#439: After That October Day, America Would Never Be the Same

Last month’s US visit by Pope Francis was the most recent chapter in a story that began 50 years ago this month.

Except for Church insiders and those following the extended reporting of John Cogley in the New York Times or “Xavier Rynne” in the New Yorker, the seismic shift of Vatican II (1962-1965) meant little to Americans, including American Catholics, until the first shockwave reached our shores in the Fall of 1965.

This is the moment when Paul VI broke all tradition and precedent (popes had been, quite literally, “prisoners of the Vatican” for the previous 94 years) by traveling across the Atlantic to deliver his Church’s message to the world. Pope Paul VI, the “Pilgrim Pope,” became the first pope to ever visit the United States.

The scene was the stuff of high theater…

Shortly after Amintore Fanfani, Foreign Minister of Italy and President of the twentieth session of the United Nations General Assembly, had called the meeting to order, he and Secretary General U Thant provided the official escort down the main aisle. Soon, only the slim, white-robed figure stood at the green marble rostrum.

     Pope Paul VI, only hours from his arrival, had already presided over a special service at St. Patrick's Cathedral and met with President Lyndon Johnson at Waldorf Towers under the tightest security precautions ever taken in New York City; that meeting had to be “private” because the U.S. did not yet have diplomatic relations with the Vatican City, so this was not officially a State Visit. Quite a contrast with 2015, when both the White House and the Congress officially welcomed the pope as a visiting Head of State!

Later, Pope Paul would present U Thant with a diamond-studded cross and ring (valued at $115, 000, to be sold to raise funds for alleviating world hunger), meet with a small interfaith group at Holy Family Church on East 47th Street, celebrate Mass before 90,000 people at Yankee Stadium, and visit the Vatican Pavilion at the New York World's Fair to gaze at Michelangelo's Pieta before flying back to Rome.

The Papal Mass Yankee Stadium

But this was moment he had really come for--the moment he had been invited for when planning for a UN conference on "Peace on Earth" began at Santa Barbara's Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in 1963. Since the Center's inspiration came from John XXIII's encyclical letter Pacem in Terris, it had seemed fitting to invite his successor to address the UN. Now he stood before the General Assembly, the first Pope to visit the New World. He spoke in French.

     Many listeners expected no more than polite and pious boilerplate, but he had not made the trip for nothing. As Drew Middleton of the New York Times reported, "The Pontiff's address, with its emphasis on universality, disarmament and the development of a world authority, went far beyond the simple pleas expected by most of the delegates." In fact, Paul delivered one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century.

Pope Paul Addressing the UN General Assembly

Specifically, Paul appealed to outlaw all nuclear weapons, issued his famous "Jamais plus de guerre!" cry, urged more concerted action on hunger, and, in "the most controversial part of the speech," advised the UN to admit Red China. Most surprising and significant of all, however, were the Pope's extended remarks about his own church and the UN itself. He began by characterizing the trip's importance from the Catholic point of view:

Like a messenger who, after a long journey, finally succeeds in delivering the letter which has been entrusted to him, so we appreciate the good fortune of this moment, however brief, which fulfills a desire nourished in the heart for nearly twenty centuries. For, as you well remember, we are very ancient; we here represent a long history; we here celebrate the epilogue of a weary pilgrimage in search of a conversation with the entire world, ever since the command was given to us: Go and bring the good news to all peoples. .

Next, he challenged the UN to an extraordinarily exalted view of its own mission:

Now, you represent all peoples...The edifice which you have constructed must never fall; it must be perfected and made equal to the needs which world history will present. You mark a stage in the development of mankind from which retreat must never be admitted, but from which it is necessary that advance be made.

The Pope paused. Then, in the measured tones of the career diplomat he was, he sharpened his point by comparing the UN's global mission to Catholicism's:

You are a bridge between peoples. You are a network of relations between states. We would almost say that your chief characteristic is a reflection, as it were, in the temporal field, of what our Catholic church aspires to be in the spiritual field: unique and universal. Your vocation is to make brothers not only of some, but of all people.

Finally, he sought to convince his listeners that his Church's own concern with humanity's spiritual needs should link, rather than separate, the two organizations:

This edifice which you are constructing does not rest upon merely material and earthly foundations, for thus it would be a house built upon sand; above all, it is based on our own consciences. The hour has struck for our "conversion," for personal transformation, for interior renewal. We must get used to thinking of humanity in a new way...With a new manner, too, of conceiving the paths of history and the destiny of the world...The edifice of modern civilization must be built upon spiritual principles which alone can, not only support it, but even illuminate and animate it.

     It was October 8, 1965. Vatican Council II would end just eight weeks later, but until now it had remained a distant blip on most Americans’ radar. Paul had used this speech to announce the Council’s agenda in the most public way imaginable.

Demands on New York's communication system were greater than for the Kennedy funeral and the five Gemini moon shots combined; A.M. Rosenthal, then the Times' metropolitan editor, called it "the saddest professional day in our lives," because a strike kept the paper's papal coverage off the stands.  But millions saw the TV coverage of the pope landing in New York, the pope meeting the President of the United States, the pope before the UN, the Pope saying mass at Yankee Stadium.

Even then, however, few observers realized that the agenda Paul proclaimed simply as his Church’s “weary pilgrimage in search of a conversation” had already put this vast and ancient organization on a collision course with its own past.

The stated intention at Vatican II was not “collision’” of course; it was “renewal.” Even so, anything new in an institution so old, any move from point A to point B, held the risk of disrupting long-accepted ways.

Francis in America

Vatican II set a course correction for the world’s largest organization, and 50 years later that course is still disputed. But the recent visit by Francis has made 2 things perfectly clear. First, the place of the Catholic Church in American life is more public and powerful than ever before. Second, Francis intends to steer that Church back onto the course intended by Vatican II, especially by his insistent focus on the twin “north stars” of Mercy and Justice.

And thus our Church continues that “conversation with the entire world” that Paul VI began 50 years ago.

Bernard F. Swain PhD 2015

#431: We Need the Right Kind of Leadership

Events in Ireland El Salvador can teach powerful lessons for the leaders of the Church in the United States. 

The recent Pew Research Center study on religious affiliation brings disquieting news: the number of American Catholics who have stopped practicing their faith has increased, especially among the millennial generation, since the last Pew study in 2007.  The Catholic Church is losing members faster than ever, and faster than any other Christian church.

But this begs the question: how can we stop, or even reverse, this trend?  I suspect there is no single answer, but last week’s events in two other countries suggest that one answer is: we need the right kind of leadership.

These countries are Ireland and El Salvador, and their contrasting experience shows the difference between two kinds of leadership: the right kind and the wrong kind.

This contrast may surprise us, since on the surface these two countries, though distant, are similar in several respects.  Both are small countries with small populations  (Ireland 4.6 million, El Salvador 6.3 million).  Both have overwhelmingly Catholic populations.  Both countries’ church hierarchies have had powerful cultural and political influence.  Both share a history of oppression at the hands of a foreign colonizer.  And both have seen grinding poverty.

Yet last week we saw sharply contrasting events.  In Ireland, the vast majority of Catholics, refusing to follow the Irish hierarchy’s opposition to same sex marriage, approved a constitutional revision legalizing civil marriage between gays.  That same week, thousands of Salvadorans attended (and millions celebrated) the beatification of Archbishop Oscar Romero, soon to be Saint Oscar Romero.

Common sense tells us that leaders cannot lead if no one follows.  This raises a new question: why did Romero inspire such following, while the Irish hierarchy inspired rejection?  As we Americans witness so many (especially young) Catholics rejecting their Church, the question is both practical and urgent.  So the cases of Ireland and El Salvador are not just relevant, but also instructive.

One can argue that both the Irish and the Salvadoran church leaders have bad track records.  Once Ireland gained independence from Britain, the country’s clergy were among its most powerful figures (some have called Ireland at that time a Vatican colony!). Before becoming Dublin’s archbishop, John Charles McQuaid was a major architect of the Irish constitution, constructed on the principle that Irish law should reflect Catholic doctrine. The constitution specifically notes the "special position of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church" in national life. As Scholar Timothy White wrote:

By the time [Irish leader Eamon] De Valera wrote and Ireland enacted a new constitution in 1937, the Catholic religion was guaranteed a special role in society and the entire document adapted principles of corporatism that were popular in Church thinking at that time….De Valera’s constitution provided an effective and formal merger between the Catholic Church and the Irish nationalist elites.

Ireland was, as the New York Times wrote, “a theocracy in all but the name.” Many public institutions (like the schools) were in fact run by the Church. Several generations were thus raised by a domineering and harsh hierarchy who taught a version of Catholicism obsessed with rules and sex and guilt.  The result was not only a morally repressive culture but an appalling array of oppressive Catholic institutions (from parishes to schools to hospitals to convents to orphanages to homes for single mothers) that achieved the psychological and even physical enslavement of many Irish Catholics.

In my first parish job, in 1972, I asked the pastor and his assistant priest, both Irish nationals, why they had come to America to work.  Without hesitation or reflection, both give the same answer: “I came to escape the Irish clergy.” Since then, revelations of widespread clergy sex abuse and exploitation of girls has reinforced popular disgust with the hierarchy.

In El Salvador, the story was slightly different.  Independence from Spain left in place a moneyed elite that owned most of the country’s land and dominated its institutions, including the Church itself.  The Salvadoran clergy, as part of the country’s small educated elite, came mostly from the wealthy landowner families.  This was especially true of many Salvadoran bishops.

Thus El Salvador’s Catholic leadership maintained a longtime partnership with the ruling elite (including the military) that maintained its status by perpetuating the gap between rich and poor.  By preaching that their suffering was God’s will, the hierarchy helped keep the poor in their place.

But by Romero’s time, the hierarchy was shifting its mission, as Vatican II (1962-1965) inspired change in the Church in Latin America. At the historic Medellín (Colombia) conference in 1968, the region’s bishops decided to abandon their traditional role as defender of the status quo and to support the poor struggling for social justice.

Romero was known as a conservative, skeptical of both Vatican II and Medellín. Yet on his appointment as Archbishop of San Salvador in 1977, Romero became almost immediately outspoken in opposing injustice and defending the poor. He had witnessed the suffering poor and government violence even against priests in his previous role as bishop in Santiago de María, which made him distrust authorities and fear for his people.

Oscar Romero had the courage to break with bad leadership and lead another way.  He took the side of the poor, decried their oppression, and became a prophetic voice for all the marginalized and destitute of El Salvador.  But this break made him not only a threat to the elites but even a traitor to his class, and his punishment was assassination during Mass at the hands of a government-sponsored death squad.

The 1980 Funeral of Oscar Romero

Thus Romero became a blessed martyr because he championed the suffering poor against their powerful oppressors.  In this he communicated the truth of the Gospel.

But the Irish hierarchy, meanwhile, was not the partner of an elite oppressor - -it was itself the perpetrator of oppression.  And unlike Romero, it never broke from its harsh and abusive practices.  Instead, as Ireland grew more prosperous and Ireland’s links to other countries (especially the U.S.) grew stronger, the nation’s culture drifted away from the rule of bishops.  In effect, the Irish began to assert a “second independence” (first from the British, now from the Church).  The huge turnout for the gay marriage referendum and a 2-to-1 vote in favor was the result.  For many, the vote was not so much about redefining civil marriage, or about accepting gays, or even about expanding constitutional rights.  Instead, for many Irish voters, this was their “Declaration of Independence” from the Catholic hierarchy.

For me, the lessons from El Salvador and Ireland are obvious and important.  First, leadership that distorts Catholic tradition to serve some other agenda (especially the preservation power) is bad leadership, so finally people refuse to follow.  Second, defending systematic inequality as God’s will is one such distortion of our faith.  Third, rule by sexual repression is another such a distortion of faith.  Fourth, only by breaking away from such distortions and preaching the authentic Gospel message can Catholic leaders restore people’s confidence in their own leaders.  Only then will people follow the leader.

For American Catholics, these lessons invite reflection.  If we are losing members, especially young members, is our leadership somehow responsible?  Has our hierarchy championed the Gospel message?  Has it been, like Jesus, committed to “preach good news to the poor”? Has it, like Jesus, chosen “to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed”?

Or has our hierarchy too often complacently accepted the growing gap between the 1% in the 99%?  Has it too often been sidetracked by its “culture wars” obsession with all things sexual?  Has it lost the trust of millions of millennials by its horrific failure to protect children and discipline their priestly molesters? 

In short, is the hemorrhage of U.S. Catholics best understood not as a crisis of faith among the young, but rather as a crisis of credibility of among our leaders?

Blessed Oscar Romero inspires millions of Catholics (in America as well as El Salvador) as a model of holy, courageous, and effective leadership.  Does he also inspire our bishops?  Can they become credible leaders like him?  If yes, perhaps more of us will be inspired to follow them.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2015

#416: The Pope Leads—Will the Bishops Follow?

The U.S. Bishops are at a fork in the road—is it splitting them up?

A little more than one year since the election of Pope Francis, many things have changed--but perhaps too many things have stayed the same.

Two weekends ago I completed four sessions of a parish retreat on “The Francis Effect.” Many participants expressed the feeling that the experience filled them with hope, which made me appreciate just how powerful the new pope’s impact has been.  After a decade-long decline in the public image and reputation of the Catholic Church, Francis has accomplished a dramatic turnaround.  Little more than a year ago the Church’s public standing was the lowest it had been since before Vatican Council II (1962-1965).  Now its standing is at its highest point in nearly 50 years--that is, since the time of the Council itself.

Francis has accomplished this by calling for and initiating a change in church culture, but others must follow suit and lead at the national and local levels.  A change of the top will mean nothing if it does not “trickle down.”

Francis himself has been very clear about what this change requires if we are to create a truly missionary spirit in the Church (see CrossCurrents #408 and #409 in the archives).

But events of the last few weeks suggest that if Francis has brought us to a fork in the road, only some of the U.S. Bishops are going his way.  Three recent events suggest that while some bishops take Francis’ mandate to heart, others are struggling to grasp it or are even continuing on their own course.

Following Francis: John L. Allen Jr.’s recent Boston Globe piece detailed how Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley and 8 other bishops staged a three day visit to the U.S.-Mexican border to urge reform of the “broken” U.S. immigration system.

In this they are, of course, following the footsteps and priorities of Francis, by putting their focus on the poor and the social injustices of current public policy.

Calling O’Malley “the American Francis,” Allen asserts: “the Catholic push for immigrant rights already had its global ambassador in Francis, and now it has found a domestic face in O’Malley.”

O’Malley and his fellow bishops celebrated Mass (distributing Communion “to outstretched hands from the Mexican side of the border through slats in eight 20-foot-high security fence”), held a news conference on immigration reform, and visited and interviewed people on both sides of the border.

Allen sees in all this “the emergence of immigration reform as a top shelf Catholic concern”--but he also hints that O’Malley &Company are not typical of the U.S. hierarchy is a whole:

In terms of church politics, one could perhaps style the other prelates who made up the delegation as well-meaning social justice types who don’t really flex much muscle in the Church.  That’s why O’Malley’s presence was vital, because nobody would say that about him.

This invites the inference that, among other bishops who do “flex much muscle” in the Church, immigration reform may not have the same priority, and that this was reflected by their absence.  This echoes a quiet theme running beneath the surface ever since Francis was elected: while Francis immediately became admired and beloved by people everywhere, he may not have enjoyed the same kind of enthusiastic support from all his bishops

That surely seemed possible in the case of Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Atlanta, who finally succumbed to popular pressure and announced he would leave his brand spanking new $2.2 million mansion after just three months, sell it, and donate the proceeds to charity.  He publicly apologized for the decision to move in but declined to take questions.

This case offers clear evidence that the people “get” Francis more easily than many of his bishops.  Gregory’s apology followed strong public pressure to give up the mansion from parishioners were well aware of the pope’s call to reject the “idolatry of money” and avoid “insidious worldliness” within the Church.  One such parishioner put the pope’s cause bluntly:

He [Gregory] is the person we follow locally, he sets the mood.  He sets the example for all of us to follow.  If he is choosing to use a gift so personally, what does that tell the people sitting in the pews?

Gregory himself acknowledged the impact of Francis by saying:

He’s called us to live more simply.  He also has encouraged Bishops to grow closer to their people, to listen to their people.

The key difference, of course, is that while laypeople got the message in the first week of Francis’ papacy, it took Gregory more than a year.

But even that is too quick for some bishops, it appears, for that same week in early April also included a story out of Ohio that sounded so 2012, so pre-Francis.

The Archdiocese of Cincinnati, it seems, has added new contract language that spells out specific ways teachers in Archdiocesan schools could lose their jobs.  The list includes public support for positions contrary to the church teaching on issues like abortion, artificial insemination, and “homosexual lifestyles.” It also includes forbidden behaviors--such as unwed pregnancies.

It appears the new language is designed to protect the Diocese from wrongful termination lawsuits, and a diocesan spokesperson attempted to minimize its significance by saying that it merely “clarifies what is expected of all of our teachers.” This comes in the wake of several lawsuits that the Diocese lost in recent years.

On the one hand, it is understandable that the Church, functioning as an employer, would want to protect itself from liability.  On the other hand, it appears that no other U.S. diocese uses such language. 

Of course, the problem of exposure to wrongful termination only arises when employees are terminated.  So this begs the question: must someone who voices an opinion contrary to official teaching be terminated?  Must someone who becomes pregnant while unmarried be terminated?

My own impression is that the instinct to terminate in such instances represents the kind of judgmentalism that Francis has been preaching against.  Underlying such judgmentalism is the notion that church workers ought to be perfect in both their opinions and their behavior.  There are several problems of this outlook.

First, it is contrary to church teaching to require that anyone be, in practice, perfect.  Our common expectation, rather, is that we are all sinners, and therefore we must be prepared to forgive and accept one another.  Since the beginning of Christianity, the real standard it has been: “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”

Second, some would argue that this is not about sin but about scandal: that teachers taking a controversial positions or caught in compromise behavior create a scandal that undermines church teaching and credibility.

Two points here: contemporary American culture is not so easily scandalized (e.g., unwed pregnancy has long since lost its stigma), and the institutional church risks inviting the label “hypocrisy” if it sets itself as the arbiter of scandal in the wake of the sex abuse crisis.  Simply put, the American hierarchy abdicated the moral high ground long ago.

Third, there is a long history of those taking issue with church officials being vindicated in the long run.

In the 13^th century, Etienne Tempier, the Bishop of Paris, issued condemnations of more than a dozen teachings by one of his professors at the University of Paris, which at that time was a church-owned school (thus the professor was a church employee). 

The professor in question?  Saint Thomas Aquinas, who in 1879 was declared the Church’s “official” theologian.  Bishop Tempier disappeared into the obscurity of history, while Aquinas achieved greatness. 

The lesson: conformity to official church positions does not guarantee of either greatness or sanctity, and opposition does not prove the opposite.  Imagine if the Diocese of Paris had acted to fire Thomas Aquinas for his positions!

The spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati tried to defend the new contract by saying:

The contract requires that if you’re going to represent the Catholic Church as a teacher, you’re not going to publicly oppose the teachings of the Catholic Church.

 Sounds perfectly logical. But that logic has not governed our history. Someone should get the man a good history of Catholicism--one that includes the 13^th century.

It remains to be seen if the U.S. hierarchy will wholeheartedly join Pope Francis as he sets a new course for the Church as a missionary presence in the world.  But those who choose their own path, and continue to present the institutional church as authoritarian, judgmental, and hypocritical, will end up being neither followers nor leaders.

  © Bernard  F. Swain PhD 2014