Not Really a Big Deal

So, there has been a lot of conservative uproar over this video posted on a parish website by a priest in Nashville describing what he sees as the major problems in the Church today. Personally, I think his analysis is realistic and pragmatic, but there is now a lot of drum-beating about him being prosecuted for heresy. He has already been "silenced" before, in the early 90's, even about the merely disciplinary (and thus debatable) question of ending mandatory celibacy in the priesthood (and it does need to be ended). That's absurd.

First, though I think he probably does hold liberal positions on these issues based on his statements about conscience and obedience...if you actually listen to the video, he never really does advocate divorce and remarriage, nor women's ordination to the priesthood. He simply says these are issues that divide Catholics in the pews, that many Catholic disagree on, which the bishops refuse to even discuss, and which have caused many people to be driven away. And they are. Whatever you believe about these issues, that's just a sociological fact; those issues are major issues for people in the Church and need to be addressed more effectively than they have been, though I don't think that has to involve changing teachings. But if they want to face the massive collapse the Church is facing right now, they can't be in denial over the fact that the problem exists.

His only explicit dissent is, later, when he says the Pope should apologize for the teaching on birth control (advocating deaconesses is not heretical; the Orthodox, in fact, treat the question as a non-issue in certain contexts). But, again, that the reiteration of the teaching on contraception in Humanae Vitae (as prophetic as it was) drove people away and was part of the huge breakdown of Catholic unity and the facade of institutional authority...is simply a historical fact.

And he's likewise spot-on about the crisis of leadership, lack of accountability and initiative among the bishops, the major problems with mandatory celibacy, the problems with authoritarianism and hyper-centralization in Rome, and the dysfunctionalism among current seminarians and the seminary atmosphere. But no, "good Catholics" aren't allowed to discuss any of those things. We're just going to pretend those problems don't exist and defiantly stay the current self-destructive course...

Like I said, I would bet my life this priest does hold liberal positions, but he was very careful; he never explicitly advocated for any of them except perhaps contraception. And if he were smart, he'd point out to whatever inquisitors decide to come after him that he could have just been talking about the Vatican's specific casuistic (and therefore debatable) policy as regards the availability of condoms in the fight against AIDS in poor countries among people who are already promiscuous, or something like that.

And if you went after every Catholic or even priest who didn't fully accept the teaching on contraception...well, it would be a minority in the Church prosecuting a majority (though I'm definitely not saying that makes the majority right). For the most part, though, he didn't advocate for these positions...he merely said these areas are a problem for many of your average Catholics, and that's just the truth. It's like the bishops and self-proclaimed orthodox want to live in a world of denial about it.

Though I don't like heresy or liberalism, I think if Catholics simply refuse to have these conversations or discussions and continue a regime of groupthink conformism, the Church is going to continue to stagnate. This priest's analysis is honest and realistic. And even if I can't support the solutions he probably imagines...there is no denying the problems that need to be dealt with. Shooting the messengers is never a good sign.

Taking the Bait...

...of the pundits and sowers of discord. That's what lots of conservatives seem to be doing lately with this whole mosque "near" Ground Zero "controversy." I can't believe this is even an issue. Besides just the blatant bigotry of painting the Muslims with such a broad brush...from what I've seen, the proposed Islamic Center won't be visible from the site itself. In NYC...even a couple blocks can mean the difference between radically different neighborhoods, can have hundreds of thousands of people in that area.

There are all sorts of things within basically that same radius of Ground Zero, from churches to schools to blatantly consumerist stores to (I have read) a store that sells pornography and sex toys and an off-track betting facility!! So much for not profaning the site or being tasteful. I'm frankly much more offended that there are banks, dens of usury, closer even than the proposed center.

But then, I suppose it is a typically American response to defiantly flaunt and celebrate the very sorts of decadence and economic exploitation that got us attacked in the first place while also continuing to alienate the very culture that dared to fight back against our debauched hegemony. Just keep poking that beehive, America. But don't come crying to me when you get stung again; "Go out from her, my people."

Seriously though, jumping on this one empty symbol in some identity-politics "clash of civilizations" narrative (that really only benefits the fat cats and their politician lap dogs) is just so childish. I can't believe how many adults have descended to investing any emotion or thought into it whatsoever. This is like the Swiss banning minarets; it's just terrifying that we've reached this point. There were Muslim victims of 9/11 too! So I have to agree with the rabbis who protested today in favor of the Cordoba Center.

Everyone else is just using the issue to score political points. Stop fighting these ridiculous proxy battles! It's like politics is just some reality game-show now, and people just root for their favorite (but basically arbitrary) team, like some sort of elaborate version of sophistic high school debate. Which is exactly the sort of complacency I think the moneyed powers-that-be want you all to have. Don't fall for it!

Slogans?

I may be needing some slogans soon, the kind that could fit on a poster board. Any suggestions? Stuff like, I don't know:

"Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven? Well, they sure don't have any balls!"

"Is the Church Catholic Anymore!?"

"Accountability!"

"Politician Bishops + Bad Liturgy = Lost Souls"

"Where's our Catholic heritage??"

"Defend the children...not your own reputations!"

"Spineless!!!"

"The Church of Almighty Bureaucracy?!?"

"Hopelessly Corrupt!"

"Sell-outs!"

"Crisis of Leadership!"

"Drive the Money Changers Out of the Temple!!!"

"We need a Savanarola!"

I'm sure some readers can be more clever...

Book Burning?!

A reader thought I should draw your attention to this thread (the original is now inaccessible) on a traditionalist Catholic forum (wherein some of them, many of them, seem to advocate or defend the burning of books, especially the Koran) as another example of Crazy Trads.

We should be reaching a breaking point. This movement is going to have to make a decision, people; there is no more just Trad. It would be to our advantage to control the framing/terminology this time around. It is becoming quite apparent that you're either Renegade (of some variety), or you're Crazy. Make your choice.

Politicians and Democracy

Feudalism and Bureaucracy?

Indeed! A commenter on yesterday's post has expressed some confusion at my use of both the terms "feudal" and "bureaucracy" to describe the institutional church (sometimes, I think, I've even used one to describe the other), and accused me of equating the two concepts. He correctly pointed out they are very different.

My use of both is not wrong or contradictory, however, it has actually been quite intentional. I started to write a response in the comments there, but I'll post my response here instead, as I think I ended up making some important observations:

As a medieval studies major, I know the difference between feudalism and bureaucracy quite well, thank you; I simply think the Church has somehow managed to maintain the worst aspects of both!

The negative aspects of feudalism found within the institutional church that I refer to are the culture of obeisance, servility, and co-dependency between superiors and their "vassals" within the institutional Church's bureaucracy.

That aspect of the hierarchy is very much a holdover from the feudal period, where the bishop was lord of his ecclesial domain. And while the rituals associated with it (for example, by newly ordained priests) are a quaint and harmless accretion from that era...the political dynamic is much outdated, especially when weighed down by the bureaucracy of the post-Tridentine era.

These are not healthy adult relationships in the democratic sense, which are a good thing, and which can in fact still have an authority differential, at least when it comes to the project at hand; ala the boss/employee relationship (which doesn't, you will note, extend into the employee's private home life). Rather, as I have seen personally, the relationships between clerics appear to be the relationships of resentful and often cowering serfs with petty lords.

It's not a good thing. Especially not when you throw into the mix the Renaissance-court ambition, intrigue, and machinations, the ultramontane absolutist monarchism, and then all the modern byzantine bureaucracy. Add to that the compromising inefficiency, unctuous politicking, and corrupt appeasement of modern democracy (the latest system these whores have cuddled up with), and it's a recipe for...well, what we've got today!

The two things, in that sense, are not mutually exclusive. The institutional church has found a way to keep alive the worst of politics from every era!

Speaking Publicly

A justice on the Illinois State Supreme Court is speaking out about the hierarchy's intransigence. The Honorable Anne M. Burke is a Dame of Malta, was on the USCCB's lay review board back when the sexual abuse crisis was exposed in the US, and seems to be more moderate-minded compared to a lot of the outright liberalism you see from the more radical voices for reform.

Now, I cannot agree with her specific proposal:

Anne Burke, a justice on the Illinois State Supreme Court and former head of the review board of lay people established by the U.S. bishops to oversee their new policies, says Benedict should ditch the shoes, the fur, and all the other trappings of papal regalia and swap his hallmark white cassock for a simple black one for the remainder of his papacy as a powerful sign of penance for the scandal of the sexual abuse of children by clergy.

The fancy aesthetics do not (or, at least, are not supposed to) glorify the man, but rather belong to the tradition and beauty of the whole Church. Besides, we need structural reforms, not just symbolic gestures; did Paul VI putting down the papal tiara actually make the institutional church any less authoritarian or feudal in its bureaucracy?? I think not, it has now become too obvious. It merely made things less whimsical, but ultimately was just a diversionary tactic. The Communist dictators all dressed in drab...it didn't solve any problems.

However, I like her gumption: "I do think it has to be something extremely dramatic." Indeed!

Burke has a long history with this issue:

"I was very hopeful when he became pope," Burke told me, recalling her reaction after the surprising April 2005 election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI. "I thought this was really going to be good. He might not do anything drastic, but at least he understood."

Burke's optimism was based on events from 2004, at the nadir of the American chapter of the clergy abuse crisis, when she and her colleagues on the National Review Board found themselves thwarted by the bishops who set up the panel in 2002 to serve as an independent, lay-run voice to oversee the bishops' behavior.

The board members decided to go over the hierarchy's head and straight to the Vatican. They faxed requests for meetings to all the major Vatican departments and the cardinals who headed them. One of just three to respond was Cardinal Ratzinger. In January 2004, Burke and two colleagues met with Ratzinger in his offices for two-and-a-half hours, a remarkable event. He pledged to take action, which Burke says he then did as a cardinal, and, at least initially, as pope. A month after that 2004 meeting, Ratzinger also sent she and her husband a heartfelt note of condolences when her 30-year-old son was killed in a snowmobiling accident.

Yet the past months of revelations and criticisms about Ratzinger's spotty record on abuse, the blustery counterattacks coming from the Vatican and top papal aides, and more important, Pope Benedict's refusal to publicly address the questions and qualms of the media and the flock, have unsettled Burke.

"He had his choice, of going down the similar bureaucratic path of all popes, or actually bringing the church into the 21st century, and to be known for that. He hasn't done that," she said.

However, her frustration, like many of ours, has only increased:

Back in April, Burke and some of her former review board colleagues were lamenting the sad state of affairs in Rome -- "They seem to be shooting themselves in the foot every time something comes out of that Vatican" -- when she decided she'd try to break through the Vatican cordon by writing directly to the pope.

"I didn't think I could rest until I actually wrote a letter."

Which she did, offering to share the expertise she and the board had gained through their experience to help the pope and the Vatican deal with the crisis. Burke said she really didn't expect a response, but one arrived two weeks ago, in mid-July. It was from Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone, passed along through the Vatican's ambassador to the U.S., Archbishop Pietro Sambi -- "the usual channels" -- and it thanked Burke and suggested she get in touch with Jeffrey Lena, the California attorney who is defending the Vatican from sex abuse lawsuits.

As a judge, Burke can't participate in any way in the case Lena is defending, and that wasn't in any sense the point of her letter. "It was just one of those things, they really didn't pay attention," she said. Lena has tried to call her at the Vatican's behest, but she said she can't get involved legally, and in any case, the details of the sex abuse crisis are a symptom as much as the illness itself.

"This has gone way beyond the sex abuse crisis. They're using that as a shield for all the other missteps," said Burke, who is a Dame of Malta, the female counterpart of the Knights of Malta, a prominent Catholic charitable organization.

Burke says she'd like to see the Vatican meet with an international group of lay people, a larger version of the National Review Board that the bishops set up, but one that would be able to talk with the pope about a range of issues. "I mean, what's wrong with listening? It doesn't mean they're going to follow through, but it would give people at least some presence at the table."

Burke doesn't necessarily blame Benedict for the Vatican's current problems; she hopes he is still the same man she and her colleagues met in 2004 -- a cardinal willing to listen, dressed in plain black cassock without a hint of red and no outward sign of his ecclesiastical rank.

The problem now, she says, is that "his position is like any other politician -- he's surrounded by those who have been there before" and who want to "keep things as they were before because they have the power."

And I feel this attitude is very promising:

Rather than writing another letter, Burke prefers to speak out publicly in hopes of leapfrogging protocol to get right to the pope.

"That's really the only thing you can do, is publicity of some sort, saying, 'Don't you get it?' "

Maybe we should contact this woman...

Film Festival

From a questionable secularist source, but sounds like a potentially supportable cause:

The National Secular Society is staging a film season in the days before the Pope arrives in Britain. The films will look at aspects of the Catholic Church which both the Government and the Church itself would prefer were not mentioned during the visit of the “Holy Father.”

The selections will apparently include films on the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, the cover-up of child-rape in the same country, the abuse at the Indian Residential Schools in Canada, and a priest who was silenced by Church authorities for trying end institutional collusion with the mafia in Mexico. (To give some idea of the international scope of this institution's corruption!)

Regarding this last film, it is claimed, "The Church declared that seeing this film is a mortal sin." And several sources I've checked do seem to confirm that the hierarchy in Mexico even tried to have the government ban this film (and this was just in 2002)!!

These corrupt old men are just vile...

Crazy Trads

So, I've threatened (and once before actually done) to hold up crazy comments as examples of What We Don't Stand For. That applies to comments on this blog, however, there were some comments on the Miles Jesu situation today on Rorate Caeli that show just what is wrong with the traditionalist movement, why this blog is necessary, and probably why stuff like that situation happened in the first place

For example:

Hard to know how to respond to this, unless and until Miles Jesu announces what sins Father Durán is supposed to have committed. I presume that if he were just another sodomite, the announcement would have said so?

Now, this is a very odd place for his mind to jump! I mean, perhaps somewhat understandable given the situation the Church is in, but the actual statement gives no indication of the founder committing sins of that nature. It is very clear what "sins" he is supposed to have committed: namely, what sounds like an excessive authoritarianism, expectations of blind loyalty, creepy cult-like tactics, etc.

This isn't necessarily like the Maciel situation where the authoritarianism was used to cover embezzlement, sexual abuse of seminarians, mistresses, etc. In this case, it seems to be being recognized that the authoritarianism in itself is a problem, even if it was never used to advance other immorality.

But, of course, many fascist trads idealize such dynamics, so they assume that these couldn't possibly be problems in themselves unless they're also used for seedy sexual purposes...[[rolls eyes]]...

The next is even more telling, however, about how some trads apparently think authority is supposed to work in the Church:

Ha? I confess that I don't know much about this Institute, but it almost seems to me like a rebellion, a "democratic" take-over has occurred.

So, when members report the oppressive atmosphere in an institute through the proper channels and participate in revising the constitutions, it's a "rebellion," a "take-over" of some evil "democratic" nature??!

These people are insane.

I may update this post if I find more ridiculous comments related to this situation. I would also invite any readers who find crazy trad statements (concise ones, hopefully, not the long rants) on various internet forums or comment boxes, which encapsulate the sort of attitudes I critique here...to send them to me so I can point them out. Not just about the Miles Jesu situation, but in general.

International Conspiracy

It's been awhile since I've done an update on the Conspiracy (ie, my Stat Counter and Google Analytics tracking of this blog). I thought this map was pretty neat, though, showing the far-flung scope of readers we've received since we started tracking in mid-January:

You can click on the map to see it bigger.

And if anyone has any friends in Red China (or Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Greenland, or any obscure African nation) please send them a link to the blog! They don't even have to be interested in the topic; they just have to visit once and it will count!!!