Category Archives: Church Dysfunctions

This Must Not Happen!

Abuse of Power, Accusation, Articles, Bishops, Christology, Clericalism, Courage, Kingdom of God, Leadership, Renewal, Satan, Scandal, Secrecy, Sexual Abuse

And yet it must…
~*~

Peter tells Jesus he is a Sinner

How the Easter story explains the continuing inability of Catholic bishops to be fully transparent about the cover up of clerical abuse of children.

First drafted in 2020 – on the brink of the coronavirus pandemic – this summary of my own understanding of what scripture is telling us about God’s reason for the Crucifixion of Jesus is now re-edited and published in 2024.

On the way to Jerusalem Peter the apostle proclaimed Jesus to be the Messiah, the great promised leader of the Jews, and the Son of God.

He was stunned when Jesus then told him that he expected to be crucified in Jerusalem – the cruel punishment meted out by Rome to intimidate and shame rebellious slaves.

Then, taking Jesus aside, Peter started to rebuke him. ‘Heaven preserve you, Lord,’ he said, ‘this must not happen to you.‘
(Matt 16:22)

This advice was itself instantly rejected by Jesus in the strongest possible terms:

‘Get behind me, Satan!’
(Matt 16: 22,23)

• Q1. Do we understand fully why Peter was appalled by the prospect Jesus had just unfolded – of his own crucifixion?
• Q2. Secondly, can we grasp why Jesus responded to Peter as he did – identifying the first person to call him ‘Son of God’ with the personification of all evil – ‘Satan’?


Believing that this passage in the Gospel is pivotal in helping us to understand the complex predicament of the Church at this time, I offer here a summary of the argument.

Q1. Why was Peter so anxious to persuade Jesus to turn away from Crucifixion?

That Peter was intent on saving Jesus from physical torture and death on the cross, and that Jesus was convinced that he must suffer that fate, is a familiar understanding of the passage.

Consider also, however, the probability that Peter was horrified on his own behalf.

Moments earlier Peter had proclaimed Jesus to be the son of God – the God who was bound by covenant to the cause of the salvation of Israel. For Peter that must surely involve freedom for the people of Israel, as we still tend to understand freedom – the expulsion of the hated occupying Roman legions and their flaunted eagle battle standards, the defeat of all Jewish collaborators with Rome (such as King Herod) and the recreation of the independent Kingdom of Israel.

The inexplicable disaster foreseen instead by Jesus – Rome’s humiliation of yet another Jewish rebel by crucifixion – would surely also now mean Peter’s own climactic public failure and disgrace.

Peter had not signed up for that.

Is Physical Suffering Our Greatest Fear?

By a process that is mysterious, the Gospel story has come to be read as though only physical suffering could have been at stake in crucifixion. Always unremarked is the human emotional dimension within which all high enterprises are conceived and evaluated – our acute worry about ‘what people will think’ – if, on the one hand things go well or, on the other, they do the very opposite.

To proclaim Jesus as Son of God was to bind oneself to the full consequences of ‘what people would think’ if this story was to end as Jesus had foretold – that Jesus was just another crazy ‘loser’, shamed and obliterated by Rome, and that Peter had been crazier still to follow him.

What About Shame?

This dramatic context of all vital decision-making is the never-absent issue of honour and shame. We ignore this dimension at our peril if we suppose it to be unimportant in the interpretation of scripture. Fear of shame is fear of ‘what everyone will think’ if something shameful happens to us. Aware that a multitude of others – gazing – will judge and jeer at us, we fear their scorn and contempt.

And crucifixion was designed by the rulers of Rome to be the most shameful possible death.

That Peter is constantly aware of this dimension is also revealed in that passage from the Gospel of Matthew. Those three words ‘taking him aside’ alert us to Peter’s realisation that to question Jesus’s judgement in the hearing of the rest of his closest followers would be to diminish him in the eyes of others, and that his own role should be that of respectful and unobtrusive adviser.

Peter obviously hopes that if he first takes Jesus aside this great leader – who has attracted the poorest in Galilee for his compassion and wisdom, and worked miracles to strengthen their faith – will rethink his dire prediction of crucifixion and announce a change of plan.

Must Not Jesus be Greater than David?

Peter must surely have thought that this Messiah could easily call on the wisdom and almighty power of the God of Israel – the power that – according to the Jewish scriptures – had drowned the entire army of Egypt, had helped Gideon to triumph over the Midianites with just three hundred men, and had guided the aim of David’s sling when faced with the giant Goliath.

Surely Jesus was simply testing his followers’ understanding of this history, and would appreciate Peter’s tactful hinting at it?

Obviously much more could be said on this by those with a more detailed understanding of what Peter’s own experience of Roman occupation could have been – including the Roman taxes that crippled people of his social class. For now I want to reflect on the rule that guides the plots of all superhero movies still today. How many would turn up to watch their chosen hero finally stripped naked, beaten flat and humiliated by his most terrifying adversary?

This must not happen!

Q2. Why did Jesus reject Peter’s advice so vehemently, and identify this very first person to recognise his stature in God’s eyes, with Satan – the source and instigator of all evil?

Most of us can have a shot at this question, I suspect, based upon the theological understanding that informed our own early education, an understanding shaped by St Anselm of Canterbury in the 1090s CE1Cur Deus Homo?, St Anselm of Canterbury, c.1098 CE. Jesus had to undergo crucifixion to undo the huge offence to his Father given by all of the sins of us humans throughout the past, present and future – because our own sufferings are insufficient to repay this enormous debt.

According to this theory, in trying to persuade Jesus to avoid crucifixion, Peter was unknowingly standing in the way of God’s forgiveness, and so serving Satan – the malignant power intent on frustrating God’s plan from the very beginning.

This understanding, first put into words by St Anselm of Canterbury c. 1098 CE, and still repeated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church2 Catechism of the Catholic Church 1994, Article 615 can certainly be presented in a way that does some justice to the compassion and mercy of God.

Was God the Father Dissatisfied?

However, in my experience, it can also mislead us into thinking that the Father whom Jesus called Abba is a distant and disapproving parent, more concerned about his own dignity than to affirm the dignity of every single one of us, right now.

If we think of God the father as self-absorbed rather than bent upon releasing us from the power of evil right now, this is not the best of Good News – the news that the Kingdom of Heaven is still at hand for all of us, in this present moment.

Before even trying to make sense of St Anselm’s answer we must first of all remember what Jesus said: ‘Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father’ (John 14: 9) and… ‘the Father and I are one’ (John 10: 30), and ‘Anyone who loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make a home in him’. (John 14: 23)

The Father is Always Close

Any explanation of the crucifixion that separates God our Father from our brother Jesus who comes to us in our deepest pain, falls short of the Gospel. Led in by Jesus, the Trinity wait even now to make their home within us, if that is our dearest wish.

Moreover, to every one of us they offer a role in making themselves known, as family, to those who need them most. They wish to free all of us from the fear that we have lost that love, or could lose it. It is an urgent desire, because no one just now should be without a sense of the Father’s nearness, compassion and presence – or of their own importance in the story now unfolding.

We need above all to try to understand why we doubt our own value, and then tend to look in the wrong place for self-respect. And how scripture – the Old and New Testaments – is always the guide to home.

Where do doubt and shame come from?

Two stories from the Old Testament help greatly here.

I. Genesis and the Roots of Shame

‘Who told you that you were naked?’ the Lord asked. (Gen 3: 11)

Straight away what Christians came to call ‘original sin’ is linked in the Genesis allegory with sensitivity to shaming, to possible ridicule and loss of both the respect of any observer and then of self-respect also.

The storyteller is suggesting that earlier, in Paradise, Eve had not known shame, but somehow the idea has come to her that there is something wrong with her. She should not be just a ‘creature’, something ‘made’ by God, the maker of all things. She should be ‘like Gods’ – equal to God. She is held back, some voice has assured her, only by her obedience to God’s ban on the ‘forbidden fruit’.

Notice how close that is to the pitch of any car salesman when you have just turned up for a service and find yourself looking at the latest gleaming apparition from the design studios:

“Great choice, that model, Sir, the xf469. Heganu designed it to help them figure out the optimal settings for the dynamic twosome in the boggle transcender that gives the next model, the xf475 50% more power for 20% less fuel. You probably weren’t aware of that, so no matter – very few people would notice the difference. Funny, though, one of those xf475s came in this morning – just to show a very excited customer later today… You wouldn’t believe the inertial dampers!”

Our biggest human problem down the ages has been our uncertainty about our own value and judgement, our chronic fear that we are insufficient as we are – our status anxiety. It always tells us that we lack something important, and to want whatever that is.

Eve could not have been influenced by this voice if she had not already been vulnerable in her self-esteem, and ready to believe that she needed something she did not already have.

This is our ‘original weakness’, and – as we are human – it never completely leaves us.

Self-Consciousness – the Source of Status Anxiety

How could we not be uncertain, coming to a uniquely human kind of consciousness at the dawn of time, tiny beings under the great dome of the stars, in a world that we ourselves have not made?

We call this vulnerability to shame ‘self-consciousness’, but it is not merely ‘consciousness of self’. It is our problematic awareness that others are aware of us – and our fear of the value judgements they will make about us.

Moreover, are we not surrounded from our birth by really important people whom many admire, while nobody is interested in us because we are nobodies? What must we do to become a somebody?

In the ancient world the greatest of all somebodies were the Gods. There just had to be far more powerful beings in charge of everything out there. Who wouldn’t want to be one of them?

That’s why we humans tend to be wannabes – until we discover that this is a serious mistake – that from the beginning nobody was a nobody.

Notice that this passage in Genesis is also insisting that our ‘maker’ is not the one who told Adam and Eve they were nobodies, by pointing in scorn at their nakedness. We have all been made, the text tells us, in God’s own image and He has already blessed us, naked.

Satan the Source of Our Status Anxiety

This passage in Genesis is clear also on where our doubt about our own value comes from – not God, the source of all that is good, but Satan, the serpent, the source of all evil.

In saying ‘This must not Happen‘ – to Jesus – Peter is giving voice to the power that evokes fear of the judgement of others, the power that had also overwhelmed the greatest of Israel’s kings.

II. King David of Israel

“You have worked in secret, but I shall work this for all Israel to see, in broad daylight.”

This, delivered by the prophet Nathan, is God’s warning to King David, following the latter’s seduction of Bathsheba and his underhanded murder of her husband, Uriah – to avoid the scandal of Bathsheba’s pregnancy. (2 Samuel 11 & 12).

Far from denying this charge, David admits at once to grave sin. In doing so this heroic defender of Israel against the Philistine giant Goliath confesses to surrender to an even greater terror – his fear of shame – of ‘what people would think’ if they came to hear the full story of David, Bathsheba and Uriah.

That scene has been set in the account of David’s earlier triumphant return from the victory over the Philistines, when the women of Israel sang: ”Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens of thousands”. (1 Samuel 18: 7)

This is the role of ‘fame’, ‘celebrity’, or ‘status’ in ramping up our fear of shame. Acclaim by a multitude, by the crowd, will inevitably turn to disgust on the part of that same multitude if David does not hide his disgraceful behaviour! It is his horror at this prospect that entraps David into something far worse than adultery.

That David – Israel’s greatest hero king – could not overcome his fear of shame is central to the story. So is the implication that it is Satan who ‘enters in’ to exploit that very fear: David’s attempt to hide his disgraceful behaviour is the equivalent of the ‘covering up’ to avoid shame by the first humans in Genesis. It had been Satan, not the God of Genesis, who had precipitated the problem of shame.

And that is why Jesus saw Peter as ‘channelling’ Satan when the former said ‘this must not happen’ on the road to Jerusalem. Faced with the prospect of crucifixion – of what would be seen as total failure and disgrace – and assured by Peter that he must not accept this denouement, he responds with:

‘Get behind me Satan!’

Satan Enters In

Why call Peter ‘Satan’?

Because, obedient to the Father and the Holy Spirit, it is Jesus’ intention to overthrow the power of Satan, the ‘prince of this world’, the power to shame us. Peter does not know that he is simply repeating a human pattern of behaviour – the pattern that had overwhelmed David also – of giving in to fear of shame.

Peter is doing what David had done and what almost everybody does when faced with the possibility of public disgrace. He gives in to the fear of total condemnation and of the shaming that crucifixion symbolised for every subject people in the empire. Peter is sure that at all costs it must not be Jesus who is shamed. Someone else must suffer that fate – those opposing him – but Jesus knows that this is why violence almost always begets violence, and he and the Father are bent on teaching us this.

For Jesus and the Father there was no other way of taking all of us, as quickly as possible, to the realisation that it is those who do the shaming who are always in the wrong – and that no one can truly shame those who are innocent. By rejecting his offer of the kingdom of God they have proven to Jesus, and the Father, that the limits of human power must now be revealed.

What Easter Means – the Overcoming of the World

Here we can see why the event commemorated by Christians at Easter – Jesus’s determination not to be overwhelmed by fear of shame, and to submit, forgivingly, to the worst that we humans can physically do to one another, was the pivotal moment in human history. (John 16:33)

Reflect right now on your own uncertainty. If you are unsure of your own judgement, have you any good reason to rely on the judgement of others – especially when those others can see only what you see – appearances – and know nothing about your inner self?

This is to know that the judgement of the world – of the multitude we mistakenly tend to look to for reassurance of our own value, for ‘fame’ – is totally unreliable and can never be trusted to pass a true verdict on ourselves.

At its worst it can lynch us, simply because in its blind anger and fear it often needs someone to blame and punish. Worse still, if we can find no reassurance from others that we have some worth, we may turn against ourselves, fatally.

To know why Jesus reprimanded Peter is to know also why the world can never shame you, or anyone else, in God’s eyes and in truth.

Jesus is Greater than David

Certainly Jesus knew that even Israel’s greatest hero king – David – had been defeated and disgraced by the temptation to let someone else die so that he, the Great King David, could avoid shame. He knew also that the first murder story told in the Jewish scriptures was of a competition between two brothers, Cain and Abel, for greater favour in the eyes of God. And he also knew that this theme of competition or rivalry between two men who want the same prize, leading to conflict between them, was an ever repeating pattern in the recorded history of his own people.

Jesus also knew well that the Roman Empire that held his own land captive had arisen from the same process of rivalry, beginning with Roman envy of the Greek hero Alexander the Great and followed by warlord rivalries and civil war under the Roman Republic. The assassination of Julius Caesar in BCE 44 had been caused by the same resentment of Caesar’s dictatorial power and was followed by the expansion of the Roman Empire by Caesar’s heir, Augustus, and his successors – the very tyranny that was holding Jesus’s own people, the Jews in captivity in his own time.

Who Satan Is

Satan is history’s name for the fear that can grip any of us, and can grip a multitude simultaneously, if we are in danger of being shamed by the dramatic crises of our own lives – scorned, derided and pushed out into the dark.

Especially vulnerable is anyone who has both an elevated position in society – and knowledge of any secret that could bring disgrace.

The Predicament of Catholic Bishops in the 1900s

Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, c. 2003

That was precisely the predicament of all bishops of the Catholic Church in the late 1900s CE. Once inducted into that office every bishop soon learned that among his most important duties was the keeping of a secret that had been kept for generations: solemn ordination to the priesthood had not prevented a significant minority of ordained clergy from abusing the trust placed in them by Catholic parents and children.

No one knew what people would think and do if everyone learned this secret. Possibly this would mean not only the disgracing of the abusive priests and every bishop who had shielded them – but the total dissolution of the church. For every individual bishop there was therefore the additional fear of being the first to ‘drop the ball’ – and therefore they all believed that …

This must not happen!

The Bishops’ Predicament in 2024

Almost four decades after the first widely publicised revelation of Catholic clerical child sex abuse (in Lousiana, USA, in 1985) the historical origins of the cover up of clerical child sexual abuse are still unknown in the detail that full transparency calls for. Jesus of Nazareth, the founder of all Christian churches, was far more clearly opposed to any adult abuse of a child than he was to his disciples marrying (Matt 18: 6) – so the protection of the reputation of professedly celibate priests never justified the keeping of a secret that endangered every Christian child.

Why and when was it first decided that any priest known to have sexually abused a child should retain his priestly status – and that such infractions should be dealt with in strict secrecy?

No one knows – even though this could quickly be discovered by historical investigation.

If St Peter Damian in the mid 11th century 3St Peter Damian, Liber Gomorrhianus, c. 1050 CEcould strongly condemn the secrecy maintained by some bishops over abusive sexual behaviours by priests under their jurisdiction, and could advise that abusive priests should be laicised – and have his efforts at reform praised by Pope Leo IX – why were these efforts apparently in vain by the late 1900s?

Why, finally, has the papacy made absolutely no effort to initiate a full discovery of the historical origin of the procedures that have so scandalised the church and now been discontinued – especially when it has initiated a process of synodal discussion that led to the following advice about the need for transparency in July 2024:

“A synodal Church requires both a culture and practice of transparency and accountability, which are essential to fostering the mutual trust necessary for walking together and exercising co-responsibility for the sake of the common mission.”4How to Be a Missionary Church, Instrumentum Laboris for Second Session of Universal Synod of Synodality, Oct 2024, P.32, Article 73

Defeating this call to transparency, continuing denial of the obvious need for full historical disclosure can suggest only one conclusion: it is thought by those who keep the church’s historical secrets that what is still unknown would cause even more trouble if it were known than what has so far been revealed – so that, yet again this must not happen!

The Expanding Church of Lost Sheep

The devastating impact of the abuse revelations upon churchgoing in Ireland, the USA and elsewhere conceals a vital truth: those revelations have been the most important learning experience for Catholic Christians since the 2nd Vatican Council of 1962-65.

And the most important lesson we have learned is that while some priests are indeed holy it is not ordination that has made them holy – for otherwise all priests would be holy.

Was it this truth above all that the bishops of the church wanted to keep from us? Did they think that belief that every priest is holy was the bedrock of our faith?

That we don’t know the answer to this question even yet is another mystery! No bishop anywhere has sat down with his flock – including the many living faithful departed – to explain, frankly, why he believes this secret was kept. And so we become, increasingly, lost sheep.

Yet this does not mean that we have forgotten Jesus, the one who told the parable of the lost sheep – or the assurance he gave:

“See that you never despise any of these little ones, for I tell you that their angels in heaven are continually in the presence of my Father in heaven. For the Son of Man has come to save what was lost. Tell me. Suppose a man has a hundred sheep and one of them strays; will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hillside and go in search of the stray? In truth I tell you, if he finds it, it gives him more joy than do the ninety-nine that did not stray at all. Similarly, it is never the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.”
(Matt 18:10-14)

Awakened to the weakness of the clerical church by both clerical abuse and the cover up of clerical abuse, those of us who become lost sheep are very well placed to experience the truth of this parable. Everyone reading this also knows that the Lord who goes in search of the lost sheep does not go in vain – for we, those who believe the Creed – in spite of the failures of bishops – are the lost sheep who have been found.

If you, the person reading this, have realised that you too are inexpressibly loved by the Lord of the Gospel, you are also well placed to explain to any bishop why the fear of shame was the fear of Peter in the beginning, and the root cause of the cover up that has devastated the church.

And, as Jesus forgave Peter for abandoning him, He will forgive also the concealment of the truth that still continues – the cause of the very worst schism the church has experienced.

To understand why Jesus had to overcome his fear of the world – his fear of shame – is to overcome in that moment the same fear in ourselves.

Apparantly paralysed still by fear of shame in 2024, Catholic bishops need to realise that the truths of the Gospel are greater than all of us, and that they too need to overcome that fear, as Jesus did – to agree to a complete discovery of the roots of the catastrophe that has nearly overwhelmed us.

For the Trinity are as busy as ever rounding up the lost sheep, and need the help of every Christian to complete that task. It is time for all Catholic bishops to realise why complete honesty and transparency must now happen.

Notes

  1. Cur Deus Homo?, St Anselm of Canterbury, c.1098 CE
  2. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1994, Article 615
  3. Liber Gomorrhianus, St Peter Damian, c.1050 CE
  4. How to Be a Missionary Church, Instrumentum Laboris for Second Session of Universal Synod of Synodality, Oct 2024, P.32, Article 73

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No Historical Transparency in the Church?

Abuse of Power, Articles, Bishops, Scripture, Secrecy, Sexual Abuse

While declaring transparency a requirement for a synodal church, the working document for the final session of the 2023-24 Vatican Synod on Synodality gives no promise of transparency around the historical origins of the standard procedure of concealing from Catholic parents the reality of clerical sexual abuse of children in the 20th century – a policy which spiritually traumatised countless Catholic children. How can the church become ‘missionary’ with such a background?

In Genesis we are told that for many years Jacob, son of Isaac and grandson of Abraham, did not know that his own most favoured son, Joseph, had not been killed by a wild animal but sold into slavery in Egypt by his other sons, out of jealousy. (Genesis 37-50) 

In the Book of Kings we learn that Naboth of Jezreel did not know that when he refused the offer of an exchange of land with King Ahab of Israel, Ahab’s wife, Jezebel, would scheme to dispossess and kill him.  (1 Kings 21)

Elsewhere we read that Esther, adoptive daughter of Mordecai and wife of Persian King Ahasuerus, was unaware initially that the powerful courtier Haman was plotting the extermination of her people, the Jews – because of Mordecai’s refusal to show due servility to Haman. (Esther)

Secure in her own garden, Susanna in Babylon was unaware that her beauty had enticed two elders among the Jews there to make a pact to threaten her with stoning to death for adultery if she did not give way to their lust. (Susanna and the Elders: Book of Daniel)

Uriah the Hittite did not know why the men beside him suddenly abandoned him in the thick of his final battle. He was oblivious to betrayal by his commander-in-chief, King David of Israel – who had seduced and impregnated his wife Bathsheba and then given orders that would doom him, despite his own loyalty to the cause of David’s kingdom. (2 Samuel)

Those women who gave birth to sons in Bethlehem around the time of Jesus’s birth had no reason to suspect that King Herod would plot their murder soon after hearing of the latter event. (Matt 2:16-18)

A Biblical Focus on Conspiratorial Injustice

Scripture scholars may doubt that all of these tales are historical, but the pattern of literary focus is clear. The authors had a common interest in narratives of high-level scheming, injustice, concealment and victimisation.  The reason for the concealment may often be implicit but always these plotters can be understood as having a common interest in preserving their reputations in the gaze of others.

That is, they all had a deducible interest in ‘saving face’, to use a phrase more often associated with Oriental culture.  

And this heuristic may also be applied to the Gospel accounts of the parts played by Caiaphas, Judas, another Herod and Pilate in the arrest, trials, crucifixion and death of Jesus of Nazareth.

The Innocence of the Victims

As the anthropologist René Girard has observed there is another common aspect of these narratives.  Their victims, or intended victims, were essentially innocent. Taken as sacred texts they all reveal the God of Israel, the claimed source of all scriptural inspiration, to be on the side of the intended victim or victims.  

Preservation of reputation on the part of plotters is far from being a dated and antiquated fixation – as proven by the outrageous murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018, by agents of the Saudi government.  That this is a western fixation also was most clearly revealed by the attempt of the Nixon administration to conceal the origins of the burglary of the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate Office Building in Washington DC in 1972.  High level financial ‘scams’ such as the Enron affair of 2001 and the Madoff ‘ponzi’ scandal of 2008 are apparently inevitable in Western capitalism. Jealousies, plots and betrayals are at the core of western fictional drama, up to and including the current TV series Succession. The tension of these dramas hangs always upon what is known and intended by ambitious or lustful characters and yet concealed, agonisingly, from others who will suffer the consequences.

Unwitting Victims of Reputational Fear

Until 1994 in Ireland Catholic parents generally did not know that the ordained status of men to whom they often entrusted their children did not always make those men incapable of severely harming those children, sexually, psychologically and spiritually.  By now those families who suffered this fate probably know that this phenomenon had been known to church authorities from the end of the first century CE (as recorded in The Didache). 

On December 9th 2009, following the publication of the Murphy report, the Irish Bishops Conference felt compelled to declare that:      

“We are deeply shocked by the scale and depravity of abuse as described in the Report.  We are shamed by the extent to which child sexual abuse was covered up in the Archdiocese of Dublin and recognise that this indicates a culture that was widespread in the Church.  The avoidance of scandal, the preservation of the reputations of individuals and of the Church, took precedence over the safety and welfare of children.  This should never have happened and must never be allowed to happen again.  We humbly ask for forgiveness.”1Statement following the winter meeting of the Irish Bishops Conference, 9th December 2009

Since then the international scope of this ‘cover up’ has become more apparent, as has that motivation to ‘preserve the reputation of individuals and of the church’ – made even more poignant by the claim of Fr Gerhard Gruber in 2010 that as vicar general in the archdiocese of Munich he had been pressurised to take the blame for mistakes made decades earlier in the handling of a case of abuse – when Pope Benedict, then Joseph Ratzinger, had been archbishop of that diocese.2‘Law firm to publish report on handling of abuse in Munich Archdiocese’, CRUX, Catholic News Service, Jan 4, 2022

An Unreasonable Comparison?

Is it unreasonable to compare this ‘cover up’ by churchmen with the plots and plottings of scriptural archetypes such as David, Ahab, Jezebel, Haman, Caiaphas and the Herods? Were those who practised concealment of clerical sex abuse of children ever truly aware of the scale of suffering they were visiting upon the innocent? Did they ever intend that suffering? May they not even have had worthy motives and been oblivious of serious injustice or harm?

All of these questions are plausible – and yet some may be asked also of some of the scriptural plotters, if mitigation is our intent.  For example, given King David’s symbolic importance to Israel, might he not have been justified in sacrificing one man, Uriah, to avoid demoralisation of the nation in time of war? And mightn’t Caiaphas, Herod and Pilate truly have had similar thoughts in the case of Jesus the Galilean troublemaker?

Why So Little Learned in Two Millennia?

Was a span of almost two millennia not truly sufficient to educate churchmen in the consequences to victims of childhood or adolescent sexual abuse? When it came to ending the cover up, did the church truly need to depend upon secular lawyers, police, courts, media? When it came to their ‘learning curve’ on the impact of sexual abuse on children should churchmen truly have needed the advice of secular psychology and psychiatry, when they had Jesus’s own stern warning to guide them? If so, why on earth condemn secularism and the Enlightenment?    

However plausible may be the attempts at mitigation of the cover up of clerical child abuse, it will always remain true that many children globally suffered totally unexpected and unimaginable horrors from these abuses. That much of this could have been prevented if the episcopal magisterium had shown corporate wisdom, courage and transparency ab initio, rather than corporate dedication to the protection of its own reputation, will also always be true – and the people of God truly deserve an historical accounting for this failure.

The Cover Up of the Past  

So far, instead, even after almost four decades of revelation, the cover up still extends backwards into the distant past. For example, no one knows why or when it was decided, with apparent unanimity by the magisterium, that Jesus’s own emphatic condemnation of the betrayal of childhood innocence (Matt 18:6) was irrelevant when considering whether ordained abusers of children could be retained in ministry after a first provable offence. Why was this most emphatic teaching of Jesus ignored, when the context of his only recommendation of celibacy (Matt 19:12) suggests that it was probably intended merely for those who could not contemplate life-long marital fidelity?  This obvious reluctance on the part of the current magisterium to consult and reveal the full Vatican and wider church record is a barrier to the ‘reckoning’ on clerical abuse called for by the Irish national synodal synthesis of August 2022.

Administrators’ Dilemmas 

Inevitably we must guess that it is still the situational dilemmas of administrators that delay a final reckoning. They need to reflect on that scriptural record, recalling where the Trinity’s sympathies always lie – as well as the prophecy of Simeon that the life of the child Jesus would reveal the hidden thoughts of many.  When Christian historians of the future tell this story, will they not also be stressing the innocence of the victims and the reputational fears of the powerful ordained?

Apart from this need to ‘clear the air’ on the handling of clerical abuse there is another reason for urgent closure. The teaching authority of Catholic bishops everywhere – especially in regard to sexuality – has been rendered null for many by this disaster. Irish bishops have still not revealed the reason for their failure to sponsor and publish reliable research on the widespread failure of Irish Catholic schools to develop a practised liturgical faith among their alumni in recent decades3See Faith Formation and Fear of Shame, The Furrow, 2017. This too is an unnecessary mystery suggestive of fear of self-embarrassment via the likely results of any such research.

Lack of Clarity on Sin

The clarity of the church’s teaching on sin is another serious issue. No one who pays any attention can be unaware that serious differences exist between the understanding of sin as prioritised by Pope Francis or, for example, Cardinal Robert McElroy – and sin as seen by the pope’s highest-level opponents, for whom the ‘no parvity’ principle in regard to all sexual rule-breaking is apparently as true and unshakeable as the Creed.

“… the sins of the flesh are not the most serious. The gravest sins are those that are more angelic: pride, hatred. These are graver.”4‘Full text: Pope Francis’ in-flight press conference from Greece’, Catholic News Agency, Dec 6th 2021 So insisted Pope Francis in December 2021, when asked about the admission by a French archbishop of an affair with an adult woman. If the ‘angelic’ sin of pride is indeed graver than lust, what about ‘the preservation of the reputations of individuals and of the Church’ identified by Irish bishops as a cause of the cover-up of sexual abuse? Wasn’t it David’s pride that prevented him from owning up to his own affair with Bathsheba – and then led to the far greater sin of murder-by-proxy?

The Catechism is seriously lacking an extended and culturally relevant treatment of both pride and covetousness – even while the problem of clericalism has been identified by Pope Francis as that desire for superiority, attention and honour5‘5 Of the many times Pope Francis has warned against clericalism’, Kathleen N. Hattrup, Aleteia, 23rd August 2018 that the Catechism does identify as a feature of pride6Catechism of the Catholic Church, Glossary, ‘Pride’. Defining covetousness as ‘modelling your desires on what your neighbour has’ would also allow the magisterium to see and reject the desire for social superiority that fuels all social ambition, including the rampant desire for celebrity. Secularism sorely needs an explanation of inequality – and pride and covetousness are ready to hand.

Sin of Pride Embedded in Clericalism

Or at least they will be when the magisterium has clearly seen these sins as fundamental to the cover up of clerical sexual abuse, and confessed them frankly as embedded in clericalism and ecclesiastical ambition. Pope Francis’s courage in opening up this debate needs the support of all bishops in the pursuit of a ‘reckoning’ – a telling of the complete truth of the hierarchical church’s own sins.  

When it happens this telling will involve a full exposure of the historical record, and the sooner the better. Scripture lauds the anointed King David while telling us the worst that he did. Jesus’s own mitigation of the offences of his persecutors – ‘they know not what they do’ – can be applied also to the cover up of clerical abuse but we need, urgently, the full story – whatever may still impend – if the church is to overcome this disaster in the time of any of the generations now living.

It took decades for Jacob to learn that his most favoured son was still alive, but at least he lived to see Joseph again, now greatly honoured, in Egypt. In knowing that Catholic churchmen at the highest level can visit the most appalling suffering upon innocent children, out of concern for the reputation of ‘the church’ – and can collaborate to hide this problem until exposed – don’t we Catholic people already know the worst?

As stated by the July 2024 Instrumentum Laboris for the final session of the Vatican Synod of Bishops on Synodality in October 2024:

“A synodal Church requires both a culture and practice of transparency and accountability, which are essential to fostering the mutual trust necessary for walking together and exercising co-responsibility for the sake of the common mission.”7How to Be a Missionary Church, Instrumentum Laboris for Second Session of Universal Synod of Synodality, Oct 2024, P.32, Article 73

Despite this statement of principle there is no sign whatever in the document of a realisation that continuing secrecy about the recent past is an insuperable barrier to trust – and so also to communion, participation and mission. How are we to take the call to transparency seriously if secrecy is still to be maintained around the greatest scandal the church has ever suffered?

Never in the long history of human shepherding have so many sheep been lost by so many shepherds – but apparently we are never to know why.

Notes

  1. Statement following the winter meeting of the Irish Bishops Conference, 9th December 2009
  2. ‘Law firm to publish report on handling of abuse in Munich Archdiocese’, CRUX, Catholic News Service, Jan 4, 2022
  3. See ‘Faith Formation and Fear of Shame’, O’Conaill, The Furrow, 2017
  4. ‘Full text: Pope Francis’ in-flight press conference from Greece’, Catholic News Agency, Dec 6th 2021
  5. ‘5 Of the many times Pope Francis has warned against clericalism’, Kathleen N. Hattrup, Aleteia, 23rd August 2018
  6. CCC, Glossary, ‘Pride’
  7. How to Be a Missionary Church, Instrumentum Laboris for Second Session of Universal Synod of Synodality, Oct 2024, P.32, Article 73

(Author’s note: An earlier version of this article appeared in the Oct 2023 edition of The Furrow, under the title A ‘Reckoning’ on Clerical Abuse? Challenge and Opportunity.)

Views: 1568

2024: Irish Catholic Vocations Office Mired in Clericalism

Articles, Baptism, Church Dysfunctions, Clericalism, Evangelisation, Leadership, Ordination, Recent
 Front page of the Irish National Vocations Office website in January 2024

“Is God Calling You to be a Diocesan Priest? Come and See. Take the Risk for Christ.” This is what faces you when you click https://vocations.ie/ the website of Ireland’s Catholic “National Vocations Office”.

Asked by Ardal O’Hanlon on his RTE documentary what risk was involved in opting for the celibate priestly vocation today, the National Vocations Coordinator, Fr Willie Purcell, responded:

“Anyone who is presenting himself for priesthood nowadays is really being counter-cultural. It really is a radical decision. The risk really is giving yourself completely to Christ that others might come to know him through you.  There really is a lot of humility involved in it, of self-sacrifice involved in it, but most important of all a vocation is a selfless decision, to give yourself to Christ and then to give yourself to others.”

Yet again we are being asked here to ignore what the Gospel clearly tells us about Jesus, viz.:

  • That he was never a member of the priestly religious institution of his own time and place;
  • That his definitive role in ‘salvation’ was not sacramental or liturgical (i.e. symbolic) but the direct prophetic challenging of a religious system he saw as both exploitative and hypocritical, to the danger of his own life;
  • That it was therefore his integrity, not his celibacy, that constitutes the central sacrifice that he did indeed ask us to repeat in memory of him;
  • That the definitive Christian calling to ‘follow’ him was therefore NOT to males only to join an exclusively male religious institution but to the same self-giving and integrity in whatever social role we baptised Catholic Christians find ourselves – whatever our gender, age or occupation.

Why does the National Vocations Office see only the risk to clergy?

Why is it not obvious to the Irish National Vocations Office that any social role, in any society, can and does involve these challenges to integrity – and that risk can attach to any of these?

It isn’t only the lives and trials of outstanding Irish individuals such as Veronica Guerin, Maurice McCabe and Martin Ridge that demonstrate this. Public service, especially for women, has become notably more risky and challenging for anyone who approaches it with integrity in the age of the Internet. With Pope Francis now calling all of us, even teenagers, to ‘mission’ today – and with Irish Garda, nurses, firefighters and paramedics at risk on every callout in certain locales in Ireland  – why was this not obvious to whoever dreamt up the slogan ‘Take the risk for Christ’ – implying that the risk of Christian witness attaches solely to the male celibate sacramental calling?

Lessons of the Pandemic

Did not the Pandemic teach us that in an interdependent society the lives of all of us can depend upon those who risk turning up even to man the check-out in the local supermarket or the counter in a dispensary?

Isn’t even any Irish teenager who stands in school against sexual harassment or homophobic bullying – or online trolling of a friend – at risk, and is not this the risk that attaches to the common priesthood of the people of God, the risk that comes to all who affirm their Baptism?

Why does Fr Purcell imply that only the diocesan priest has the responsibility to bring the message of Christ to others, when the key message of synodality is that this responsibility comes to all of us with Baptism?

The Priests who spoke out

As for the specific risks that do indeed attach to the sacramental priesthood, how would Fr Purcell account for what happened to those Irish priests who did prophetically challenge the injustices of church policies in relation to women, the LGBT community and the mishandling by bishops of the issue of clerical sexual abuse of children in Ireland, back in 2012?

What a shame that Ardal O’Hanlon did not think to ask if that was indeed the ‘risk’ that the National Vocations Office has in mind!

Child Safeguarding and Risk

And if he had asked that question, would Fr Purcell have recalled  that we have never yet had an open conversation on the role and obligation of private conscience when faced with an abuse of authority in the church, as could happen, for example, to any of the child safeguarding personnel we now depend upon?

With synodality far from firmly embedded in our Catholic culture, and canon law still a mess, the risks for every servant of the church that are still posed by the church itself are far from merely notional or historic. Does Ireland’s National Vocations Office truly serve the church by apparently forgetting all of that?

Why in 2024 can we not instead have a properly balanced understanding  of ‘vocation’ that does not associate counter-cultural Christian self-sacrifice and ‘humility’ solely with the male celibate sacramental priestly role or imply that for all lay people the risk of Christian witness must be secondary?

Is it not to this clericalist talking-up of the sacramental role alone – and the consequent forgetting of the priestly and prophetic calling of all of us – that we must ascribe the incomprehension of so many young people about the Christian call to themselves?

Baptism the Primary Sacrament of the Priestly People of God

Finally, given the paramount importance of communicating the meaning of our common priesthood, why is the restoration of the primacy of Baptism still lagging totally in Ireland? Is that no concern of the National Vocations Office, or of the Irish Bishops Conference?

In its singular concern for the survival of the sacramental Catholic priesthood in Ireland the Irish National Vocations Office has presented us yet again with an understanding of the Christian vocation that is stridently and essentially clericalist.  This can only undermine the central message of synodality and delay the emergence of the co-responsible church we so badly need.

17th Jan 2024

Views: 1680

A Reckoning on Catholic Clerical Abuse? Seriously?

Abuse of Power, Articles, Clericalism, Maladies, Paternalism, Recent, Secrecy, Sexual Abuse, Sexuality

Are Irish bishops truly serious in echoing the view of Ireland’s National Synodal Synthesis – that a conclusive ‘reckoning’ on the issue of clerical sexual abuse of children has yet to happen in the church? If so will they now call upon the Pope and the Universal Synod of Bishops to remove the obvious barriers to such a reckoning that the hierarchical church has maintained since the abuse crisis began in 1984?
~

In a December 2022 statement Irish bishops repeated the assertion of the Irish National Synodal Synthesis that a ‘reckoning’ on abuse in the church has still to happen. They quoted the following paragraph from the National Synthesis:

“There was a palpable sense that despite many efforts by the Church, a ‘reckoning’ had not yet taken place, and the synodal process generated a clear imperative to place this issue at the heart of any Church renewal and reform. A submission noted: We must pledge ourselves to journey with survivors, to meet with them, preferably in small groups where dialogue is possible and opens us to the presence of the Spirit.”

Who do Ireland’s church leaders suppose should initiate such a ‘reckoning’ after three decades of church scandal, when everywhere the hierarchical church has deliberately dealt with survivors individually – often imposing non-disclosure agreements on receivers of settlements – and failed to provide victims of abuse in the church – or the people of God – with any corporate representative structures?

No Irish diocese has ever even projected a full reckoning on the issue of abuse, to end the isolation of survivors with a view to final reconciliation. This effectively means that the Irish church remains divided into three separate bodies: first, clergy; second, clerical abuse survivors; third, the now radically declining body of church goers. 

Furthermore the Irish Catholic Church has never published any account of the current wellbeing or otherwise of the survivor community, leaving the wider church completely in the dark on the wellbeing and health status of survivors. It is for all the world as though they are all out of sight and out of mind, and deliberately so.  If a ‘reckoning’ is sincerely contemplated now, shouldn’t survivors be asked, openly, what exactly that would mean?  

The 2022 synodal process received only one distinctive survivor submission – from only seven Irish survivors – and their submission was an indictment of the ongoing typical treatment of survivors as adversaries – by church servants who too often showed an inclination ‘to sacrifice survivors for what they considered to be the good of the Church‘.

And no Irish diocese yet has a permanent forum where anyone could ask why this is still so.

This is the deliberate maintenance of an imbalance of power between survivors and Irish church leaders, and the isolation of survivors from the wider church-going community.

When and Why did Secrecy Begin?

Meanwhile there has never been even a hint of an in-house attempt to uncover and reveal the root of the ghastly mishandling of the issue via secrecy and recycling of malefactors. What reason do survivors have to believe that they will live to see such a reckoning?

Ad nauseam we have been assured that celibacy does not cause clerical child abuse – but what caused the cover up by bishops everywhere, which empowered abusers and protracted this disease for centuries? When and why did it become standard procedure for the hierarchical church to ignore what Jesus had said should happen to those who caused children to stumble (Matt 18:6) – and to hide, systematically, the fact that the ordained could ever do this?

Did the rule of celibacy and the elevation of celibate clergy as exemplary models of Christ truly have nothing to do with the intensification of the practice of secrecy since the Protestant Reformation of the 1500s, and especially from c. 1869 – as outlined by Tom Doyle in his brief history of this issue?

Given that Rome has not ever offered even a hint of interest in discovering the roots of this malignant secrecy, the onus must surely rest with the hierarchical church to prove that this had nothing to do with the preservation of the myth of a celibate clergy.

The obvious block on the disclosure of the full historical record, at the highest level, is a barrier to belief that living survivors will ever see a full reckoning. Those at the local level who don’t control access to the full historical record can speak of a reckoning easily enough, as another pious thought –  just something for the historians of the 2100s to get into.

Given the imbalance between the Irish hierarchy and the sufferers of abuse, the former can defer to the notion of a ‘reckoning’, while knowing full well that in their own time everything is being done at the centre to block all means of getting there.

So if Irish bishops are serious about a full reckoning, will they now call for a full disclosure of the historical origins of the greatest mistake ever made by church servants – the hiding of a phenomenon that has plagued the church for centuries and will continue to paralyse it until the mistake of secrecy is traced to its poisonous source?

Views: 1294

The Frustrated Potential of the Alienated Church

Articles, Clericalism, Sexual Abuse

“I no longer have any trust in the Catholic Church but I have my own faith and belief in God. I believe that Martin Ridge and his investigation stopped me from committing suicide and I owe him everything.”

This was Martin Gallagher – Donegal victim of the ordained abuser Eugene Greene in the Catholic diocese of Raphoe – speaking to the Donegal Daily (October 24th, 2019).

Martin Ridge was one of two Garda officers who painstakingly took the testimony of Martin Gallagher and twenty-five other victims of Greene, resulting in a successful prosecution in 2000, and a twelve-year prison sentence. Greene died in November 2018.

Martin Ridge d. Jan 6th, 2022

Martin Ridge, also raised a Catholic and still a firm Christian believer, sees the clerical Catholic church in Donegal as still in denial – his reason for calling for a ‘cold case’ forensic review of the mystery of Greene’s three-decade invisibility to church authorities before he came to the attention of the police in 1997.

Nothing could be clearer from Martin Gallagher’s testimony than that the Garda officers who took up this cause were also ministers of grace to himself and his fellow-sufferers – so why, more than half-a-century after Vatican II, can that not be fully acknowledged by our Catholic bishops – to begin a healing of the chasms that have opened up in the Irish Church over the past quarter-century?

And just how many others are there in Ireland who have been alienated from the church’s clerical superstructure precisely because they identify, as did Jesus of Nazareth, with victims of institutional injustice and have nowhere to go in their church to express their revulsion?

And just when will the Irish Catholic clerical institution begin to research this very question?

On October 1st 2019 Irish Catholic bishops were presented with the case for making the common priesthood of all baptised Catholics in Ireland the lynch-pin of a strategy for the recovery of the church. This would solve another pressing problem – the failure of the clerical church to address the problem of deference to clergy that lay at the root of the institutional abuse recorded by the Ryan report of 2009.

The Church of Christ the King, Gortahork, Co Donegal – one of the chapels in which Eugene Greene ministered

Despite that report, our Irish church has still heard nothing from the Irish bishops’ conference on the problem of clericalism – despite the many allusions to that problem by Pope Francis since 2013.

For example, on August 20th 2018 Pope Francis described clericalism as “an approach that not only nullifies the character of Christians, but also tends to diminish and undervalue the baptismal grace that the Holy Spirit has placed in the heart of our people. Clericalism, whether fostered by priests themselves or by lay persons, leads to an excision in the ecclesial body that supports and helps to perpetuate many of the evils that we are condemning today. To say ‘no’ to abuse is to say an emphatic ‘no’ to all forms of clericalism.“

When will all of those harmed by and alienated from the clerical church by Irish Catholic clericalism hear that emphatic ‘no’ to clericalism from their own bishops’ conference, and hear their own baptismal priestly role recognised?

Martin Gallagher, Martin Ridge – and far too many others – have already waited far too long for that to happen.

Postscript: Martin Ridge died in the Donegal Hospice, 6th February 2022 – without seeing the closure he hoped for – a full and honest accounting for the toll of secrecy and denial of true ‘synodality’ in the Irish Church, in the early decades of the 21st century – when transparency and honest communion could have made such a difference for himself and countless others. Personally suffering the memories of his years of investigation of an unspeakable evil he exemplified the common priesthood of service of others to which all baptised Christians are called.

Views: 1642

St Mary’s, Dunboe on YouTube

Articles, Canon Law, Church Renewal, Clericalism, Dysfunction, Renewal, Secrecy, Transparency, Vatican II, Vocations Crisis
Does the word ‘decrepit’ best describe the current state of Catholic Canon Law?

In what else could the Irish Church be ‘entrapped’ – to use the perfect word of Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin – other than Catholic Canon Law?

And how else could the ‘We speak – you listen’ inertia of our Irish Catholic clerical culture have persisted – in a zombie state – for over half-a-century after Vatican II (1962-65)?

And how else could the dozy clericalism of the Down and Connor pastoral letter ‘To Follow Jesus Closely‘ have found its way onto a leaflet to be read by adults at Easter 2019?

Then there had been an exploratory pilot study (EPS) of ‘lay involvement’ in Irish Catholic parishes, conducted by the steering group of the Association of Catholics in Ireland in the spring. Pending a more through professional report on this I could see three things right away from the returns:

First, ‘lay involvement’ can vary hugely from parish to parish – with the crucial factor always being the readiness of parish clergy to take time to develop that very thing. The reluctance of too many too-busy clergy simply to delegate parish development activities to lay people is crystal clear. The insistence of Pope Francis, that ‘making a mess‘ to begin with is OK, has fallen on far too many deaf ears.

Second, this sample of thirty-three different parishes was predicting that healthy parish pastoral councils are likely to be in a minority.

Third, some returnees expressed a fear of being known to have taken part in such a poll!

So, by July 2019, it was very clear to me that ‘things’ are very far from OK for the RCC on this island, and the Archbishop of Dublin is far from being the only Irish Catholic who feels ‘entrapped’.

But I wasn’t ‘entrapped’!

Not by lack of resources anyway. I hadn’t yet ever produced a video – but surely I could find someone who could help with that. And wasn’t there a perfect example of the very same ‘entrapment’ of a parish community on my own doorstep? By the system in which parish clergy are also ‘entrapped’.

And hadn’t I developed a bit of a ‘brass neck’ over the years, by just writing for public consumption? And wasn’t some persistent prayer for guidance on ‘entrapment’ making this neck brassier still?

And didn’t the example of the good ol’ Earl Bishop Frederick Hervey of Bristol in the 1780s and 1790s offer the perfect example of that proper respect for the good people of Dunboe that was so clearly missing from the canonical treatment of their community 2018-19?

Mind you, I had one detail of that story quite badly wrong, I am told. Since the voiceover for the video was recorded I have received the following from Jim Hunter of the Hervey Heritage Society, based in St Columb’s Cathedral, Derry.

Jim quotes Stephen Price as writing that:

“Frederick [ the Earl Bishop ] stipulated in his will that Catholics living near Downhill should be allowed to hold a service in the Mussenden Temple every Sunday in the actual Temple itself and not in the less salubrious basement, as is more often recounted. He even laid aside a payment of £10 per year for the priest and decreed that he and his horse should be fed. The arrangement persisted until the 1850s, although a row over a missing book caused a priest to take his congregation into the basement, which was never the Earl Bishop’s intention.”

So that point in the video could have been made even more strongly!

What am I hoping for now?

First, that Catholics struck by this story would both pray and think about it – to clarify for themselves whether it seems important that this present state of affairs should be ended. Might everyone who does feel ‘entrapped’ ask themselves ‘Am I, really?’ and then decide on a course of action. It’s pointless to be complaining while doing nothing constructive oneself.

Not everyone can be, or needs to be, with myself and some friends, at the gateway of Maynooth College, Co. Kildare on October 1st, 2019 – when all Irish bishops next meet.

But those who cannot be there could instead write to their bishops on this matter, expressing an opinion.

And in the meantime you could be discussing this with some friends too.

Nothing will change without obvious and overwhelming momentum for change, an unstoppable ‘enough already’ tsunami of rejection of the non-accountable and non-transparent canonical clerical culture that keeps Irish Catholicism entrapped – in 2019 – in the legal detritus of the Middle Ages.

We’ll see – as my Mum used to say.

Views: 93

‘Holy Sacrifice?’

Adult Faith Formation, Articles, Clericalism, Dysfunction, Evangelisation, Fear of Assembly

Without question our Irish Catholic chapels – especially the smallest – are both holy sanctuaries and places of sacrifice.

That is, they are places set aside for the sacrifice of time… for contemplation… of a life given totally to others, in love.  The life of Jesus.

And places for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the celebration of that greatest gift ever given, and of the gifts that we now make of ourselves. 

And places of celebration of the other lives that loved him, the life of Mary, the Mother of God, of Joseph. The lives and holy deaths of the Saints.

Places of proof that such a life is not only possible but historically verified in all the lives that have followed, in hopeful imitation, over so many generations.

Of that life that did not ever end, that rose from death, that is alive still in the memory and bodies of local people who came with their own sacrifices of penitence and self-giving.

Places for the shedding of whatever in us that is unholy, selfish, dark – and therefore places of penitence, forgiveness, light, generosity, restoration and renewal.

For the shedding of tears over centuries and centuries – wrenched by miseries that only the angels have total record of …

And places of sacred bonding in marriage, of sacred parting in the mystery of death.

And places of Baptism, First Communion, Confirmation, weekly Mass – the rites of passage from womb to tomb – in stubborn hope of the eternity that children trust to in their own innocence and wisdom.

These churches memorialise those who designed and built them with love – with that letting go of the little wealth they could donate, for the sake of that dream of eternity.

What could it mean that such places – and especially the smallest – could now be under threat of closure, of the dying of the sanctuary lamp, of shuttering, of decay or transfer to another usage?

What better source of meaning has replaced the Creed that built these Holy Places?

None whatever! Merely the novelty of meaninglessness, the entrancement of a commerce that glories in novelty, illusion, unreality – the endless screenings of stories of superheroism that deny human vulnerability and the facticity of death.

If our chapels are in danger of closure, that is not because the Trinity are absent but simply because our pastors are temporarily without passion for the Creed and the Gospel , and cannot convey to us why Holy Sacrifice is still the only trustable path to the future.

We must now therefore make holy sacrifice of a different kind – in our own vigilance and prayer and study – to keep these places safe and holy for a better time, for a renewed Eucharistic ministry. 

For, built in confidence in the power of Holy Sacrifice, they belong to the future, to the Omega, the Christ, the One who is coming – who must find them clean and warm, lit and welcoming.

They must not be sacrificed to the dark, grasping, confused and baffled present.

Views: 136

The Scandal of the 2011 Missal

Articles, Authoritarianism, Church Governance, Eucharist, Scandal


Why exactly did we find ourselves in 2011 suddenly obliged to declare that Jesus as Son of God is ‘consubstantial’ with the Father?  Why had it been supposed that this would clarify what had been meant by ‘of one being with’ the Father – the previous translation of the Creed from the Roman missal, used in Ireland since 1972?

And why in the same prayer were we now saying that ‘For us men and for our salvation’ Jesus had come down from heaven, when ‘for us and our salvation’ would have left half of the human race untroubled by the possibility that only those with male chromosomes could fully enthuse about that event?

As for terms such as ‘oblation’, ‘prevenient grace’ and ‘sustenance’ – and flatly ugly and incomprehensible phrases such as ‘merit to become co-heirs’ – who exactly had supposed that the liturgy had been improved in solemnity and clarity by these?  Had English truly been the vernacular of the person or persons who had delivered these galumphing atrocities?

And why those impossibly long sentences in the Eucharistic Prayers at the centre of the Mass, prayers that so often lead officiating clergy to substitute Eucharistic Prayer II, the most succinct of the four, for any of the other three?

For a truly literate, succinct and quite shocking explanation of these mysteries the curious reader need look no further than ‘Lost in Translation’ by O’Collins and Wilkins.  In just over 100 pages this (for me indispensable) book tells us not only why we are still trying to pronounce the unpronounceable at Mass, but why we should instead be using a far superior translation of the missal prepared by people who could speak and write English – a translation that was shelved in 1998 in the cause of what looks extraordinarily like Roman pique and amour propre.

The timeline at the foot of this review will summarise the complete dreadful tale – of what can only be interpreted as Roman resentment that Vatican II had given Catholic bishops anywhere the strange notion that they could do without Roman supervision when it came to deciding what wordage was to convey the meaning of the liturgy in Ireland, England, New Zealand, The United States, Australia et al.

It was especially interesting to learn here why such luminaries as Evagrius of Antioch, St Thomas Aquinas and Blessed John Henry Newman had long ago rejected the practice of translating sacred texts in a simple word-for-word sequence, carrying over even the elaborate structure of complex Latin sentences to a language that still lives.  As brevity, simplicity and clarity are exemplified in, for example, Jesus’s rendition of the Lord’s prayer, it is surely to these ideals and to the meaning of the original that the translator needs to be faithful first of all.  Liturgiam Authenticam – the document that in 2001 mandated that translation take place on the basis of a quite contrary word-for-word method – flew in the face of advice given by St Thomas in the 13th century:

“It is . . . the task of the good translator, when translating material dealing with the Catholic faith, to preserve the meaning but to adapt the mode of expression, so that it is in harmony with the idiom of the language into which he is translating.”

Yet this greatest of the medieval theologians was drawing on a far older tradition of paying attention first of all to the sense of the original.  As early as the fourth century Evagrius of Antioch had translated from Greek into Latin a life of St. Antony of Egypt – advising in the preface that “A word-for-word translation from one language into another conceals the meaning and strangles it, even as spreading couch grass [does to] a field of corn… Whatever lack may be in the words, there is none in the meaning. Let others go hunting after letters and syllables; do you seek for the meaning.”

How then could it have happened that in 2011 there would come a translation of the Missal that would flagrantly flout that long-established principle, and inflict the couch grass of ‘oblation’, ‘merit to’ – and the syntax of Cicero – etc upon all of us?  This slim volume cuts to the chase on this admirably.

It does far more than that.  It compares key passages in the 2011 Missal with what we might now be using instead, if the 1998 ICEL translation – the one that had satisfied eleven conferences of anglophone bishops and that is still gathering dust – had been accepted almost two decades ago by the Holy See.  Here, for example are comparable renditions of the prayer over the offerings for the feast of the Immaculate Conception:

1998 rejected ICEL version

In your goodness, Lord, receive the sacrifice of salvation which we offer on the feast of the immaculate conception. We profess in faith that your grace preserved the Virgin Mary from every stain of sin; through her intercession deliver us from all our faults.

2011 Missal version

Graciously accept the saving sacrifice which we offer you, O Lord, on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and grant that, as we profess her, on account of your prevenient grace, to be untouched by any stain of sin, so through her intercession, we may be delivered from all our faults.

To compare just these two passages is to see clearly the impact of the translation protocols at work in the 2011 missal.  Obsequious courtly terms such as ‘graciously’ and ‘solemnity’ – and theological power terms such as ‘prevenient’ must clutter up and extend the verbiage, and the passage must also be one long single sentence.  The normal conventions of punctuation, aimed at the needs of the celebrant who must enunciate the text, have been sacrificed in the cause of pomposity.  Most importantly, the meaning of ‘prevenient’ – perfectly rendered in the 1998 translation – has been lost in the 2011 version.

As I obviously cannot go on here with further such comparisons I can only urge those interested to read this book – to be convinced that the cause of the restoration of the discarded 1998 translation needs the most urgent support.

There is an even more important point made by this book:  that in overruling the anglophone bishops’ conferences on the missal this curial interference of the late 1900s was a flouting of a key principle of Vatican II – that key responsibility for church governance belongs to regional conferences of bishops also.  If the bishops of Ireland, England, Wales etc can so easily capitulate to such flagrant and foolish overreach, what kind of precedent has been set for the future, and what conclusions should those bishops now come to regarding other matters critical to the health of their own congregations – under a jurisdiction inclined (for how long?) towards decentralisation?  Those bishops too should read this book – as a warning to seek the gifts of the Holy Spirit (including fortitude) in any such future assault on Vatican II, the only sure gateway to the future – and to pray for those gifts right now also, in urgent consideration of a missal that clearly should not still be in required use.

I chose carefully the word ‘scandal’ for the title of this article.  A scandal is a ‘stumbling block’ – an obstacle to belief.  This short book explains how and why the 2011 missal became a clear obstacle to the belief that common sense, scholarship and wisdom will always guide the leaders of our church – and makes a formidable case for the conclusion that this travesty needs to be cleared out of everyone’s way as speedily as possible.

~

Timeline

1963 – Sacrosanctum Concilium – Vatican II Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy – stipulates that responsibility for determining the liturgy would rest with the Holy See and the bishops of different regions.  It allows translation into the vernacular, to be ‘approved’ by regional bishops, and makes no mention of the need to have such translations ‘recognized’ by the Holy See.

1964 – Sacram Liturgiam – a motu proprio or personal edict by Pope Paul VI prescribes submitting translations to the Holy See for an official recognitio or approval.

1972 – ICEL – (The International Commission on English in the Liturgy) – introduces first vernacular translation of the Roman Missal.  This comes into use in 1973, and remains in use until 2011.

1981 – ICEL begins painstaking revision of the 1972 Missal.

1998 – ICEL wins support for new English translation from eleven English-speaking bishops’ conferences and submits this completed translation to Rome.  It is rejected without discussion by Cardinal Medina Estévez, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, who also then demands radical changes to ICEL which place it under Vatican control.

2001 – A new document, Liturgiam Authenticam, is issued by the CDW, changing the rules for translation of the liturgy and emphasising the need for word-for-word (rather than meaning-for-meaning) translation.

2011 – The 1972 missal is replaced by a new word-by-word translation prepared by a reconstituted ICEL, gifting English-speaking congregations everywhere with e.g. ‘consubstantial’ in place of ‘of one being’ in the Nicene Creed.  Lengthy sentences following the structure of Ciceronian Latin are declared literally ‘unspeakable’ by some priests – and in Ireland some clergy continue to use the 1972 translation.

2016 – Pope Francis appoints a commission to revisit the rules for translation set out in Liturgiam Authenticam .

2017 – (September) Pope Francis in the motu proprio ‘Magnum Principium’ restores to the conferences of English-speaking bishops the authority to translate the liturgy.

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No research, ever, on school-centred faith formation in Irish Catholic Schools?

Ageing of Clergy, Articles, Education, Formation, Sacraments, Schools, Vocations Crisis, Youth

classroom-with-crucifix

On June 2nd, 2016, the letter below appeared in the ‘Letters’ page of the Irish Catholic.  Since then no response has been received to the central question posed: whether the effectiveness of Irish Catholic schools in forming faith has ever been seriously researched in Ireland.

Educationists in all fields conduct research – and school-going pupils are always available to participate.  In an era when Christian faith is increasingly challenged it stands to reason that Catholic educationists – as well as teachers, clergy and parents – will need to know exactly what is ongoing in the area of faith development if they are to respond effectively.

It now appears that there is a very serious issue here.  If no such research has ever been conducted in Ireland – despite, for example, a reply to this writer from one Irish bishop in 2005 that the issue would be raised at an impending regional meeting of bishops – what is the reason for this?  Why is our knowledge on this issue so partial – based on individual experience, and therefore still merely anecdotal?

In 2011 Irish bishops adopted a strategy of switching the focus of faith development to adults, with the long-term intention of placing this responsibility on parishes and families.  As outlined by the document Share the Good News  this shift was to take place over a ten-year period – yet in my own diocese, Derry, there is still no sign of this shift even beginning.  In a growing general crisis of continuity – including a crisis of clerical manpower and clerical ageing – inertia too widely reigns.  Unaccountably, we remain substantially ignorant of the scale and nature of this crisis.  There is surely no excuse for this.

Why don’t we know reliably already – from pupils at the upper end of our second-level schools – why increasingly they do not show any interest in Catholic sacramental practice?  

From the Irish Catholic, June 2nd, 2016:

Huge research deficit on issue of Catholic education

Dear Editor,

These days our bishops and educationists are again circling the wagons against the encroachment of ‘faith-neutral’ models of religious education in Catholic schools. So, for example, we hear Dr Eugene Duffy of St Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, insisting that: “Parents, if they’re sending their children to a faith-based school, will have a genuine expectation that their children will be formed within their faith tradition.” (‘School religious ed will suffer under new Govt plan – experts’, IC 12/05/2016)

Upon what reliable research evidence is this assertion based? Back in 2006 Archbishop Diarmuid Martin told Pope Benedict XVI: “I can go to parishes on a Sunday where I find no person in the congregations between the ages of 16 and 36. None at all.”

Why should we believe that the predominant motive of Catholic parents in favouring Catholic schools is not simply their belief that those schools are academically effective and well disciplined, meeting educational ends that are not strictly religious, but actually secular?

My point is not to attack the principle of Catholic schooling but to question the huge and inexcusable research deficit in Ireland on the entire issue of Catholic education – especially the reasons that despite our virtually total reliance on schools for faith formation our Irish Church is facing a radical crisis of continuity.

As a teacher in a Catholic second-level school for three decades, I had many times to supervise Catholic pupils responding to research projects initiated by the education department of a local university. Never once had any of those projects been sponsored by the Catholic Church, with the issue of faith development foremost – even though it has been known for decades that many of those same pupils are not only disinterested but often alienated from faith observance.

Everything we hear at present shouts to us that our school-reliant system of faith development is not maintaining – on its own – the continuity of the Catholic faith. Are our bishops afraid to confront that issue directly, by conducting reliable research on the issue?

Yours etc.,

Sean O’Conaill,
Coleraine,
Co. Derry.

Views: 95

When will Ireland hear the whistle?

Articles, Collegiality, Courage, Fear of Assembly, Francis, Reform, Vocations Crisis, , ,

Today we learn from the Tablet that Pope Francis has again explained to a bishop facing a manpower crisis  “that he could not take everything in hand personally from Rome … that  local bishops, who are best acquainted with the needs of our faithful, should be corajudos, that is ‘courageous’ in Spanish, and make concrete suggestions”.   And that “regional and national bishops’ conferences should seek and find consensus on reform and … should then bring up … suggestions for reform in Rome”.

The Pope was speaking to Bishop Erwin Kräutler, Bishop of Xingu in the Brazilian rainforest.

And the topic of conversation?    “The issue of the ordination of “proven” married men – viri probati.” 

Click here for the full Tablet article.

This is not the first clear signal from Rome to the Irish Bishops’ Conference to start thinking for itself.  Surely also there is a need for a European bishops’ conference – to seek consensus on solutions to their own critical manpower crisis.

That crisis deepens another – the crisis of morale.  And the morale of the Irish church generally is very seriously challenged by the apparent reluctance of Irish bishops to hear and respond to the clear call to their own spirit of courage and initiative.  And not just on this particular issue.

So when will our bishops begin to show that they are not deliberately deaf?

 

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