HOW TO SOLVE THE CHURCH CRISIS What is to be done in the aftermath of the sexual-abuse crisis? Those on the Catholic left and right are organized Where's the middle?
O'Brien, David
HOW TO SOLVE THE CHURCH CRISIS Ordinary Catholics must act David O'Brien The year 2002 was a very bad year for the Catholic Church in the United States. This year could be much worse. California...
...In Boston, the victims, lawyers, and courts forced truths into the open...
...small groups of believers experiencing in prayer and service the solidarity of the Body of Christ now less visible in the larger church...
...From now on, let it be clear that the heart and soul of American Catholicism lies in its always-forming, always-renewing face-to-face communities...
...Opposition to the national commission is gathering strength, and none of this truth-telling will happen without organized pressure from outside the church bureaucracy...
...Some bishops are engaged in increasingly open efforts to limit the role of the National Review Board that has been appointed to investigate the abuse scandal...
...While in many places people have become cynical about pastoral councils, there are places where they work better...
...That agenda apparently includes reforms like admitting married men, even women, to the priesthood and taking a critical look at current teaching and pastoral practice on human sexuality...
...imagine that trust can be restored and the mission of the church energetically pursued in the absence of independent commissions empowered to examine the records and explore the causes of these terrible betrayals...
...People like Weigel and Richard John Neuhaus have been vigorous in suggesting needed actions, including Vatican control of the judicial process involving priests, supervision of seminaries to insure fidelity to orthodox teaching and practice, consideration of banning gays from the priesthood, new appointments of reliable men to key posts...
...Both spoke candidly to the bishops in Dallas last June, and since then they have repeatedly demanded that the bishops follow through on their promises of truthfulness, accountability, and reform...
...After all, we middle-aged Catholics were around and some of us were active in the church while all this was going on...
...There is also a body of knowledge about how to make them work (most of what is needed is common sense in other voluntary organizations...
...It is important for priests and bishops to trust their people, but it is also vital that people have the capacity to speak up, strongly and independently, to their bishops and priests...
...Who speaks on behalf of that still vast number of Catholics of every age who fall in love with the gospel and the church and volunteer to serve in ministry...
...All Catholics, and especially those who work for the church, should immediately demand, in public, that this review and renewal take place, and they should offer to help...
...Few Catholic leaders have found a national audience...
...Some restorationist groups have learned to operate very effectively from the outside...
...In the midst of this crisis it is not overly dramatic to ask whether we care enough to do the same...
...At their November meeting, several bishops called for a national plenary council to make it clear that current teaching on birth control, homosexuality, clerical celibacy, and the ordination of women can never change...
...Still, their moderation is almost defined by the "on the one hand, on the other hand" dismissal of the alleged extremism of right and left...
...Writing recently in Notre Dame Magazine (Winter 2002-2003), Appleby sketched the ideological basis of varied responses to the crisis, distanced himself from Wills and George Weigel, left and right, and urged Catholics to "stay, pray, and inveigh...
...Pastoral Ministry: The perpetrators of sexual abuse in almost all cases were pastoral ministers...
...Roman congregations and their American supporters know that...
...These naturally raise questions for moderates, most of whom seem to have internalized recent Vatican definitions of what is "responsible" in Catholic discussions...
...Will the laity and clergy, bishops and religious join in a renewed effort to evangelize U.S...
...Rather, it is a vehicle for action for anyone who claims to speak from the center and for "the good of the church...
...In shorthand, that was what Vatican II invited all Catholic communities to do...
...neither does James Carroll or Garry Wills...
...I suggest five things that seem obvious, at least to me: Truthfulness: Needed in many diocese are independent commissions, empowered to examine all the records, to issue public reports on cases, dispositions, and costs, and to explore the causes of the scandal and suggest reforms...
...interested parties who care about the church must do something or it won't happen...
...Let's face it: In the United States the existence of a Catholic Church with integrity and intelligence, where differences can be discussed in the open, cannot be taken for granted...
...Concerned about the abuse crisis, they help people deal with it locally, but they seem unable, even when willing, to help their church recover...
...We must never again say, as so many of us did for too long, that we can be good Catholics by working hard at our individual ministry and attending to our family and our parish, if we can find one...
...That suspicion shows little confidence in the intelligence or commitment of ordinary Catholics...
...This assumes that the agendas of the left and right are equally unacceptable...
...He ends with good questions: "Will the church pull itself out of this mess, restore credibility and deepen its historic commitment to the poor, the marginalized, the abused and lonely and forgotten...
...Among the most worrisome signs of the times is the fact that this request for participation seems to terrify everyone from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to Crisis magazine to the local chancery...
...A decade later we have to say, sadly, it's not over...
...For years trustees, administrators, and faculty have ignored church politics except when their interests were at stake...
...Parish priests are badly organized and what structural advocacy exists for them is devoted to the historic agenda known as priests' rights...
...It poisons the very integrity of the Catholic identity shared by all members of the community of faith...
...They distance themselves from ecclesiastical politics, adopt the same pose of irony about the church they use when discussing American foreign policy, and are largely passive as scandal sweeps over the Catholic community...
...Moderate views also, probably and properly, correspond to pastoral practice almost everywhere...
...Some sort of common-ground effort to establish structures for civil conversation about the church, its mission, ministries, and organizational policy and practice is not a "hobby horse...
...Eventually, however, conservatives learned how to influence the hierarchy and make an impact on policy...
...They also have been very sensitive to the divisions in the church...
...One reason it's not over is the absence of leadership in the American Catholic community...
...Although superiors of religious orders keep open lines of communication with the hierarchy, more than a few religious shrug their shoulders when people begin talking about "the institutional church...
...Yet, once again, even the modest project of evaluating and reforming existing structures of shared responsibility is unlikely to be initiated from the top...
...There are some small national organizations, like the National Association for Lay Ministry...
...They should work closely with the National Review Board, which is hoping to gather reliable data and study the causes of the scandal...
...Catholic institutions for which lay people are largely responsible, such as colleges and universities, have not yet fully engaged the scandal (Boston College is an exception...
...Even there Steinfels warns us to be careful to work for "the good of the church and not our own hobby horses...
...Now, when it comes to the politics of the church, they are almost the only lay people with any real voice...
...Because it is very hard to persuade people you distrust or dislike, both factions lack broad popular support (though I judge the left far more open than the right to dialogue and working with structures of shared responsibility...
...society...
...dedicated Christians serving the needs of people in neighborhoods, classrooms, hospitals...
...Yet institutional and political support for this middle, or common, ground remains elusive...
...The only thing recommended resembling organized action is the suggestion that we pay more attention to the "ordinary mechanisms on the books for church governance" such as pastoral councils...
...We should "not press our usual agendas," scapegoat homosexuals, believe everything we get from the media, or forget "the great good that may come from this...
...Large professional organizations in charities and education also exist...
...Theologians, educators, and pastors all know this, but most sat on the sidelines while a few cardinals and self-defined orthodox factions made the Common Ground project so controversial (read "liberal") that even independent but skittish colleges and universities would not touch it...
...Even supporters of a stronger lay voice seem quick to criticize VOTF, worrying that its support for "structural change" and its democratic spirit might lead down a slippery slope Jo Unitarianism...
...That sounds properly humble...
...For lay people, it means joining national VOTF, sending it a check, organizing local chapters, supporting the National Review Board, finding out what needs to be done in each diocese, and making sure it gets done...
...So, for all the talk about the "people of God," almost everyone is standing around, waiting for the Holy Spirit to straighten things out by sending new leaders for offices in the hierarchy...
...The irony here, of course, is that moderate positions on sexuality, women, ministry, and social justice correspond to the views of most Catholics...
...Still, around New England, diocesan priests for the most part stick to their parishes, speak well of the laity, and hope for the best...
...Each may be correct in portions of his analysis, but none has the answers...
...Even the reforms championed by Call to Action and defended in the pages of the National Catholic Reporter women's ordination, married priests, lay participation in church decision making seem like symptoms of dissent and thus sources of further discord...
...The Catholic right, at its best, is very interested in important questions of authority and orthodoxy, and it will risk losing many people to achieve what its advocates believe is essential to the integrity of their church...
...Self-defined moderates, standing between the so-called left and right, hardly notice that there is almost no organized support for the middle ground...
...It has power and responsibility, and we ignore it at our moral peril...
...Contributions to the church seem to be down, clearly so in the Northeast...
...Indeed, proposals for structural change, however modest, seem beyond the pale for everyone to the right of Call to Action and the National Catholic Reporter...
...They worked in parishes, or in pastoral offices in schools and hospitals...
...Think of various curial officials' insistence that the crisis arises from David O'Brien is Loyola Professor of Roman Catholic Studies at the College of the Holy Cross...
...On campus they have affirmed the equality of women, invited lay people to peer and team ministry, accepted homosexuals and allowed them to have their own voice...
...For years, self-styled "orthodox" Catholics almost always lost to reformers in disputes over liturgy, religious education, or pastoral practice...
...Every reform movement of recent years charismatic renewal, divorced and separated Catholics, women's ordination, and the peace movement drew leadership and support from nuns, brothers, and religious-order priests...
...Moreover, many younger religious women, and some men, devote themselves to worthy vocations outside the church and take little notice of ecclesiastical policy...
...The project evoked limited support, even from those with a stake in Catholic intellectual life...
...I don't have the answers...
...Joining Appleby in distancing herself from the supposed extremes, she writes: "George Weigel doesn't have the answers...
...Of course, dialogue among contending groups is not an ideological weapon but a practice indispensable to the vitality and unity of the church in a free and pluralistic society...
...Because no one knows what to do...
...Few Catholics seemed to notice...
...We know now how important it is to insure that everyone be accountable...
...What most moderates call the Catholic left is more ready to engage the Catholic people, but it too would wave good-bye to many members if that were the price of particular reforms...
...This is not surprising...
...The scandal has damaged, badly damaged, the fabric of trust that helps define a parish or pastoral community...
...People who think that a church like that is a good idea will have to do something to make it happen...
...Indeed, in my experience of parish life the most remarkable thing about the response to the crisis is the contrast between the sense of Catholic solidarity felt by middle-aged and older (not younger) priests, religious, and lay people, and the near total absence of structures to express that solidarity...
...Shared Responsibility: Immediate steps should be taken to more effectively organize "the people of God" and "the Body of Christ" in the local church by evaluating and strengthening (or reviving) diocesan and parish pastoral councils, finance committees, presbyteral councils, and senates of religious, along with their related committees...
...So a last action item: Let every organization that claims the word Catholic take the time to do a pastoral self-assessment and develop a new pastoral plan...
...Yet, although she asks, "What can we do...
...Still, they know that straightening out the church will require "structural change...
...If people are responsible for their church, they must take responsibility for suggesting policy, even if doing so sounds like "an agenda...
...Yet to take responsibility now requires analysis of causes, assessment of options, and decisions about action...
...Given the outrage of Catholics across the county, the membership and financial resources of the Boston-based reform group Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) remain surprisingly modest...
...Each has contributed enormously by insisting that the truth of corruption must be faced...
...The vacuum is obvious among the bishops...
...The late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin made use of an appointed but credible and empowered commission a decade ago in Chicago...
...Somebody must stand up and make proposals for truth-telling in those ordinary mechanisms of church governance that already exist...
...Among his books are Public Catholicism: American Catholics in Public Life and Isaac Hecker: An American Catholic...
...Yet although their ministries and professional integrity are at stake, lay ministers have little local organization and few opportunities to take a share of responsibility for the church's common life...
...What she does not note is that the commission's success depends nationally on the willingness of the bishops to utilize similar commissions, especially in those dioceses with many purported cases...
...So, to steal a phrase from the labor movement: Don't mourn, organize...
...That means somebody has to gather and distribute reliable information, organize petitions, demonstrations, and open letters, lobby the chancery and constituencies who might be able to wield some power...
...Catholic colleges and universities have rightly insisted that differences can't be resolved by Vatican decrees but need to be dealt with in the open through the discipline of dialogue...
...We have taken some big steps toward greater justice, greater mercy, greater safety and trust...
...When Catholic philanthropists urged the bishops to make public the costs of the abuse settlements and lawsuits, they were turned down...
...Neither faction should be trivialized, nor should the passionate convictions of Pope John Paul II's self-appointed interpreters or the stunning critical work of James Carroll and Garry Wills...
...Most needed is the voice of the vast number of deacons, religious, and lay people who work in parishes and pastoral ministry...
...Who really speaks up, and acts, on behalf of the great body of ordinary Catholics...
...It is hard to Why doesn't Steinfels issue a challenging call to action...
...Who speaks on behalf of the great and inclusive Catholic intellectual and cultural tradition...
...Lay people of moderate views have played a major role in the crisis as victims, victim advocates, lawyers, prosecutors, judges, and as members of pastoral-care committees, but when major decisions are made within the church, they are irrelevant...
...Bishops are once again asked to value the truth, hold each other accountable, and support reform...
...Most Catholics remain reluctant to criticize even the most transparently wrong-headed comments from Rome...
...supporters seem determined to use the crisis to promote their agenda on matters of sex, authority, and ministry...
...Why doesn't Steinfels issue a challenging call to action...
...We need to face the hard human truth that the church's future is in our hands, which means we have to act, together...
...Good pastoral care: dedicated priests and pastoral staffs in parishes that people regard as their own...
...In 1992, University of Notre Dame historian Jay Dolan wrote that the revelation of clerical sexual abuse and its cover-up by bishops was the most serious crisis in the history of American Catholicism...
...Faced with the distance between campus pastoral practice and current church policy, and forced by the long-drawn-out Ex corde ecclesiae controversy to defend their autonomy from hierarchical control, Catholic academics generally avoid challenging the institutional church...
...It even makes lay advocates like Commonweal nervous...
...People of conscience overwhelmed by the magnitude of the suffering, the widespread corruption, and the "don't get it" attitude of people who should know better necessarily pause before offering prescriptions...
...Hardly heard from before the bishops' June meeting in Dallas, the National Federation of Priests' Councils rushed to uphold priests' canonical rights...
...A few eventually demanded Cardinal Bernard Law's resignation...
...Until such instruments of shared responsibility are up and running, anxiety about lay power or creeping Unitarianism is simply silly...
...Still, we need to do much more to find the truth, to share responsibility, to renew and reform the church...
...In the end, if American Catholicism is to survive and prosper, it meaning we must find our way through the current crisis...
...But, how does the church "pull itself out" unless somebody other than the bishops does something...
...Such a dialogue should be undertaken by every Catholic college and university, even by independent Catholic high schools...
...Parish and diocesan pastoral councils, like presbyteral councils, are in place, but they do not seem to work very well...
...If VOTF is too scary, lay people must find a comparable vehicle, and not complain unless they have joined or formed an organization designed to take on the responsibility that rests on all of us...
...even the best of them have found it difficult to explain the situation, communicate regret, accept responsibility, and inspire confidence...
...For all its rigor and precision, Steinfels's excellent essay ends with characteristic modesty...
...In Ireland, the church now faces a public commission with access to all its records...
...He specializes in the history of American Catholicism...
...no one is asked to do very much...
...Every one of us left, right, and center has to be challenged to care for the church as it is, not as we would like it to be...
...neither does James Carroll or Garry Wills...
...We also know that, in the particular question of shaping policy and practice as it relates to the sexual abuse of children, lay people and parents must play a central role...
...Catholicism, with its rich cultural diversity and marvelous educational and charitable institutions and its enormous potential to enrich American life, is available to American Catholics today because over the course of two centuries ordinary people from many nations made great sacrifices to renew the faith, build the church, and pass on their heritage...
...Even more striking in some ways is the paralysis of priests, religious orders, leaders of Catholic institutions, scholars, artists, journalists, and lay people generally...
...Meanwhile, without leadership, ordinary Catholics feel abandoned and powerless...
...hi the December 20,2002, issue of Commonweal, Margaret Steinfels ("The Church Still in Crisis") ably summed up the state of the scandal question and properly insisted that truthfulness remains the central challenge...
...Or of the Vatican statement last November on the priesthood that was almost hysterical in its fear that priestly dignity will be destroyed by an overactive laity...
...Independent organizations always make sense if people are to have a voice, but they are especially crucial as long as shared responsibility structures like pastoral councils are entirely subject to the bishop, who can, if he wishes, set the agenda, call or not call meetings, and decide whether to seek or accept advice...
...Unfortunately, his example was not followed nationally...
...In contrast, Wills, Carroll, and Call to Action, although sharp in their criticism of the bishops, have been quite modest in their proposals...
...Lay people mostly remain outsiders vis-a-vis the ecclesiastical system...
...To insure that the truth is faced, she emphasizes the importance of the Keating Commission...
...Yet these altogether indispensable ministers are totally unorganized...
...The larger church matters...
...Aside from a similar defense of their canonical rights, male religious orders, which long carried the agenda of church reform, are quiet and seem detached from ecclesiastical politics...
...In the United States, moderate reform and apostolic groups and movements are either very small, uninterested in ecclesiastical affairs, or badly divided...
...Perhaps fearful of adding to the divisions, Appleby characteristically avoided supporting any specific action by anyone other than the bishops...
...Organization: Strong organizations for priests, deacons, pastoral ministers, and other groups, including lay groups, are indispensable...
...True, Wills and Carroll, at the end of broad surveys of a whole range of problems in the church in Carroll's case anti-Semitism and in Wills's deception suggest broad changes in attitude and direction, changes that sound suspiciously Protestant...
...Qet something must be done, and leaving it to the Holy Spirit, working through the hierarchy or somehow through the ether, simply will not do...
...As its effect is felt, the damage spreads, to church-sponsored educational, charitable, and medical institutions, to the credibility of Catholic word and witness on problems like abortion, war, and economic justice...
...They almost always point out those boundaries by distancing themselves from Garry Wills, James Carroll, and, of course, Call to Action...
...From now on, for Catholics of the center, parish renewal, energetic movements, and reforms to support them should constitute, yes, an agenda...
...As a consequence, conservative Catholics, and apparently Rome, place these quite successful institutions and their leaders near the supposed left-wing boundary of contemporary Catholic discourse...
...For that to happen, the Catholic people need to get to the table where decisions are made, especially decisions that affect their children, families, parishes, and, yes, their church...
...the Catechism and the guidance of Rome provided all the "common ground" the church required...
...But what of the center...
...chronic moral laxity and permissiveness...
...Retrieval of embryonic reforms inviting wide consultation in the selection of bishops, introduced during the 1970s tenure of Apostolic Delegate Jean Jadot, would also help...
...When Jim Post, president of VOTF, got a chance to meet Governor Frank Keating, the National Review Board chairman, he told him the single thing he wanted to communicate was that his members are solid parish Catholics who want nothing more than to help their church find solutions to the current crisis...
...If the organization does not work well, they must fix it and stop whining that "the bishop won't let us...
...VOTF members freely acknowledge they are amateurs, and would not dream of trying to define doctrine or decide controversial moral questions...
...Instead of challenging such statements, most involved Catholics who get quoted by the press repeat the same mantra: The crisis should not be used to promote an "agenda...
...The federation wanted to insure that, within the church, cases of abuse are processed in clerical courts...
...Hormer Commonweal editor Margaret O'Brien Steinfels and Notre Dame historian Scott Ap-pleby are among the clearest and calmest voices addressing the crisis...
...This is not surprising for an array of reasons...
...For priests and deacons, ministry is corporate and constitutive: they are a presbyterate united with one another and their bishop...
...Each group is tempted to straighten Catholics out, sometimes by appeals to hierarchical authority, sometimes by the more gentle means of education...
...California has temporarily lifted the statute of limitations on sexual-abuse cases...
...To be sure, religious orders are distracted by massive internal problems such as caring for aging members, maintaining historic institutional commitments in education, health care, and social services, and dealing with their own cases of sexual abuse...
...Hhis is, I think, an agenda that answers the question, What are we to do...
...She digs into this hard place, citing Vaclav Havel on how easily we, all of us, live with lies...
...Because no one knows what to do...
...Female religious orders, of course, never gained entry to the arena of church politics and no one is rushing to let them in now...
...Joining Appleby in distancing herself from the supposed extremes, she writes: "George Weigel doesn't have the answers...
...Inveigh he defined as "assailing with words" and "demanding attentiveness," concluding that such an "overbearing presence" of the laity is badly needed...
...Ministry is and will remain mainly a matter of what used to be called "the cure of souls," people helping one another find their way to God and in that process finding their way to God's people, all of them...
...Even the strongest lay voices stay carefully within the accepted boundaries of Catholic discussion...
...For priests and religious, that means getting involved with their existing national organizations and organizing their own local associations to set forth the pastoral needs of the local church, put pressure on institutional structures, and encourage hesitant lay people to join in...
...Still, few people suggest applying financial pressure to bring about change, such as improved monetary accountability...
...Both in a general way affirm the need for a greater role for the laity, but usually in the form of an appeal to the bishops to listen to their people...
...We know we have to listen to victims, punish lawbreakers, ban criminals from ministry, and open up the decision-making process...
...More seriously it leaves unanswered the question of what is to be done and who, in the end, is supposed to take responsibility for the integrity of our church...
...Much as it bothers us in our often politics-averse culture, there is a politics of the church, and it starts, like all politics, with each of us...
...VOTF supports "priests of integrity," and in Boston some priests formed an independent forum...
...Vatican restora-tionists and their U.S...
...It enjoyed only limited success because important cardinals decided it was not needed...
...Common Ground: Cardinal Bernardin's proposal for a common-ground strategy of disciplined dialogue among differing Catholic groups was intended to bridge dangerous ideological divisions by drawing attention to shared faith and mission...
...We don't know the answers because we don't yet have the truth, or at least we have not yet fully told the truth...
...Boston would be a good place to start, and VOTF has invited local Catholics to speak up...
...They are badly needed now, but almost invisible...
...What sustains the church, as one looks around the smoldering ruins of Catholic life, say in Boston or Worcester, where I live...
...Of course moderates find equally problematic some of the proposals made by the restorationists...
...These are the people who might carry a pastoral agenda into organized church life when the bishops and priests fail to do so...
...Simple as that...
Vol. 130 • February 2003 • No. 3
