#475:Sex Abuse—From Denial to Action

In various ways, people are in denial of what it will take to finally solve the sex abuse crisis.

The Vatican Summit on Sex Abuse

Everyone wants to end the Catholic Church’s sex abuse crisis once and for all.  We want abusers found and punished, we want officials who cover up held accountable, and we want concrete actions to prevent future of abuse.

But reactions to the recent Vatican summit have shown that many people are still in denial of the true nature, scope, complexity, and depth of the problem.  These denials take several forms, but they all have one thing in common: they erect barriers to action, and impede the end of the crisis.

So it becomes important to name and denounce each of these denials, for until they end the crisis will persist.

Denial #1: “We don’t have this problem.” From the start, the main focus of the Vatican summit was announced to be, not problem solving, but education.  Why?  Because many bishops remain in denial that there is a problem at all.  Especially in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, bishops have typically thought of—and dismissed-- sex abuse as “an American problem” or “a Western problem.” The summit aimed to correct this by informing the bishops of the cases emerging in their own regions and by the testimony of victims. 

We can only hope that bishops went home persuaded that they can no longer avoid addressing the problem in their own dioceses.

Denial #2. This is no time for Education, only Action.  The second denial comes from those who saw the summit wasting time and not proposing concrete solutions.  It’s easy to understand their disappointment, especially among the victims, who understand the problem best because they experienced it first-hand.  But they may overlook the global nature of the institution that must address this problem.

Clergy abuse has occurred on five continents and in many forms: child abuse, abuse of seminarians, abuse of young adults, abuse of women, and (especially in Africa) abuse of women religious.  Abuse will not end with one simple plan--both the problem and the church are too complex for that.  It does not help to persist in denying that many of those Bishops are themselves in denial and must first of all be persuaded to pay attention. Getting the world’s bishops on board is a real action, a first step. 

Denial #3: The Gays are to blame. A third, related denial involves denying the need for multiple solutions.  Since abuse takes different forms in different locations, “one size fits all” will not work.  Seeking one quick fix can actually hinder real solutions—and lead to false fixes that leave real problems untouched.

For example, when an observer like George Weigel claims that “In the so called developed world, the plague seem to have largely involve the sexual abuse or exploitation of young men,” he is not just wrong: he also displays a denial of the real facts. In the US crisis, the main body of victims has, in fact, been minors-- children!- -who are most vulnerable to priestly abuse of power.  Denying this reality focuses our attention on secondary issues that will lead us to false fixes.

Specifically, Weigel and those who think like him want to pin the crisis on gay priests, and argue that the simple solution is better screening and more strictly practiced celibacy. They portray the crisis as an ethical breach by gay men wrongly admitted to the priesthood. 

But this denies two central facts.  First, pedophiles are generally disordered individuals attracted to children, not homosexuals attracted other man.  These are mostly two different populations. I know many good celibate priests who are gay, and scapegoating or stigmatizing them will solve nothing.

Second, gay priests who fail to maintain a celibate life break a church rule, just like heterosexual priests who have secret mistresses. Officials who prey on students or subordinates also commit an ethical breach by abusing their authority.  But pedophiles who prey on minors of either sex commit a crime.  Thus, while in other locations clergy sex abuse may be about violating church rules and moral teachings, in the U.S. has it has been especially about violating the law. 

And bishops who enabled this may also have violated the law (just this week, French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin was given a six-month suspended prison sentence for not going to authorities about the alleged abuse of minors by a priest).

Denying that the Church in the US and elsewhere has a problem with criminals in the clergy will only block real solutions.

Denial #4: This is mainly a problem of sexual immorality. The horrible history of bishops recycling abusers to new parishes – and thus enabling them to rape more kids– was caused precisely by bishops thinking this was about sin – a moral problem that confession, repentance, and penance would solve.  But no, that never worked, because the real problem was (1) an abuse of power by (2) pathologically disordered people.  The only solution was to strip such men of their priestly power, and (if and when treatment failed) isolate them from potential victims.

To deny this, and talk as if the abusers’ evil was about sexual immorality, prevents us from tackling the twin dangers of pathology and power.  This is not primarily about sinners who must repent; it is about criminals who must be stopped.

Denial #5:  The Pope can fix this right now.  The failure to discipline bishops who cover up abuse or simply mismanaged controlling the abusers has of course worsened the scandal.  And in some ways a cover-up is worse than the original abuses.  But both canon law and church structure give bishops a high degree of autonomy, even in relationship to the pope.  Many decry the slow speed of action from the top, and Pope Francis has probably deserved some criticism for being too slow to believe and to act on allegations against bishops.

But Andrew J. Bacevich offers another angle. Bacevich is Professor Emeritus of International Relations and History at the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, and  a retired US Army Colonel. He is also a life-long Catholic, and he recently observed that a realistic view of church structures suggests that its pace, while not up to many expectations, is nonetheless reasonable:  

Not without cause, critics have lambasted the Catholic Church (to which I belong) for being slow to address the epidemic of clergy sex abuse. Yet when it comes to acknowledging institutional failure and initiating remedial action, Rome moves with gazelle-like swiftness in comparison with the Pentagon. Pope Francis knows that he has a serious problem on his hands. In Washington, the defense secretary and the Joint Chiefs of Staff either haven’t noticed or don’t care that the military…has achieved a less than stellar record.

Thinking Francis can end the crisis by papal fiat only obscures the need for a systematic reform of procedures and policies that can be led by Francis but must be supported by the world’s bishops-- procedures and policies that will probably vary by region depending on the shape of abuse there and local legal systems.

Denial #6: Band-aids will do.  Thinking such reforms will prevent future trouble is yet another barrier to enabling ending the crisis, because it denies the underlying causes.  Dealing with those requires solid answers to two questions: (1) how did this horror happen in the first place?  And (2) why did it continue on unreported and unsolved for so long?

 Francis himself has suggested the answer to number (2) by saying that there will be no solution to this crisis as long as clericalism exists: “To say "no" to abuse is to say an emphatic "no" to all forms of clericalism.” (see CrossCurrents #471 “Ending Clericalism, Our ‘Original Sin’”).

And I have argued that answering number (1) requires us to examine an entire range of dysfunctions within the Church: our attitudes toward sexuality in general, our treatment of people who violate sexual rules, our pressures on people who do not fit the norms, our seminary cultures, our demand that all priests must be celibate, our myth about the asexual “purity” of ordained men, our acceptance of the clericalism, our moralization of all things sexual and our blindness about pathological disorders (see CrossCurrents #472 “How Could This Horror Happen?”).

Failure to acknowledge these two underlying issues and failure to address them will leave our Church vulnerable to future abuses of pathology and power. This crisis is not something that simply emerged in the last generation or two; the potential for this crisis has been baked into church structures for a century or more.  Unless we get to the bottom of that, we will not be finally clear of the crisis.

It is all too easy to fall into denying just how complex and profound this crisis is.  But we must fight against all such denials, for each denial blocks our path to get the Church right again.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 201

#472: How Could This Horror Happen?

The sex abuse crisis has flared up more than ever with the Pennsylvania grand jury, the Cardinal McCarrick case, calls for bishops to resign, and allegations against Vatican officials including the last three popes. Clearly there is no easy fix--if any fix at all.  But any fix must answer three major questions.

Current investigations focus first on (1) What has happened? and it will be urgent to follow with (2) How can it be stopped? But any solutions depend on good answers to (3) Why did it happen? beacause if we misunderstand why this crisis could arise we may apply false solutions that fix nothing--or make matters worse.

The problem comes in two parts: priestly abuse itself and the hierarchical cover-up.  In my last blog (CrossCurrents #471) I argued that the cover-up was largely the result of the Church’s culture of clericalism - - and even my most chronic critic, in his comment on the blog, agreed that “clericalism is pernicious insofar as facilitates cover-ups.”

But he then goes on to claim that I ignored the “rainbow-hued elephant in the room” responsible for the crisis itself--namely, “distorted liberalism and rampant and homosexuality in the clergy.” He claims that, to put out the flames of scandal, we must “identify and name the arsonists responsible.” I agree with the general idea, but I believe he has named the wrong “arsonists.” Indeed, I have concluded that, while clericalism is the clear cause of cover-ups, the causes of the abuse itself are much more complex than a single set of villains.  And if we get this wrong any solutions will be false solutions.

Let me survey what I believe are the main factors contributing to the horrific assaults of too many priests and even bishops on children.

First, I must warn that these factors are generally not of recent vintage.  The Pennsylvania cases go back 70 years, and I am personally familiar with cases from the 1940s.  And data on child abuse indicates many abusers were themselves abused as children, which pushes the crisis back into the early 20^th century or further.  For all we know, given the secrecy attending clerical cover-ups, priestly sex abuse of children goes back centuries. Any simpleminded targeting of the “distorted liberalism” of the last 50 years is much too recent to explain priests committing abuse before, say, Pearl Harbor.

And scapegoating homosexuality is a similar dead end.  As Benedict XVI pronounced in 2008, the abuse of children and homosexuality “are different things,” not to be confused.  Homosexuals are attracted to same sex partners, while pedophiles are not attracted to adults of either sex.  The Pennsylvania cases included both male and female victims.  What they have in common was not their gender but their age: they were minors, children. 

So to really understand why this happened we must begin with the basic fact: for generations, some priests have been attracted to sexually assaulting children.  Clericalism allowed them to get away with it, but that does not explain what caused it.

So we face the question: “How could such horror occur in the first place?”

For me, the answer is a complex “perfect storm” of interlocking factors.

I begin with original sin.  We’re all morally frail, unable to do the good consistently.  And since the 5th century Catholic tradition has included the Augustinian notion of “concupiscence”--the idea that we are particularly vulnerable to our sexual impulses.  Thus everyone struggles with desire, and social structures and mores have often been designed to help people control these desires.  Sometimes these were rigid or even cruel, such as the stigma on premarital pregnancy that aimed to limit premarital sex but ended by traumatizing millions of young women with shame, scandal, secrecy, and even imprisonment.

Of course, in any population, people’s desires vary.  If our desires conform to cultural norms, controlling behavior becomes relatively easy: millions of young Catholic men and women, for example, dealt with their desires by getting married.

But in any population, some have more difficulty, since their desires did not fit them norm.  This includes both those with same-sex attraction and those attracted to children of either or both sexes.  These are not the same category of people, but both groups face the same challenge: what to do with my desire?

For some, of course, marriage was a tempting solution simply because it conformed.  But this often backfired: in the case of pedophiles, law enforcement officials report that a high percentage of child abuse is incestuous.  In these cases, pedophiles did not avoid children; they simply produced their own victims.

But for Catholic males, the Church offered both groups another, near-perfect refuge: the celibate priesthood. Priestly celibacy offered a socially acceptable form of sexual nonconformity.  One’s out-of-the-norm attractions did not really matter if one practiced celibacy.

Today the Catholic Church teaches it is not wrong to be homosexual, but that homosexuals must live celibate lives.  Ask yourself: where in our culture is that possible? To this day I recall the priest who confided that he rejected a theatrical career in New York for fear of his own desires.  For him, priesthood and celibacy was much the safer option.  And for many gay young Catholics, seminary brought an end to all the family peer pressure to “find a good Catholic girl” and settle down.

Over 40 years I have observed the result: the percentage of gay men among priests is higher than in the general population.  Nearly all of these men have been good priests leading celibate lives--just as the Church teaches they should.  Indeed, given that teaching, I am forced to ask: where else in the Church do they belong, if not in the celibate priesthood?

But gay priests are not “the arsonists” here.

Abuse expert Jason Berry has studied the crisis for more than 30 years, and he identifies the problem in another group: “psycho-sexually immature” men who find the seminary and the priesthood a “safe” refuge from ordinary norms, only to enter parishes and schools that give them not only contact with children but almost absolute power over them.

We may indeed ask if seminaries were incubators of abuse, since many seminary classes had unusually high numbers of such disordered man.  In Boston it appears that nearly 10% percent of priests committed child abuse 1950-2000—that is more than TWICE the percentage of pedophiles in the male population in general (believed to be less than 5%).  In other words, it’s possible that a sexually repressed culture, combined with the refuge of celibacy, funneled high concentrations of these distorted individuals into seminaries. 

Until we have good data on the history of such seminaries, we do not know the impact of concentrating so many disordered men under one roof for long years of study, often isolated from outside normal family life. No doubt the rule of celibacy provided a protective cover, while traditional teachings on sex as a sacred/taboo subject drove any dysfunctions deeper under cover.

What we do know, from the data available, is that the population of priests entering parish work at least from the 1940s was a disproportionately disordered population, and that a well-established culture of clericalism placed these men in positions of respect, authority, and power with no effective oversight.  Laypeople were taught to obey priests at all costs, were taught that priests were better than the rest of us, and indeed were taught-- another consequence of our sex-as-taboo tradition--that priests were nonsexual beings, above the struggle of desire and self control.  I still recall how shocked I was, perhaps at 12, to learn that priests actually went to confession!

Now we know that the widespread presumption of priestly “purity” combined with real power to create a recipe for disaster.  In hindsight, we see a highly concentrated population of disordered men who could commit atrocities with impunity.

The case history shows that fear kept most children silent, that the myth of pure priestly asexuality ensured that no one believed those who spoke up, and that clericalism ensured the cover-up of the few cases where children were believed.

We must add another factor: the Catholic moralization of all things sexual.  This ensured that, when abusers were exposed, their superiors (usually bishops) assumed the problem was simply sinful behavior.  This meant the solution was equally simple: confession and penance.  And after completing penance (sometimes including rehab), priests were routinely reinstated on the assumption that they had repented their sins.  The result was the notorious pattern of the secret recycling of abusers that enabled them to rape more children.

One may argue that those superiors were simply ignorant of the pathology that rendered penance an empty remedy. But there were enough cases of abusers who repeatedly abused for years, in multiple parishes, that one must ask: did such superiors possess no common sense at all?  Did it not eventually occur to them that penance was not working---that a disordered psyche was not the same as moral failure?  Did they never realize that they were enabling the rape of children?

It is possible, of course, that there’s some overlapping in the categories of priests I have described.  It is possible, for example, that some gay priests abused children, just as some heterosexual priests may have abused children.  But there is no evidence that gay priests represent a statistical threat to the well being of children.  Do some gay priests violate their celibacy?  Probably they do, just as there is a long history of heterosexual priests who had mistresses.  But when we try to analyze the cause of disordered behavior, it makes sense to begin with disordered people.  And screening out gay men from the priesthood, as some alarmists demand, would do nothing to address the problem if such screening still allows the “psycho-sexually immature” to enter seminary life.

If my description of the factors contributing to the sex abuse crisis is at all accurate, then we must acknowledge the painful truth: our entire system of Catholic life--our attitudes toward sexuality in general, our treatment of people who violate sexual rules, our pressures on people who do not fit the norms, our seminary cultures, our demand that all priests must be celibate, our myth about the asexual “purity” of ordained men, our acceptance of the clericalism, our moralization of all things sexual and our blindness about pathological disorders--all these things combined in what I am calling a perfect storm.

Thus the idea that simply screening gay men out of the priesthood will solve the problem is wrong-headed: typically gay men are not disordered by attraction to children; they can make perfectly good priests as long as they obey the same rules as heterosexual priests must obey.

It is time we accept that in any population there will be other men--men who are not capable of either normal married life or the life of the celibate priest.  And we must begin to think about how such men will live in our communities without endangering our children. The priesthood cannot be their refuge. So then what?

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2018

#471: Ending Clericalism, Our “Original Sin”

  [Pope Francis’ letter on the Sex Abuse crisis

 has received praise and criticism. 

But one idea deserves deep reflection by all of us.]

The recent outbreak of the sex abuse crisis (Pennsylvania, Australia, Cardinal McCarrick, etc.) prove that any notion that this nightmare was over was just wishful thinking.

Pope Francis’ letter expressed remorse for the church’s failures and empathy for the victims. He clearly is appalled by both the depravity of individual clergy and the equally scandalous (if not worse) cover-up by bishops.

But critics argue we need real change, not just talk. Surface reforms won’t do. We must identify and uproot the underlying causes. This crisis is about failed leadership and governance. We know “This is no way to run the Church,” and we need a different way.

So we must first understand why it runs the way it does.

I think Pope Francis offers the best answer: “To say "no" to abuse is to say an emphatic "no" to all forms of clericalism.” I could not agree more—but to end clericalism we must understand what it is, where it came from, and why it is so dangerous.

Hierarchy vs. Clericalism. People may think the problem is the church’s top-down structure. I would argue, instead, that the problem is not the structure but the culture than drives it.

The Catholic Church’s hierarchy is hardly unique. Over centuries, the church’s hierarchy provided the model for most major organizations in Western culture. Even democratic institutions, like the US government, are heavily hierarchical. The President may be elected, but the entire executive branch is a complex ranking of appointed superiors and subordinates. Hierarchy permeates contemporary society--it has become the dominant way to organize any large institution. The Church is simply the world’s largest and oldest hierarchy--it is, in a word, the mother of all hierarchies.

Lord Acton, referring to Pius IX’s papacy, warned “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But not all hierarchies are corrupt, because they place checks on power.

The American military is hierarchical, but its Commander-in-Chief is a civilian. The executive branch is a hierarchy, but it is checked by the legislative and the judiciary. Corporate hierarchies may be checked by forces either within the organization (unions, directors, shareholders) or outside it (e.g., regulatory agencies, legislation).

The common denominator in all these: while hierarchies place people in positions of authority, those people remain accountable to someone else for the way they use their authority. Accountability is what keeps those in authority honest, by ensuring that, if authority is abused, there will be consequences for the abuser.

What sets Catholic governance apart is not its hierarchical structure, but the absence of accountability.

We should ask:  Why is there no accountability?

Because, while the basic structure of Catholic hierarchy has remained relatively intact for centuries, an evolving Inner Culture was permanently altering the roles of both clergy and lay people. This inner culture, Clericalism, is the “original sin” that has made our present crisis inevitable. The Culture of Clericalism has prevented the accountability we needed to keep hierarchy honest.

In its broadest sense, Clericalism evolved in two dimensions: (1) The clergy became a privileged class, and (2) Lay people became totally dependent. In a word, clergy became the Church’s parents, and laity its children.

 A Privileged Clergy. Over centuries, the top-down hierarchical structure was accompanied by privileges not available to laity. Pastors began functioning as proprietors entitled to income and even to property, as though the parish belonged to them. Priests eventually acquired titles, uniforms, incomes, land, exemptions from ordinary public duties (from jury duty to paying traffic fines), rights and even “special graces” denied to lay people.

The cumulative effect was a caste system: the priesthood became an entitled, elite club, which tended to operate by its own (often secret) rules, invisible to outside view and immune to outside accountability. The Church’s inner culture developed a chronic double standard--one for clergy, and the other for laity.

Modern reforms leading up to Vatican II (1962-1965) stripped away many privileges, but the double standard itself remained. The long history of clergy being above accountability to anyone “below” them continued—and so did the history of the clericalism’s gravest abuse: the abuse of power.

Authority without accountability becomes dangerous. Once I am in a position of authority, I may be tempted to make it my shield. Instead of using authority to serve the Church, I abuse it, controlling whoever challenges my will, demanding obedience and loyalty. People simply follow my orders. So my human weaknesses are hidden. My arrogance goes unchallenged, my dishonesty goes unchecked, my misdeeds go undiscovered. I remain a flawed human being, but authority covers up my flaws like a bullet-proof vest, so I begin to seem invulnerable, morally superior to ordinary humans, hardly human at all. The notion that I stand in Jesus’ place cements my super-human status.

It takes rare moral strength to resist such temptation consistently. Among US Catholic immigrants, the priesthood represented the only privileged state available to most Catholics. The priesthood became such a powerful vehicle of personal advancement—the “Cadillac among professions,” once diocesan vocations director called it—that many priests retired wealthy, with legacies and seashore estates. And all priests faced the diabolical temptation to wield their authority to acquire virtual moral immunity. Too many men succumbed to that temptation. Pretending to be angels, they fell.

And a dependent laity. The deep cultural roots of clericalism have a lay side as well. At the same time that priestly privileges were mounting (from the 4th century on), the Roman Empire was crumbling. Schools closed, civil government yielded to Church control. Eventually the laity were nearly all illiterate and powerless, and it naturally became common to regard lay people as helpless children. (James Carroll has termed this the “infantalization” of Catholicism).

Monasteries, cathedral schools, and even universities in this period were open only to those seeking ordination. The parish priest was thus the only literate member of most parishes. Holy Orders took the place of Baptism as the prime sacrament of vocation, and the priest became the central figure in church life. He was shepherd to his flock, “father” to his family, making the parent-child relationship the controlling metaphor for all clergy-lay relations. The Church’s parents could do as they liked, and the children—the laity—were kept “innocent” by being kept ignorant.

Modern life, of course, eventually rendered this metaphor obsolete. By late 20^th century, American Catholics were as educated, independent, capable and sophisticated as clergy. Yet this obsolete parent-child relationship persisted—and it persisted despite official Church teachings against it, teachings that called for its end.

Vatican II proclaimed the need for a holy, mature, adult laity. In 1985, the US bishops spoke of the laity’s “Call to Adulthood” in the church. Yet many priests still defined clergy-lay relations by the same old cynical rhyme: “We hatch, match, and dispatch; they pray, pay, and obey.” Meanwhile most laity accepted a passive role; those asserting themselves often met resistance, anger, rejection. At best, relations progressed from “parent-child” to “parent-adolescent”—rebellious hostility vs. threatened defensiveness.

Why, despite such calls for a new relationship, has the parent-child model persisted?

My answer: many clergy have clung to the obsolete model precisely to protect their privileged state. An empowered laity raises the threat of accountability—and many clergy, horrified to think of answering to their own people, cling to their role as the Church’s parents, wielding their authority like a personal shield. So, in the present crisis, Church officials opposed laws requiring clergy to report abuse, rationalizing their elitist arrogance with a perverse logic that erupted naturally from the inner culture of clericalism like lava oozing from split rock:

“We clergy (the parents) know clergy sex abuse exists. But the laity (the children) could never handle discovering this, it would destroy their child-like faith, and that would be a scandal. It is our duty to protect them from this truth, so we must take any measure to hide it from them.”

In short, the Church’s culture of clericalism has perverted its hierarchical structure, keeping clergy immune from accountability—and that immunity has now led to disaster on two levels: the sexual abuse by priests, and gross abuse of power by bishops.

What can be done about it? The short answer is: we must institutionalize accountability. And since the hierarchy itself is not about to disappear, the question becomes: how to institutionalize accountability within hierarchy?

Replacing Clericalism.  One thing is clear: operating without accountability is no longer an option. Henceforth the secular society—media, courts, legislatures—will police the Church if the Church cannot police itself. But any solution within the Church will require broad support. Clergy and laity must act to replace clericalism with a new way of running the Church. 1000 Catholics have already petitioned all US bishops to resign as a collective symbol of their willingness to act.

Structural change will be needed: We need effective ways of ensuring that everyone in authority answers to someone else. One priest has already proposed a “Council for Clergy Accountability” with lay, religious, and clergy members.

But structural changes will not be enough. For years police, DAs, and courts possessed the structures to hold the Church accountable, but failed to employ them out of deference—that is, because of clericalism.

Bad leaders can pervert the best structures, but good leaders can improve even bad structures. That means getting leaders whose character, training, support systems, and operating culture make them effective at empowering others instead of controlling them.

This means a variety of cultural reforms: in seminary formation, in the professionalism of clergy and lay leaders, in the Church’s work environment. It also means serious formation that empowers lay people to take on their new responsibility to keep clergy accountable.

Calling out priests for acting privileged was once unthinkable. NOW it is essential, and that means lay people must step up to the plate and do the calling out.

This happens in very mundane ways. Example: a parish council is supposed to be an advisory body. But too often pastors ask council members for individual opinions, rather than asking the council body for its advice. That requires decision-making: do we advise this or that? And if the council decides by consensus, with the pastor present, that can check his authority by giving everyone a veto. This is how accountability can work on the local level.

I’ve worked with pastors whose councils use consensus, and with dozens of other local initiatives that already show us better ways of running the church together: A pastor who invites his staff to evaluate his performance; clergy who consult parishioners to develop priorities for the future; youth ministers, religious education directors and worship coordinators who consult volunteers to keep them involved and invested—all are part of the solution. They model authentic authority, accountable leadership, and transparent operations.

Such “best practices” have already transformed Church leadership in some places, and they need to be more widely appreciated and nurtured. 

These initiatives remind us that Vatican II offered an alternative to Clericalism in the form of Conciliarism—the ancient (but underused!) church culture that brings people together for consultation “as much as possible” at all levels whenever decisions are needed or action is to be taken.

Vatican II was itself an example of conciliarism in action. Many effective parish staffs and parish councils I consult with model conciliarism. But too many priests and bishops still give lip service to conciliarism, resisting efforts to expand it while clutching all control behind the scenes.

But lip service for conciliarism is no longer acceptable. If Vatican II is the work of the Spirit, then its intentions are the Will of God—and God’s Will must be done.

Acting to end clericalism is doing God’s work.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2018

#429: 10 "Francis Effects"

It’s become commonplace to talk about “the Francis Effect.” Now, two years after Pope Francis’ election, we can see that does not mean one thing, but many things. Here are the key examples.

The First Papal Selfie

1. Rebranding the Roman Catholic Church. After 25 years of declines, 15 years of scandal and closings, and more than a decade of culture wars, the Catholic Church wore the brand of a tired, mismanaged, even corrupt institution ineffectively pursuing a stubborn holding action against modern life. Francis almost immediately injected fresh air into the Church’s wheezing body with his vitality,  humor, and easy manner—and sent the clear message that the Church would return to its core mission of serving the world with good news and love. This injection has been a booster shot for millions of discouraged Catholics, who once again have started feeling pride in their Church.

2. Reversing Catholicism’s Bad PR.  Anyone old enough to remember Vatican Council II (1962-1965) remembers clearly the euphoria that surrounded the Council and its activities.  This was partly, of course, a “John Effect” created by the popular personality of Pope John XXIII, but it was also due to the sense that the Catholic Church was finally responding to the challenges of modern life after centuries of defensive stasis.  The upshot was the most positive media and public attention the Catholic Church had received in more than a century, not only from Catholics but from other Christians, other religions, and even the secular world at large. 

It is safe to say that, after 1968, that favorable public image began to cool and weaken, reaching its lowest point in the last 10 years. This resulted from a combination of factors, including the gap between Benedict XVI’s brilliant ideas and his clumsy public communication skills.

Francis has reversed all that, as his own wildly popular public image has rubbed off on the institution as a whole.  We Catholics are enjoying the best PR of the last 50 years--at the very moment that we observe the 50^th anniversary of Vatican II!

3. Reviving the Ghost (spirit) of John XXIII.  One of the casualties of the long reign of John-Paul II was that an entire generation grew up in his shadow.  They were “John-Paul II

John  XXIII

Catholics,” and in too many cases his giant public presence overshadowed both the Council that had preceded and produced him and the pope that made it possible.  None of the papacies we have seen since 1965 could be imagined before that, and all of John’s successors depended on and benefited from his vision of the Church’s future.  Francis has made sure we do not forget John’s impact.  That is precisely why, when it came time to canonize John-Paul II, Francis ensured that John XXIII was canonized on the same day.

4. Retrieving the Legacy of Vatican II.  Not a few Catholic leaders and commentators in the last 20 years arrived at the conclusion that the legacy of Vatican II was either accomplished, or at least on a settled path that could not change.  But Francis has clearly expressed the view that much of the Council’s vision has been left unfulfilled, and has personally described himself as “humble enough and ambitious enough to try to do something about that.” In that sense, his agenda as pope leapfrogs back over his predecessors Benedict and John-Paul II to the papacies of Paul VI and John XXIII.   

These were the popes who initiated and completed Vatican II.  These were the popes who set the Church on the course-correction called “renewal”--a course correction of historic proportions.  Francis has staked his papacy on recovering the momentum of that time.

5. Dethroning Clericalism.  This is hardly a case of the emperor’s new clothes, since the Catholic Church has worn imperial trappings for more than 15 centuries.  And the corrupting impact of human nature on the Catholic hierarchy has been largely ignored and evaded for generations.  Now Francis, in a pioneering move, has identified the symptoms that corrupt the vocations of ordained man in too many places within the Church.

Francis has made it clear that, after centuries of treating laypeople as helpless children and the ordained as faultless parents, too many clerics pursue the wrong motives for personal benefit, acquire habits that impede their service, and set themselves apart from the rest of the body of Christ.  He has even called himself “anticlerical” in the face of clericalism. Images of the many glum faces among his Vatican staff during his highly critical Christmas message reflect the wider alarm felt by Bishops and priests in many lands, who now realize that their ambitions of churchly glory have been exposed.

6. Elevating Humility.  From his very first papal moment on the balcony at Saint Peter’s, Francis has consistently eschewed any place of honor, privilege, imperial trappings, rank, or luxury.  In the true Jesuit spirit of poverty, he has refused to place himself apart from or above others, and has thus ironically elevated humility to the rank of the highest leadership gift.  His very unwillingness to pretend superiority has already made him stand out, not only among much of the hierarchy, but even among some of his predecessors.  That humility now becomes a model, not just for the hierarchy, but for all of us in all of our roles as we serve others in family, in workplace, and in community.  Thus Francis becomes the epitome of leadership not by command but by example. In the process, his humility has made him arguably the world’s most loved, admired, and respected officeholder.

7. Restoring Mercy.  It was at the opening address of Vatican II that John XXIII rejected condemnations and harsh execution of laws and rules as the norm for pastoral leadership in the Church.  Instead, he said we must replace such things with the “medicine of mercy.” Somehow someplace along the line, this message got lost.  Francis has brought it roaring back to life, making it one of the hallmarks of his papacy.  He never ceases to speak of the mercy of God, and makes it clear that this enjoins the rest of us to practice mercy as well.  For Catholics who grew up before 1960, John’s focus was a welcome relief from the notion that Catholicism was merely a set of rules to be followed.  In this day and age, Francis’s insistence on mercy brings warmth back to an institution that, in recent years, too many had found cold-hearted.

8. Promoting the Poor.  It goes without saying that the Gospel message, and the mission of the Catholic Church, has always given a central place to the poor of the world.  But it also goes without saying that the Catholic Church, as the world’s largest organization, has not always kept that priority in focus.  We now live in a world of unprecedented wealth, but also of unprecedented inequality.  Francis has made it clear that the desires for peace, prosperity, and a sustainable world will all be impossible if the problem of inequality is not solved.

This focuses our attention on the Catholic social teaching which calls for the redistribution of wealth when inequality reaches harmful dimensions. Thus Francis implies a great challenge for us and the citizens of other wealthy nations: how can inequality be reduced?  How can we redistribute the wealth? 

For Americans, of course, imbedded in the world’s largest capitalist society, this is complicated by the fact that we face not only the inequality between the wealthy and poor nations, but also the inequality between the 1% and the 99% in our own land.  In this sense, Francis has become an especially prophetic leader for Americans.  This will make his pending address to the U.S. Congress in the fall 2015 that much more intriguing and challenging.

9. “Cooling” the Culture Wars.  Catholic leaders in America in the last 10 to 15 years have often been characterized by their preoccupation with issues now identified as the “culture wars”: abortion, contraception, artificial insemination, euthanasia, same sex marriage, gay rights, sex education, etc.  Francis has been quite blunt on this matter. He’s not criticizing or questioning traditional Catholic teachings on any of these issues, but he is convinced that the culture wars made two mistakes. First, their preoccupation on these issues distracts them and Catholics in general from our mission to evangelize with mercy and joy.  Second, they distort Catholic tradition:

The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.

Francis has announced in no uncertain terms that he does not want culture warriors nominated to be future bishops, since he believes that the culture wars represent a distortion of our core priorities as Catholics.

10. The “Cooling” of the Papacy.  The first two years of the Francis papacy have been not only dynamic but remarkably congenial. Even when uttering controversial, off the cuff remarks, this pope tends to be lighthearted, quick to smile, easy to approach, comfortable in his own skin.  The image of Pope Francis beaming into the camera on the cover of

Rolling Stone magazine now overshadows the radiant, even regal image of “John Paul Superstar” on the cover of Time magazine. 

Francis lacks both the looks and the charisma of John-Paul II but, like John XXIII, he projects a down-to-earth, human appeal that people find nearly irresistible.  It was one thing to attract 3 million youth to the World Youth Day in Rio (his two predecessors had performed similar feats). 

Listening to a reporter's question on the plane from Rio

But the 90 minute interview on the plane back to Rome showed a man willing to walk back to the press seats and mingle with the media in a familiar, ingratiating way.  And his decision to wade into Rio’s worst slum on foot to greet poor residents showed a fearless love of people that is making him the most beloved pope in many people’s memories.

So the papacy itself has suddenly become cool! Two short years ago, few Catholics would have believed that this could happen, and none of us believed it could happen so fast. 

Francis himself speaks as though his papacy will probably be a short one.  But the accomplishments of his first two years are already enough to mark him as a historic figure--and a gift from God.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2015