Pontifex Minimus

Honorary SHU Alumnus dies—and a great voice in the tradition is stilled.

The death of Gregory Baum on Wednesday, October 18, is a passing of great consequence for the Catholic Intellectual Tradition.

Baum was a theological expert or peritus at the Second Vatican Council, a journalist, a mathematician, an ecumenical theologian, an ex-Augustinian friar, a married man, a celebrated dissenter, a pioneering sociologist of religion and a prophetic bridge-builder in the turbulent seas of interfaith dialogue.

Baum likened the Catholic church to a “company that becomes so big that it can’t be run anymore; any management consultant would take one look at the Catholic Church and even without any highfalutin spiritual liberal ideas he or she would say:  ‘This is simply impossible.  You have to decentralize, you have to delegate, and you need a different system.’”

That’s why he liked Pope Francis and that is why his last years (he was 94 when he died) were suffused with hope.  The Bergoglio papacy reminded him of the Roncalli promise.

Along with canonist and theologian Ladislas Orsy and Cambridge theologian Nicholas Lash, Baum was honored by Sacred Heart University for the sterling work they did as shapers of the CIT.

Baum was a prolific writer publishing a raft of books, articles, columns and essays exploring the legacy and spirit of the Second Vatican Council.  That very Council was the making of Baum: he thrived in its intellectual hothouse and he delighted to find a company of co-workers inspired by the best of Catholic thinking.

Politeness, ingenuousness and collegiality are the personal as well as professional qualities that have defined his life and vocation as a theologian and social thinker no matter the setting—university, chancery, parish hall or activist cell.

He was a giant on the post-conciliar landscape.

Sacred Heart University President John J. Petillo presents Gregory Baum with an honorary degree in 2012. 
At right is SHU trustee Mary-Ann Bunting.

Hef or Oraison

One of the media celebrities of U.S. life died recently and the encomia, the lavish tributes, the endless and fawning word bouquets have been, even by national standards, over the top.  Few have spoken directly about the true legacy of a man who did not so much liberate as enslave.

That presumed liberator was Hugh Hefner, sybarite extraordinaire.

Hefner’s sexual revolution took place against a backdrop of ersatz Puritanism, religious hostility to any variant of sexual freedom, and a declining Victorian zeitgeist.

But, as conservative Catholic New York Times columnist Ross Douthat astutely observes: “The things that were distinctly Hefnerian, that made him influential and important, were all rotten, and to the extent that they were stories that people tend to celebrate, they showed the rot in larger things as well. . .in every way that mattered he made. . .our culture coarser and crueler and more sterile. . .[and] at the end of the long slide lay only a degraded, priapic senility.”

Tough words.  But they need to be said and kudos to Douthat for saying them.

What he does not say, however, needs also to be said: the failure of a Catholic sexual ethic to command persuasion in a time of change—anthropological and ethical. Hefnerianism flourished in a vacuum.

Does Catholicism have anything meaningful to say about human sexuality that is not constrained by rubric, code, prohibitions and exclusion?

Are there alternatives to the idiosyncratic teachings of Pope John Paul II as found in his Theology of the Body? Alternatives that are neither enmired in a casual libertinism or burdened with an incomprehensible discourse?

There are, and for a start we can rediscover the insights of the French priest-psychiatrist Marc Oraison in his Human Mystery of Sexuality published at the very time that the Playboy empire was gaining traction.  There is a fecundity in the Catholic intellectual tradition we often miss.  Time for rediscovery.

Pope Francis is no heretic

Evidently, the last time anything like this happened was during the reign of Pope John XXII in the year 1333.

It doesn't happen that often, so when it does, it is a matter of note.

The fuss in Catholic conservative circles, and the unwelcome stress it has created in the Vatican of Pope Francis, is the letter Correctio filialis de Haeresibus Propagatis or Filial Correction of Pope Francis for the Propagation of Heresies. Traditionalist groups have a sacred bond with the Latin language – the onetime lingua franca of the Roman Catholic Church – so everything, admonition, indictment, or apocalyptic screed appears in the mother tongue.

The Correctio is more than an historical oddity, a fervent initiative launched by scandalized Catholics keen on getting the Barque of Peter steered in the right direction again. It is a shot across the bow and should be read as such and not dismissed as the rantings of a disaffected crowd of ultra-conservative Catholics horrified by the "untoward" actions and musings of a Latin American pontiff who does not play by the rules of orthodoxy.

The problem, as the signatories attest, resides in the perception that Pope Francis is not holding fast to the teachings of the church on matters that pertain to the reception of communion by divorced and remarried couples, that he is bypassing tradition, indeed violating it, by pursuing an alternate reading of the scriptures.

His pastoral approach – the church is a field hospital rather than a citadel of certitude – is a source of grave scandal for the faithful and he is bound by his position as Peter, the supreme teacher of the church, to "correct" what is demonstrably false in his teaching, as found both in his apostolic exhortation, Amoris laetitia, as well as in his numerous talks, interviews, and homilies. In short, Francis needs a correction.

The signatories – in total, some 60-plus – make it clear that what they are doing is driven by their conviction that they "need to protect [their] fellow Catholics – and those outside the Church, from whom the key of knowledge must not be taken away – hoping to prevent the further spread of doctrines which tend of themselves to the profaning of all the sacraments and the subversion of the Law of God." Serious stuff.

The crafters of this letter of a deeper fidelity, as they see it – but in fact, a broadside of open dissent – amass a multitude of biblical, papal, conciliar and other official writings to proof text their argument that Francis has drifted too far into the open seas of post-modernity, pastoral laxity, and theological murkiness. We need clarity and we need it now, they pontificate.

Francis can choose to ignore them – their number, after all, is paltry – which is a course of action he has followed in the past, or he grant extensive interviews with his preferred journalists, including the Jesuit Antonio Spadaro, and simply reiterate what he has said, but with the focus on his detractors.

But the time has come to do something bolder. Although the signatories are largely drawn from the lower end of the hierarchical spectrum, are not immediately recognizable as extraterritorial thinkers and internationally celebrated scholars, and hold positions of modest influence, it is hard to imagine that they stand alone, that the Correctio is the product only of such a small group of ecclesiastics (with a small number of laity thrown in).

You do not need to subscribe to any of the conspiracy theories doing the run around the Tiber to divine the presence of senior prelates hovering in the background. There have been a few curial cardinals who have not had their appointments renewed, been shuffled to lesser duties, more honorific than substantive, licking their wounds amongst other aggrieved servants of the Servant of God. And they don't like their boss.

Time for Francis to request a public pledge of loyalty from the College of Cardinals, his electors, the esteemed members of his "cabinet," those who take a special vow of fealty on the election of a new pope, these men – and they are all men in conformity with ancient practice – should, in unison and in a public not private manner, stand should to shoulder with the successor of Peter, and with no equivocations or reservations, affirm their loyalty to Francis.

No less a message than this can forestall the growth of such obscurantism as found in the Correctio. It isn't the Pope, however, who requires correction.

We don't need 1333 recidivus. At a time when the moral authority of the papacy has achieved global recognition, the gnawing away at the witness of Francis by those held hostage to an ahistorical ecclesiology, a desiccated governance system, and a pastoral leadership defined more by law than mercy, the signatories, and those they represent, need to be held to account.

Who needs an Inquisition when a fiery debate will do!

It is quite the media storm and perspective seems lacking.  Charity too.

I am referring to the brouhaha betwixt James Martin and Ross Douthat—although it is by no means limited to them.

The Jesuit Martin has been disinvited to speak at a seminary at Catholic University of America ostensibly because of discomfiture over some of his writing but more demonstrably because of pressure groups within the church that object to his stance on numerous issues.

Enter Massimo Faggioli of Villanova University, a prolific ecclesiologist and quickly animated controversialist.  Faggioli objects strenuously to the “Catholic cyber militias” that delight in exercising the role of supreme invigilators of the truth.  They are more than tiresome, however, more than vexatious even.  They are dangerous.

Douthat, a Catholic columnist at The New York Times, is outraged that liberal intolerance is trumpeted as persecution.  He deplores the accusation that conservatives are inquisitors when progressives, thin-skinned and hyper anxious, are prone to the very strategies they decry.

Here is the good news in this imbroglio: media coverage is a desirable thing, the contestation of view in public a boon for the believing community, the airing of contrary views around matters of social and moral consequence, a blessing and not a curse.

Here is the bad news: by employing logically faulty ploys, the standard argumentum ad hominem and argumentum ad auctoritatem, the participants diminish the quality of their reasoning, resort to besmirching the reputation and faith of their opponent, and reduce the value of the intellectual engagement to ash and ruin.

There is an oppressive irony in all of this that Douthat studiously avoids.  The climate of delation—the denouncing of others to ecclesiastical authorities on charges of heresy, schismatic sympathies, or ecclesial unreliability—is not a liberal invention. The scourge of such a strategy of pastoral solicitude, re-introduced to the modern church during the reign of St. John Paul II reaching its apotheosis during the pontificate of Benedict XVI, has been actively cultivated in obscurantist Catholic circles in the United States for decades.  If liberals have taken a leaf from this deplorable pattern of behavior, should we be surprised.

Martin is an irenic writer, keen on finding a via media, motivated by pastoral rather than doctrinal priorities, and would be better served by ignoring his detractors.  Faggioli, a well-schooled European scholar with a keen taste for debate, would be ideally suited to take up Douthat’s invitation to be educated by him on the matter of his “theological deficiencies on a platform of [Faggioli’s] choosing.”

Now that is one debate I wouldn’t miss.  Ideally, the tone set would be more in the manner of a Gilbert Keith Chesterton versus George Bernard Shaw debate rather than a William Buckley versus Gore Vidal donnybrook.  In other words, rich in substance and devoid of animosity.

As Douthat cryptically asserts: “postpone the inquisitions; schedule arguments instead.”

Altar Wars

At last, the altar wars may be coming to an end.

For two decades both progressive (read: those inclined to accept the Second Vatican Council and its decree on the Liturgy) and the reactionary (read: those inclined to “reform the reform”) have been at loggerheads around how we pray.  After all, lex orandi, lex credendi (how we pray and what we believe are inextricably linked).

Pope Francis, with the publication of his motu proprio, Magnum Principium, is setting the record straight. Time to return immediate responsibility for the translation into the vernacular of Latin texts to the local bishops’ conference; it is the local bishops who have rightful jurisdiction and oversight for those they serve not some obscurantist curial body exercising inappropriate authority.

It all began with various directives emanating from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, but was really an initiative stemming from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and bore from its outset the distinct stamp of the cardinal-theologian and future pontiff Joseph Ratzinger.

English translations were deemed insufficiently faithful to the “sacral language” of Latin, as a consequence theologically dubious in some instances, bereft of a transcendental tone and reverence, too jocular, too random, too ordinary.

Nonsense.

In an effort to correct perceived abuses, new translation rubrics were issued, an anti-collegial oversight body, Vox Clara, was put in charge, the objections of some episcopal conferences overridden, the scholarly recommendations of accomplished and reputable liturgists and translators ignored.

It was a power grab and the effects were dispiriting, genuine collegiality was impaired, the laity bypassed, and priests forced to comply.

The British Catholic weekly, The Tablet, put it especially well in its leader of September 16:

                                In the English-speaking world the result of this power-grab

                                was the scrapping of a very good translation into English—

                                readable, poetic, understandable and accessible—and its

                                replacement by a clumsy attempt to render the basic Latin

                                text into word-for-word equivalents in English, which was

                                none of the above.  That is the version now in use, and

                                priests and people gritted their teeth in a spirit of

                                unenthusiastic and even resentful obedience as they

                                became used to it week by week.  It is an unlovely thing,

                                palpably the product of a committee predominantly made

                                up of non-English-speaking cloth-ears.

But now a “correction” is on the horizon.  Time for the bishops to rise to the challenge to reclaim their legitimate authority.  Francis is returning it to them.

Time to act and rectify a damaged past.  Time to end the altar wars.

Letter from Canada

This week, I am providing a link to an article my editor at Commonweal requested concerning the state of Catholicism in Canada. The timing is ideal given that this year marks the 150th anniversary of the founding of Canada as a nation.

It makes for bracing reading and can serve as a cautionary tale for U.S. Catholics. A once major shaper of the national sensibility—political and social policies involved distinct and influential Catholic engagement—the contemporary church has been largely marginalized, not despised or derided, just “peripheralized.”

The muting of the Catholic voice in the public arena, the polite distancing of the media from covering religious issues, all contribute to the effective silencing of a major component of the national mosaic.

Is the Canadian church following the Dutch experience? One thing for certain:  we must make sure that such a pattern is not replicated in American Catholicism. And the university plays a special role in making sure that doesn’t happen.

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/letter-canada 

We coarsen language at our peril

At a time when the academy starts up again--students are returning to campus, professors, both the seasoned and the novice, are priming for new and vibrant exchanges--it makes sense, in these parlous days, to reflect a bit on the importance of the word.

In both his prose writings and in his poetry Thomas Merton, the celebrated monk-intellectual, will not let his readers forget what happens when words are held hostage by those who intend more than mischief for us, when words have become drones of discontent, missiles of madness, surreal sound bites disconnected from reality, lethal weapons in the hands of advertisers, spin doctors, political apologists, apparatchiks of industry, state, and, yes, religion.

Language is not only ruthlessly rendered inchoate by wordsmiths in love with neologisms, parasense and persiflage, these high priests of opacity have become our new comedians.

But there is not a lot to laugh about when, as journalist Stephen Marche observes  "writing itself, the attempt to make sense, is now a political act.  Science, the attempt to describe the world is now a political act.  Whether we want it or not, anyone who observes, and reports is now an agent.  Fact-checking and peer review are no longer abstruse functions of professional castes; they are sacred obligations.  To check a fact is to preserve a white dove in the heart of the temple."

Facts are foundational; truth is not a commodity; words must represent and define reality not misshape it.

Merton was a model "dove in the heart of the temple."  He treasured the word, he didn't massage it; he chose the right word because he knew by doing so he reverenced it.  The word is sacred.

 

 

Jacques Dupuis Deserved Better

In an excerpt from the just published memoir of the highly accomplished and respected Jesuit thinker, Jacques Dupuis, a memoir entitled Do Not Stifle the Spirit: Conversations with Jacques Dupuis, the Jesuit observes of his treatment by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: “It was dishonest to add restrictions and threats to the second version of the Notification, which I had signed under pressure, thus creating the myth that I had agreed to a drastic curtailing of my freedom in speech and writing.

To call the procedures a prolonged and fruitful dialogue between the authorities of the CDF and the author under trial was as trivial as it was dishonest, and it was hard to believe that high officials at the Roman Curia—in particular Cardinal Ratzinger himself—could indulge in public lies to hide the meanness of the procedure they followed.”

Certainly, following the publication of his seminal work, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism, Dupuis would have been under no delusions that his work would escape the scrutiny of the CDF. That the Supreme Congregation would take a keen interest in the work of a theologian exploring the role of Jesus and universal salvation is not surprising—it was to be expected.

What is clear now with the posthumous publication of his memoir is what had been only surmised before: he was treated shoddily by a system that runs riot over the natural privileges and rights of a baptized Christian—rights that include due process, full transparency of allegations, the presumption of innocence and good faith and natural justice.

All these were lacking in his treatment. The reputation of the church in intellectual circles, in ecumenical and interfaith circles and among all those who believe in the integrity of the ecclesia has been besmirched by this sad illustration of ecclesiastical distrust, antiquated measures of fair judgment and demeaning conduct by authorities.

Dupuis deserved better.

At one point in his memoir he laments the prolonged secrecy of the investigation: “I had lived in Rome for 15 years without any suspicion in a matter of doctrine, when out of the blue it hit me that I had been under investigation for who knows long and that a Contestation of my work had been launched by the CDF after a consultation with consultors chosen for the purpose, and of all this under top secrecy. I began to wonder for how long I had had a file at the CDF.”

This put me in mind of my own comparatively anodyne and inconsequential encounter with the Vatican machinery of investigation.  When I was President of St. Thomas University I had occasion to meet with the then nuncio, Ambassador for the Holy See to Canada, one Luigi Ventura, to discuss a matter of some importance to the presidents of Catholic universities in the country.

After our chat—which was both amicable and informative—the nuncio mentioned that there was a file on me and he needed to pursue closure. Evidently, strong concern was expressed over a comment ascribed to me on the matter of Pope Benedict’s celebrated, nay notorious, address at Regensburg with its controversial inclusion of a passage of dubious historicity around Islam. There was an international firestorm over his comments, riots and some murdered religious as a result. I observed for the national press that the failure to closely vet the papal lecture by the Secretary of State was “staggeringly stupid.”

I was misquoted as saying the pope was staggeringly stupid when in fact that was not at all what I said or implied. No one of sound mind could ever accuse Ratzinger of being stupid, staggeringly or otherwise.  The magazine that quoted me acknowledged its mistake.

But the file was opened.  The nuncio wanted me to address the charge—although it had been refuted in public at the time—and so I did again. He inquired: “So you are saying that the Secretary of State was staggeringly stupid and not the pope?”  Precisely, I replied. “Well that’s quite all right then,” the nuncio observed. The file was closed.

Small stuff, I know, but still astonishing. The file was open for years before I was informed—no hurry, no transparency, no timetable—and then satisfactorily closed with the bat of an eye.

My health was not impaired by this episode. In fact, I was bemused. That was not the fate, however, of the eminent Belgian theologian. The process weakened him and imperiled his health.

How long before this scandal of a process is dismantled?

Read David Adams Richards for tales of miraculous survival

David Adams Richards (DAR) is a Catholic writer of astonishing fecundity and variety:  novels, non-fiction, screenplays, apologetics and short stories.

The August 10th issue of The Globe and Mail published his story, “The Shannon,” which is a luminous example of a Christian parable, a story of kenotic love, quiet bravery, familial fidelity, crushing want and valor-infused witness.

Two boys and their psychologically wounded and physically suffering father find themselves threatened by turbulent seas and imminent death and in this vortex of hopelessness and struggle, you find a self-emptying love exquisitely calibrated by the deft hand of a master writer.

DAR has published more than 20 books, won the highest awards for his art in the country and continues to explore in the heartland of the Miramichi the travails, quirks and genius for survival of ordinary folk—the regular vessels of Divinity’s fragile grace.

Not since Flannery O’Connor do we have a writer whose fiction captures the violence of moral urgency, the violence of the Gospels.

Müller has a few things to Mull

We have become accustomed to the current political reality in the United States whereby previously seasoned diplomats, civil servants, cabinet officials and various factotums and underlings, to say nothing of supernumeraries, are dispatched at a whim, cast into the dark and unknown.

This is not generally the case with the Holy See. Senior ranked prelates, heads of departments we call dicasteries, prefects and presidents, have been much accustomed to see their functions as sinecures.

For sure, some errant cleric could find himself removed, but as a rule, the Supreme Pontiff tended to renew every five years the positions of authority. It seemed ad perpetuam.

Not any more. In a short time, Pope Francis has offloaded some cumbersome weight, by which I mean ecclesiastics who are far from simpatico with his ecclesial vision, and although there was the predictable wailing and gnashing of teeth, it was done quietly in chambers secure from surveillance mechanisms.

But with the removal—non-renewal of the appointment of the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Gerhard Müller—a new dynamic has unfolded. Müller abided by the pope’s decision but without grace.  He mused in the press on the pope’s non-pastoral mode of operating, his seeming indifference to due process, his callous disregard for the quality of work done and the stamina of loyalty required for its execution.

This is rather rich coming from the man who ran the Suprema, the lead Congregation in the Roman panoply, known for its indifference to standard investigative policies, its dismissive approach to those whose allegiance to the church they consider suspect and its summary method of foreclosing discussion.

But Müller is going to have other things to keep him occupied for awhile, distracting him from his pique over being jettisoned from office, and that is the swirling scandal around the Domspatzen Choir in Regensburg, Germany where 547 choir boys were abused between 1945 and 1992. Although Müller is unconnected with the abuse and was bishop only from 2002-2012, he has come under mounting criticism for his failure to formally apologize.

It is time for the former chief inquisitor to pay attention to recent patterns of episcopal misjudgment. The consequences are more severe than losing your job.