The Church at Risk
Remarks to the USCCB
Scott Appleby
University of Notre Dame
June 13, 2002, Dallas, Texas
"I thank Archbishop Flynn and Monsignor Maniscalco for inviting
me to speak to you and with you today. For the past five months
I , along with other lay Catholics, have attempted to speak to you,
and occasionally with you, through the media. I far prefer the present
forum, where one's words cannot be edited to support a pre-existing
story line with invisible headlines that read: "New Evidence
of Catholic Church Decadence," "Church Cannot Do Anything
Right" or "See-We Told You So." Certainly in the
court of public opinion the Church is now guilty until proven otherwise.
Nor should we be surprised: We live in a culture that permits everything,
and forgives nothing.
The painful truth, of course, is that the media did not create
this scandal: We created it. Indeed, the mainstream media has done
the Church a service by exposing that which was shrouded in darkness.
Only in the light can truth prevail and healing and repentance begin.
That the media has focused with such intensity on the scandal is
a kind of testimony, odd though it may be, to the fact that American
society rightly expects more of the Church-more purity, more fidelity
to the gospel, more compassion, more holiness. In a way that is
not always balanced or fair, and certainly painful, the people are
nonetheless calling the Church to purify itself and to be its best
self-the image of the compassionate God in the midst of the world.
Did I say WE created this crisis? I speak only for myself, not
for the 60 million-plus laity, many of whom may protest: "We"
did not create this scandal! - the pedophile priests created it;
the bishops who reassigned them and deceived not only the unsuspecting
parishioners but also, incredibly, their fellow pastors and bishops,
created it. Surely the laity is innocent and has every right to
be outraged.
And of course they are right: the laity did not create this crisis:
indeed, some of the laity are the direct victims of the crisis,
while many, many others, including the disadvantaged and those most
in need of social and pastoral assistance, are threatened with the
reduction of services provided by the Church as assets get re-routed
to cover the legal costs of the abuse.
What did create this crisis? The root of the problem is the lack
of accountability on the part of the bishops, which allowed a severe
moral failure on the part of some priests and bishops to put the
legacy, reputation and good work of the Church in peril. The lack
of accountability, in turn, was fostered by a closed clerical culture
that infects the priesthood, isolating some priests and bishops
from the faithful and from one another.
No one can safely generalize about a group as huge, complex and
amorphous as "the laity." It is also wrong to generalize
about "you," the bishops. Indeed, many of "you"
are not only blameless in the current scandal-you have acted honorably
in the incredibly difficult balancing act you are called upon to
perform. You did not protect abusive priests, nor have you attempted
to circle the wagons or clamp down on lay "dissent," when
outraged parishioners and priests in recent months demanded accountability
for episcopal misdeeds. Other bishops, however, have behaved atrociously,
angering fellow bishops and priests, whose reputations have been
tarnished by those whose actions have been marked by arrogance,
lack of repentance, and repeated failure to be collegial and consultative,
except in an upward direction.
Archbishop Flynn and Monsignor Maniscalco asked Peggy and me to
address the question: What's at stake in the present crisis? What's
at stake is the viability of the Church's moral and pastoral mission
in the United States on the scale of its historic legacy; at stake
is the reputation of the priesthood; at risk is the moral and pastoral
authority of the bishops, and the Church's credibility on social
justice as well as sexual teaching. Whether the Catholic Church
as currently governed and managed can proclaim the gospel effectively
in this milieu is an open question.
The laity must always be receptive to frank talk from our bishops
about our own failings. And in that same spirit of candor, borne
not of spite, but of love for the Church and respect for your office,
we must reproach you for your attitudes and behavior that have given
scandal to the faithful, especially to the young. A good friend
of mine, hearing I would be addressing you, sent the following message:
"You and I are the father of teenagers who are experiencing
all that teenagers experience. Our children struggle with the whole
concept of Church, the nature of God, the tradition into which they've
been born. I am confident that God will speak to each of them at
some point in their lives, perhaps when they are ready to listen.
Sooner better than later. But you and I both know that, above all
else, teenagers hate hypocrisy. Like Holden Caufield in The Catcher
in the Rye, they will spot a phony from miles away. And right now
they are thinking that if this is what is going on with the Church,
I want no part of it."
When Jesus withdrew temporarily from the crowds and led his apostles
to Caesarea Phillippi, he posed two questions to them: What are
the people saying about me? And who do you say that I am?
Today, after five months of unrelenting revelations of clerical
and episcopal misdeeds, one is compelled to ask: What are they saying
about you, the successors to the apostles? I don't think the suspense
will be broken if we admit that at this particular moment in American
history, they are NOT comparing you to Christ and his apostles.
They are saying, rather, that this scandal is only incidentally
about the terrible sin and crime of the sexual abuse of minors by
a small minority of priests; that the underlying scandal is the
behavior and attitudes of the Catholic bishops-not just THEN-ten
or fifteen or twenty years ago, when the abusive priests were reassigned,
but even NOW, after all the sorry revelations to date! They are
saying that the bishops, even now, have not yet engaged the victims
in a way that conveys that the Church begins to comprehend the profoundly
devastating effect of sexual abuse at the hands of a priest, one
whose hands also consecrate the Eucharist, baptize the infant and
forgive the sinner. If a bishop had any idea how soul-shattering
the loss of self-esteem, how deep the wounds of betrayal, the people
are saying, he could never have contemplated, even for a moment,
putting other children in jeopardy by relinquishing his moral authority
to a therapist, or by bowing to the pressure of the pastoral need
for active priests or, what is worse, by being governed by a misguided
sense of sympathy for brother priests.
They are saying, most distressingly, that the seminaries and the
priesthood have been made vulnerable to the unstable and to the
immoral; and that (some of) you bishops are complicit in this development.
They are saying what months ago would have been unthinkable-that
the Church is not safe for the innocent, the young, the vulnerable-that
it is morally bankrupt. Astonishingly, they are saying this of the
Church whose priests and religious have nurtured the weak, fed the
hungry, educated and formed generations of immigrants and their
children and grandchildren. They are saying this about the bishops,
who have spoken the truth before the political powers of this nation
and who continue to testify on behalf of the marginalized, the weak,
the unborn and the other defenseless ones in American society-they
are saying this of the priests and women religious and lay ministers
who built vast expanses of the social service infrastructure of
this nation and who contributed to some of its most glorious achievements
as a democratic society!
They are saying that the failures of the hierarchy extend to your
arrogation of unchecked authority over finances and legal strategies,
extending to cover-ups and fiscal malfeasance.
They are saying that some members of the hierarchy, including those
at the center of the storm, remain unrepentant and even defiant,
blaming the culture, the media or their ecclesial opponents for
the disgrace that has been visited upon them.
They are saying that you are divided among yourselves, and that
some of you even take pleasure or comfort in the travails of rival
bishops.
I am saddened to report, from our perch here at the Texan equivalent
of Caesarea Philippi, that they are saying all of these things.
And let us not even consider what our enemies are saying!
And what are your priests saying? Not much; they are reeling, suffering
untold pain; and they would be in hiding, shamefaced and feeling
abandoned, were it not for some of you and for their parishioners.
The people to whom these more than 40,000 priests daily minister,
knowing that their priests are good, heroic, and often holy men,
refuse to hold them accountable for the egregious sins of the few.
In their collective wisdom, the faithful hold priests accountable
for their behavior-no more no less. They want to know if the priest
keeps his promises and vows, if he remains celibate whatever his
sexual orientation, and if he is kind and filled with the spirit
of self-denying love.
On this matter of reassigning predator priests, the apologies issuing
from bishops and cardinals will not be heard unless and until they
go beyond the rhetoric of "mistakes and errors" and name
the protection of abusive priests for what it is-- a sin, born of
the arrogance of power. The bitter fruit of clericalism is the often
unreflected upon assumption that by virtue of ordination alone a
priest is spiritually and morally superior to the laity.
This is difficult for some of you to hear, and some of you will
refuse, even now, to listen to it. But I remind you that a remarkable,
and to my mind encouraging, development in response to the danger
we now face is the fact that Catholics on the right, and the left,
and in the "deep middle" all are in basic agreement as
to the causes of this scandal: a betrayal of fidelity enabled by
the arrogance that comes with unchecked power. Karl Rahner said
that one of the most devastating effects of sin is the sinner's
inability to recognize his behavior as sinful. Sin's cloaking of
its presence occurs whenever a bishop, archbishop or cardinal, assumes
quietly that he is accountable to no one but God and the Holy Father--
that only he, as successor to the apostles, knows what is best for
the Church. This is an outrageous assumption, and it is the deepest
source of the anger currently being unleashed upon all of you, including,
unfairly, those of you who have overcome the temptation to the sin
of clericalism in your own ministries.
The role of women in the church is a topic that deserves full and
separate consideration; but the marginalization of women, wherever
it exists in the Church, counts among the most devastating effects
of clericalism on the morale and vitality of the People of God.
Women are outsiders on two counts, being neither male nor ordained,
and so are among the most frequent recipients of the aloofness and
disregard that is a sign of clericalism. Given that women religious
and lay women not only helped build the Church in this country but
have been the primary formers of faith in children from birth to
adulthood, we cannot afford to lose credibility on questions of
sex and gender. But that credibility has been shattered by the current
crisis.
Faced with this litany of accusations, the world wants to know
one thing: Why would anyone in his right mind want to be a Catholic
bishop today?
My concluding remarks proceed upon the assumption that each of
you has a compelling answer to that question, and is prepared to
defend the Church and the episcopacy with all your heart and mind
and will.
Where is the path out of this disaster? I do not envy you the enormously
difficult decisions before you, and I will not presume to suggest
how you should vote on the controversial provisions of the draft
document prepared by the Ad Hoc committee. But allow me to make
three general points that I ask you to consider as you deliberate.
1. The crisis is primarily a moral crisis. It is also, now, a pastoral
crisis and an institutional crisis, the latter entailing complex
financial and legal considerations. These three dimensions of the
Church's presence in U.S. society are interrelated. Loss of confidence
in the moral judgment of some of the priests and bishops places
the Church in a vulnerable position vis-a-vis the legal system and
the civil authorities, who will no longer give the Church a wide
berth when it comes to the conduct of its "employees."
These various dimensions of the crisis are addressed in a document
entitled "Challenges and Opportunities Arising from the Current
Crisis," which Father Edward Malloy, C.S.C., president of the
University of Notre Dame, sent to all the U.S. Catholic bishops
on May 22. The document was prepared by a Church Study Committee
appointed by Father Malloy. We have grouped our reflections under
three headings: restoring trust, exercising stewardship, and seeking
wisdom. In my full text I summarize our recommendations, but I urge
you to consider the report carefully.
2. The Church, institutionally, is a unique presence in American
history. It is not a public trust in the legal sense, but it clearly
has a public face and acts as a public trust in the moral sense.
The current crisis has removed any doubt that the Church in the
United States must understand itself as a national body and act
accordingly. This will not diminish but enhance fidelity to the
local and universal Church. There is no threat of a Gallican model,
one that privileges national over Roman, that is, universal jurisdiction.
But has it ever been clearer to us that what occurs in the church
in Boston, New York, or Los Angeles can have immediate repercussions
for the church in Iowa, Ohio, or Washington? And yet the crisis
has also revealed that the present procedures and structure of the
USCCB are inadequate to address the governance of the Church on
this level.
It may be helpful if you explain to the non-specialists, that is
most all of us, at least in general terms, the relationship between
the Vatican and the USCCB, and between canon law and civil law in
this particular case. Rome has been very cautious, to say the least,
in granting authority to the national episcopal conferences, and
I believe that the laity have or will have difficulty understanding
what appears to be a counterproductive level of oversight. Please
pardon the question but it is a natural one: Are you not trusted
by the Vatican? It seems incredible to the interested outsider that
on matters of faith and morals you would veer one millimeter from
orthodoxy.
Those of you who are canon lawyers know the challenge of applying
canon law within a specific local and national environment. The
state and civil society in, say, Honduras, or Poland, present different
challenges to the Church than does the U.S. government and legal
system. To the extent possible, then, I urge you to formulate the
policies that make the most sense for this environment, without
anticipating how the Vatican might respond. Let Rome be Rome; it
will be, in any case.
Thinking and acting nationally as well as locally and universally
will enhance the Church's effectiveness and thus bolster its authority.
Everyone is relieved that a national policy will be deliberated
and adopted at this meeting; but will that policy have teeth? Will
it be enforceable and enforced? In the current climate it will not
be enough to say no bishop would refuse to implement the new policies.
Each bishop must be held directly accountable and his diocese evaluated
for compliance on a regular basis.
3. A new attitude toward lay leadership, supported by new or renewed
structures, is necessary.
Although the laity is not to blame in the current crisis, our own
consciences have not been entirely clear on other matters. A significant
portion of Catholics in the pews have been selectively ignoring
you, for many years now. Indeed, next month it will be 34 years
since the events of July 1968. At that fateful moment the majority
of American Catholic laity openly disobeyed authoritative Church
teaching; and the bishops, in turn, failed to persuade the majority
of Catholics, including some priests and religious, of the compelling
truth of the Church's position. The laity practiced artificial birth
control, had sex outside of marriage, and endured abortions at about
the same rate as other Americans.
The breakdown of Christian community, in short, opened the way
to crisis. In the nearly forty years since the Second Vatican Council,
despite the Council's call for greater participation by the laity
in the mission of the Church, we allowed some of you to remain aloof
from lay concerns, and to consolidate all significant decision-making
in your office, including things unrelated to your teaching office
in matters of faith and morals, things either beyond your competence
or beyond your ability to judge in a disinterested manner. No one
man can responsibly bear all burdens, perform all tasks, act with
integrity and excellence as chief pastor and teacher, liturgist,
confessor, administrator, financial officer, supervisor of litigation.
Not even a company of men, all cut from the same cloth. (Especially
, perhaps, a company of men, all cut from the same cloth.)
Despite the repeated objections of hundreds of Catholic journalists,
theologians and historians active lay participation, including shared
decision-making where appropriate, was left, like so much else in
the Church, to the inclination of the local bishop or pastor. In
some places lay councils and clergy-lay collaboration flourished,
elsewhere they languished-much like the NCCB recommendations regarding
sexual abuse policy a decade ago. The laity's hope, immediately
following the Second Vatican Council, that collegiality would come
to characterize moral and theological reflection, pastoral leadership
and administrative decisions at every level of the Church, including
lay-episcopal relations, diminished as we observed a steady erosion
of collegiality within the hierarchy itself.
The post-conciliar era, as we all know, has been a particularly
tumultuous time for the Church in the United States. While parish
life remains vital for practicing Catholics, the laity as a national
body has experienced fragmentation, confusion, discontent and in-fighting
as the gap between church and society has widened. Might the same
also be said for the priests, the religious and the bishops?
Indeed, these have been challenging- at times, excruciating-years
for those who are called to teach, defend and celebrate the Church's
proclamation of God's offer and guarantee, through Jesus Christ,
of redemption from sin and death. Nonetheless, the faithful are
just that-filled with faith! Yesterday we believed in Christ, today
we believe in Christ, and long after the current storm has passed
we will continue to believe in Christ, from the depths of our being.
We will continue to believe in Christ, and in the Church, which
has, in and from Christ, the words of eternal life and the model
of authentic human flourishing.
Some have called for new canonical structures to facilitate lay
involvement in the Church; these advocates note, correctly, that
current structures such as diocesan pastoral councils representing
the laity and presbyteral councils representing priests have in
many cases atrophied into uselessness, whether through benign neglect
or deliberate suppressions. Such calls should be taken with much
more seriousness than they have been taken in the past. I do not
exaggerate by saying that the future of the Church in this country
depends upon your sharing authority with the laity. I commend to
you especially the editorial published in the Summer 2002 issue
of Church magazine under the title "A Purification Urgently
Needed." Alongside the many sound structural reforms suggested
by Monsignor Murnion, he notes that finance councils, and other
kinds of structures, did not prevent scandal, and new structures
will not do so, either. BUT, he continues, church leadership was
too narrowly conceived within those structures and "participation
of the laity must be structured into the basic culture of the church
through Vatican norms, bishops' procedures and ministry formation
programs-all three."
Finally, a word about the priests: the victims rightly complain
that the bishops seemed more worried about the priests than the
victims. But let me speak for the laity directly to the victims
of clerical sexual abuse and their families: we grieve with you
for the terrible ordeal you have suffered, and we pray that you
will give healthy and holy people within the church a chance to
work with you respectfully to help heal the wounds as far as this
is humanly possible. AND we also worry about the tens of thousands
of priests who have never and would never abuse anyone; priests
who today are afraid to show any kind of affection, priests who
are paralyzed with fear, embarrassment and grief. We sympathize,
too, with these good men, the innocent, the unjustly tainted.
Academics can be obscure; I have tried to avoid that occupational
hazard in these remarks. But to restate my argument in the clearest
possible terms: the crisis confronting the Church today cannot be
understood, and thus not adequately addressed, apart from its setting
in a wider range of problems that have been growing over the last
34 years. At the heart of these problems is the alienation of the
hierarchy, and to a lesser degree many of the clergy, from ordinary
lay women and lay men. Some commentators say that the root of this
scandal is betrayal of purity and fidelity; others say it is the
aloofness of the bishops and the lack of transparency and accountability.
They are both right: to be faithful to the church envisioned by
the council fathers of Vatican II, bishops and priests must trust
the laity, appropriately share authority with them, and open their
financial, legal, administrative practices and decisions to full
visibility. They must give a compelling account of the faith that
is within them and address controversial issues directly, in an
open and collaborative spirit.
An enormous mistake would be to adopt prudent, courageous and enforceable
policies regarding sexual abuse at this meeting, and then think
that the work of reform has been accomplished. The principles underlying
the policies you will implement on sexual abuse-a return to strict
discipline and moral oversight within the priesthood, a new regime
of collaboration with laity marked by transparency and accountability,
a firm resolve to pray together as a body of bishops and as individuals
to root out clericalism in the priesthood and in the seminary-these
principles must be extended to all aspects of the life and service
of the Catholic Church in the United States. Otherwise, the next
scandal will come quickly on the heels of this one.
Christ's promise that He will not allow the forces of hell to prevail
against the Church is disturbingly relevant today. At such times
it is worthwhile to recall the first line of the Second Vatican
Council's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World.
As the bishops gazed out upon the modern world with all its deeply
troubling trends for people of faith, they proclaimed that "The
joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this
age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these
too, are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers
of Christ." The preparatory commission that drafted the document
gave it the working title "Luctus et Angor: On the Grief and
the Anxiety." One could sympathize, perhaps, with their point
of view. But when the bishops gathered in council to consider the
document, they gave it the title Gaudium et Spes: On the Joy and
the Hope. In the current crisis God has given us a second chance
to renew the church through the kind of joyful active involvement
of all Catholic women and men-not only the priests, bishops, and
cardinals-in every dimension of the Church's mission on earth. The
promise of Vatican II can yet be realized, if you will lead us in
that endeavor. Despite the gathering storm of materialism, hedonism
and a culture of disbelief, the council fathers looked with joy
and hope to the future. They did so in full awareness of their own
sinfulness and failures, but in full confidence that the Lord, by
His suffering death and rising to new life, has already overcome
the world. Thus the bishops named the document Gaudium et Spes.
Despite the regrettable failures of the People of God in the years
since that hopeful day, I continue to believe that they were right.
Scott Appleby, University of Notre Dame, June 13, 2002
June 13, 2002 Copyright © by United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops
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