KEEPING THE FAITH

Last night, as I was getting ready to go to sleep, I asked myself what matters to me with respect to my Catholic religion. This is what I came up with:

1) Preserving the Faith

2) Propagating the Faith

3) Expressing the Faith (through prayer, liturgy and Christian action)

4) Promoting unity among the faithful

It occurred to me that if these four points were the goals of our religion, other factors such as the doctrines of our theology, the proper approach to moral instruction, the organization and governance of church hierarchy and so forth were simply a means to the end – the end being the great goal of Faith.

As it happens, I’m positively sick about Archbishop O’Malley’s decision to close sixty-five parishes in the Boston area. Although many of these parishes were struggling and probably ought to have been reconfigured; several, including my own parish of Sacred Heart in Lexington, are thriving. My pain, in this matter, stretches far beyond the sadness I feel when I contemplate the thought of saying goodbye to a beloved faith community or the inconvenience of starting an association with a new parish. The vast bulk of my distress is rooted in my conviction that our archbishop has embarked upon a deliberate and systematic course of action that is absolutely inimical to the goals of Catholicism. It’s flat out wrong to suppress a viable parish, and I believe that the reason the archbishop was able to make this mistake is because virtually anyone with any power in our church, these days – at least within the USA – is steeped in the destructive mindset commonly know as clericalism.

Clericalism is marked by a progressive imbalance in the distribution of authority within the Church. It’s the tendency to direct more and more power into the hands of fewer and fewer individuals, to award promotions based chiefly on a person’s willingness to obey, to frustrate the attempts of well-meaning men and women to correct the mistakes of their superiors, and to replace the spirit of faith with the spirit of fear. Clericalism, once it reaches the point where we currently reside, attacks faith itself. Clericalism weakens our ability to preserve, propagate or express our Faith. The more clericalism progresses, the more it promotes disunity among Catholics and between Catholics and members of other faiths.

Lay Catholics, particularly in the Boston area, recently received a ‘wake up call’ with respect to the dangers of clericalism. Over the past two years we have been shocked and saddened as more and more information has been revealed to the public about the scope of priestly pedophilia. Events that were given out as ‘news’ to those of us in the pews were events that had actually been well known to authorities in the chancery for decades. This scandal has been labeled a ‘sex scandal’ and it is; but more than that, it is a scandal of the misuse of authority – authority warped by the influence of clericalism.

Why would a priest sexually abuse a child? The answer to that question is too complex to be addressed here and can never be exhaustively answered since it deals, in part, with the movement of will inside a person’s soul. Suffice it to say that no human organization can ever be one hundred percent safe from evil action on the part of one of its leaders. Why, however, would a predatory priest be able to operate repeatedly, inflicting harm for decades, shielded from punishment and exposure? That sort of protracted evil can only occur in an organization shrouded in secrecy with a dangerously skewed balance of power. The sex scandal could never have reached the scope it reached if our church leaders weren’t disabled by clericalism.

Shortly after arriving in Boston and taking over the reins of the archdiocese, Sean O’Malley announced that the sex scandal was over. It was time for victims to agree to a settlement the Church could manage, for reporters to cease filing stories about the issue, for Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) groups to disband and for lay people to go back to previous levels of confidence in their priests. His Excellency appears convinced the matter is settled. I’m convinced he’s missed the point entirely. We can banish pedophiles, but if we don’t put the disease of clericalism into remission we’re going to buy trouble. Too bad members of the church establishment don’t see it that way. The fact that those most steeped in the problem don’t even notice it means that we’re all simply waiting for the next scandal to arrive. The “next scandal”, of course, has arrived already with the suppression of vibrant parishes such as Sacred Heart. The next scandal after that, whatever form it happens to take, will make it into the papers soon enough.

Back in the early ‘sixties, when John XXIII was pontiff and Vatican II was in session, the Church actually had the grace to look at the problem of clericalism and to take steps to cure it. It implemented reforms to promote collegiality between bishops, initiative and flexibility in pastors and empowerment among the laity. What a good and gracious development Vatican II was!

Sadly, though, the hierarchy of the Church – like a stubborn patient – has refused to take her medicine, and like a patient who’s been non-compliant, she’s only become sicker and sicker in the days since the Council issued its recommendations. Will she continue to grow more ill until she’s incapable of dong any good at all, or is there a chance she can be restored to health? Does it make any sense for faithful people to continue to participate in the life of the Church, or does such participation only serve to leave us vulnerable to the affliction that’s all around us?

Certainly, in the nearly forty years since the close of the Council, many people have left the Church. Priests have left, nuns have left, laymen and laywomen have left. Some claim to have lost their faith, others say they don’t want to lose their faith and have removed themselves in order to protect it. Some people back away at intervals and return when they feel strong enough to “handle it”. What are they handling? They’re handling the challenge of coping with clericalism.

Our archbishop has asked the members of parishes slated for suppression to believe that by enrolling in other parishes we can strengthen the Church in the archdiocese. He wants us those of us at Sacred Heart to join, and to support, St. Brigid’s, the other Catholic parish in town. If that’s a hardship to any of us, we’re free to link up with some other parish. That certainly doesn’t seem like a difficult or unreasonable request. It wouldn’t be a hard request for me to obey, and I would obey – if I thought that by doing so I would be advancing the Faith. Trouble is, I’m afraid that in obeying such a directive I’d be complicit in making my Church sicker. Trouble is, I think this ‘crisis of suppression’ might be a blessing in disguise. I think we, at Sacred Heart Parish, ought to appreciate that we’ve got an opportunity to exercise the power the Vatican II reformers wanted us to have. I believe that by resisting our suppression we’re also taking a step toward resisting the clericalism that’s choking the Faith.

That’s why I’m still recalcitrant. That’s why I’m still urging my fellow parishioners to look for ways to stay together no matter what. I do it because my Faith is worth saving and because I want to help others to save theirs.

Paul Bradford

July 25, 2004