#478: Getting “The Two Popes” Right

By all means see the Netflix film “The Two Popes,”

 ---but see it for the wonderful thing it really is.

George Weigel takes pride presenting himself as someone who has known several popes, so he rightly claims to be “credentialed” for inside insight into recent papal history.

But a film critic he is not.

And even professional critics sometimes make the mistake he commits in his review of the movie “the Two Popes,” criticizing a film for what it is NOT rather than analyzing what it IS. Sadly, this leaves Weigel—and others like him—unable to appreciate the film before his eyes. He saw “baloney on steroids,” and missed what was actually on the screen: a delightfully plausible parable aimed at inspiring the viewer.

Weigel begins by saying the film claims to be “based on actual facts.” This is not true. The screen title at the movie's start reads “Inspired by true events”—which is an entirely different matter. Both the screenwriter and the director have explained that they wanted to make the movie because of their admiration for Pope Francis, combined with being intrigued by the events surrounding the resignation of Benedict XVI.  They asked themselves: “What if these two were to arrange something together?”

Weigel says the movie reveals more about the screenwriter and the director than about the historical figures. Well, duh—the whole point of film art is to express the creators’ vision. Weigel makes the common mistake of testing a film about historical figures for its historical accuracy. But this is not a documentary, or even a docudrama.

Could anyone really think that images of the College of Cardinals entering the conclave to the tune of Abba’s “Dancing Queen” could be about documenting events? Or that setting Benedict’s announcement of resignation to three different versions of the Beatles’ tune “Blackbird” aimed to serve historical accuracy?

The Filmmakers are exercising what is generally referred to as “artistic license”; typically they care less about veracity and more about verisimilitude. Yet they land on some verities.

So they contrive a two-day meeting in which both men change by coming to terms with their differences. My personal reaction: I left feeling, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this had happened—and even better if such things happened more often!” I took it as a parable for our time, a time in which people of differing views –in our Church, in our communities, in our nation, in our world--have stopped listening to each other. Imagine the Church as a public model inspiring people to resolve their differences!

Weigel is entitled to consider the film’s characters as “stick-figures,” despite the screenplay being nominated for both a Golden Globe and an Oscar. But his comparison of “one–dimensional portrayals of popes” with Xavier Rynne’s New Yorker coverage of  Vatican Council II is a simple category mistake—the proverbial “apples and oranges.” While Rynne claimed to be reporting, these filmmakers openly admit to inventing. One can search numerous sites detailing what is historical and what is apocryphal in the film.

Still, the characters' positions on issues are consistent with the public record. Weigel complains that the film misrepresents Benedict’s attachment to the papacy, quoting him that “I am not a man of governance.” And while it is true the film shows him urging cardinals to support him at the conclave in 2005, it also has him arguing for his own resignation by saying “I’m a scholar, not a manager.”

And while Weigel sees “self-knowledge, spiritual detachment, and churchmanship” in Benedict, he ignores how the film portrays precisely those qualities, thus humanizing a figure who has too often been stereotyped in the media as an ogre. Weigel writes as if the film were a hatchet job on Benedict. But every single viewer I’ve spoken with has come away finding Benedict a much warmer, more admirable character.

Weigel complains that the movie portrays the 2013 election of Francis as fueled by a desire for a reform movement, a course change from John-Paul II and Benedict back to engagement with the world. What motivated the voters is hard to prove, but there is ample evidence from Francis’ own public statements that he himself took his election as a mandate to make changes in the Church’s approach to the world—and that he took much of his inspiration from the two popes who preceded John-Paul II and Benedict:

Vatican II, inspired by Pope Paul VI and John, decided to look to the future with a modern spirit and to be open to modern culture. The Council Fathers knew that being open to modern culture meant religious ecumenism and dialogue with non-believers. But afterwards very little was done in that direction. I have the humility and ambition to want to do something.

Weigel further argues that the real motive behind Francis’ election was to choose “a tough minded, no-nonsense reformer who would quickly and decisively clean house"--that is, the Vatican itself, especially the curia. He implies the movie ignores this.

He seems to have missed the scenes when Benedict complains about the curia, pleads his inability to fix things (“I have lost,” he says) or when Cardinal Bergoglio (later Pope Francis) recounts how he had already cleaned up his ecclesiastical house in Argentina. When he expresses his intent to do the same in Rome, Benedict says "Well, good luck with that!"

Sadly, Weigel simply ignores a large part of the movie showing Bergoglio's own path to the priesthood, as well as his struggles as a leader. But viewers who saw the Oscar-winning films “City of God” and “The Constant Gardener” will recognize in these flashback scenes the world-engaging imagery of director Fernando Meirelles, full of vibrant third-world street scenes and the chaos of poor people’s lives. These scenes reveal that what inspired Meirelles to make this new film was precisely Francis’ career-long engagement with struggling people.

Finally Weigel calls the movie “fake news” and states his desire to “clarify the historical record.” But people who react to this movie as if it were (or claimed to be) a historical record of what actually happened have already failed to see the film on the screen. They just don’t get it. It’s their loss.

Oh, and I nearly forgot to mention the one point on which Weigel and I agree: the film is quite funny! In fact, several critics have called it a “buddy comedy”—and they are closer to the truth than Weigel.

The closing scene of the two popes watching the 2014 Argentina-Germany World Cup Final together may well be apocryphal, like most of the film—but the accompanying documentary footage of the Two Popes warmly embracing is not. When you see “the Two Pope” on Netflix, take it for what it really is: a hopeful fiction of how powerful but opposed leaders might come to see each other as (to quote Benedict's character) “only human”-- and even to become friends. 

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2020

#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

#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

#411: Cover-Up

Ever Since Watergate, Americans have believed that “The cover up is worse than the crime.” Has the U.S. Catholic hierarchy STILL not figured that out?

Two events this week remind us that not only is the Church’s sex abuse crisis still with us; it is also still cause for worry.  For there is fresh evidence that, even now, some members of the hierarchy just don’t get it.  In particular, this week’s events--one in Chicago and one in Geneva--show a hierarchy still torn, among its own members, between apology and denial. 

The denial came to the fore when Bishop Francis Kane, vicar general of the Archdiocese of Chicago, held a news conference concerning Wednesday’s court-ordered release of documents relating to cases against 30 priests accused of child abuse.

Bishop Kane began by apologizing for the abuse itself, and admitted that the archdiocese had been wrong not to act more forcefully, but then denied any cover-up by Chicago bishops:

It was just they didn't realize that it was such a terrible thing, and so I think they did relocate people, but it was not intended as a way of covering up things.

But Marc Pearlman, a lawyer representing 200 of the victims, took exception to the Bishops claim:

The issue is not when the abuse happened; the issue is what they did once it was reported….I think that the files will show a systemic plan over decades in this diocese, along with many other dioceses, to conceal sexual abuse, to conceal who the predators were, and to put the interests of the predators and the institution above the interests of innocent young children…Until there is public disclosure and transparency ... there is no way people can learn about it and make sure it does not happen again,"

Bishop Kane also said, “It's humiliating as a priest to know there were other priests who did something like that."

In both of his remarks, Bishop Kane speaks for many bishops (past and perhaps even present) who find it “humiliating” to acknowledge that priests abused children but impossible to acknowledge that bishops and others covered it up.  Of course, it was precisely this “humiliation” that induced bishops to keep such matters quiet—they were too embarrassed to admit the truth.

What they still don’t get is that, for the vast majority of Catholics who were not touched by the abuse itself, the cover-up is a much greater scandal, and denying it continues to damage the Church’s credibility.

So the question arises: how could Bishop Kane say there was no cover-up?  Perhaps it is a matter of definition. Perhaps he and others think that, if previous bishops underestimate the problem, the result was they did nothing about it—and that was not, at least intentionally, a cover-up. To me, such a view is disingenuous at best.

To clarify, it may help to use a concrete example, so let me tell a story.  A true story.

This happened more than 60 years ago in a small town in the Archdiocese of Boston.  One fine day the pastor of the local parish took a group of altar boys on a field trip.  At some point during the day he sexually accosted one of the boys.  The boy broke away, and had the presence of mind to hitchhike home, where he told his father what had happened.

On his return with the rest of the group, the pastor found the boy’s father waiting for him at the rectory--with a shotgun.  No violence resulted, but the diocese was contacted.  That night, a limo arrived at the rectory carrying the archbishop’s minions, who removed the pastor to the limo, thence to Logan Airport, and finally onto a night flight to exile in Ireland, where he arrived the very next morning.

A team of three priests was assigned to the parish, with instructions to calm the family involved and “avoid any scandal” over the event--that is, keep things quiet (one of those priests told me this story years later).  So the parish never knew what had happened or why their pastor had disappeared literally overnight.

Three years later, he returned from Ireland and became pastor of a parish in another part of the diocese.  No one there ever learned the story either.

Now this story, while dramatic, is not at all unusual.  In fact, it reflects a pattern that was remarkably consistent from diocese to diocese in the U.S. throughout the 20^th century.  In case after case where abuse was charged, the Church’s managers--the bishops--dealt with accusations by taking the following steps:

1. They removed the priest, usually on short notice, with either no public explanation or a phony one.

2. They bargained or bribed to prevent victims and their families from exposing the priest, often in the name of “avoiding scandal.” In many cases, families were promised the priest would never deal with parishes or children began.

3. The priest was sometimes sent away for “penance” and/or for “treatment,” often to a facility operated for that purpose.

4. The priests who remained or who replaced the abuser did not inform the parish about anything that had transpired.  In some cases, they themselves were not informed.

5. The accused priest was generally recycled to another parish or even diocese, either immediately or on his return from exile.  The new parish was told nothing of his record.  If he was assigned under a pastor, even the pastor himself was often not informed of the man’s history.

6. Of course, in a large percentage of cases the recycled priest repeated his offense, abusing more children in his new setting.

One is tempted to say: if this is not “cover-up,” what is?

Let’s grant that bishops honestly failed to recognize that a crime have been committed, so civil authorities were not notified.  Let’s even grant that bishops failed to understand the deep damage done to the children and their families.  The fact remains that no attempts were made to protect future victims, for that would have required notifying others--other parents, other families, other priests, as well as pastors (and sometimes other bishops) under which the recycled abuser was assigned.  Instead of taking steps to prevent further abuse, bishops acted to end each incident quietly and then keep the problem itself quiet.

In a 2010 novel that Robert B. Parker wrote as part of his celebrated “Spenser” series, private eye Spenser interviews a university police officer about the way the university handled the case of a professor named Prince, who had been seducing his students.  Spenser says, “So the university decided to do nothing about Prince.”--and the campus police chief replies: “No, they decided to keep it quiet…That’s doing something.”

Indeed, keeping abuse quiet is doing something--something called covering up.

Bishop Kane seems unable to acknowledge that, whether they “intended” a cover-up or not, bishops managed to cover up the problem so effectively, in diocese after diocese, that the history of abuse was kept quiet for decades (and probably generations) before it finally exploded into public view.  Over the years, dozens of bishops knew the facts and kept them secret.

One of the released Chicago documents, for example, includes former archbishop John Cody telling a priest not to worry about one girl’s 1970 accusation of prior abuse: “The whole matter has been forgotten,’’ he told the priest. “No good can come of trying to prove or disprove the allegations.’’

Sorry, Bishop Kane.  “Cover-up” is the right label for such behavior.

Meanwhile, Vatican officials were appearing before the U.N. Commission on the Rights of the Child in Geneva, where they had been summoned to explain their compliance with the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (which the Holy See signed in 1990).

While attempting to persuade the U.N. panel of their resolve to fix things, the Vatican’s envoy nonetheless refused to accept a “buck stops here” responsibility.  Instead, he passed the buck for responsibility back onto the local bishops, insisting:

Priests are not functionaries of the Vatican…Priests are citizens of their own states, and they fall under the jurisdiction of their own country.

Yet a U.N. Committee investigator pointed to cases where priests were transferred from one diocese to another, with Vatican approval.  And Vatican guidelines only require notifying local authorities if local laws require it.  Many bishops in the United States led efforts to prevent such reporting laws, including a 10-year legislative campaign to prevent clergy from being designated as “mandated reporters” under the Massachusetts law--a campaign which failed only after the Boston scandal broke in 2002.

The Vatican denials of responsibility ring hollow for one simple reason: while not responsible for the management or discipline of individual priests, the Vatican is responsible for the performance of local bishops.  And since the practice of recycling accused abuses was so widespread, we might ask: by failing to remove or even discipline bishops who covered up, did not the Vatican become complicit in enabling abusers?

In short, both local bishops and Vatican officials fell prey to the same failure: because they did not act to be part of the solution, they made themselves part of the problem.

As the U.N. Committee chairperson said:

The view of committee is that the best way to prevent abuses is to reveal old ones--openness instead of sweeping offences under the carpet…It seems to date your procedures are not very transparent.

Transparency, accountability--these are the hallmarks of a solution.  The failure to employ them is the failure of those who remained part of the problem, not by abusing children but by covering up the abuse by others--and in doing so, enabling abusers to abuse again.

It is high time to stop denying that cover-up happened and enabled abusers.  It is time to begin the long process of rehabilitating the crippled credibility of the U.S. hierarchy.

The last thing we need now is a cover-up of the cover-up.

  © Bernard  F. Swain PhD 2014

#397: A Truly Jesuit Pope

After merely 100 days, the new pope is already quietly charting  a different course for the Church...

It seems like Pope Francis keeps catching my eye with an outlook unlike any pope since Blessed (soon Saint) John XXIII.  This time it was the remarks Francis made to a group of papal nuncios, who nominate bishops in each country whenever there is a vacancy.  Francis was talking about the kind of candidates he wanted them to look for, and he was characteristically blunt about what kind of candidate to avoid. According to Thomas Reese in the National Catholic Reporter:

Pope Francis described the kind of persons he wants them to put forward. He wants pastors who are "close to the people, fathers and brothers." They should be "gentle, patient and merciful; animated by inner poverty, the freedom of the Lord and also by outward simplicity and austerity of life." They should "not have the psychology of 'Princes.'"…The pope specifically warned them against ambitious prelates who want to be promoted from one diocese to a more prestigious one. He cited the ancient view that bishops "are married to a Church" and should not be "in constant search of another."

     And the Catholic News Service quoted Francis acknowledging that what he was asking for was not easy:

"It's a delicate task," the pope said. "Beware of those who are ambitious, who seek the episcopacy."

These remarks reminded me that Francis is a Jesuit, and confirmed my experience of the sharp difference between the Jesuits and some diocesan priests.  The difference is often between humility and ambition, and it is illustrated by two examples from my own life.

First came the example of Father Raymond Swords, SJ.  He was president of Holy Cross when I arrived there. He held degrees in theology and mathematics, taught mathematics at Holy Cross, and then found himself president in a time of great cultural upheaval.  While generally regarded as a low-key, uncharismatic figure, he nonetheless became the focal point of some dramatic events during my senior year (1969-1970).

President Swords (left) confers an honorary degree

 The fall term brought the Vietnam Moratorium, a mass movement of protest against the war that garnered huge crowds demonstrating in most major cities across the United States.  In Worcester, Massachusetts (the state’s second largest city and home of Holy Cross) a rally was held on city hall plaza.  Fr. Swords appeared on the podium and announced today he spoke, not for the college, but for himself as a Catholic, as a priest, and as a Jesuit.  He explained that he had reluctantly concluded that the war in Vietnam could no longer satisfy the requirements of the Church’s just war theory, and so he felt compelled to call for an end to the war--and to urge all Catholics to do the same.

Suddenly, Ray Swords was no longer just the chief administrator of our school.  Suddenly he became our leader.  The assembled protesters gave him a standing ovation.

In December a labor dispute led to the expulsion of some black students and the decision by all the blacks on campus to leave Holy Cross permanently (see CrossCurrents #346, A “Small” Crisis Recalled, for details).  After several days of pressure on the administration to restore order on campus, Fr. Swords arrived at a packed “town meeting” of students to announce an amnesty for the expelled students and the creation of an “open university” to reflect on the lessons of recent events and their implications for the college’s future.  That night he received his second standing ovation from the students.

That spring Nixon invaded Cambodia, the National Guard killed four students at Kent State University, and Holy Cross went on a general strike (as did hundreds of U.S. campuses).  It was a time when many college presidents were being hanged in effigy on their own campuses, but at Holy Cross the senior class voted to invite Raymond Swords--their own president--to be their commencement speaker.  In his address, he predicted that the future of the college would be secure if future classes followed our example of moral conviction and committed action:

What you young graduates are completing here today--your four years of living and learning at Holy Cross--has had no real parallel in the past history of this college.  But most of all it is different because what you are commencing here today is--I believe and I hope--something new in the history of Holy Cross.  That “something new” is the beginning of a life-long commitment to fundamental change--social and political, cultural and religious--a commencement grounded on a level of awareness and concern never before achieved by so many in so short a time.  In a profound and genuine sense the class of 1970 has been radicalized as no other class before it.

 When he finished, the entire class rose to its feet and to deliver his third standing ovation of the year.

This man left the mark of his indelible character that year on our class and on our school.

 One year later he finished his 10-year term as Holy Cross president and moved on--to become president of Cranwell Prep, the Jesuit high school In Lenox, Massachusetts. He later led Jesuit high schools in Manhattan and Portland, Maine.

To me, that move—from college president to high school work—typified the Jesuit commitment to service, a commitment rooted in the dedication to one’s work regardless of its status.  Loyola’s maxim “Age quod agis” (“Do what you are doing”) meant that ambition was out of place in Jesuit Life, that one’s mission was to contribute to the whole mission of the Jesuits and of the Church.  “Promotions” were not permanent, and “demotions” were not punishment.  The alternation of “higher” and “lower” positions made Jesuit Life humble by design.

That this is precisely what some commentators noted as a significant aspect of electing a Jesuit as pope. Here is Rev. Richard Ryscavage S.J., a professor of sociology at  Fairfield University:

“St. Ignatius Loyola never wanted us to become bishops. Some exceptions were made in the mission territories, where Jesuits were sometimes the most qualified candidates for becoming leader of a diocese. At times, the Pope himself would intervene and promote a Jesuit bishop to the College of Cardinals. These were exceptions to the rule. St. Ignatius wanted to prevent us from ‘climbing the Church ladder’ by ambitioning high offices.”

Fr. Ryscavage explained that St. Ignatius’ original objection to seeking higher office was in response to the clerical careerism so prevalent at the time. Thus Jesuits take an additional vow not to seek high office.

All of this contrasts sharply with my experience of a certain kind of diocesan priest. The truth is that clerical careerism never died out.  Over my 40 years in church work I’ve occasionally encountered priests who projected a certain ambition.  I cannot describe concrete symptoms of that ambition; it always was a kind of intangible aura such men carried with them like baggage.  But when I felt it, I would tell myself (and often tell others too): “That man wants to be a bishop.” As it turns out, every single one of those men did become bishops, their ambitions fulfilled. Many of them lead dioceses today far from their native local church.

I was seldom privy to the details of the clerical politics that produced such bishops, but I’ll never forget the remark of one pastor, a close family friend, who early in his priesthood had declined the tempting invitation to become a bishop’s secretary (often a step toward higher office).  He confessed to me that he was indeed tempted by that prospect of higher office, but even then he knew he was uncomfortable taking that path.  He described “climbing the church ladder” to me.

“There are only two ways to get ahead,” he told me.  “One is to climb over other guys.  The other is to push them out of the way.” He decided he wanted none of it, became a pastor instead, and stayed in his small, out-of-the-way parish for nearly 30 years until retirement. 
He and I both knew one exception to the rule, however.  One of his seminary classmates, Dan Hart, had left a high diocesan office

Fr. Dan Hart

to return to parish work, where he and I were colleagues.  This priest taught fourth grade CCD and worked with me on baptismal and confirmation programs.  One day, out of the blue, he was named an auxiliary bishop, and several years later became bishop of a New England diocese of his own.  

I always said the highest compliment I could pay him was this: he always remained “the same old Dan Hart” I had known in the parish.  And that was enough to make him a terrific bishop: caring, accessible, solicitous, an authentic shepherd.

Bishop Dan Hart

True, he had never been a great parish priest.  He was a tepid preacher, a dry teacher, an uninspiring liturgist. Yet his very ordinariness made him a good bishop.  “After all,” I would explain to others, “The standards for bishops are much lower than for parish priests!”

Sadly, the last 10 years have demonstrated that truth, and worse: those few priests who sunk below the usual standard and abused children with their power were the very priests that bishops worked hardest to protect.

Ironically, neither Ray Swords nor Dan Hart ever served as a pastor, but they had the qualities a pastor needs. What they proved was that, pastoral skills aside, the personal qualities of humility, simplicity, and authenticity are enough to make a bishop great.  That’s why, 43 years after my college commencement, I’m sure that Pope Francis is onto something.  If we could have more bishops with qualities like Ray Swords and Dan Hart--bishops who adopt a Jesuit spirit of avoiding ambition--the Church will be better for it.

And these are precisely the gifts Pope Francis has brought to his job as Bishop of Rome.  Here is hoping we now get more bishops in his mold. 

  © Bernard   F. Swain PhD 2013

#396: The Providential Summer of ‘63

Fifty summers ago, dramatic events brought one of those tectonic shifts that alters the landscape for generations...

This summer brings many significant 50^th anniversaries, since the summer of 1963 brought so many significant events. Civil rights leader Medgar Evers was assassinated; Alabama Governor George Wallace stood in a doorway to block access by blacks to the University of Alabama; President John Kennedy delivered three important speeches: on civil rights (to mark the centennial of the Battle of Gettysburg), on freedom for the Soviet bloc, and—on June 26—he stood before the Berlin wall and delivered the famous lines “Ich bin ein Berliner.”

For Catholics, June 1963 and the weeks that followed were particularly dramatic.  And 50 years later, with the benefit of hindsight, we can say that the drama unfolding that summer was no doubt of divine inspiration.

It all began with the death of Pope John XXIII (Angelo Roncalli), who will soon become Saint John XXIII.  

John XXIII lying in state, June 1963

 John had opened Vatican Council II in October 1962, had publicly intervened to help resolve the Cuban missile crisis that same month, and was made Time Magazine’s man of the year in January 1963.  But even then, he knew he was dying.  At his death

on June 3, the world mourned the loss of the most beloved pope in memory.  Because of his achievements, Catholics do not observe his feast day on his death date (as is standard for saints and venerated people of the Church) but on October 11, the opening date of Vatican II.

But June 3 brought crisis, for John’s death created an immediate vacuum that threatened chaos.

When Vatican II began as the largest meeting in history and the first general council since 1871, the conservatives hoped (and many more expected) that it would adjourn quickly after rubber-stamping Catholicism’s status quo.

Instead, the world’s bishops rejected the boilerplate drafts offered by Vatican officials and committed the Council to a full-scale reflection on the nature of Catholicism in its place in the modern world.  This commitment would transform Vatican II into the most important religious event of the 20th century--and one of the three or four most important watersheds in Catholic history.  But it also meant that, by the end of the Council’s first session in December 1962, almost nothing had been finished yet. 

John’s death suspended all plans for a second session, expected in fall 1963.  The next pope’s name was unknown until an election could be held.  Whoever he was, he would be under no obligation to reconvene the council, or--if he did--to continue with John’s (and now the bishops’) agenda. 

So questions abounded: Who will be pope?  Will he continue the Council?  What will he have the Council do?  In a word, all bets were off.

It all ended well.  The next pope, Paul VI (G.B. Montini),

Pope Paul VI

decided to reconvene the Council, and in his opening address he quoted John’s 1962 opening address to confirm that Vatican II was to be nothing less than a “new Pentecost”—a rebirth—of the Catholic Church. Thus the summer of ’63 included serious preparations of the new, more substantive drafts that would ultimately become known as “The Documents of Vatican II.”

But hindsight tells us that none of this happy outcome, none of this surprisingly smooth transition from pope to pope (and from first Council session to second session) was really an accident, or a matter of good fortune.  Looking back upon facts that have emerged over the last 50 years, we can now say that the events of summer 1963 appear to be the result of a plan--a plan not of human design.  In other words, summer 1963 witnessed an act of divine Providence.

The providential pattern leading to the successful continuation of Vatican II was composed of three main elements:

The young Roncalli

A Long Friendship.  As far back as the 1920s, Angelo Roncalli (later John XXIII) and Giovanni Montini (later Paul VI) were friends.  In 1925 Pope Pius XI appointed Roncalli apostolic visitor to Bulgaria.  Roncalli was devastated to be sent out of Italy. But Montini (who worked at the Vatican’s Secretariat of State) encouraged him, saying he would now have opportunities to encounter the Orthodox churches of the east and the Muslim tradition.  This mattered to both men, since both wanted to promote a reconciliation with other faiths.

The young Montini

When, after later serving as Vatican apostolic delegate to Turkey and Greece, Roncalli was made papal nuncio to France in 1945, it was Montini who signed the letter of his appointment. 

Roncalli in France

 Later, it was Montini who also asked him if he were willing to become patriarch of Venice. They corresponded frequently over the years, well beyond the demands of protocol, and one biographer says that Montini became Roncalli’s “Roman confidant.”

When John XXIII observed his 80^th birthday in 1961, it was Montini who celebrated the Mass.  And when John lay dying in June 1963, it was Montini who arranged to fly in his family from Milan to be at his old friend’s bedside.

A Close Partnership. When Pope Pius XII died in 1958,

Pius XII

Montini (now Archbishop of Milan) was a favorite to succeed him--but he was not yet a cardinal and was thought a bit young. Since Pius had ruled for 19 years, the College of Cardinals preferred a shorter interim papacy, and thus an older man.  So they elected 76-year-old Roncalli to be a caretaker of the papal seat.  They expected a brief, uneventful papacy.

When John XXIII shattered expectations by calling for the first council of bishops in a century, even Montini was surprised.  “This holy old boy,” he said, “doesn’t seem to realize what a hornet’s nest he is stirring up.”

Nonetheless Montini began advising John as early as 1961 on the best approach to a successful Council.  And he offered public support in a pastoral letter to the people of Milan in which he said “It is the whole Church that expresses itself in the Council…And we are the Church.”

Montini as Archbishop of Milan

In June 1962, only weeks before the opening of the council, John sent Montini to the final meeting of the central committee preparing for the Council.  Montini delivered the pope’s message: the Council was not to concentrate on condemnations and anathemas (like many previous councils), but was to emphasize mercy and love.  Cardinal Ottaviani, the Grand Inquisitor, spoke for many of the “intransigenti” (church officials opposed to reform) when he said, “I pray God that I may die before the Council’s end.  That way I can die a Catholic”!

We now know that that during Vatican II’s first session in the fall of 1962, John invited his friend Montini (and no one else) to reside in the papal apartments.  John did not attend council meetings himself, so he relied on Montini to keep him abreast of the mood among the bishops.  We also know that Montini led the progressive bishops in overcoming the resistance of the intransigenti.  This ensured that the council would not be brief and unproductive, but would last four years and transform Catholicism.

When John was made pope, the first man he chose to become a new cardinal was Montini.  And after the dying John receive the last rites on June 1, 1963, he told those around him that he guessed Montini would be his successor.  Three weeks later, his prediction came true, and his close partner and old friend) took over the reins of Vatican Council II.

Thus, when the College of Cardinals elected Montini himself as John’s successor 50 years ago on June 21, 1963, the cardinals were uniting two friends in one office.

A Shared Vision.  As preparations for the second session of the Council proceeded during the summer of 1963, the partnership these two friends had forged began to bear fruit in an inspired vision of how the Council could renew the Church and its mission in the world

Both men were francophiles influenced by the “new theology” of Jesuits Henri de Lubac and Jean Daniélou and Dominicans like Yves Congar and Marie-Dominique Chenu.  Both shared an optimistic view of modern life and a critical view of clerical church customs and structures.  Both believed that the wisdom of Catholicism was a key to steering the power of modern technology, science, and culture toward good rather than the evil--and they were both convinced that only a transformed Church could accomplish this. Both saw this transformation as the Council’s purpose and agenda.

When John addressed the Council’s opening session on October 11 1962 he called for a “New Pentecost.”  And when Montini became Pope Paul VI in the summer of 1963, he made that rebirth his own top priority.  As summer ended and the Council reconvened, Paul repeated John’s call for a “new Pentecost” and made it clear that John’s vision of a renewed and updated Church was now in the capable hands of his former friend and partner.

Two years later Paul addressed the United Nations just as the Council was finishing its work.  Here is how he described himself and the Church he represented:

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.

Paul VI addressing the UN General Assembly

And here is how he described the historic, even heroic vision that had inspired both him and John:

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.

Looking back, we can only marvel.  The troubling questions that were provoked by John’s death in June 1963 were answered by summer’s end--but only later have we realized that the answers were engraved by the wisdom of divine Providence in the hearts of two men whose paths had converged 40 years earlier and whose shared accomplishment still touches us deeply, 50 summers later.

  © Bernard   F. Swain PhD 2013