I had heard about who lived outside my area. Our sessions dealt with my anger and disappointment for the most part--that the place was so unspiritual and uninspiring. Administrators themselves lived posh lives. One of them showed me his private suite of rooms--Martha Stewart would have been proud. It was like walking into the presidential suite of a four-star hotel. The Blessed Sacrament, on the other hand, was housed in a small storage room in the basement. And this was one of the major seminaries in America.

[don-o]

Mrs dono is knows of this priest, but has never seen this. She is eagerly awaiting my getting off the puter, so she can read it.

[sinkspur]

Unless he makes unusual efforts to the contrary, a priest today finds himself part of a culture of pleasure-seeking bachelordom, and the way he recreates and entertains himself overlaps to a great extent that of the young professional bronco.

When I was in seminary back in the early 70s, I was flabbergasted at the lifestyles of most pastors of major parishes, especially those in Dallas.

They attended the Opera, ate out twice a week at the swank restaurants, drove brand new cars, mostly Lincolns, courtesy of Ed Maher (a local Catholic dealer), went to Las Vegas as a group at least twice a year, and jetted off to the Kentucky Derby, to the Masters Golf Tournament. Liquor cabinets were full, but not for long.

I once asked a younger priest how these guys could afford this lifestyle. I was frankly shocked at the lavish expenditures, since my family never took a vacation further away than Houston, and my dad never made more than $20,000 in his entire life, to support a family of five.

He said "Well, they see giving up a wife and family on one side of the ledger, so they figure they can indulge themselves in all this other stuff as a compensation. After all, look what they gave up!"

Every single one of these men, outwardly admired by their parishioners, had been ordained in the 40s and 50s.

[Piers-the-Ploughman]

Excellent, thank you for posting.
I first saw Fr Mankowski's byline with First Things years ago. He wrote some hilarious parodies of NewChurch.

[cielo]

CS, Thanks for posting the article. It's important commentary.

[Maximilian]

This is a really outstanding analysis! This priest obviously knows the inner workings of chanceries, seminaries, etc. I remember his brilliant piece from a couple of years back in which he analyzed the "lames" who currently run the Church. I thought he hit the nail on the head precisely.

Recently I've been thinking about the current use of the word "gay" by today's teenagers to mean "lame," "pathetic," "weak." It seems that the current crisis in the Church is a "gay" crisis in more ways than one, both literally and figuratively.

[RobbyS]

I believe the sexual abuse crisis represents no isolated phenomenon and no new failure, but rather illustrates a state of slowly worsening clerical and episcopal corruption with its roots well back into the 1940s. Its principal tributaries include

1. a critical mass of morally depraved and psychologically defective clergymen who entered the service of Church seeking emoluments and advantages unrelated to her spiritual mission, in addition to 2. leaders constitutionally unsuited to the exercise of the virtues of truthfulness and fortitude.

Right! Contrary to some people's thinking, it did not begin with Vatican II.

[Askel5]

Outstanding. Thanks.

[NDHoosier]

Two salient points to this reply - also "truth in advertising". (1) I am a former Roman Catholic who converted to Eastern Orthodoxy (2) I am a former Roman Catholic seminarian. (1991-1993)

The Eastern Orthodox (with the exception of the Orthodox Church in America) refuses to ordain celibate diocesan priests. Either you must be married or a monk. Either state helps keep a man grounded in reality. I have yet to meet an Eastern Orthodox priest who had a taste for material things that I saw in RC priests. I saw many, many RC priests who suffered from "playboy priest syndrome" - the excessive materialism described in the article posted. I can remember how repulsed I was when I saw my RC bishop wearing French cuffs with expensive cufflinks.

The seminaries are indeed as bad as advertised. They're now nothing more than gay priest factories. They were 10 years ago, and "it ain't gotten no better".

This isn't to bash - it's just that I've found the differences between RC and Orthodox clergy striking, to say the least.

[netmilsmom]

>>I am here sketching only the best-case scenario, where the bishop's adventures were brief, without issue, and twenty years in his past. In cases where the man continues his sexual exploits as a bishop, he is of course wholly compromised and the blackmail proportionately disastrous. <<

Welcome to Cleveland!
Could you put me on your ping list as well?

[dangus]

I agree entirely.

[SuziQ]

An excellent article! I'll have to send it to my priest b-i-l, who has been saying many of the same things for the last couple of years!

[narses]

Ping!