Be Not Afraid! (I)

Very much in my mind as I was writing Everything Hidden Shall Be Revealed: Ridding the Church of Abuses of Sex and Power was the anxiety I have often heard, and still hear, from those who identify themselves as "conservative" or "traditional" Catholics. Such people often regard the idea of structural reforms to the Church with fear and loathing. Some of this, as I suggested here, has to do with an undiagnosed and ancient theological mistake of a crypto-monophysite sort--regarding, that is, the Church as some purely spiritual body untouched by the grubby concerns about politics and organization, and the politics of organization and structure. 

Much of this anxiety has to do with internal ecclesial perceptions of the last thirty years or so: "conservatives" think everything, including structures, must be preserved unchanged; and those they regard as "liberals" are associated in their minds not only with dodgy ideas and heterodox theology, but with structural reforms to accomplish those apparently nefarious goals. Oppose the reforms--so this thinking runs--and you cut off the necessary route for the imposition of "heresy." But the problem is that we have not had real structures of local accountability and real synods (local and otherwise), but only appallingly easily abused and very shabby simulacra of them, as I argued here. So the fear of structural reforms is (as our father among the saints Sigmund of Vienna might say) merely a fearful fantasy. 

My task, then, was to show the "conservatives" and "traditionalists" that the current structures, which they want to hold on to, are modern inventions, scarcely a century old, and thus in no serious way "traditional." Moreover, and more to the point, they simply do not work--no matter who the pope is. As should be obvious to everyone by now, even having "conservative" popes like John Paul II and Benedict XVI manhandling the structures did not prevent the present crisis from breaking out. 

Quiz: which pope appointed McCarrick to Washington and the college of cardinals? Which pope elevated Pell? Who was bishop of Rome who made Barbarin archbishop of Lyon and a cardinal? Who refused to allow Bernard Law to resign before shuffling him off to a cozy sinecure using the time-tested technique of promoveatur ut amoveatur? Better still, which sainted recent pope appointed not one but two bishops in succession to Palm Beach, Florida, both of whom had to be removed for abuse? 

Assignment: Why not collect a statistic of how many of the current bishops in the United States knew of what McCarrick (and others) were doing, but themselves did nothing, assuming that it was not their job? Do we want to continue to allow them to get off so easily? 

Bonus Assignment: what percentage of American Catholics was edified by watching their bishops last November stand around doing damn all because apparently their brother in Rome told them not to? Who was heartened to hear them claim they could not discipline each other, but only the pope could do that--and since there are 3500 of them in the world, and only 1 pope, the chances of him doing that are vanishingly small? Is any of this a system any sane person wants to hang onto? 

No "conservative" with a functioning brain should thus want to conserve the structures that have given us these disasters--and countless others. No Catholic has any interest in hanging on to the worst structures conceived at the most infelicitous of times (after the 1848 revolutions) and in a context and crisis that have long since past. In holding tightly onto those structures, we are preserving sclerosis in the body of Christ, and preventing it from undergoing necessary reforms and purification. Catholics who resist structural changes today are harming the Church, not helping her. 

My additional task was to show such anxious types that John Paul II's constant call "Be not afraid!" applies to reform in the Church as this dark hour. One need not be afraid of such reforms if one can see that they work elsewhere, especially in parts of the Christian East, almost all of whose churches--Catholic and Orthodox--have so far largely preserved their liturgical traditions intact, and whose theological patrimony has been subject to far less craziness than we have seen in the West for a half-century and more now of "experimentation." 

In other words, if the structures I propose are largely drawn from the very conservative Armenian Church, then anxious conservative Catholics can take some measure of reassurance that structural reforms do not in themselves go hand-in-hand with liturgical destruction and theological heterodoxy. (I also reference structures in the Anglican Communion, which may well cause the aforementioned "conservative" anxiety to spike sharply upwards. I will address that on Monday, for in fact what I propose takes only selective parts of Armenian and Anglican structures and sets them in a Catholic context, allowing for a considerable role of insight reserved to the bishop of Rome and avoiding some of the problems of both systems.)

At the same time, however, the book is unapologetically "liberal" in the sense that the theological case for the liberation of the laics (a term I borrow from the invaluable Nicholas Afanasiev) to take their place in the councils of governance--parish council, diocesan synod, regional, and even international synods--is overwhelming. 

Equally, the case against the current system--of papal-episcopal monopoly on power at all levels--is overwhelming: such a system is (to coin a phrase) objectively disordered. It must go. Even if there were no crisis at all, I would argue this with the same vigor. There is nothing to be afraid of in having the governance of the Church in the hands equally of laics, clerics, and hierarchs. The current system barring laics from any serious say in the running of parishes and dioceses is perverse.