EXCERPT:
The concept that different organizations have distinctive ways of doing things--different cultures--has been around for more than 30 years; what began as a technical term in organizational theory has become a familiar notion to most people.
But over that time the Church’s way of doing things has become more and more targeted, both by its members and by outsiders. This targeting came to a head last week in Ireland.
It was, in fact, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny himself who denounced “the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism--and the narcissism--that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.”
This was in response to the recent government report claiming that Rome had secretly discouraged bishops from reporting priest abusers to authorities. This led Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore to charge the Vatican with violating Ireland’s sovereignty by placing the Church’s canon law above Irish law. And it led to a unanimous “unprecedented denunciation” by the Irish parliament:
[Parliament] deplores the Vatican’s intervention, which contributed to the undermining of the child protection frameworks and guidelines of the Irish State and the Irish bishops.
What followed was equally unprecedented: Gilmore summoned Vatican Ambassador to Ireland, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, for a face-to-face grilling, and subsequently Leanza was recalled to Rome.
Whether the accusations are completely accurate or not, they spring from the impression that church officials make on others by the way they conduct the Church’s business--that is, from the culture that frames their performance as church leaders. Prime Minister Kenny’s description of that culture as dysfunction, disconnection, elitism, and narcissism reflects a serious challenge to the Church’s mission. If people find Catholic leadership dysfunctional, disconnected, elitist, a narcissistic--how can the Church promote the Gospel message and the world?
Indeed, we can see this perception of Catholicism’s culture impeding our mission when Ireland proposes legislation making it a crime to withhold evidence of child abuse from the police--even evidence protected by the seal of the confessional! In short, Catholicism’s perceived institutional culture has provoked a reaction that intrudes on the very function of the Church.
All this begs the question: do the Prime Minister and the Irish government have a case? And if they do, is the culture they decry only a problem for them--or is it more than a local Irish problem?
Friday, July 29, 2011
Friday, July 15, 2011
#333: “Golden Age”—Or Golden Calf?
EXCERPT:
…
Sometimes I think people have a psychological or even spiritual need to judge the past as superior to the present, perhaps because our memories tend to embellish reality, like the big fish that got away (and gets bigger with each retelling).
Like this big fish, for example: when the FBI finally caught its most-wanted fugitive, James “Whitey” Bulger, after 16 years, some public reactions in Bulger’s Boston were astoundingly nostalgic. Whitey wasn’t so bad, people said, he helped a lot of people, he protected his South Boston neighborhood from drugs and violence. As his girlfriend’s lawyer stated for the record:
James Bulger, at that time and era, was considered to be a hero-like figure in the city of Boston. He was alleged to have kept drugs off the street, helped the elderly and the poor. He was a man of almost mythic proportion.
Those were the days, in short, when Southie had pride and life was good.
The reality, of course, is well documented: South Boston had the largest concentration of poor white people in the country, as well as the country’s highest percentage of public housing residents. It was a neighborhood rife with domestic violence, alcoholism, drug addiction, dysfunctional families, and racism--a closed neighborhood that protected its turf by harassing “outside” folks (usually black) attempting to move in, attend its schools, or even visit its beaches.
Nonetheless, the myth of a golden age persists, satisfying some inner need. But in assigning perfection to a flawed time and then becoming devoted to its invented memory, this myth comes perilously close to idolatry.
I see something similar in my own work. Quite often I meet Catholics who long for a lost past. Sometimes they are yearning for the “golden age” before Vatican II (increasingly, this comes from people too young to remember). They recall (or imagine) a contented and thriving Catholic Church: packed churches, full seminaries, with no divorce or abortion or agitation for gay rights or scandal or divisions. They bemoan the controversies, divisions, and declining numbers of recent decades.
More often I meet Catholics yearning for the church life as they recall it immediately after Vatican II. For them, 1965 to 1980 was a time of widening horizons, dynamic movement, a relevant faith and a responsive Church that made Catholics not just proud but excited to be catholic. They bemoan what they see as a recent crusade to undo the Council’s gains and restore pre-conciliar Catholicism.
Both these memories, of course, embellish the reality.
…
Perhaps the prudent thing in life is to be very cautious whenever we attempted to stir up longing for the “Good Old Days.” We might do well to realize they might actually have been pretty awful.
Pope John XXIII actually began Vatican Council II with advice like this. He noted that, even among Bishops and Vatican officials, there was moaning and groaning about the current situation, as though everything had declined since the Good Old Days. Calling such people “doomsayers,” he challenged the Council Fathers to be more realistic and optimistic, to acknowledge the flaws and limitations of the past and also to acknowledge the great blessings of current times. One never knows: one might be living through a golden age without even knowing it.
Yes, sometimes it’s good to step back and celebrate the good things that happen now, the things we can see and enjoy and experience, rather than merely remember. It reminds us that while memory matters, it is healthy as well to live in the moment--and to see that our moment is good.
Of course, the moment we live in is never perfect, but that is precisely why we are never tempted to idolize the present. We are all too aware of its dents, scratches, warts, and flaws, right in front of our eyes. It is only the past that gets polished by memory, and can appear so perfect that we bow down before it as superior to all that has come since; the golden age becomes our golden calf.
…
…
Sometimes I think people have a psychological or even spiritual need to judge the past as superior to the present, perhaps because our memories tend to embellish reality, like the big fish that got away (and gets bigger with each retelling).
Like this big fish, for example: when the FBI finally caught its most-wanted fugitive, James “Whitey” Bulger, after 16 years, some public reactions in Bulger’s Boston were astoundingly nostalgic. Whitey wasn’t so bad, people said, he helped a lot of people, he protected his South Boston neighborhood from drugs and violence. As his girlfriend’s lawyer stated for the record:
James Bulger, at that time and era, was considered to be a hero-like figure in the city of Boston. He was alleged to have kept drugs off the street, helped the elderly and the poor. He was a man of almost mythic proportion.
Those were the days, in short, when Southie had pride and life was good.
The reality, of course, is well documented: South Boston had the largest concentration of poor white people in the country, as well as the country’s highest percentage of public housing residents. It was a neighborhood rife with domestic violence, alcoholism, drug addiction, dysfunctional families, and racism--a closed neighborhood that protected its turf by harassing “outside” folks (usually black) attempting to move in, attend its schools, or even visit its beaches.
Nonetheless, the myth of a golden age persists, satisfying some inner need. But in assigning perfection to a flawed time and then becoming devoted to its invented memory, this myth comes perilously close to idolatry.
I see something similar in my own work. Quite often I meet Catholics who long for a lost past. Sometimes they are yearning for the “golden age” before Vatican II (increasingly, this comes from people too young to remember). They recall (or imagine) a contented and thriving Catholic Church: packed churches, full seminaries, with no divorce or abortion or agitation for gay rights or scandal or divisions. They bemoan the controversies, divisions, and declining numbers of recent decades.
More often I meet Catholics yearning for the church life as they recall it immediately after Vatican II. For them, 1965 to 1980 was a time of widening horizons, dynamic movement, a relevant faith and a responsive Church that made Catholics not just proud but excited to be catholic. They bemoan what they see as a recent crusade to undo the Council’s gains and restore pre-conciliar Catholicism.
Both these memories, of course, embellish the reality.
…
Perhaps the prudent thing in life is to be very cautious whenever we attempted to stir up longing for the “Good Old Days.” We might do well to realize they might actually have been pretty awful.
Pope John XXIII actually began Vatican Council II with advice like this. He noted that, even among Bishops and Vatican officials, there was moaning and groaning about the current situation, as though everything had declined since the Good Old Days. Calling such people “doomsayers,” he challenged the Council Fathers to be more realistic and optimistic, to acknowledge the flaws and limitations of the past and also to acknowledge the great blessings of current times. One never knows: one might be living through a golden age without even knowing it.
Yes, sometimes it’s good to step back and celebrate the good things that happen now, the things we can see and enjoy and experience, rather than merely remember. It reminds us that while memory matters, it is healthy as well to live in the moment--and to see that our moment is good.
Of course, the moment we live in is never perfect, but that is precisely why we are never tempted to idolize the present. We are all too aware of its dents, scratches, warts, and flaws, right in front of our eyes. It is only the past that gets polished by memory, and can appear so perfect that we bow down before it as superior to all that has come since; the golden age becomes our golden calf.
…
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