Benedict and the Scandal (Mark Shea comments on Rod Dreher remarks)

Inside Catholic ^ | April 23, 2008 | Mark Shea

[NYer]

Now that Benedict has come and gone we are in the thick of media analysis of the meaning of it all. Many folk (Rod Dreher is a notable example) were (as I expected) disappointed because the pope didn't "do something" about bishops who have, to say the least, not particularly distinguished themselves in the Scandal. Dreher wanted a "read them the riot act" moment. Others scattered around the secular and mainstream media talked about Benedict "firing" them and so forth.

The pope, as you might expect, addressed the bishops and (as you also might expect given his high degree of commitment to dialog with any person of good will or even not-so-good will) his talk wound up being a mixture of his thoughts and attempts to engage the often dim-witted drivel of the USCCB functionaries upon whom he depends for information about what's going on in the USCCB. But though he made clear that sometimes sexual abuse cases had been very badly handled by our bishops, there was no Riot Act Reading. Compounding this, for Dreher, was the reaction of our dim-witted functionaries, which was predictably less-than-stellar (not to say vaguely nauseating). Dreher mentioned Bishop Tod Brown, who offered the usual disingenuous smarm that he learned from his master, the even more egregious and untrustworthy Cardinal Mahony. Both Brown and Mahony are textbook examples of just about everything that is wrong with the USCCB's response to the crisis of sexual abuse in the Church.  All this bugs Dreher and he expresses his disappointment with Benedict (though, to be fair, he was also very delighted to see Benedict meet with abuse victims and gave him his due).

The thing is, I'm not sure what Dreher and many others think should have happened between Benedict and the bishops. But then I haven't thought Dreher has had a realistic grasp of the options the pope has in this matter since the beginning. Dreher began his quarrel with the papacy on this matter when, as he famously said, the pope "let us down" by not dismissing a bunch of bishops "with the stroke of a pen." Life for Dreher since then has constituted the never-ending encounter with the fact that this entire perception of what the pope could or would do was wholly unrealistic.

As I've argued repeatedly, anybody who has read and internalized Ut Unum Sint could not be surprised when the pope with the most Eastern conception of the papacy in a thousand years did not regard it as his role to micromanage the American Church. Likewise, John Paul II's successor, Benedict, for all his fury at the Scandal (and it is real fury, not feigned for the cameras) is also constrained by the fact that, at the end of the day, he is bound to his commitment to regard himself as first among equals, not as The Guy Ordained by God to Tell All the Other Bishops to Obey Him or Hit The Road. His mission is to strengthen the brethren, not lay about him with mace and cudgel. Both his office and his personality are wholly arrayed against this highly American desire to "fix" everything with a cathartic gust of rage.

Moreover, the crowning paradox of Dreher's position is that, having left the Catholic Church for Eastern Orthodoxy in large part because of the Scandal, he is now in communion with bishops who would take it very ill if the pope were to do what Dreher so much wants him to do. It's one of the most puzzling aspects of Dreher's position and I hope that one of these days he will articulate how he can simultaneously hold an Orthodox ecclesiology and still want Benedict (or any pope) to act like Innocent III. I honestly don't get it.

Meanwhile, from where I sit it seems we are left with this:

 

Failing to summarily fire bishops whom even we laypeople (who own all the guns, run all the police forces, staff all the courts, and manage all the jails) have not opted to charge with any crimes, what is it we laypeople are asking the pope to do?

 

As far as I can tell, we are demanding that the one person in the world whose job, more than any other, is to proclaim the mercy of God do our job for us by administering some sort of vague but severe punishment for something we will not, ourselves, punish (and which we in many cases celebrate: namely a laissez-faire attitude toward our sex lives, including the sex lives of our kids).

Now I'm all for jailing bishops who have committed crimes. But, see, that's our job as laypeople and we have basically decided we can't or won't do that. I'm not a lawyer and I have no idea of the legal guilt of this or that bishop. But I do know something about the Gospel and it seems to me that if we laypeople don't think we have a case against the bishops beyond their being dumb, shady, slick, and/or disingenuous in the handling of serial perverts, then I don't see how it is the pope's task to be more merciless than we are.

The American Church has made great strides in making parishes places of almost paranoid safety for kids since 2002. This is but one of the prices we pay for the wretchedness of the episcopal response to the Scandal. Some of the Zero Tolerance idiocy is a heavy cross to bear for all the normal people who have to go through endless training and scrutiny because bishops did not have the sense God gave a goose when some serial pervert was reassigned to a fresh field of victims multiple times by these numbskulls. Now the bishops overcompensate by treating everybody as a serial pervert. That's exasperating, but it does give the lie to the notion that "nothing has been done." Plenty has been done and I, as a layman, have not a worry in the world about the safety of my children in the Church.

But that's not what people now mean by the phrase "nothing has been done." What they mean is that they do not have the sense that sufficient vengeance has been wreaked on bishops. Well, if there is legal vengeance to be wreaked, that's up to us laypeople, innit? But we have not done so, apparently because we don't have a case. So we hope that Benedict will do something or other to wreak that vengeance for us and we take it out on him for not doing our job. I think that's kinda crazy. I don't want a Church that is all about vengeance. I much prefer a Church that is about mercy.

[livius]

Cardinal Law: “We are all ‘wounded healers’”

Wounded healers...bleccchhh...

[livius]

The pope stands with Athanasius but many of the bishops stand with Arius.

Very true. The thing that makes this controversy so difficult is that there is no heresiarch. Unless maybe one could say the "Zeitgeist"!

But seriously, I have always thought that one of the problems with this modern heresy is that it is very diffuse, doesn't have an identifiable leader - yet it is a reality and is destroying the Church, and will attempt to destroy anyone (like BXVI) who gets in its way.

[livius]

I agree, and I also don’t think that JPII put that much thought into the matter in the first place. He simply was hands-off because - well, that’s the way he was. He was a media personality and I think this affected his view of his role very greatly.

Now that BXVI has suddenly gotten popular, I hope the same thing doesn’t happen to him! But I don’t think it will.

[Kolokotronis]

"What letter makes the “ee” sound?"

θυμιατό

[Kolokotronis]

“But seriously, I have always thought that one of the problems with this modern heresy is that it is very diffuse, doesn't have an identifiable leader - yet it is a reality and is destroying the Church, and will attempt to destroy anyone (like BXVI) who gets in its way.”

Allow me an observation from the outside. From what I can see, the Latin Church for many, many centuries, really since before 1056, has inculcated in the laity and the lower clergy a “pay, pray and obey” mindset. Your lower clergy and laity, for all the talk about “cafeteria Catholics” floating around, really are simply obedient and wouldn't't think of questioning your hierarchs out loud.

Orthodox Christians, however, are quite different. We sniff out heresy; in a way, we lay folk are all Inquisitors. And when we see heresy, we go after it with a vengeance. We don''t hesitate to topple a hierarch for heresy. As you know, we recently did it right here in America. We, not the hierarchs, are the ultimate guardians of Orthodoxy. Its simply not the same in the Latin Church and because of that, heresy persists and becomes, as you say, more “diffuse”. There are so many Latin bishops that its simply too much to think the pope can handle each one of them. Where Orthodox patriarchs can count on the people to deal with heresiarchs including heretical patriarchs, at least initially, the pope can't say the same for you guys because you've not been taught that's your role for well over 1000 years.

[ELS]

I sincerely disagree that there was anything even remotely Eastern about +JPII. ... Its quite a different matter with +BXVI

When I first read the phrase "the pope with the most Eastern conception of the papacy in a thousand years" I thought the author was referring to Benedict XVI. It wasn't until I reread the sentence that I realized the author was referring to JPII and had no idea what he was talking about. I agree that Benedict XVI much better fits the description given to JPII.

[Tax-chick]

It couldn’t be the same letter twice, could it? That just wouldn’t be Greek! (Or English either, I suppose.)

[Kolokotronis]

"It couldn’t be the same letter twice, could it? That just wouldn’t be Greek!"

No, it wouldn't. Frankly, the same letter twice in Greek is uncommon, very uncommon. But to transliterate the syllable "θυ" we need to write "Thee" and "μι" in English becomes "mee"

[Tax-chick]

This will upset Pat. He’s going to learn Indirect Objects (or specialized prepositional phrases) in his next lesson! Vlad’s learning the Greek alphabet and phonics, and James has learned some words and parts of speech. I almost wish they all wanted to go to the Greek charter school!

[Kolokotronis]

“I almost wish they all wanted to go to the Greek charter school!”

You have a Greek Charter School???????????????

I have an idea. Take them (James & Pat; Vlad is too little) to the Great and Holy Friday devotion at the Greek Church tomorrow night. That’ll give them enough Greek to last for weeks!

[kosta50]

at the end of the day, he is bound to his commitment to regard himself as first among equals, not as The Guy Ordained by God to Tell All the Other Bishops to Obey Him or Hit The Road.
Your thoughts?

I am not familiar enough with Papal jurisdictions to make en educated comment. It is my understanding that he is not "first among equals" when it comes to theological issues, as he can proclaim dogma without consulting the Synod (College of Cardinals).

It is also my understanding that every bishop has to be approved by him. Maybe someone more familiar with the Church can explain his prerogatives when it comes to firing clergy, especially bishops. They are all Apostolic brothers, after all and Peter did not lord over any of them.

However, those who oppose the Church openly can be cut off from communion with the rest of the Church. We have a similar case currently with the so-called Orthodox "Churches" of Maceodnia and Montenegro.

Petrosius, care to to comment on this?

[Patriotic1]

Benedict slaps Mahoney’s face, administers a blessing and sends him back to the pew.

Quite uncharitable of you, and much too violent for me. I have thoughts of B16 smacking him with a palm frond.

[Petronski]

Quite uncharitable of you...

A slap and a blessing IS the charitable version.

[Patriotic1]

In fact he was not well thought of in the East though of course his office and person were respected. Its quite a different matter with +BXVI

Why is this? I know why I love and respect B16, but am interested on the Eastern take on this.

[RobbyS]

The confusion arose partly from the attempts of some priests to break away from an ossified version of Thomism and return to a more Augustinian view of things, or at least a more Augustinian view of Thomas. That would have put us more in "tune" with the Reformation tradition. Except that most believing Protestants have retreated to fideism. This is someone true even of someone like Karl Barth. Many Catholics have felt the appeal, mainly because they lost confidence in their priests who assured them that everthing they had been taught to believe was childish and most be "updated." But instead of waitint around to be "educated," they jumped ship to the evangelicals who could offer them an " falllible" guide, the Bible.

Then of course, there was a resurgent modernism led by the jesuit followers of Theilhard de Chardin. If there was a heresiarch, He is IMHO the best candidate. The irony is that his name is never mentioned nowadays. he revolutionm he helped start has long since buried his specific contributions.

Then there are the biblical scholars who latched onto liberal scholarship and like Luther et al. claimed to present a "true" form of Christianity beased on their scholarship. If Ray Brown weren't such a footnote in the scheme of things, we might name him.

[Kolokotronis]

“Why is this?”

Why is what; that +JPII was not well thought of or that +BXVI is or both?

[livius]

Then of course, there was a resurgent modernism led by the jesuit followers of Theilhard de Chardin. If there was a heresiarch, He is IMHO the best candidate. The irony is that his name is never mentioned nowadays. he revolutionm he helped start has long since buried his specific contributions.

That's a very good point - in fact, you're so right about the last part that I hadn't even thought of him in connection with this! But his thought certainly holds many seeds of the modern (as yet unnamed) heresy that pervades the Church, particularly this growing focus on the Earth and Nature.

I remember reading him when I was a teenager. His works struck me as very poetic, more in the line of meditations than anything else, and not meant to set forth any doctrinal points. However, if examined from that point of view, they are stuffed with dubious doctrines, and his vague, mystical visions hold some dangerous things within them.

There used to a saying that mysticism is dangerous because it "begins in mist and ends in schism." I think one of the reasons Teilhard doesn't get more blame for this heresy is that it's quite possible that he didn't see himself as believing anything that was not in consonance with the Church and hence never really tried to start his own "school" of thinkers. Yet there were people at the time who were aware of the dangers of his thought, and I believe he was even forbidden to publish at one point (I'd have to check that, I'm not sure about it). And of course he was a Jesuit, so he probably got off the hook as simply being Jesuitical rather than pursuing his own religion...

In any case, you bring up a very interesting point, and I think there's a lot to it.

[Tax-chick]

Yes, we have a Greek charter school. It gets a piddling per-student stipend from the state, but the real funding comes from a very successful Greek family with a chain of restaurants. They’re opening a second campus this fall. It teaches modern Greek.

It would be really neat to go to the Friday service, but my husband and two oldest children are going to Waxhaw for a race this evening. You have a great Friday, though! I’ll be heading out in a little while to campaign at the early voting site for my state representative.

[RobbyS]

If you have not read it ,or read recently, I suggest Maritain's “Old Man of the Garonne.” which was published in December, 1965, just as the Council was ending. His phrase “genuflection to the world” reflects his disappointment with the results and he lands blows on Teilhard’s back with a thick stick.

[livius]

I’m going to have to re-read that one...I don’t think I’ve read it since 1965! Well, maybe 1970...

I do remember his enormous disappointment with the Council. And his name was virtually blotted out from all subsequent Catholic texts, university courses, etc. as a result.