#294: Timidity and Transparency

EXCERPT:
When Boston Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham charged local Catholic officials with “moral timidity,” she named the difficulty many Catholics have had with their own leadership in recent years.

Abraham was commenting on the case of a child removed from a parochial school because her parents are lesbians. The principal made the initial decision, which was supported by her pastor. The Archdiocese of Boston then apologized to the family and offered to place the child in another school. This triggered criticism by some insisting the Church should stand up for its teaching against homosexuality, and citing Denver Bishop Charles J. Chaput, whose policy is to refuse enrollment to any child with homosexual parents. Boston’s Archbishop Sean O’Malley subsequently blogged in support of everyone at once, saying (1) the Church welcomes all and discriminates against none, (2) the pastor had only acted in the child’s best interest, and (3) the Denver policy would be given serious consideration.

We often find conservative leaders like Archbishop Chaput behaving as if they (and only they) occupy the high moral ground, with the courage to stand firm on right values while others yield to the pressures of a secularized society.

Sometimes this leads to unseemly (not to say un-Christian) displays of self-inflating presumption. Case in point: C.J. Doyle, head of Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, questioned why couples whose lives are at odds with Church teaching would want to send their children to Catholic schools – as if his own inability to understand was somehow the parents’ problem to solve!

But such self-righteous people, with their knee-jerk instinct to withdraw Catholicism’s benefits from those less worthy, often gain undeserved traction by presenting themselves as the courageous ones, willing to defend good against evil. Perhaps some militant conservatives see us progressive Catholics lacking the courage of our convictions, and this fuels their own self-serving posture as faith’s lone heroes.

I believe it’s time to say the emperor has no clothes. Such self-righteous posturing is cowardly, not courageous. And such posturing threatens to corrupt Catholicism’s message to the world.
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As early as 1968, Joseph Ratzinger fled his teaching post when confronted by student protests. His flight has become symbolic of a whole new generation of post-conciliar bishops, clergy, and church leaders who, confronted by values and practices they cannot accept, withdraw from the encounter even while proclaiming themselves firm defenders of the faith. But however gifted they may be at articulating their faith and values, they are preaching to the choir – a choir chanting over increasingly empty pews. The rest of us–especially the increasingly alienated generation of post-boomer Catholics–see this façade of courageous convictions for what is: a return to the fortress, pulling up the drawbridge and refilling the moat.

In these scandal-ridden times, Catholics sick of cover-up welcome their leaders’ promise of greater transparency. But the transparency we seek is about honesty and accountability, not this: an all-too transparent attempt to cloak one’s cowardly fear of modernity in the guise of righteous convictions, and to rationalize even discriminatory practices with the lame excuse of “protecting the innocent.” At best such claims provoke deserved skepticism; at worst, they render the hierarchy a laughingstock.

#293: Beneath The Headlines AND The Trends

EXCERPT:
As much as I like and recommend John Allen, Jr.’s new book The Future Church: How Ten Trends Are Revolutionizing The Catholic Church, I have a serious problem with one section—and it’s taken me a few weeks to figure out what it is.

Among the trends Allen analyzes is the rise of what he calls "evangelical Catholicism," and his analysis includes the impact of this rise on "liberal Catholicism."...

Reading and reflecting on Allen's account, I've had three distinct reactions.
The first is that I instantly recognize both "camps." …
My second reaction is that I belong to neither camp -- and I know many Catholics who keep me in good company...

All this leads to my third reaction: something is missing from Allen's analysis...As early as 1987, in a Miami Herald op-ed piece marking John-Paul II’s second US visit, I described a third “camp” of Catholics—Catholics who reject both the evangelicals and the liberals. We think evangelicals who “build a fence around the faith” are repeating the failed “quarantine” strategy of Vatican I, which was already rejected at Vatican II and replaced by the Council’s “inoculation” strategy of engagement with the modern world. We see liberals as preoccupied with internal matters, when engaging the modern world was Vatican II’s priority.

To us, it seems both those camps have lost faith with the long-term effectiveness of Vatican II: one camp fears engagement has gone too far, the other feels reform has not gone far enough. My trouble with Allen’s two-camp account was that it leaves out the very people who remain convinced of the Council’s continued relevance.

I suspect the key to my trouble lies in Allen’s focus on the idea of "trends."...The fact is there is a movement deeper than trends. Catholicism, so ancient and vast, mostly tends to move in history much like the slow, barely noticeable but inexorable pace of the ancient vast tectonic plates drifting beneath in the earth's surface. But just like those plates, Catholicism occasionally (even without warning) suddenly shifts, causing abrupt changes in faith’s landscape. Such "Churchquakes" give way to pressures that have built for centuries, and their aftershocks last centuries as well.

Vatican II was just such a seismic spasm, as both John XXII and Paul VI acknowledged by calling it Catholicism's "Second Pentecost." If Pentecost marked the Church’s birth, they dubbed Vatican II its rebirth.

Clearly Allen's focus is deeper than headlines--but his frame of reference is the 21st century, and especially its first half. The book is a futurist exercise, full of predictions that get too risky if projected too far out in time. So Allen's real focus lies between the headlines that skim today’s surface currents, on the one hand, and the centuries-long dynamics that give global (and Catholic) history its deep structure--a structure characterized, not by trends, but by the alternation between glacially-slow drifting and sudden, seismic shifting.

If I am right, the seismic shift of Vatican II lies too deep for Allen's analysis...

#292: Hans Kung's Call to Arms

EXCERPT:

By now Kung and Benedict have become iconic figures representing two distinct "takes" on Catholic life. Depending on your viewpoint, Kűng embodies either the courageous voice of authentic Catholic renewal from Vatican II, or the arrogant, even spiteful dissenter who would make a better Protestant. Similarly, Benedict XVI personifies either the heroic defender of authentic Catholic identity, or the backsliding, lapsed conciliarist bent on propping up a discredited pre-conciliar version of Catholicism.

Inevitably, then, either man's public pronouncements provoke both fervid praise and heated criticism. Kűng’s latest piece is no exception.

I have no particular interest in defending Kűng, but since he is calling on bishops to act, it makes sense to assess what such action might mean.

My own opinion: Kűng’s critique of Benedict's papacy includes some powerful truth, some personal attack, and some debatable history. But the letter’s importance depends less on these and more on his practical proposals, where he urges the Bishop to six actions. While much of Kűng’s letter earns the controversy he is provoking, a lot of the commentary strikes me as distracting us from these proposals. For once, it may be helpful to consider them out of context:

1. “Do not keep silent.” Does anyone doubt that the hierarchy’s age-old habit of silence has done more harm than good? Even when Bishops keep horrifying secrets only to “protect the Church from scandal,” they only cause worse scandal. Perhaps Kűng’s advice will fall on deaf ears if no bishops agree with him. But if they do agree, don't we hope they have the courage to say so?

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4. "Unconditional obedience is owed to God alone." As a layperson, I do not always understand the constraints felt by clergy who have promised obedience to their superiors. But too often those constraints have allowed bad practices and even scandalous behavior to persist. Kűng’s point reminds us that, even in a hierarchy like ours, officials who fail to do the right thing will earn no sympathy by claiming "we were only following orders."

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6. “Call for a Council.” More than 50 years after John XXIII called for Vatican II, the case for Vatican III grows stronger by the day. I can see three main arguments for convening the world's bishops: (a) the momentum of Vatican II's renewal has flagged, and passing on the torch of renewal to the next generation may require a rekindling that only a council can supply; (b) our growing global crisis of authority and credibility needs to be addressed at the highest level -- which is a council -- if the Church is going to recover its good public name in the foreseeable future; (C) the Europe-dominated hierarchy which gathered at Vatican II no longer reflects a Church that has gone global on all levels; a new council would be a more representative gathering that could put this global Catholicism on the map.

So while Hans Kűng’s critique of Rome and Benedict XVI are admittedly (and deservedly) controversial, his practical proposals seem good, constructive ideas that could only benefit the Church. It remains to be seen if he will be heard.