Competing Paradigms and Church Politics

Published on by D. G. Hart

First, a paradigm that Bryan Cross has not considered — the Italian one:

Anyone who knows the inner reality of Catholic life is well aware that at the retail level, there’s always a sort of negotiation that goes on between what the rules say and what actually happens. It’s not about hypocrisy or disobedience, but adapting universal norms to the infinite complexity of real-life human situations.

I was once at a talk given by a senior Vatican official when a questioner said he had a sin he wasn’t ready to confess but still felt drawn to receive Communion, even though the rules say he shouldn’t.

“The law of the church is clear,” the official responded. “You have to go to confession first.” Then the official said, “But now let me talk to you person to person. As a priest, I can’t substitute my conscience for yours. I can’t tell you to go or not to go. You have to make that choice in conscience, always bearing in mind that it must be a well-formed conscience.”

That’s the Italian view of law, which permeates the psychology of the church — law is an aspiration, not an absolute, which must be adapted to individual circumstances.

Second, the people’s paradigm in contrast to their bishop’s or the pope’s:

Medjugorje: On Monday, a commission created under Benedict XVI and presided over by Italy’s powerful Cardinal Camillo Ruini submitted the results of a four-year inquest into the alleged apparitions and revelations of the Virgin Mary at Medjugorje in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It will be up to Francis to decide what to do, though some felt he tipped his hand in mid-November during a homily in his morning Mass in which he said that Mary “is not a postmaster sending messages every day.” In the Jan. 23 edition of Corriere della Sera, famed Vatican writer Vittorio Messori said it’ll be a painful decision whichever way it goes: If Francs rules the apparitions are false, millions of faithful who flock to Medjugorje will feel deceived and betrayed; if he says they’re authentic, it would be “devastating” for canon law, which leaves to the local bishop the right to judge such phenomena in his diocese, and two bishops in a row have said no. For that reason, Messori predicted the ruling will be that “for now” there’s no proof these events are supernatural rather than the more definitive, “there’s proof they’re not supernatural.”

Last, the transparency paradigm (which isn’t necessarily the one to use with the “millions of faithful” when it comes to apparitions):

This week, Scarano faced another arrest warrant on charges of money laundering, as prosecutors charged he paid around 60 people in cash to write checks to him for roughly 10,000 euro, then used those checks to create a false paper trail to cover as much as $10 million stashed in various accounts, including the Vatican bank. . . .

Faced with the clamor these two storylines are generating, the Vatican response so far has been a deafening silence.

Not so long ago, one could have counted on somebody loudly questioning whether civil investigators were overstepping their boundaries by intruding on the Vatican’s sovereign autonomy. One recalls, for instance, that when former Naples Cardinal Michele Giordano learned his phone had been wiretapped as part of an investigation of a real estate scam orchestrated by his brother in the late 1990s, the cardinal testily snapped, “I could have been talking to the pope!”

It’s also easy to imagine that someone might have implied, if not stated outright, that these investigations are part of a political, media, and judicial campaign to drag the church through the mud, that the charges themselves are false or exaggerated, or that the Vatican’s role in the story is so negligible as to make even mentioning it gratuitous.

This time around, however, Vatican officials seem content to allow the criminal probes to play out without protest or perceptions of interference.

While Francis has not put out a formal gag order, people who otherwise might have been inclined to pop off seem to have gotten the memo: If transparency and accountability are the new watchwords, then doing or saying anything that smacks of obstruction of justice is probably not a good career move.

15 thoughts on “Competing Paradigms and Church Politics”

  1. While Francis has not put out a formal gag order, people who otherwise might have been inclined to pop off seem to have gotten the memo: If transparency and accountability are the new watchwords, then doing or saying anything that smacks of obstruction of justice is probably not a good career move.

    I think he really is trying to restore honor to the Institute for the Works of Religion and that can’t be an easy task. 😉

    I would imagine the worst of the pederasty scandal is behind him but if not, he’ll have that too to attend to.

    If he’s an honest man (and I think he is) then he’ll need at least a decade to make headway in terms of reform.

    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/pope-removes-cardinals-in-shake-up-of-vatican-bank/article16347046/

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  3. This is for Erik from the baddest of bad-boy chefs:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuomQ3Pd7Ew

    P.S. Last night I listened to Francis Schaeffer’s Watershed of the Evangelical World. It was quite depressing but prescient. He had a Moses thing going for him. I wasn’t aware of the less than ideal circumstances of his upbringing. He’s very likable.

    Now I’m done big-footing the thread.

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  4. The law of the church is clear,” the official responded. “You have to go to confession first.” Then the official said, “But now let me talk to you person to person. As a priest, I can’t substitute my conscience for yours. I can’t tell you to go or not to go. You have to make that choice in conscience, always bearing in mind that it must be a well-formed conscience.

    Fascinating.

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  8. The Pontiff also declared the internet is a powerful tool because it lets people of various religions engage in dialogues about their faiths. 

    He believes it shouldn’t be used just to preach the Catholic word, but to discuss the benefits the religion has while accepting other religions may offer alternatives. 

    The only question that remains: Are the CTCers paying attention?

    ?

    Grace and peace..

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  10. Andrew,

    You missed this wonderful quote from Francis. I think it’s the best one:

    ‘Engaging in dialogue does not mean renouncing our own ideas and traditions, but the pretense that they alone are valid and absolute.’

    A postmodern pope for a postmodern age. Amazing.

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  11. Robert, totally. You done well, here, man, FWIW. You had some great comments with Cletus van Damme out in the cognitive disonance thread. You should blog..

    Have a great Lord’s day with your family, and we’ll do our best too. Cheers.

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  14. Sdb,

    Just one more thought on the callers. Then I need to leave for church..

    It’s a good point you make, but we can fall afflicted as reformed into the same traps. It’s why that quote about submitting all to Christ, from Machen. I’d post that, if I wasn’t going out the door, and on a cell phone..

    Peace, brah.

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