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CATHOLIC PASTOR:
SHEPHERD OR HIRED HAND?
by Msgr. George A. Kelly
The Good Shepherd labors zealously for his flock in union with the bishop and the pope; the Hired Hand impairs his office and his flock by disrespecting the teaching office of the Church, and by neglecting his priestly responsibility to form his people in “the obedience of faith” (Rom. 1,5).
I.
A bishop pastor of a large city parish once instructed a new Chancery official, undoubtedly to help the young man keep his Catholic priorities in order, as follows:
“The linchpin of the Catholic Church is the pastor — the Pope in Rome, the Bishop in his Cathedral, the shepherd of every diocesan parish. On these three rest the well-being and Catholicity of the Church.”
Priests and laity of the World War II generation, as those who had gone
before, accepted this proposition as a Catholic given. Especially since historians had
attributed the strength of the American Church to the effectiveness of diocesan bishops
and parish priests of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Something happened to that concept on the way out of Vatican II, because two years later
the new National Conference of Catholic Bishops authorized a study, published as The
Catholic Priest in the United States: Historical Investigations, whose index of 900 items
totally failed to mention “parish,” “parish priesthood” or
“parochial work.”
Ever since, the phrase “Catholic pastor” has become an elusive term. The idea,
therefore, deserves another look, not only on behalf of the Church’s mission to
God’s people, but for its Catholicity.
The Bishop’s Point
The Catholic pastor — from John Paul II to every would-be imitator of the Curé of
Ars — is the central figure in the existence and conduct of the Catholic Church. Any
debasement of his status and dignity, including that by a priest himself, jeopardizes the
credibility of the Church.
Pope and bishops may contract with other qualified people to teach under Church auspices,
to succor the needy, and to manage her temporalities, but the pastor — called simply
“the parish priest” in many places — is irreplaceable, without peer.
Without him the Church cannot function legitimately or properly.
In a community of truly Catholic faith, the phrase “He is a priest” speaks
volumes to believers, and for the man himself. In a godless society (as the Church
understands God), the priest is looked upon as just another citizen with a man-made job.
Neither is he “sacred,” nor is there a “sacred” for him to represent.
At the worst, in the language of a virulent secularist, he is a threat to modern society.
John Paul II, in the opening lines of Pastores Dabo Vobis, looks at him differently:
“Without priests the Church would not be able to live.”
The Second Vatican Council also reaffirmed the necessity of pastors in Lumen Gentium when
the Fathers declared that Christ, the Church’s “Eternal Pastor,”
established Peter at “the head of the apostles and set up in him a lasting and
visible source and foundation of the unity both of faith and of communion.” (No. 18).
Furthermore, bishops are Vicars of Christ in their diocese, and “in virtue of this
power bishops have the sacred right and duty before the Lord of legislating for and
passing judgment on their subjects, as well as regulating everything that concerns the
good order of divine worship and of the apostolate.” (No. 27). Priests, too,
“exercise the function of Christ as Pastor and Head in proportion to their share of
authority.” (Presbytorum Ordinis, No. 6). The Council spoke of service, consultation,
participation, collegiality as elements in the proper exercise of his office, “but
all Church documents are careful to protect the authority of the pastor to act motu
proprio as necessary in order to teach, to rule, and to sanctify the faithful. The Fathers
made clear that a Pope is outside — and not a member of — his College of
Cardinals, and the local bishop is independent of his Board of Consultors.
Arlington’s Bishop John Keating, in urging parish councils in his diocese, also made
the following disclaimer for the pastors: “Pastors have certain responsibilities
which are theirs alone. They have duties which must be exercised personally in virtue of
the mission which they have from Christ in ordination and from the bishop through their
appointment as pastor.”2
The new Canon Law of the Church (1983), implementing Vatican II, specifically states that
the faithful “are bound by Christian obedience to follow what the sacred pastors, as
representatives of Christ, declare as teachers of the faith or determine as leaders of the
Church.” (Cn. 212). Those pastors alone, pope and bishops especially, have “the
supreme responsibility to teach, sanctify, and rule the faithful in Christ’s
name.” (Cn. 376).
The New Questions
Almost every interested Catholic, beginning with John Paul II, is today
talking about the shortage of priests. And about what their absence will do to the future
of the Catholic Church. Are there human causes of this crisis? Or, ways to make the
priesthood attractive again to young men, as surely it once was?
The pious look upon the shortage as a cross from God. But: How did the American Church
fall into this institutional morass?3 Fewer still are willing to probe further: Why should
a manly human being aspire to devote his entire life celibately — to a Church role
which, throughout the recent years of his boyhood, has been denigrated, deflated, and
debunked not only by those who reject the very notion of priests, but within the Catholic
sanctuary itself?
Reports of various kinds, including those of ecclesial bodies, attribute this shortfall of
priests to the collapse of Catholic discipline before the secular culture. Or to moral
failures of one kind or another within the Church. There is truth in these assertions.
Yet, historically, confusion or doubt about the faith itself— either Christ’s
teaching or the Church’s — is what undermines priestly performance. Many bishops
allege today that their serious problems involve priests, not the laity. Furthermore, the
believability of the priesthood comes into question whenever questions arise in rectories
over what Catholicity — the papacy or the Eucharist — really means. Any overhaul
of priestly thinking that excludes Catholic faith and places self-anointed men solely in
charge of determining who God is and what he has revealed, or that stresses Christ the Man
virtually to the exclusion of Christ the Son of God, or speaks of the Church as People
more than as the House of God, or makes the priest more a delegate of the community and
less a Vicar of Christ, places the Church in trouble with God and his people. Those
popularizing such a new gospel would solve the present priest problem by marrying them
off, or by ordaining women, or by creating “lay pastors.” Would these
concessions to secularity motivate a potential Isaac Jogues to leave his homeland and to
die, if need be, for Christ?
The Way It Was Not Long Ago
No system or organization, even the priesthood, is ever perfect. Still, the American
parish may be “the highest achievement of the American priest,” as it had been
called in 1905.4
The special bonus of the Catholic system, which continued beyond World War II, was the
relative freedom of the pastor to run his own parish. It took a little doing to make it
so.5 But by the turn of the 20th century, the pastor was “a little bishop,” whom
cardinals treated with respect. For one thing he had stability in office.6 For another
bishops depended on pastors for support of diocesan causes. Thirdly, the majority of
veteran pastors, as “men of authority,” also commanded large amounts of local
loyalty, and bishops, as a rule, had a healthy regard for the pastor’s “ordinary
jurisdiction.” Pastors were practically “irremovable,” except for grave
cause. (The obvious dysfunctions of any system — incompetent or lazy pastors —
reflected not so much on the system as on the bishop’s failure to use his authority
to correct or persuade his errant subordinates.)
In important respects, therefore, the office of pastor was insulated from undue harassment
or abuse by curates, by religious, or by laity prone to demand what Church law or a
pastor’s priorities said they could not have. Brooklyn’s Archbishop Thomas
Molloy may have overdone it a bit with his advisory to a disgruntled curate: “The
pastor is always right. You’ll be a pastor someday!” The unhappy curate,
principal, corporate executive or political “boss” of that day might complain,
or move elsewhere, but a pastor’s authority was rarely undermined by his superior.
The underside of this 19th-20th century parochial success, however, was that mega-parishes
sometimes became status symbols and sinecures, more than missions. Older priests came to
enjoy the benefits of their predecessors’ labors, much the way prelates savored
benefices in the late Middle Ages. By the 1950s pastors had ceased giving strict orders to
their curates. They might propose tasks, or at times express annoyance, even bark a bit,
but by and large “laissez-faire” became the order of the average pastorate. If
the nuns did not wish the priests to teach in the school, that was the end of the matter
as far as certain pastors were concerned. A handful of responsibilities were still
mandatory, and widely respected (e.g., Saturday confessions, rectory duties, parish
events) but parish priests were mostly on their own, unless they also had teaching or
other assignments. Parishioners came to them (home visitations were a thing of the past),
making many rectories busy places. And a function of being a good curate was to protect
the pastor from those burdens which transcended administration.
A pastor’s priority, which in 1910 was on “the work to be done,” shifted to
what the priests and others felt about the work in the post-World War II era, especially
if it seemed mandatory. The lazy priest was far more noticeable in many rectories than
violators of the Ten Commandments. A pastor could still effectively ask for the removal of
a curate, but he had little influence over how much work the priest actually did in his
house. Nonetheless, so many first-rate parish priests were available everywhere that the
“good” parishes remained good.
“Laissez-faire” also extended to the bishop’s level. If no one disturbed
him, then he disturbed no one. Episcopal visitations became perfunctory, more like social
meetings than serious supervisions of pastoral performance. The Superintendent of Schools
was a more likely overseer of parochial education than the bishop was of the priestly
mission. The system continued to work well because tending to the basics remained an
ingrained sacred trust for most priests: a decent worship, sound teaching, dutiful
sacramental and social life, exemplary behavior.
From the priests’ point of view, the most noticeable dysfunction amid such ecclesial
prosperity was the length of time required for those in large dioceses to become pastors
in their own right. In the 19th century, a priest might become the pastor of a small
parish in two or three years, and then be transferred to the metropolitan area by the time
he was 35. By World War I he might still receive a large city parish in his early
40’s. At World War II time, he would be almost thirty years ordained, or 55 years
old, when he was called upon to govern a rural parish. The pastoral care of the faithful
sometimes suffered when a curate, who had served a single city neighborhood for twenty or
more years, was passed over for succession in the pastorate there, in favor of a stranger,
because at 50 he was not old enough to merit the assignment. The over-aged curates of the
day were, however, too disciplined to be outraged at the prevailing conditions, or at a
bishop who was not creative enough to find adequate remedies for an obvious evil. Their
response, too often, was early retirement from hard work. This situation set the stage,
after Vatican II, for a revolution in priestly expectations and behavior.
The Diminishing Status of Pastors
Any octogenarian priest who is still interested will find himself in conversation these
days with priests a generation younger who do not wish to be pastors, or who already have
abandoned the role. If he also moves around the country, he will discover this to be more
than a local phenomenon. The United States may be too large for generalizing about the low
morale of the clergy, especially when so many young enthusiasts are evident in every
diocese. Yet, being “boss” of a parish is not what it used to be, either in its
status or in role-playing, a phenomenon new to the 20th century, during which practically
all priests, even the incompetents, yearned for the bishop’s call to pastor.
The tendency nowadays to correlate high morale with the ecclesial shift in priestly style
and manners, from sacred persons in cassock and Roman collar to
“hail-fellows-well-met” in secular clothes, is presumed to enhance self-esteem,
allegedly a prized step-stone to a more fulfilled life of Church service. But how is
self-esteem an adequate priestly goal when “emptying oneself” (Phil. 2,7) is the
New Testament model? Freedom, comfort, and shared authority have been offered, too, as
bonuses for the “renewed” priest, but for a pastoral role which of its nature
demands duty and sacrifice? Has the reinforcement of new American spirit by new methods of
training future priests or updating veterans really worked to the Church’s advantage?
Another factor complicating morale has been the rising status of priest-specialists
vis-a-vis parish priests out in the field. Once bishops began to feature (and to honor)
Chancery officials as the important men in their lives, the pastors (certainly the
curates) lost diocesan status. Patrick Cardinal Hayes of New York (1918-1938) made bishops
only of active pastors, whereas his successor Francis Cardinal Spellman (1939-1967) mostly
promoted Chancery priests. As the Church’s bureaucracies grew, so did the
bishop’s reliance on what social scientist Charles Murray calls “the cognitive
elites.” After the New Deal, such elites were not without influence on secular
politics, but they were counterbalanced by the grass roots wisdom of “party
bosses” and district captains, much as — within the Church — seminary
professors and chancellors were offset by large numbers of dominant pastors.
Today, the pastor’s likely difficulties (or a priest’s) are his diminished Mass
attendance, the rising costs of maintaining Church agencies, the increasing taxation or
special collections imposed by diocesan headquarters, the absence of well-trained American
priests as curates, the plethora of foreign-born externs who do not intend to establish
roots or to Americanize, or the dearth of religious, who once were “the heart”
of parish life. The Church has recovered from deprivation and poverty before, and so have
disciplined priests of faith, but this time it is not going to be easy.
The more pressing problem is that of the pastor or a priest (in communion with his bishop)
who is deeply mired in ambiguity about how far his authority extends to decide the meaning
of the word “Catholic;” or to determine, against recalcitrant opposition, how
his parochial community should normally worship, believe, or live, or how much support he
will receive from his bishop in doing what the Pope says. Challenge to pastoral authority
is the order of the present day. The contestation may be expressed in
“power-sharing” language, but it really challenges the pastor’s fundamental
authority. By training, a Catholic pastor realizes the limits of his authority over
unbelievers, non-believers, or recalcitrant sinners, now he must face commonplace doubts
about his doctrinal and disciplinary authority over a community that is still described as
“the faithful.”7
The Post-Vatican II Revolution
The post-Vatican II decline in priestly/pastoral status began simply enough with theories,
proliferated throughout the Church’s infrastructures, that Catholic doctrine had it
wrong when it insisted that a priestly hierarchy is the magisterial guarantor of
God’s revealed Word, or that Christ appointed bishops as governors of the Church.
Catholics were commonly taught during the 1970s, in college or seminary classes, that what
the risen Christ likely had in mind as his replacement was a congregation of followers who
worshipped God and did good works in his name. Not much more. Certainly not a community
with a priestly caste, or a Eucharistic sacrifice, or an ex opere operato sacramental
system celebrated only by priests, or moral absolutes taught by them. According to Joseph
Cardinal Ratzinger this revisionism, viz., that the Catholic Church is largely a human
construction, became a dangerous dubium to make its rounds at the parish or school street
level.8 A “humanly constructed” Christian community might grow naturally, so the
theorizing went, to need supervising “presbyters” (i.e., a Greek word for
“old men”), but hardly a divinely sent “Holy Father” in Rome or
anywhere else.9
This revolution was justified in the name of Vatican II which supposedly decreed major
accommodations to the demands of secular culture, in the hope of an increased influence
for the Church over worldly institutions, and the enhancement of the quality of life on
earth, particularly that of the poor and the oppressed. Those who feared evil consequences
from activating these theories within the Church were called “prophets of doom.”
Yet, the results have been a diminution of Catholic faith and piety among large numbers of
actual and would-be Catholics, a proliferation of dissent against Catholic Creeds, and a
disobedience of Church Laws, to an extent proportionately unknown to America, since the
early days of its first bishops.
The American bishops sensed this post-Vatican II threat inherent in the theories going
around their dioceses as early as 1974. In preparation for the Third Roman Synod, which
resulted a year later in Paul VI’s deservedly famed Evangelii Nuntiandi the NCCB sent
its episcopal delegates to Rome with this advisory:
“The emerging question for the Catholic community may well be whether in the future,
as in the past, it derives its fundamental beliefs and attitude from the traditional value
system of Catholic Christianity or whether its beliefs and attitudes will be drawn more
and more from the secularistic, humanistic value system around it.”10
Wrong Practice Makes Malpractice
The failure to perform the duties assigned to, and expected of, a public office is
malpractice. A certain amount of it goes on in families everywhere. Determining the degree
to which it must be in evidence before it becomes a menace to society, involves human
judgment of a non-infallible nature. Still, like so many social conditions that cannot be
defined empirically, people know malpractice when they see it. Certainly, the Church of
the United States is worse off than it was in 1962, not because of anything the Council
Fathers said or wrote, but because their words were misinterpreted and misused and because
the authority that belongs to Pope and bishops was equivalently “hijacked” at
lower levels. Worse in the process, the public laws of the Church on worship, doctrine,
and discipline were violated with impunity.
As events unfolded, however, the local pastor today can do little about these divisions,
which appeared almost everywhere, except to exacerbate them, if he was one of those
priests inspired or trained to keep “pluralism” alive among Catholics, after the
manner of the Church of England. Although such divisions are often presented as mere
differences of opinion between “pluralists” (“the best and the
brightest”) and “fundamentalists” (“the narrow-minded”), the real
issue was, and is, the true meaning of the virtue of faith and its content.11 If something
contrary to faith, or at least indeterminate about faith, is taught or done in violation
of Canon Law at a neighboring parish or in the next diocese, it is almost impossible to
insist on universal Church norms of belief and practice.
To the charge years ago that the Church was undergoing a “crisis of authority,”
Jesuit Cardinal Jean Danielou, himself a scholar, responded that the divisions were due
rather to the lack of the use of authority by bishops and by Rome. That was his early
post-Vatican II judgment. As years went by, the bishops actually allowed their authority
to be used to legitimize the status of “pluralists” within the Church. They drew
their preferred experts mainly from dissenting professional associations. This not only
gave status to dissenters, but it also led to the quarantining of competent
“defenders of the faith,” and excluded these latter from having any serious
influence on the trend of national decisions by hierarchy.
The faithful pastor at the local level suffered from all of this, notably by loss of
authority over clergy who were trained in the new order, and over religious who taught in
his schools. This did not happen everywhere at first, nor does it happen everywhere now,
but significantly so across the country.
The process of debilitating the pastorate (and the parish priest, too) occurred in many
places in three stages:
1. By Bishops weakening motu proprio their own authority, that of
Rome, too, and of every pastor, whose office is only as effective as the Bishop’s.
2. By secularizing the priestly office.
3. By feminizing the Church.
1. Weakening Pastoral Authority
The year 1967 was a critical turning point. Cardinal Krol had it right: If bishops, who
owned the Catholic University of America, could not terminate the employment of a
non-tenured professor of only two years’ apprenticeship, what was the use of being
its Board of Trustees? Especially since Trustees at Yale or Harvard were free to do
precisely that, without having to explain why they did it. In 1967, however, someone
persuaded CUA’s Rector, and others, against their better judgment, that letting
Charles Curran’s contract expire would somehow be un-American. Subsequently, Curran
found the way to bring the bishops to heel by organizing priests and religious, especially
in the Washington, D.C. area, to march on picket lines in protest against the very idea of
bishops having anything to say about the Catholic qualifications of a professor. The
bishops capitulated.
Cardinal Spellman said he was too old to get into another fight. Archbishop John Dearden,
newly elected President of the NCCB, was hardly an influence on behalf of Rome, and his
fellow Clevelander and friend, Atlanta’s Archbishop Paul Hallinan, might even be
called the main Curran partisan on CUA’s Board. Cardinal Krol himself capitulated to
his fellow bishops, wrong-headed though he thought them to be. And Boston’s Richard
Cardinal Cushing roared that he did not know why bishops were involved at all, because
they knew nothing about running a University. (As if this was the principle under attack
from the Curran faction.) Later, Cardinal Patrick O’Boyle summed up the rout with the
pithy line: “We ate crow!”
Within weeks of that debacle the forces of autonomy against episcopal hegemony gathered
again. This time it was the Jesuit College presidents, and Notre Dame’s President
Theodore Hesburgh as their host, at Land O’ Lakes, Wisconsin (July 23, 1967), to
declare the freedom of Catholic higher education from hierarchy’s oversight. On
October 14, 1967 the Immaculate Heart of Mary Sisters followed suit celebrating a
“Charter Day,” whereon they declared that no longer would IHM leadership permit
Rome (or the local bishop) to determine “the essentials” of the Church’s
religious life. This community paved the way for the breakup of convents and parochial
schools all across the country. (When the Congregation for Religious directed the IHMs to
observe Roman norms, NCCB president Dearden wrote to Paul VI against the letter’s
sternness.) These autonomies of special Catholic interests from papal and episcopal
authority are more firmly in place now than they were thirty years ago.
In the years between 1967 and 1982 American Catholics saw the growing use of contraception
among Catholics, the explosion of annulments, the wipeout of the Sacrament of Penance,
opposition to the General Catechetical Directory (as there later was to the Universal
Catechism), studies of both religious life and seminary training which managed to paint an
optimistic picture little resembling the reality, and a host of disciplinary problems.
Tensions developed early between Rome’s universal norms and Episcopal Conferences
which regularly sought leeway in their application (e.g., dispensations or
reinterpretations of what was about to be promulgated in the new Code of Canon Law [1983],
or in later Apostolic Constitutions like Ex Corde Ecclesiae [1990], even on the English
translation [1993] of the new Catechism).
By 1982 the bishops in conference were ready to discuss “The Role of the Bishop in
the Contemporary Church,” which they did behind closed doors in Collegeville. The
then Archbishop James Hickey favored the consultation process inherent in good government,
a judgment with which anyone of sense would agree, but, he also made clear that certain
authoritative aspects of the Church were reserved to Bishops alone, such as teaching in
Christ’s name. He asserted that those who “teach in the Church’s name”
should be accredited by Church authority, as surely as chemistry teachers were by the
State. (These were points Paul VI had made earlier.)
However, the prevailing voice of that meeting was John Cardinal Dearden, the founding
father of the American post-Vatican II ecclesiastical machinery. Brought back from
retirement to give the keynote, the Detroit Archbishop — in contrast to Hickey —
stressed almost exclusively the virtues of the “listening” bishop, who shared
responsibility and consulted. No reservations were indicated. At one point in the address
he jibed at the relationship of Rome with a National Body of Bishops, by recalling
Rome’s anxieties about the old NCWC (1919):
“We can smile at the reports drawn up during the stormy days when a small delegation
was endeavoring to save the NCWC from suppression. One quotation from a report has these
sentences: ‘They (i.e., the Holy See) are always talking about the autonomy of a
single bishop. It’s a smoke screen. What they mean is that it is easier to deal with
one bishop than with a hierarchy.’”12
Indeed, under Dearden’s administration of the NCCB (1966-1971), which had an
anti-Roman flavor characteristic of him, the episcopal “listening” favored the
Church’s pluralists, viz., those who held in disfavor many views of Roman authority.
Even a bishop-in-the-field could be called “absolutely stupid” by a
bishop-bureaucrat if he stood in the way of what became Washington priorities.
To this day official Catholic circles do not correlate the breakup of the Church’s
doctrinal unity, or the statistical declines, with policy decisions made between
1966-1971, and reaffirmed thereafter year by year.
The national episcopal machinery was in such a hurry to make changes, some quite dubious
from the beginning, and so forcefully, that thirty years later, many individual bishops
feel bound to rubber-stamp decisions which make them unhappy. After the November 1966
meeting, for example, Archbishop Elden F. Curtiss of Omaha, discussing liturgical
translations, summed up the mood: “We have been fighting about this for several years
and arguing and discussing it. We have made our interventions and we tried to got a
response. The body of bishops generally wants to finish it and get on with it. So I think
this is the reason there has been so little debate.”13 In short, a small committee
with “experts” chosen by a few leaders tends to remain in command despite unrest
among bishops in the field.
What has this to do with pastors and parish priests? Such episcopal practice, widely
publicized, makes it seem that the local pastor, too, is not the final word in his own
jurisdiction, especially if he rejects the recommendation of a parochial committee or
council which considers itself independent of the pastor in matters of Church governance.
The average pastor today deals with priests, religious, and laity who, by what they notice
going on at large, no longer think that a cleric, even if he is a Bishop, has any right to
require acceptance of what the Church prescribes about First Communion, general
absolution, or liturgical norms, or teaches about worthy concelebration or communion,
marital responsibility, or “the Catholic conscience.” If some of those who have
enjoyed “consultant” status at the national level, say that bishops no longer
control the Church’s highways and byways, what makes a parish priest feel important?
“Reformers” have come to think that they represent the Holy Spirit refashioning
a Church that never should have come to be in the first place.
In some respects, the secular world has succeeded in turning the Church upside down. Ever
since the Freudians and Rogerians came to dominate the culture with their stress on the
subjective, and to make personal feelings the important elements in the determination of
truth, in the formation of character, or of good citizenship, and ever since hierarchical
structures came to be looked upon as instruments of oppression, or “guilt
machines,” the officers of secular society have courted the unhappy and the
discontented more than those seeking only to do what is objectively good. In recent years
censure has gone out of favor, unless the wrongdoing offends the secular agenda. This
ideology has achieved great influence today on the governance of Catholic institutions,
where obedience to Church-Law is not necessarily a high priority, and when the demands of
ecclesial authority are deemed to be politically incorrect by secular standards. If many
of the best and brightest Americans now eschew vital civic roles because the world in
which government officials must function is morally topsy-turvy, it should not be
surprising that a pastorate fashioned in the secular mode is not the desirable thing it
once was.
2. Secularizing the Priestly Office
“Come Follow Me” was an invitation for The Twelve to undertake Christ’s
redemptive mission to God’s people. Their relationship from the beginning was
patriarchal/filial, just about what He meant when He spoke of “my” or of
“your” heavenly Father. Many latter-day Christians will have none of this
traditional understanding of the priesthood, in part because it suggests dependence on the
arbitrary will of someone else, or on a lack of self-determination. In their mind it is
also opposed to the contemporary plurality of interpretations of God’s alleged Word
about ministry. Such views are old news to the Church, although rarely expressed in modern
times until the post-World War II period.
By then American priests were enjoying more of life’s comforts than their lay
counterparts, more than their predecessors. Not simply because of their “star
status” in every neighborhood, but because of improved rectories and a new freedom of
operation. (Priests were, however, no more exempt from the crosses of life than others.)
Celibacy in those generations was not the cause of crisis the secular world makes it
today. Busy priests had little time, then, to feel sorry for themselves, and knew where to
go for help, even to the bishop or the vicar general, who were usually solicitous for
every priest’s well-being.
Almost without careful estimate of what hasty change could do to the status and mission of
parish priests, bishops introduced terms of office, personnel boards, multiple discussion
groups, preferential options, salary emoluments, leaves of absence, and so forth. These
perquisites were presented as real answers to oft-expressed personal problems (e.g. over
faith and/or being under authority), which all people experience at some time or another
under any system. Concessions, however, never seemed to help some priests. Almost
immediately, curates became harder to handle once they were made “associates”
(no matter the age), no longer “assistants.” (In the professional world, an
“associate” earns his status over time.) The strange aspect of this
“modernization” is that, although these proposals were given by priests’
councils as options, bishops often followed them as bounden duty. One Archbishop,
succeeding to a See where “terms of office” did not exist, refused to introduce
them because he looked upon the oversight of all diocesan pastoral needs, and of priests
especially, as his personal responsibility. Another bishop told his 75-year-old pastors
that he would speak with the Pope about compulsory retirement, not adverting to the fact
that he, no less than the Pope, need not accept a priest’s compulsory “letter of
resignation.” More than a few priests, arriving in the pastor’s chair in their
50’s, were forced out in their 60’s to start all over again, in an entirely new
place, denied the opportunity to enjoy the harvest they had sown.
If currying favor with the bishop was the earlier way to gain a good assignment, or to
escape an unpleasant one, the new game involved playing the politics of the
“Personnel Board,” whose well-intentioned and apostolic-minded members often had
their own agendas for the diocese.
While “checks and balances” between centers of political power, or “divided
government,” as it is sometimes called, represents enlightened political wisdom,
there is no philosophical or ecclesiological principle, let alone empirical evidence,
which verifies that a “committee system” is proper for, or superior to,
patriarchy (or matriarchy) in the management of a family, or Christ’s Church. A
Church that claims that her hierarchy is of divine institution must be careful about a
“committee” tampering with a pastor’s office, or his staff, without his
knowledge. A “Personnel Committee” which supplies a bishop with information he
might not otherwise have, is a procedural improvement. A “Personnel Board,”
which manages the bishop’s priest placement process, stands between a pastor and his
bishop (or vicar general), after the manner of a corporate enterprise.
At ordination a priest gives himself in “reverence” and “obedience”
into the hands of the bishop alone. To obey a bishop is more in accord with that
commitment than to obey a Committee or a staff officer who would have a pastor bow to the
Chancery’s prudential judgment on free matters. In former days a Chancellor would
permit the pastor to decide whether “a suicide” was entitled to Christian
burial. A father-son relationship with a bishop may not make priestly morale in a diocese
better, but it does maintain a certain sacredness between the two that cannot be realized
through a negotiating committee. Nor do we hear that the present abundance of committees
raises priestly morale. The contrary seems to be true. Employment practices borrowed from
a modified capitalistic enterprise (where making or dividing money is the objective),
designed to mute class distinctions, or instill a sense of self-fulfillment in
subordinates, and improve corporate productivity, are not exactly what should define the
kinship of a father with his son. These devices by themselves are unconnected with
“self-sacrifice,” “obedience,” or priestly “mission.” In
fact, they more often take away from the priesthood the very qualities required for
exercising a sacred vocation properly and for finding satisfaction with it.
3. The Feminization of the Church
One of the more disparaging statements made about religion, even of Catholicity, is that
it is mostly a women’s work. It is so by the nature of femininity, some would argue.
Cursory observations of Catholic life in many countries of Europe lend prima facie support
to this theory. The fact that such an assertion has never been made convincingly about the
Church in the United States is testimony to the well-rounded formation of Catholic
character here by American bishops and their priests.
Before God, men are no less bound to His worship than women, nor are they less obligated
than women to obey His Laws and those of the Church. Neither in the order of grace nor of
nature are men dispensed from fulfilling the different roles that God has ordained for
them. God shows no partiality here. Radical feminism, whatever its role in reducing
sexuality to sex or in weakening the link between womanliness and marriage, or with
motherhood, clearly seeks to unseat men as authority figures. The feminist campaign
targets are not just fathers of the household, but priests of the Church as well,
especially the Holy Father. God as Father of the human family might even be the ultimate
object for a fall.
Men and women are often defined today as male and female, without reference to their
fatherhood or motherhood; in radical feminist circles marriage is often mentioned without
its natural link to parenthood, or even to heterosexuality. Such feminism associates
authority with mere power, not with God’s truth or right. Its partisans seek parity
of political power with men, perhaps even more power, although domestic and maternal ties
will always place limits on the political entanglements of most women. Their irreplaceable
motherly presence in society can never find a fitting substitute in males.
Although extreme sexual formulations can hardly be defended within the Church, feminism
nonetheless has impacted negatively on the conduct of pastors, even of bishops. By
pursuing the ordination of women with social force, in spite of explicit magisterial
teaching, its protagonists tend to eviscerate the term “shepherd” of its
Christ-like meaning. This destructive privilege was reserved in earlier centuries only to
unbelievers, heretics or schismatics.
Today, pastors tiptoe around the feminist issues (so do official documents), by frequently
placing unconditioned emphasis on women’s rights without corresponding reference to
their Christian duties, and seemingly join the chorus of those who oppose discriminating
judgment about sexual roles in the marketplace, in public service, in the worship of God,
or even within marriage. Motherhood and fatherhood are rarely discussed in depth.
References to the indignities heaped by feminists on manhood or on good men are never
heard, while silence over the lack of respect frequently shown to fathers in
mother-dominated households, merely reinforces the impression that women per se are
victims, and men somewhat unworthy of respect for the role most of them exercise
responsibly. A great deal of rhetoric in this vein is sometimes expressed at Bishops’
meetings. The suggestion occasionally appears that women would be more comfortable with
the Church if more of their numbers were diocesan pastors, chancellors, or tribunal
judges; if hierarchy only reeducated their priests accordingly, or persuaded Rome to
overcome its outdated attitudes by conferring priestly jurisdiction on those without holy
orders.14 In Catholic circles discussion of this subject turns at times into a rally for a
secular political judgment, rather than a search for the correct fulfillment of Christian
Revelation.
These thorny issues are not going to be resolved by the Church as long as they remain
political; nor as long as the only correct answer seems to be to divide the priesthood in
Solomonic fashion between so-called chauvinist men and feminist women; nor as if the
absolute demands of God’s word as the Church understands it are not the framework
within which sincere believers work out how best to do what God wants them to do. St.
Paul, in spite of his dismissal as an authority on matters sexual, speaks more wisely on
this subject than his critics. Those who would rewrite Ephesians 5, find it is easy to
grant that in modernity, free or not, it is appropriate to remind husbands (as if God is
demanding it) to “love your wives” (since men tend to be careless in this
regard); but inappropriate to remind wives to “obey” or “be subject”
to their husbands in the proper place and time? Good women do this all the time, even as
chauvinist ‘Enry ‘Iggins reminded his [My] Fair Lady of her special tendency to
“do precisely what she wants!”
The secular world cannot be held to account for its double-standards, or for its
hypocrisy, because it no longer believes that words ever mean absolutely what they say
(e.g., “until death do us part”), or because ambiguity and equivocation are
acceptable, if carried on for a politically correct cause. The Church, however, may not
permit her sacred institutions — marriage and the priesthood being only two — to
appear as man-made constructs, rather than as the God-given supernatural realities they
are. She does not allow this to happen, at least not among her own, when she is sure of
herself. In 1930, for example, Pius XI had no trouble articulating the role of fatherhood:
“If the husband is the head of the domestic family, then the wife is the heart, and
as the first holds the primacy of authority, so the second can and ought to claim the
primacy of love.”15
Even when new questions arise about the Sacraments, Church teaching remains constant,
however the language or arguments are modified. Canon 521 of the New Code speaks simply:
“To assume the office of pastor one must be in the sacred order of the
presbyterate.” Canon 517 says such authority can be shared but if, due to the
shortage of priests, “the pastoral care of a parish” is entrusted “to some
other person,” even a deacon, the bishop is to “appoint a priest endowed with
the powers and faculties of a pastor to supervise the pastoral care.”
It is this determination of the Church to hold fast to the revealed realities upon which
its very nature and the Word of God is based, which “reformers” seek to erode.
“Change the Church’s practice and the Church’s teaching will change,”
was a principle of revolution enunciated early by the likes of Hans Kung and Associates.
Under this rubric began simulated concelebration of Mass with the non-ordained (or
non-Catholic ministers), Eucharistic reception without absolution from mortal sin, general
absolution as licit apart from personal confession of sins, declarations of nullity for
valid marriages, ambiguous translations of biblical “hard sayings,” secularized
religious life, women as administrators of parishes (with a priest as curate), and so
forth.
Tearing down the walls around that exclusive “man’s world” in the Church
and making the definition of priesthood sexually neutral is the latest assault on Catholic
doctrine. Already 80 percent of the laity engaged in Church ministry are women, according
to one bishop addressing a national meeting of his peers (1996). How rarely do churchgoers
see a man in the role of their parish’s Eucharistic minister? The Catholic
Theological Society of America (in a 1996 convention report) deduces that John Paul
II’s belated approval of altar girls is a theological harbinger of women priests to
come. Is it?
The First World has been moving towards unisex for a half century, and towards a
femininized culture in which women will be honored if they are less than truly feminine,
or if they limit their motherly role in their daily life. John Paul II warned about the
pitfalls of that feminism which encouraged “a renunciation of femininity” or an
“imitation of the male role.” Such an ideology may please “iron
ladies” who seemingly never appear lovable, but it also repudiates the street wisdom
that says that working women prefer men bosses. Apart from the homosexual implications of
unisex, a “disorder” of nature ab initio, “women-power” does not
necessarily beget “women influence,” especially if “iron ladies” are
its chief witnesses. The complimentary masculine/feminine structures of the
Judaeo-Christian tradition may have bestowed power on men to wage wars, to levy taxes, and
to gain a great deal of attention from history buffs. Still, mothers, the child-bearers,
the nurses, the teachers, and the nuns, are the ones who mostly ran the world of the
streets, where human beings learned how to be human, a lesson many children no longer
learn.
In post-World War II Catholic circles, a man, challenged to prove that he was “the
head of the house,” was commonly caricatured as defending his superiority in this
way: “I make all the big decisions, she makes the little ones. She determines where
we live, where the kids go to school, and what we eat. I decide whether Russia should be
allowed into the United Nations, or whether the A.F.L. should merge with the C.I.O.”
That crack contained more of the real world than sexists, male or female, would like to
admit. The eternal question remains: Does the battle of the sexes really exist? Obviously,
from the time of Adam and Eve, with women, usually mothers, winning more often than the
radical feminists want youngsters to know. If the children of Catholic immigrants once
credited the Church with their social success, chances are that this or that local pastor
received honorable mention for the accomplishment. But, more commonly, it was “the
nuns” — and mothers in the home — who were the greater influence during
husband’s and children’s formative years, a power of women over people more
significant than any man’s power over things. (This was so noticeable by 1950 that
Philip Wylie made a national reputation decrying the putative ill-effects of
“Momism.”)
The Church cannot control the reigning ideologies of the secular order, but by now she
ought to know how to handle her own false prophets. If the purpose of temporizing with
those Catholics who have a “conscious bias” against the priesthood (John Paul
II’s term) is to effectuate their conversion, the effort is failing. New priests are
not only fewer, but the morale of the “reformed” clergy has never been lower, if
reports of the NCCB (1989) or the National Catholic Educational Association (1990) are
correct. Martin Luther denigrated the ruling role of the priest with his line “we are
all consecrated priests by baptism,” but the modern issue is whether he, as “the
man of the Eucharist” (John Paul II’s term), is Christ’s vicar in the
apostolate of redemption and salvation. Even the appearance of compromise over the manhood
of the priesthood is bound to raise the next questions: Whether the priesthood has direct
connection with Christ; whether Christ is really present in the Church or in the Sacrifice
of the Mass.
Pastores Dabo Vobis and the Faith Problem
That something should be done about these matters is obvious to John Paul II who, when he
wrote Pastores Dabo Vobis in 1992, took note of the depth of the crisis over the
priesthood from early Vatican II days, and the marked difference in the kind of priests
who were appearing on the scene then, as compared to thirty years earlier. Even though his
problems are similar to those of his predecessors from earlier centuries, this pope is not
expected to do anything impetuous.
During the 14th century days of Urban VI (1378-1389), the Church was in decline because
ecclesiastics had allowed themselves to be held hostage by underlings or politicians.
Princes wanted less Church influence on the conduct of States, French Cardinals (and the
King) kept the Pope in Avignon and out of Rome for seventy years. Freewheeling clerics,
then, fixed their eyes more on money than on souls. University personnel (e.g. Paris’
John Gerson) argued that Christ’s authority was vested in the Church’s people,
not in the Pope, and therefore exercisable without necessary reference to the apostolic
patrimony. During this so-called “Avignon Captivity,” according to Philip
Hughes, hierarchy surrendered their rights and jurisdiction “wholesale,”
authority which their predecessors valiantly fought to have recognized in the public
arena.16
History never quite repeats itself, of course. Catholic kings are not around anymore to
threaten prelates. Only, the officers of the secular State have a grim, if subtle, way of
burying the Church behind her own walls, while they reach over bishops to change the minds
of people about religion. The modern State is insidiously antithetical to Catholic piety,
a virtue that every pastor must cherish. Its “cognitive elites,” including
Catholics, are prone nowadays, as they were in the days of imperial Christianity, of
Conciliarism, of Protestantism, or of Gallicanism, to propose marriage of the Church to
the reigning State, a temptation prelates of old found hard to resist. But as one sage
reminded them: “If the Church marries herself to any era, she’ll soon be a
widow.” Why? Because she stands outside and above secular culture of any kind, even
one of her own making. When certain popes mistakenly thought they should dominate the
State because they were Vicars of Christ, their successors felt the force of State power
seeking to fit the sacred into its secular mold. Whenever the State trivializes capital
sins or makes trivial sins capital, the Church has lost. Masters of secularity think that
the idea of sin (an offense against God) is just about as ridiculous as the idea of God
becoming man to redeem the world.
What has this to do with pastors? If the decline in congregational faith among Protestants
is a paradigm, then it was the “treason of clerics” which brought it about, as
Anglican priest-theologian Eric Mascall was wont to say.17 Mascall saw the process at work
among Catholics after Vatican II, in the willingness of “enlightened clerics” to
spread a view of Christ as one who is not our God nor our teacher, and to explain
Christian events rationalistically, as if the explanations provided by the Apostles,
Evangelists, Fathers of the Church, or the Magisterium of the Apostolic Successors, were
intellectually incompetent. The loss of faith in the real Christ, and in the Church as his
real sacramental presence, began in her heartland after the recent Council — within
those houses of learning and formation entrusted with the initial and ongoing training of
priests and religious. The results of the treason were symbolized almost overnight in
little things. Bishops continued to wear cassocks, but many younger priests divested
themselves of clerical clothing, almost as rapidly as younger religious women exchanged
community garb for secular attire. Then, came the priestly downgrading and the belittling
of those pious practices which, while not the necessary effects of faith, do reflect the
efforts of earlier priests to keep God’s presence felt in the lives of their
faithful: holy water fonts at the entrance to a Catholic home, bowing the head or signing
the cross as one passed a Church, blessings of new mothers and their infants, Benediction
and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, devotional novenas to Our Lady and the Saints,
scapulars, etc. In due course, as these pious practices fell into disuse, there followed
Mass without vestments or creeds, Holy Communion to habitual sinners and non-Catholics,
dissoluble marriages, and the end of confessional lines, just about the time that large
Catholic families disappeared. When the flight of religious from religion began, colleges,
too, founded by a saint or a living martyr from one of America’s great communities,
muted their Catholic identity. Or, like the twenty in New York, had themselves declared by
the State nondenominational and no longer juridically Catholic. These shortfalls were not
sanctioned by Vatican II, yet they were frequently claimed as legitimate fruits of the
Council, especially the result of the Church’s “openness” to the world on
rational terms, and to autonomous decision-making below the level of pastors’
jurisdiction — and, therefore, no need of pastors. Many years ago an obscure
academic, reviewing Karl Rahner’s theological superiority over the German bishops,
recapped a new elitist view of Catholicity:
Openness means facing the deep religious problems of contemporary life — acknowledging, for example, that it is not easy to say exactly what “God” means today. To say whether the orthodox formulas are not mainly empty and to say precisely when love of neighbor is not sufficient religion. Similarly, we have no adequate ecclesiology for the increasing number who are “selective” in their faith, who cling to some doctrines and reject others. We are already an ecumenical Church, in the sense that we are solidly pluralistic. If we are courageous enough to accept organizational and doctrinal pluralism more forthrightly, letting more ways of following Christ just be and interact, we could really start to think of ourselves as united.18
Most Evangelical Protestants would reject this inane logic, which divests
the creeds and Church teaching of meaning, and reduces the sacramental system to a series
of empty rituals or superstitious acts. For Catholics who think this way, St. Paul’s
“one Faith, one Lord, one Baptism” (Eph. 4:5) no longer endures as a rule of
faith. The right of the Church to vivify these three aspects of authentic Christianity
— unilaterally through pastors — is denied. The faith-problem transcends any
failure in the human governance of Christ’s Church.
In Summary
The critical questions facing all contemporary Catholic pastors are two:
(1) How much of the faith preached by the Vicar of Christ can their parishioners believe,
in view of the way bishops or pastors are often contested in their household, or by the
quality of parish life they are likely to hand on to their successors if the present
divisions continue; (2) How can that discipleship which characterized the American Church
through most of the 20th century be restored, that which is consistent with mind of Him
who told His first followers, “If you live according to my teaching you are truly my
disciples.” (Jn. 8:31).
Doctrinal purity and discipleship go together, injury to one weakens the other, hardly a
desirable condition for the Mystical Body of Christ.
Deny it as many may, contradictory pluralism on matters of faith and morals is entrenched
in the post-Vatican II Church, and a form of heresy. A kind of Treaty of Westphalia now
rules in the United States; the quality of the Catholicity in a given place depending on
who is in charge of the local Catholic community. In 1648, after a Thirty Years’ War
between Catholic and Protestant princes, Europe’s political leaders decided to give
civil legitimacy to the religion professed by the local reigning prince or duke. Cujus
regio, ejus religio. Identify the prince of a place, and the people’s religion was
officially predetermined. This Solomonic solution was denounced by believing Protestants,
while Pope Innocent X (1644-1655) excoriated it as “null, worthless, iniquitous,
frivolous and without authority!” Yet Westphalia was nothing more than statutory
recognition by politicians of religious pluralism over which popes and bishops no longer
had any say. Henceforth, Church membership was to be a private affair, doctrines were of
no social significance, and the secular State became, in effect, the arbiter of religion
whenever Churches were unwise enough to intrude on the public square.
Princes of the realm no longer exist in the West with power to seize monasteries, or send
a bishop to the Tower for head surgery, or imprison a pope. The Church’s privileged
place in secular society was lost at Westphalia, but bishops at least were left free to
deal with the Church’s own, at least in theory. New “princes” were bound to
arise notably in the academy of Germany for the Protestant Church, but also within
Catholicity on the Continent. In those years the caretakers of the Church at any given
time often lacked the fervor of their Jansenist enemies, or the intellectual/polemical
skills of a pagan Voltaire, or the will-to-win of a politically determined Bismarck.
Something of the kind has been going on in the modern Church. A different kind of
Catholicity has unfolded in various segments of the Church, depending on who controls a
specific place — a pastor, a prior, a college president, and so forth — with
bishops no longer having a firm hold on the consciences of Catholics. This veritable
revolution in the United States institutionalizes a nominal Catholicity here for the first
time, one that has long been a characteristic of “Catholic” countries in Europe.
A social scientist, asked to comment on the present state of the Church, might express
surprise that anyone is upset by this turn of events. Changes in types of government and
in ruling classes go on all the time, he would say. Vilfred Pareto dubbed this as the
“circulation of elites,” a Machiavellian case of “foxes” in a
nation’s political structure outsmarting the “lions” in power, or of the
latter eventually running over the former. In this theory, revolution was likely to appear
at critical points of history, when “the ins” miscalculated the popular support
enjoyed by “the unfriendly outs.” The Pareto analysis claims to explain the
dissolution of the Roman Empire, why republics replace monarchies, or how democracies end
up totalitarian. It suggests, too, that a fox-like “cleverness” in politics,
exercised at the right moment, prevails over the sheer “strength” of
officeholders, as symbolized by lions, and has a certain relevancy to secular governance,
whose main function is to create or maintain order within a country, and to defend people
against outside enemies.
The Catholic Church, however, has been created to sustain much more than social peace. She
was ordained to instill the Word of God among men, and to engender sanctity at least among
her own. Granted that, as a human institution, a certain discipline is necessary in order
that this be done effectively, but the message matters for the Church, not the social
process. And to protect the gospel and the creed she may call on the disciplinary customs
of an age or draw on the wisdom of her own tradition.
Whether secular society likes it or not, or particular Catholics either, Christ’s
mission has been entrusted to consecrated priests. John Paul II insists: “Without
priests the Church would not be able to live!” In the pursuit of their vocation,
therefore, in the Pareto scheme, priests must be both “clever” and
“strong.” When they are “foxes” to the exclusion of their
“lion-like” qualities, “the message” becomes blurred.
A “Treaty of Westphalia” situation cannot long continue in the United States
without the witness of the Catholic Church to Christ’s mission becoming irrelevant to
the lives of her own people. Nominal Catholicity will replace the deep Catholic piety of
those trained in the unified American Church of the earlier 20th century.
What can Catholics do about this crisis?
Renewing the Pastor’s Role
The renewal of priestly status in the Church, the reaffirmation of the parish
priest’s role and authority, and the reversal of the downward trend in seminary
enrollments, is a top priority for action by pope and bishops. Part of the process
involves scholarly restatements of the Catholic tradition, going back to apostolic times,
and orchestrated recalls also of saintly testimony about priests. But re-enhancement of
the office in the lives of priests themselves is also essential. The sacredness of the
priestly vocation demands it. If a priest is a vicar of Christ, he must learn to think as
such.
To reinforce priests in this endeavor, however, structures must be developed, beginning at
the seminary level. It is worth recalling that sound doctrinal and moral formation,
episcopal supervision, rectory living, and wearing cassocks or Roman collars, for example,
only followed long centuries of poor training and unworthy priests.
Some steps to consider:
1. As a beginning, recognition by the American body of bishops that the root of the Church’s priestly crisis is in a widespread loss of faith in the Church’s creedal propositions and, therefore, in the credibility of the Church herself. The surrounding culture, more worldly or earthbound than ever before, is partly to blame, but that hardly excuses the scandals within the Church, sins against the faith being the most notorious. Invitations to sin were first extended to those living a fruitful marriage, only later to those engaged in a self-sacrificing priesthood.
2. The process of recovery from any problematic situation usually originates in the prudent but unapologetic use of their legislative, judicial, and executive authority. Bishops, for example, are not supplicants before civil magistrates, certainly not before their own elites, but vicars of Christ, men who speak in His name and share His authority.
Unequivocable re-affirmations of the doctrinal teachings of Christ and the Church, especially those which are misrepresented in the public forum, or neglected, are appropriate.
In the hostile environment they face, bishops are impelled to dispute, refute, and confront, publicly as necessary, those who lead the faithful astray on matters of doctrine, or threaten the Church’s well-being or reputation by their disobedience, insofar as they are guarantors of what is taught under the auspices of the Church, and in every institution which uses the Cross of Christ as its identifying feature. The Holy See expects the Catechism of the Catholic Church to be the authoritative norm against which worship, teaching, and parish life are to be judged.
Only those who have a measurable record of fidelity to the Church’s teaching office and to her vicars are eligible for appointment to diocesan office, or to become consultors, or be featured or honored by ecclesial authority, with the understanding that these offices or honors are held in trust at the pleasure of the responsible Church authority.
3. The Holy See contributes to this process of rebuilding respect for the Church’s pastors by appointing to episcopal office, or promoting, only those bishops with the demonstrated ability to govern the Church as Canon Law specifies, and their personal history of governance vindicates, and the special needs of the ecclesial situation.
4. The Holy See insists, once universal policy or law is established, that National Conferences of Bishops apply the policy or law, without equivocation, ambiguity, or benign neglect by a diocesan bishop within his own jurisdiction, especially as it applies to the worship of God, the administration of the sacraments, and the Catholic reputation of the Church.
5. The Holy See oversees Roman institutes of learning and of seminary training, so that these remain models for bishops and major superiors of how the Church’s universal norms are to be implemented, and how Catholic institutions are to be managed.
6. Diocesan Ordinaries review all policies and practices already in place to insure that they enhance the sacred status of pastors and of parish priests in general. These priests must be properly trained and supported for the vital roles they play. Any custom that secularizes their divinely conferred status and role should be reversed.
As the abuses of the post-Vatican II years mounted, one American Cardinal
had reason to instruct the Apostolic Delegate — “You clean up the mess in Rome,
and I’ll clean up my Archdiocese!” Reform, whatever its inspiration, is
accomplished only through the proper laws with sensible enforcement of a society’s
highest authorities.
The scandals of recent years are due mainly to the fact that those whom Peter and Paul
called evildoers have often been indulged or even rewarded, while the faithful sons and
daughters have been ignored or discounted. The disorder, most noticeable of all, has been
the fraternal relationship that developed between Church bureaucracies and notorious
dissenting bodies within religious and academic communities. On the other hand, rarely is
an apology tendered for the hurt inflicted by a bishop who removed a good pastor after
four decades of service for being strict on decorum during worship, on the theologian
forced out of his university tenure for criticizing some of his Community
“leadership” (a post he could retain if he left the Order), on the university
president forced to retire when dissenters became the dominant force in his Congregation,
on the priest who never recovered his parish although the Holy See directed the bishop
otherwise, on the theologian denied a seminary post because he was considered a papalist,
or a faithful journalist terminated as editor of a diocesan newspaper because a timid
bishop caved into pressure from a handful of priests, no less. These are only a few of the
wrongs that have been perpetrated on the Church’s faithful by one or another
officeholder, with hardly a thought within the community of defending the righteous
against the misuse of office by the unrighteous. What was once called “the blackboard
jungle syndrome” in major cities came to prevail, once students (some commentators
called them hoodlums) took the peaceful management of public education in metropolitan
areas away from their teachers and the Municipal Fathers. The office of pastor suffers
similarly whenever Catholic antiestablishment figures ignore the legitimate directives of
bishops or refuse to obey, or make threats against his governance, or disdain the office
publicly even when they do what Church law requires. Once unchallenged or uncorrected,
such misconduct radiates throughout a parish or a diocese.
Being a man of authority, or a woman, is as much a matter of presence, as of decision.
Great leaders and grand dames exude presence. No one underestimates who they are. At the
end of the 19th century, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, still not a Catholic, was so stunned
one rainy Sunday by the dignity of Westminster’s Cardinal Henry Edward Manning as he
stepped out of his carriage to enter a Church, that he took little note of his finery,
only the man. After World War I the British Prime Minister so respected the potential
impact of Melbourne’s Archbishop Daniel Mannix on the Irish Question that he sent two
destroyers to remove the prelate from a Cunard liner on his way home to his dying mother
in Ireland; the fear was that he might cause more trouble than the Empire cared to face.
In the 1930s when Patrick Cardinal Hayes walked down the middle aisle of his Cathedral,
the churchgoers automatically fell to their knees to gain the full benefits of his
blessing. During the 1940s the publisher of the Philadelphia Enquirer and other
journalists treated Dennis Dougherty with the utmost respect because they learned from his
posture — and his known way of defending his flock against unfair media treatment
— that this Cardinal was not to be taken lightly. These men were the personification
of their authority and were respected for their Church role, even by those who did not
like them. They knew who they were and so did everyone else. Religious superiors and
college presidents bowed in their direction, not the other way around.
Reform, according to the authentic norms of Vatican II, begins when all Catholics,
including pastors, recognize that the present crisis begins with lack of supernatural
faith in the truths of the Church as expressed in her ordinary teaching, and ends in
disobedience of the Pope and the bishops in union with him. Our crisis, therefore, is not
one of exhaustion from a frustrating contest between tradition and modernity, liberals and
conservatives, Americans and Romans, as it is sometimes made out to be. It results from a
lack of virtue within the Catholic community, and perhaps from God’s displeasure.
As long as the crisis continues, it is incumbent on those who have full confidence in the
“faith of our fathers” to continue witnessing their faith boldly. By so doing
they will suffer, as St. Athanasius did in the 4th century at the hands of Arian
confreres, as Thomas More and John Fisher did a millennium later under England’s
headhunting Henry VIII, as the Curé of Ars did in post-French Revolution days when
bishops seemed more nationalist than Catholic, and as St. Elizabeth Seton did from the
Protestant crusade against her newfound faith. Who else will?
Believing Catholics will reject the pessimism of those who think that the battle for the
American Church has been lost, or of those who confront the present controversies more in
anger than with hope in God’s Providence. The faithful certainly must continue their
efforts to regain assent and obedience as attributes of the Church body, until pastors are
once more able to teach, rule, and sanctify as Catholic wisdom ordains. Only under those
circumstances, and with God’s help, will the Church of the United States have once
more the quantity and quality of priests the “faith of our fathers” engendered.
Of course, nothing is perfect within the Body of Christ as long as human beings are part
of it. But that does not mean that the Church lacks a sacred nature, its priests too, or
that seeking perfection in this life is not her raison d’etre. Henri De Lubac had it
right:
The Church which we call our Mother is not some ideal unreal Church but this hierarchical Church itself; not the Church as we might dream her but the Church as she exists in fact, here and now. Thus the obedience which we pledge her in the persons of those who rule cannot be anything but a filial obedience.19
These words are meaningless if the contumaciously disobedient or the
scandalous sinners, especially consecrated religious persons, dominate Catholic
sanctuaries or the designated halls of learning the faith; and if the faithful, including
priests, are left to shift for themselves in their quest for holiness and eternal
salvation. The gates of hell are prevailing, at least momentarily, when pastors watch the
Church overrun by norms and sanctions invented by the Secular State to keep God in his
heaven, and to mute Christ’s presence in the Church’s public square. Since the
princes of academe now take pride in their secularity, as the princes of the realm once
did, it is incumbent on the Pope with his bishops to restore the priesthood, the pastorate
especially, to its full dignity and authority, leaving to practicing Catholics, taught and
inspired by such priests, to bear such witness to the faith that the altars and the
pulpits of the 21st century will be filled to overflowing with worthy Vicars of Christ.
A Pastor’s Last Hurrah?
The Pope by himself has jurisdiction over the governance of the universal Church, the
bishop Ordinary over each diocese, the pastor over the local parish. Every modern document
of the Church from Paul VI’s affixed note to Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium to
Rome’s 1997 instruction on Diocesan Synods says so, without prejudice to the
collegiality of bishops together with the pope, or the importance of consultative bodies
in the administration of bishops.
Briefly stated, a single person in the Catholic Church stands in place of Christ — a
priest pastor somewhere.
But once that long-standing Catholic truth is stated, we must hasten to admit that, in
practice, the notion of “pastor,” as defined, is on its way out of the Catholic
lexicon. It is vanishing as surely as the word “father,” the “head of the
household,” is fading from American usage. Both terms have become socially
unacceptable, as much because of the failure of both pastors and fathers to protect their
roles in Church and family, as from theories concocted to undermine or demolish the
dominion of one person over another in any society. (De facto, someone is always in
command.) The malpractice appears regularly in the unwillingness of “men of
authority” to enforce the laws of their society, allowing it to appear that, in the
conduct of personal affairs of social concourse, everything is relative. The significance
of that “ism” should not be underestimated by any truly Catholic shepherd of
souls.
The subversion of the very notion of one person’s authority over another has long
been in the making, conceptualized usually by philosophers who resented the Fatherhood of
God or the Lordship of Christ.
Today, the sages of secularized Western culture are determined to maintain the present
status quo, which they created, one described by Robert Nisbet as representing “the
twilight of authority” itself. In present circumstances, the pastorate, like
fatherhood, is looked upon as a titular office, a symbol of community, but not as an
agency of decision-making or lawmaking, upon which the unity, peace, and Catholicity of
the Church depends.
Secular elites are hardly sympathetic either with what may be the most powerful persons in
the world, homemaking mothers, living indissolubly in sacramental union with the fathers
of their children, fashioning the character of the nation’s next generation. Nor do
they cotton to consecrated women working under a pastor as religious mothers to the
Church’s future Christ-bearers. Secularists prefer, instead, that women be autonomous
of men, in the marketplace, in the public square, or in the trenches, searching preferably
for their own individualities, rather than meaningfulness in ties that bind them to their
family or to their Church. In their view, togetherness is the result of agreements freely
entered with others, and voidable, not a bonding of nature or one demanded by God’s
law.
In spite of the disintegration of America’s civil order, and its family life — a
byproduct of this secularist philosophy, breaking the moral bond between human freedom to
see the truth and responsibility to do the right; the offshoot also of the conviction is
that humankind’s only directive power is one growing from consensus among equals
— secularism still dominates the thinking of the country’s leading
opinion-molders, and pervades the policies of government.
The further the Church walks that secular highway the less will she be Catholic, the more
irrelevant will pastors become to the life of the baptized, the fewer will be the manly
young men who find the priesthood attractive, and the more will secular idols replace the
worship of God the Father, and of Christ in the Eucharist.
Msgr. George A. Kelly, the founder of the Fellowship of Catholic
Scholars, is the author most recently of A Pastor’s Challenge: Parish Leadership in
an Age of Division, Doubt and Spiritual Hunger (Our Sunday Visitor Press).
End Notes
1. See Explanatory Note appended to Lumen Gentium which makes clear that
papal collegiality with bishops is not intended to prevent the pope from acting on his
own.
2. Origins, October 11, 1984.
3. In 1789 there was one priest for every 1,000 Catholics. By 1939 the
ratio was down to 1:600. By 1989 it was back up to 1:1,100, without assessment that large
numbers of foreign-born extern priests are now serving American Catholics on a
month-by-month basis.
4. John Talbot Smith, The Catholic Church in New York, (Hall and Locke
Co., 1905, p. 470).
5. Peter Guilday, History of the Councils of Baltimore, (Macmillan,
1932, p. 185). Guilday explained the beginnings as follows: “Uniformity of discipline
was the principal need of the score of years which followed the (first episcopal) meeting
of 1810. It was not easy of attainment for misrule had spread under incompetent leadership
in New York, Philadelphia, and New Orleans. The Church here during the period of its
infancy was sadly hampered by the presence of priests who knew not how to obey and laity
who were interpreting their share of Catholic life by non-Catholic Church systems.”
6. Canon 552 of the New Code still looks upon “stability” as
normative; “The pastor ought to possess stability in office and therefore he is to be
named for an indefinite period of time; the diocesan bishop can name him for a certain
period of time only if a decree of the Conference of Bishops has permitted this.”
7. The doubts and challenges, as well as the factual situations, vary
with the personnel and the diocese, priests and religious stonewalling authority more than
laity (unless they be academics or teacher representatives), American-born more than
foreign-born.
8. Cf. The Ratzinger Report, (Ignatius Press, 1985, p. 45).
9. For a simple review of these theories, see Patrick J. Dunn,
Priesthood. A Reexamination of the Roman Catholic Theology of the Presbyterate, (Alba
House, 1990, pp. 232 ff.).
10. See Origins, July 4, 1974.
11. A Religious News Service report Christmas week 1996 has Andrew
Greeley still defining the internal schism in these terms. This is precisely how the
issues were joined during the “birth control fight.”
12. Origins, June 15, 1982, p. 119.
13. Even the attempt to resist the use of the word “presbyter”
for “priest” was rejected to avoid prolonging the overall approval process.
14. See Minutes of NCCB’s Executive Session, June 22, 1996,
Portland, Oregon.
15. Casti Connubii, No. 27.
16. Seven Popes, all French, lived in this small town — outside of
Italy and Rome from 1309-1378.
17. See E. L. Mascall, Theology and the Gospel of Christ: An Essay in
Reorientation, (London, SPCK, 1977).
18. A book reviewer in America, February 16, 1974, p. 111.
19. The Splendor of the Church, (Ignatius Press, 1986, p. 265).