Category: Roman Catholicism

Apostolic Succession without Success

Published on by D. G. Hart13 Comments

It used to be that the claims of a Cardinal in the church might be above the paygrade of an ordinary university theologian, but in sectors where papal supremacy is still audacious, a bishop’s links to the apostles doesn’t count much any more. Timothy Cardinal Dolan’s op-ed for the Wall St. Journal has not pleased a bevy of Roman Catholic theologians and ethicists:

Jesuit Fr. John Langan, who holds the Cardinal Bernardin Chair of Catholic Social Thought at Georgetown University, faults Dolan for crediting all the positive accomplishments of the economy “to the private sector, while exempting it from serious criticism for the actual defects of our system, the problems of ‘real existing capitalism.'”

“Virtuous American capitalism,” Langan argues, “is an abstraction. The key question is whether the notion is being used to prick or to lull our consciences.”

For Langan, “The real arguments which need to be faced have to do with achieving the right balance of private initiative, redistributive programs, fair regulations, opportunities for the young and for the previously excluded, equitable and realistic taxation, a style of management that treats workers with dignity and respects the environment.”

Unfortunately, he says, “far too many of the friends of American capitalism devote their energies to denouncing, defunding, and otherwise restricting efforts to face the immensely complex set of problems that confront us. They are devoted to a powerful but incomplete method of economic thinking that marginalizes important human needs and values that Catholic teaching is committed to proclaiming and defending.”

What especially caught the ire of the theologians was Cardinal Dolan’s focus on personal morality and virtue while excluding structural issues.

“Cardinal Dolan’s stress on personal virtue as the solution to issues of economic injustice does not give sufficient attention to the structural causes of poverty,” Hollenbach complains.

“These structural issues have long been a major emphasis in Catholic social teaching, especially since Pius XI placed high stress on social justice as a reality that goes beyond the justice of individuals,” he says. “Pope Francis is clearly aware of these structural issues when he argues that markets do not lead to justice by ‘trickle down.’ The Pope’s critique is another way of calling for structural change.”

Dolan’s column “reflects a heavily individualistic understanding of morality,” says Professor Mark Allman, chair of Religious & Theological Studies Department at Merrimack College.

“He seems to reduce the bad behavior of the financial districts to individual choices, which ignores John Paul II’s teaching on ‘social sin’ as ‘institutionalized evil,'” Allman says. “Granted John Paul said all sin is traced back to individual choices, nevertheless there are structural and cultural practices that contribute to a culture or status quo that can be inhumane.” But in Dolan’s piece, “There’s no mention of the need for structural change.”

Then again, the Cardinal wasn’t resting simply on his own ecclesiastical authority, perhaps because economics is an aspect of human interaction that resists divinely revealed categories. Dolan, it turns out, needed the help of Larry Kudlow to yield an opinion with the weight of apostolic authority:

Larry Kudlow of CNBC tweeted that he worked with Cardinal Dolan on the piece. On his show back in August, after quoting the pope’s tweet that people are “unemployed, often as a result of a self-centered mindset bent on profit at any cost,” Kudlow commented, “That doesn’t sound like much of a free market message to me.”

Many of the themes in Dolan’s column can be heard in Kudlow’s show. “I hope sincerely that the pope does not believe that his native Argentina was an example of capitalism,” Kudlow said. “That was state-run fascism, and that was cronyism and stealing.”

He argued that what Pope Francis is saying is, “businesses, politicians, and everybody, we all have to have a conscience. As we go about our business in this system, we must have a conscience and we must not forget those who are less fortunate.” Kudlow said he believes that “Judeo-Christian values, meritocracy values, that is where the rising tide lifts all boats.” He acknowledged, “That does not mean poverty ends, but that is where the rising tide comes from.”

In contrast, Kudlow said “Pope John Paul II had a much more market-friendly approach to all this” because he lived under Soviet Communist rule. “He understood that the socialist systems or even the quasi-socialist systems have no freedom,” he opined. “I am not sure this pope really understands that.”

So the next time Jason and the Callers want to lecture Protestants about our poorly governed ideas and communions, they may want to consider the incoherence in their own seemingly well-ordered circles.

Worship in Spirit and Truth or Place

Published on by D. G. Hart19 Comments

On Sunday, with English-speaking Protestant churches in short supply in The Eternal City, I took advantage of streaming audio but also decided to observe the 10:00 Mass at the Basilica of St. John Lateran. When in Rome do as some of the Romans do (I say some because the Saturday before Pentecost Sunday, Romans turned out loudly and brightly for a gay pride parade). While observing the proceedings, which included a Cardinal and about 25 assistants with the liturgy (how do they pay them all?), a choir that sang better than the liturgical music I’ve heard in U.S. Roman Catholic parishes but that did not hold a candle to the evensong performances in Christ’s Church Cathedral (Dublin) or St. Mary’s Cathedral (Edinburgh), and a surfeit of images (statues, paintings, tile work in the ceiling, I couldn’t help but think that U.S. Roman Catholics who worship in Rome must feel a tad underwhelmed when they return to their home parish. Rome simply has more stuff than Lansing, Michigan. In fact, place seems to matter for Roman Catholicism in ways that rival Judaism and Islam — certain locales are holy and function as the spiritual capital for the faith.

In comparison, I can return to the States (in a week or so) after worshiping with Presbyterians in Dublin and Edinburgh and not think twice about missing the liturgical bling — and I can say that even while admitting Presbyterianism’s debt to the Scots, and to the charms of what might qualify as Presbyterianism’s capital city — Edinburgh. For Presbyterians, worship doesn’t depend on the tie between the minister and another church official, nor does it include relics or objects that point to holy persons who inhabited that space. The services in Dublin and Edinburgh were not any more special or meaningful because they were closer to Presbyterianism’s original space.

That would seem to confirm Jesus’ point to the Samaritan woman at the well that Christian worship depends not on place or space but on word and Spirit. Sure, that’s a root-for-the-home-team point. But it does account for the lack of liturgical envy among New World Presbyterians. On the other side of the Atlantic, the Spirit and the word are just as much a part of worship as in the Presbyterian heartland.

How Is this Conservative?

Published on by D. G. Hart21 Comments

The Catholic News Service (via Dwight Longenecker courtesy of our mid-western correspondent) explains how we are supposed to understand a Muslim prayer being offered in the Vatican:

When leaders of different religions come together and pray for a common cause, they are not only appealing to God, they also are showing the world they believe that followers of different religions are still brothers and sisters before the one who created them.

That is not the same as ignoring religious differences or pretending those differences do not matter.
“It should be evident to all who participate that these occasions are moments of being ‘together for prayer, but not prayer together,’” said guidelines for interreligious dialogue published in late May by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.

“Being able to pray in common requires a shared understanding of who God is,” the document said. “Since religions differ in their understanding of God, ‘interreligious prayer’ — meaning the joining together in common prayer by followers of various religions — is to be avoided.”

The distinction between praying together and praying at the same time is one Vatican officials have found increasingly necessary to emphasize as popes have led more and more interfaith gatherings for peace.

That sounds about as clear as the distinction between praying to Mary and praying to God through Christ.

But John Paul II may have established the pattern in his catechism:

841 The Church’s relationship with the Muslims. “The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day.”

These are clearly Roman Catholic matters and I am not in a position (even if writing from Rome) to tell Roman Catholics how to interpret the Bible or their tradition. But I am befuddled, to put it mildly, that formerly conservative, strict-subscriptionist, inerrantist Presbyterians can switch sides and then tell us with a straight face that they have entered a communion that is more conservative than even the PCA.

BTW, I wonder if those team-switchers notice a resemblance between Called to Communion and this.

The European Roots of American Christianity

Published on by D. G. Hart184 Comments

As I walked around Rome this morning I could well understand the appeal of Roman Catholicism to Christians in the U.S. who desire a faith more profound than James Dobson’s or even Tim Keller’s. (TKNY’s historical vibe does not seem to be any older than 1990s New York, despite the comparisons of him to C. S. Lewis.) Heck, part of the appeal to me of Reformed Protestantism was that it situated me in a set of debates and a system of Christian reflection and ministry that went well beyond 1938 — the year my parents’ Baptist congregation started (we had no clue about Roger William and Rhode Island). So with Zwingli and Bucer I get almost five hundred years of tradition (or records, anyway). And for a U.S. Presbyterian who just spent a week in Edinburgh, arguably one of the most beautiful cities in the world with a population of less than 600,000, to walk through the streets and read through the archives and be reminded of arguments and assertions that still hold sway in some American communions sure beats following a trail that ends in some recent odd American locale.

Even so, with Rome, you get a lot more and a lot more grandeur, and if you are simply in the who’s-got-the-oldest-church-cornerstone mode, Rome beats Geneva and Edinburgh (though the latter has more polish than Rome which seems to suffer, along with Istanbul, from being too old; when you get used to having ruins around, you may also become accustomed to a place being a tad disheveled). Still, I’m not sure how Rome beats Jerusalem or Antakya except that western Europe has more cultural cache in the U.S. than Asia Minor (Turkey).

Amid these reflections on Europhilia, David Robertson came to the rescue to keep European Christianity real:

Put any group of Christians together and you will get a wide variety of opinions – some of them contradictory. That is particularly true when we are trying to assess the state of the Church in Europe today. On the one hand there are the doom and gloom merchants, the Jeremiahs, full of facts and figures about numbers and visions of the past, pointing out that the church is dying and we are all “doomed, doomed”. On the other there are the “God is doing a new and greater thing” brigade, the revivalists who are also full of facts and figures but their visions are visions of the future. They assure us on the basis of what is happening in a couple of churches, and a dream that they had that victory is just around the corner, revival is on its way and all we have to do is help their ministry. Isn’t it strange how both the “realists” and the “revivalists” seem to be able to justify their own ministeries because of their prophecies? We are told that we need to support the realists because only in that way will the remnant hang on until the Lord returns. On the other hand we had better support the revivalists because we don’t want to miss out on the revival.

So maybe European Christianity isn’t all that we Europhilic Christians in the U.S. make it out to be. It sure has more history, better architecture, and civilizational presence. But freed from all the baggage of Christendom, perhaps Christianity is better off. That’s not an expression of American Christian exceptionalism. Nor is it an assertion that American Christianity is somehow independent from Europe’s churches. Unmoored from Europe’s tragedies and buoyed by America’s can-do (Pelagian) spirit, mixed with a blasphemous belief in the nation’s divine purpose, American Christianity (Protestant and Roman Catholic) has no room to gloat (even though we usually gloat in spades). At the same time, returning to Europe and its Christian ways won’t do either.

Giving New Meaning to Evangelicals and Catholics Together (or to the Call)

Published on by D. G. Hart5 Comments

One way of finding this meaning is to look at the increase of calls to a communion called the Evangelical Catholic Church.

In the wake of media coverage of Fr. James Radloff’s recent highly public departure from the Roman Catholic Church to seek incardination into the Evangelical Catholic Church as an active priest, the little known denomination had received 80 inquiries from former and current Catholic priests about reaffiliation as of May 6.
According to ECC spokesman William Morton, ECC Bishop James Wilkowski also “has in hand 19 inquiries from Roman Catholic women who have earned their Masters of Divinity Degrees and are considering their options with us.”

Formed in 1997, the ECC allows single or married male and female deacons, priests and bishops; grants “marital dissolution”; encourages divorced or remarried Catholics to return to “the full sacramental life of Catholicism”; recognizes same-sex marriages; and accepts birth control.

This sounds like the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of the Roman Catholic world.

(Thanks to John Fea) Then there is news that evangelical Protestants affirm Roman Catholic teaching more than Roman Catholics do. And this has implications for the so-called Religious Right and the ecumenism in the trenches of which ECTers are fond of invoking:

The 2007 Pew Poll found that 42% of Catholics expressed support for same-sex marriage versus 36% of the population as a whole. In terms of trends, 40% of Catholics supported same-sex marriage in 2001 with that number increasing to nearly 60% by 2014. By contrast, only 13% of Evangelicals favored same-sex marriage in 2001 and just 23% approve of it today.

Writing in The Atlantic, PRRI’s Robert Jones gets at the truth behind these numbers: “there is more support for official Roman Catholic Church positions among white evangelical Protestants than among Catholics.” But, as he notes, this isn’t a new trend; it’s the result of a two-decade long effort to cultivate “a new evangelical flock to compensate for the loss of lay Catholic support on cultural issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.”

The real Catholic-Evangelical convergence is between the Republican leadership, the Catholic bishops, right-wing Catholics, and rank-and-file Evangelicals, a coalition that was cemented by Karl Rove with his aggressive outreach to “conservative” Catholics during the Bush administration. But the fact that a big chunk of moderate and progressive Catholics are missing from this coalition continues to be lost on many in the media. It’s as if as long as the bishops are vocal in their objections to progressive polices and someone in the public is making noise, there’s a tendency to attribute it to “Catholics.” How else to explain the PPRI number that only 37% of Catholics oppose the contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act, when the widespread perception that Catholics were broadly disapproving of it helped gin up early and critical opposition?

I’m sure Jason and the Callers have already factored these numbers into their call.

Is the Last Acceptable Prejudice No More?

Published on by D. G. Hart69 Comments

I like Ross Douthat and all, but the inside Roman Catholic baseball discussions of divorce at his New York Times blog — NEW YORK friggin’ TIMES!! — are perhaps more appropriate for a parochial website like CTC than at the place for all that’s fit to print. Here’s a recent sampling. First Douthat quotes Pascal Emmanuel-Gobry:

I think this is a grace we often overlook. God’s law is as hard as His mercy is infinite. And none of us are righteous under the law. And none of us, if we are honest, can even be said to want to be righteous under the law, in every single dimension of our life. But, particularly in these delicate and demanding aspects of sexual life and life situations, the grace of wanting to want God’s will is already very precious and important. And is it not in those phases, where we are broken down, and all we can muster the strength to pray for is to want to want, or even to want to want to want, that the Church should be most present with the succor of her sacraments?

… If I am a divorced-remarried-unchaste person and, during the eucharistic liturgy, I cry out in my heart, “O Lord! I do not understand your law, and I do not have the will to follow it, but I love you, and I beg you for forgiveness of my sins and the grace to want to want to follow in your footsteps and to be able to humbly receive your body”, is this a contrition that is “sufficient” for me to be able to receive the Body of Christ?

I think so.

Douthat replies in part:

Whatever the complexities and shades-of-gray involved in human sin, it is very clear in Catholic teaching that the medicinal effect, the “succor” of communion, is inseparable (like a two-dose drug) from the succor of a good confession, and you simply can’t make a good confession, and thus be in a position to benefit spiritually from communion, if you don’t intend to take some positive step to separate yourself from a gravely sinful situation or arrangement. To use a higher-stakes version of the professional case Gobry references — if you work at a job that by its nature requires grave sin for full participation (let’s say, I dunno, you’re a lieutenant for the Wolf of Wall Street in his salad days), and you make a confession of sin but have no plan of any kind to disassociate yourself from the business, your confession is by definition insufficient, and saying “I do not have the will to stop defrauding people, Lord, but I pray to gain it” is a sign that you should be praying and not communing.

The same logic, then, would apply to someone in an institutional arrangement that amounts to public adultery under the church’s definitions. You need not have the full desire to change (of course everything is grayer than a term like “perfect contrition” might suggest), but the desire to have the desire is not enough: You need to have some intention to change your life, some idea of alteration, to confess and commune in good conscience.

Can anyone possibly imagine a Reformed Protestant writer for the New York Times blogging about union with Christ or the ordo salutis and the bearing of these debates on denominational politics with reference to American citizens that belong to NAPARC communions? If not, then why do some argue that the anti-Catholic prejudice still exists in the United States? I am well aware that it used to and I can well imagine Paul Blanshard‘s jaws tightening if he were to encounter Douthat while surfing the Times’ webpages. But Ross Douthat free and frequent comments on Roman Catholic faith and practice at the newspaper considered one of the most secular in the nation sure needs to be added to the calculations of anti-Catholic prejudice.

The Call Thickens

Published on by D. G. Hart66 Comments

Jason and the Callers have nothing on Ross Douthat for explaining what’s at stake in current debates about marriage and what they mean for the Call to Communion:

. . . what’s being proposed and discussed and debated among some of the church’s bishops and cardinals — with, it would seem, the blessing of the pope — is something significantly different: An official mechanism whereby a divorced and remarried Catholic could, without having their previous marriage declared invalid, do penance for any sins involved in their divorce and then receive communion without their new marriage being a moral impediment to reception of the host. In practice, this would move the church in the direction of Eastern Orthodoxy, which has traditionally allowed pastoral exceptions for second marriages, but it would so in a more ambiguous way — effectively creating a kind of second tier of marital unions for Catholics, whose existence the church would decide to “tolerate” (in the words of Cardinal Walter Kasper, the leading voice making the proposal) but “not accept.”

Now one can debate the practical effects of such a proposal (I have various thoughts, but again, I’ll save them). And one certainly can, as the Orthodox and many Protestant churches do, make reasonable theological and biblical arguments for accepting second marriages in some form. But here’s the crucial problem: The test for changes to Catholic practice isn’t just supposed to be “what practical consequences are likely to ensue?” and the bar that such changes need to clear isn’t just supposed to be “what can be reasonably defended by thoughtful Christians?” Rather, the primary test and crucial bar alike are supposed to be “what can be reasonably defended in the light of what the Roman Catholic Church has historically affirmed and taught?”

Seen in that light, it is very hard for me to understand how this kind of change wouldn’t create some pretty significant internal problems for Catholic doctrine as currently and traditionally understood. Saying, with Cardinal Kasper, that second marriages can be tolerated but not accepted implies a zone of human conduct that one might call “tolerable sinfulness,” which is an idea that church teaching does not currently support. (And which if it did support would have all kinds of moral and doctrinal implications, extending well beyond this particular debate.) And whatever individuals and pastors decide to take upon their own consciences, declaring the reception of communion licit for the remarried-but-not-annulled in any systematic way seems impossible without real changes — each with its own potential doctrinal ripples — to one or more of three theologically-important Catholic ideas: The understanding that people in grave sin should not generally receive the Eucharist, the understanding that adultery is always a grave sin, and/or the understanding that a valid sacramental marriage is indissoluble.

Which in turn would mean that if he actually made this kind of change — and, as I said in the column, I do not think he will, but it is being debated with his apparent encouragement, so the possibility has to be addressed — Pope Francis would be either dissolving important church teachings into what looks to me like incoherence, or else changing those same teachings in a way that many conservative Catholics believe that the pope simply cannot do.

Now I am obviously neither a theologian nor a church historian, so my judgments on an issue like this are hardly (ahem) infallible. But in following the controversy, the arguments that this sort of move would not require a doctrinal change seem fairly weak. There is the claim that it would be a strictly disciplinary change, not a dogmatic one … but unlike many other disciplinary issues (from Friday fasts to priestly celibacy), this seems like a case where the discipline is more or less required by a doctrine or doctrines, and to alter one is to at least strongly imply an alteration in the others. There is also the invocation of practices from the early centuries of the church, when some second marriages may have been handled in this manner, and the suggestion that under such a reform the church would be simply returning to an ancient practice. But the entire theory of the development of dogma, which is central to defenses of continuity in Catholic teaching, would seem to militate against the idea that the consistent witness (and to this layman, it really does look pretty consistent) of the second millennium of Catholic history, complete with martyrs and dogmatic definitions, can safely be set aside because of some highly ambiguous cases from the first millennium.

Now these are not points that would trouble many liberal Catholics, who often reject the intertwined ideas of consistency in Catholic doctrine and papal infallibility, and for whom the idea of a pope willing to alter doctrine might be a consummation devoutly to be wished. But for conservative Catholics, many of whom have spent the John Paul and Benedict eras arguing that on a range of controversial questions the whole issue isn’t just that the church shouldn’t change, but that it can’t … well, if a change like this did happen, however hedged and with however many first millennium antecedents invoked, that conservative argument would at the very least look weaker than it did during the last two pontificates.

And since it isn’t a small argument … since the church’s claim to a constant, non-contradicting authority lies close to the heart of why many conservative Catholics are conservative Catholics … well, that’s why the “schism” possibility seems worth raising, because hard-to-process theological shocks are where institutional fractures often start. It’s one thing for conservative Catholics to serve as a kind of loyal opposition during this pontificate — to learn to doubt a pope, or disagree with his rhetoric or decision-making, while remaining faithful to the office and the church. It’s quite another if one of those papal decisions seriously calls into question the doctrinal continuity that’s the very root of conservative-Catholic loyalty. And there just isn’t a recent model apart from the Lefebvrist schism for how that kind of more-Catholic-than-the-pope dissent would practically work.

But once again, I could be completely wrong, about either the problematic nature of the shift being discussed or the likely conservative reaction to the change. All I can say for certain is that a development like this would leave me more doubtful than before about the consistency of Catholic doctrine and the nature of the church. But I’m not sure what to read into these feelings: While I obviously fall into the conservative camp in the Catholic culture wars I’m also on the less-rigorous, more-latitudinarian end of the conservative-Catholic spectrum, so I tend to expect that what unsettles me should unsettle the more rigorous even more … but it could also be that if I were more rigorous I’d be more trusting and less suspicious, and less likely to see (invent?) discontinuities where they might not actually exist. I’m not sure …

Wouldn’t it show their Protestant past if the Callers were so candid in their descriptions of the communion to which they call.

Roman Catholic Calvinists

Published on by D. G. Hart13 Comments

Not sure that this is what Jason and the Callers had in mind.

Mark Silk compares politically conservative (read GOP) Roman Catholics to Jansenists and neo-Calvinists (I think he means New Calvinism) (thanks to Michael Sean Winters):

Today’s neo-Jansenists are likewise moral sticklers, focused laser-like on the twin evils of abortion and same-sex marriage, They are driven crazy by a Jesuit pope who tells them to stop harping on those issues, whose most famous remark is, “Who am I to judge?”

Where he portrays the Church as a hospital for sinners, they want to restrict Communion to the deserving, whether that means excluding politicians who are soft on abortion rights or holding the line against divorced and remarried Catholics. Possible papal readiness to open the door to the latter led Ross Douthat of the New York Times to blog the other day, ”Pope Francis would be either dissolving important church teachings into what looks to me like incoherence, or else changing those same teachings in a way that many conservative Catholics believe that the pope simply cannot do.” Oh, can’t he?

Today’s neo-Jansenists do their predecessors one better by embracing the Spirit of Capitalism famously associated with Calvinism by sociologist Max Weber. To tweet that inequality is the root of evil, as Francis did the other day, distressed them deeply. Altogether, they resemble the neo-Calvinists who have become the intellectual leaders of contemporary American evangelicalism.

The old-time Jansenism included world-class luminaries like mathematician Blaise Pascal and playwright Jean Racine but never the Catholic majority. In their emerging struggle with the Jesuit pope, the neo-Jansenists have lesser lights like Robert George and George Weigel, even as the faithful are overwhelmingly on Francis’ side. And so, history seems likely to repeat itself.

The good news for Weigel and George is that the Vatican makes no such distinctions. From their statistical perspective, the only distinctions are among bishops, priests, deacons, and baptized (not to mention monks and nuns). (But the Callers know better.)

By the end of 2012, the worldwide Catholic population had reached 1.228 billion, an increase of 14 million or 1.14 percent, slightly outpacing the global population growth rate, which, as of 2013, was estimated at 1.09 percent.

Catholics as a percentage of the global population remained essentially unchanged from the previous year at around 17.5 percent.

However, the latest Vatican statistical yearbook estimated that there were about 4.8 million Catholics that were not included in its survey because they were in countries that could not provide an accurate report to the Vatican, mainly China and North Korea.

According to the yearbook, the percentage of Catholics as part of the general population is highest in the Americas where they make up 63.2 percent of the continent’s population. Asia has the lowest proportion, with 3.2 percent.

During the 2012 calendar year, there were 16.4 million baptisms of both infants and adults, according to the statistical yearbook.

It said the number of bishops of the world stayed essentially the same at 5,133.

The total number of priests — diocesan and religious order — around the world grew from 413,418 to 414,313, with a modest increase in Africa, a larger rise in Asia, and slight decreases in the Americas, Europe and Oceania. Asia saw a 13.7 percent growth in the number of priests between 2007 and the end of 2012.

The number of permanent deacons reported — 42,104 — was an increase of more than 1,100 over the previous year and a 17 percent increase since 2007. The vast majority — more than 97 percent — of the world’s permanent deacons live in the Americas or in Europe.

That means Rome has roughly 5 bishops for every 400 priests and 1.2 million members, and 4 priests for 1,200 members. In the OPC, where the costs are nowhere near PCANYC levels, you have roughly 1 pastor for every one hundred members (and these members — ahem — meet membership requirements).

Canonization Fall Out

Published on by D. G. Hart53 Comments

If you like the social aspect of Popes John XXIII and John Paul II, you feel warmed and filled after the recent canonizations:

Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II can rightly be called “the human rights popes.” In their teaching and their actions, they did more to advance the church’s teaching on human rights and to promote the dignity and rights of the human person globally than any other pope. Blessed John’s 1963 encyclical Pacem in Terris brought about a sea change in the Roman Catholic tradition. It declared for the first time the Catholic Church’s full commitment to the modern human rights agenda, encompassing democratic freedoms and economic, social, and cultural rights. Blessed John Paul built on the foundation of John XXIII by unremittingly reminding the world of the inviolable dignity of the human person and her rights on pastoral visits all over the world. This is why in 2011 the United Nations honored him as a “consistent promoter of peace and human rights.” He trenchantly reminded Christians not to dismiss human rights as a product of the Enlightenment, or a “wish list” of political parties. Rather, argued the pontiff, Jesus Christ and his Gospel are the ultimate source of human rights. Moreover, John Paul argued that the rights of the poor and marginalized cannot be postponed because affluent nations and individuals think their “freedom” entitles them to hyper-consumption (see Redemptor Hominis, no.16). He also penned the Church’s most complete ethic and spirituality of labor, Laborem Exercens. John Paul maintained that the Son of God became a carpenter, thereby revealing that all work possesses equal dignity because it is done by a human being. All workers – not just those highly valued by the market – must be guaranteed rights such as a just wage, affordable healthcare, rest, retirement pensions, unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, maternity leave, and safe working conditions (no. 19).

But if you are concerned about liturgy and piety, then cool and unsatisfied:

Then we have the canonization of John Paul II, which is being treated in media accounts as the Traditionalist half of a political process. On the same Sunday, both John Paul II and the liberal hero Pope John XXIII will be canonized. We are told that Pope Francis is trying to effect the reconciliation of two spheres in the Catholic world, and consolidate the legacy of the Second Vatican Council, which sought to bring the church up to date with the modern world. This narrative leaves me cold.

Like a lot of Catholic Traditionalists, I have extremely mixed feelings about John Paul II. He inspired many of the best men in todays’s church to join the priesthood. But I do not consider him a representative of Traditionalist views. He made additions to the Rosary, which have been thankfully ignored by the faithful. His allowance for the Traditional Latin Mass was insultingly ungenerous. He made bold ecumenical gestures that seem impossible to reconcile not only with the texts of Vatican II, but also with the teachings of the pre-conciliar church.

I find that John Paul’s writings are alternately inspiring, opaque, and incomprehensible. His governance of the church was lax in the extreme, to the point of negligence. Even before his death, my view was that here was a celebrity pope who traveled while Rome burned in scandal.

John Paul II’s record on sexual abuse was abysmal, full stop, even if there may be some room to doubt his personal culpability. I’ve sometimes wondered if his personal charisma blinded him to the obviously un-Catholic spirit of personal obedience written into the heart of the Legion of Christ, led by the noted abuser, liar, womanizer, and drug-addict Marcial Maciel. Or if his view of priestly abuse allegations were shaped by his experience in Poland, where communist authorities routinely accused priests in order to undermine the church. But for over two decades he was the supreme authority in the church, and he did next to nothing to abate this crisis.

There is still much goodness and grace in the church today, and much growth and heroism among its members in Africa and Asia. But for the Western world, the post-Vatican II era, the one that is supposedly being consolidated and sanctified by these canonizations, has been one of shocking decline in Catholic practice, weakness of faith, and demoralizing immorality. Why the rush to canonize those who initiated and oversaw it?

Meanwhile, Jason and the Callers are up to speed with more reflection on Mary (who blogs here).