Sex Abuse and Episcopal and Papal Cover-Up: What to Do?

As a Canadian (as well, of course, as a man of heroic modesty and saintly humility) I am constitutionally averse to promoting my own work, but if there is any moment where it might be helpful to people, now is it. 

The McCarrick report came out of Rome this week. I have been interviewed about it already and asked to write about it. The first article came out this morning in the Catholic Herald. More will follow, there and likely elsewhere. 

The question I have already been asked by editors is this: what can be done about the catastrophically broken system of governance and episcopal appointment in the Church? 

My answers are the same as those I began giving more than a decade ago: the closed system of papal appointment and promotion must be destroyed. Not tinkered with, moderately reformed, mildly changed, slightly altered: destroyed. Blown up. Annihilated. Cremated, and its ashes fired out of a space cannon to the dark side of Saturn or Jupiter.  

That system, people must come to learn, is a total novelty anyway, scarcely a century old. The idea that it is some longstanding part of sacred and holy Tradition is a pernicious fantasy that must itself now die. Only with the 1917 code of canon law is the claim--the novel and wicked claim--made that the pope of Rome has the right to appoint all the world's bishops. That claim is so staggering, so modernist, so untraditional, so without theological justification, that the eminent historian Eamon Duffy has rightly called it a coup d'Eglise. 

What must also die is the even worse fantasy that the current system is somehow required by the claims of Vatican I (repeated verbatim at Vatican II) that "universal jurisdiction" of the pope of Rome requires him to appoint bishops universally. That is nonsense, and the easiest proof of that is the existence of the Eastern Catholic Churches, most of whose bishops are not in fact appointed by the pope but elected by their own synods. So the current system is neither required nor any longer defensible. Indeed, it is a millstone around the neck of the Church: either we kill it or it will continue to kill us all. 

What might or should replace it? Synodal election is the best system to my mind. I argued this out in some detail in my Everything Hidden Shall Be Revealed: Ridding the Church of Abuses of Sex and Power, published early last year. Have a look and let me know if you can think of a better way forward. 

Who the Hell is Pope Francis and What is He On About?

We are fast closing in on the second anniversary of the election of Pope Francis, who continues to confound both fans and enemies and, doubtless, will continue to do so in the year ahead. For those desirous of understanding previous popes and their surprising antics in papal history, as well as their relations to the Christian East, they would do well, as I have often remarked in the past, to turn to what is the best one-volume history of the papacy available in English, now about to enter its fourth edition: Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes; Fourth Edition (Yale University Press, 2015), 500pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

This engrossing book encompasses the extraordinary history of the papacy, from its beginnings to the present day. This new edition covers the unprecedented resignation of Benedict XVI and the election of the first Argentinian pope.

Praise for the earlier editions:

“Duffy enlivens the long march through church history with anecdotes that bring the different pontiffs to life. . . . Saints and Sinners is a remarkable achievement.”—Piers Paul Read, The Times

“A distinguished text . . . offering plenty of historical facts and sobering, valuable judgments.”—Henry Chadwick, New York Times Book Review

“Will fascinate anyone wishing to better understand the history of the Catholic Church and the forces that have shaped the role of the papacy.”—Gloria J. Tysl, Christian Century

Lunatics, Heretics, and Mystics: Is There a Difference?

Sandro Magister, always worth reading about matters ecclesial and Catholic, has a round-up of some things lunatics are saying about the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. (One can only imagine what Yves Congar would say about these types! He had scathing comments about them in his own day as recorded in his diaries.)

The prize has to belong to Enrico Maria Radaelli who attempts to claim with a straight face that papal resignation “is not permitted metaphysically and mystically, because in metaphysics it is bound up with the kernel of being...and in mysticism is bound up with the kernel of the mystical Body which is the Church, through which the office of vicar...places the being of the elect on an ontological plane substantially different...: on the metaphysically and spiritually highest plane of Vicar of Christ.” That has to be about as neat a definition of contemporary papolatry as we are likely to find, though I'm keeping the contest open for a while yet because doubtless there are bound to be other contenders. It is also, I maintain, a thinly veiled heresy of the old school: a species of ecclesiological monophysitism. Ecclesiology, as has often been remarked, tends to ricochet between Arianism on the one hand (i.e., an overemphasis on the exclusively human nature of the Church) and monophysitism (i.e., an overemphasis on the exclusively divine nature of the Church).

When discussing the pope, we have, as two recent and splendid histories make clear--Eamon Duffy's Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes (Yale Nota Bene) and John O'Malley's A History of the Popes: From Peter to the Present (both of which are, one may say, perfectly "Chalcedonian" in maintaining a sober "dyophysite" view of the papacy and Church as both divine and human), suffered for a little over a century now under an increasingly "sacralized" notion of the popes and their office which tends towards precisely this monophysite notion: the humanity of the pope is severely downplayed, and his status as some kind of demiurge is exalted. This began at Vatican I, whose absurdly misunderstood doctrine of infallibility can and should be "re-received" (as Walter Kasper argued in That They May All Be One: The Call to Unity Today and other places), though in a very different form today--something I suggest at the end of my Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy: Ut Unum Sint and the Prospects of East-West Unity.

Thankfully since Pope Paul VI (1963-78), and certainly under John Paul II in some ways--though in others, perhaps unwittingly, he certainly reinforced it--this sacralized notion of the pope (replete with tiarra, sedia gestatoria, use of the royal "we," and other nonsense) was increasingly set aside, and it has now definitely changed with Benedict's resignation, a gesture that, perhaps more than anything else he has done, will deal this notion the death-blow it deserves. As I have asked many Catholics over the last week: if all other bishops in the world are required to retire at 75, why should the bishop of Rome be any different? There is no coherent theological case to be made for treating him differently, and so we are treated, as above, to "metaphysical" and "mystical" emoting that is both dangerous and risible. Radaelli and too many Catholics have spent the last 10 days reacting to the papal retirement with mawkish mewling as though they were helpless kittens whose mother had just been flattened by a truck on the highway. This de trop devastation seems to be one of the lamentable features of our time--as witnessed, e.g., with the faux hysterics of millions in the streets in 1997 at the death of that erstwhile princess of Wales (what was her name?). To all such ululaters, I reply, as the famously taciturn Clement Attlee did in a one-line letter to the endlessly agitated Harold Lasky: "a period of silence from you would be most welcome."

My Brother the Pope

Of the writing of books about the papacy there is no end. One may divide those into three broad and by no means exclusive categories at least: biography (of the incumbents), history (of the institution), and theology (of the munera or offices). I have of course had a few things to say about the latter in my Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy: Ut Unum Sint and the Prospects of East-West Unity. 

One cannot separate the office entirely from the man, no matter how certain apologists for, say, Alexander VI or Honorius I may wish to do so. And the lives of the nearly 300 men who have held this office often make for fascinating, not to say titillating, reading. Individual biographies for many prominent popes abound while some languish in total, and often deserved, obscurity. Good surveys are notoriously hard to produce effectively, though I have argued that Eamon Duffy succeeds admirably in his Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes (3rd ed.) (Yale, 2006).

Since the papacy of Pope John Paul II (for whom George Weigel's Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II--
notwithstanding its occasionally hagiographic tone and equally occasional propensity for exaggerated statements as, e.g., when treating that vastly over-rated "theology of the body" business--is far and away the best of the many biographies written about that pope, all of which I have suffered through as a penance for my myriad sins) we have had two additional categories of writings: book-length interviews and quasi-memoirs, the most recent of which, by Pope Benedict XVI, generated a great deal of sound and fury, as I noted in my lengthy discussion of it here. Now to this vast library of books, we may add a new genre: books by the pope's family--in this case, Georg Ratzinger: My Brother, the Pope (Ignatius, 2012), 

About this book, the publisher tells us:

It wasn't always the case that Msgr. Georg Ratzinger lived in the shadow of his younger brother, Joseph. Georg was an accomplished musician, who for over 30 years directed the Regensburger Domspatzchor, the world-famous boys choir of the Regensburg cathedral. Brother Joseph was a brilliant young professor, but mostly known in German academic circles.

Now Georg writes about the close friendship that has united these two brothers for more than 80 years. This book is a unique window on an extraordinary family that lived through the difficult period of National Socialism in Germany. Those interested in knowing more about the early life of Benedict XVI will not be disappointed. They will also learn of the admirable character and inspiring example of the parents, and see how the Catholic faith can shape not just a family, but an entire culture-in this case, that of Bavaria.

Georg's reminiscences are detailed, intimate, and warm. And while they begin with the earliest years of the Ratzinger family, they continue right up to the present day. This is not simply a book to satisfy curiosity about a "celebrity", though it certainly does that. It's a beautiful portrait of Catholic family life and, in the most literal sense, of enduring fraternal charity. Georg has a talent for telling a story, and the co-author fills in some of the larger historical background. The many photographs, both in black and white and in color, round out a thoroughly enjoyable and inspirational book. Illustrated with 47 photographs.

I look forward to reading this book, not least because I am sure it will continue to make known the charming, humble, and winsome man whom I briefly met in Rome in 1998 and who was elected nearly seven years ago now even though he never wanted to work in Rome at all and has for many years longed for release from those labors. Those who actually bestirred themselves to read Ratzinger--as I did, and not just his excellent books, especially The Spirit of the Liturgy, but also the several book-length interviews he has given, most famously in The Ratzinger Report--will have found in them, and even more fully in his charming if incomplete Milestones: Memoirs, 1927-1977, incontrovertible evidence of a man completely different from the media caricature of him as some vindictive, punitive Panzerkardinal. That mendacious and malevolent image of him, tediously and tendentiously generated and mindlessly recycled over many years, would be risible were it not so cruel and dishonest. 

Eastern Christians, in particular, should look on Benedict as someone who understands them perhaps even better than his famous Slavic predecessor, and who has for decades now been advancing arguments about the need for reform to the papacy (arguments I treat in my  Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy) very much along Orthodox lines. Famously, in 1976, while a simple priest, Ratzinger, at a lecture in Graz, uttered what has come to be called the "Ratzinger formula" (reprinted in the 1987 book Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology): 

Rome must not require more from the East with respect to the doctrine of primacy than what had been formulated and was lived in the first millennium . . . Rome need not ask for more. Reunion could take place in this context if, on the one hand, the East would cease to oppose as heretical the developments that took place in the West in the second millennium and would accept the Catholic Church as legitimate and orthodox in the form she had acquired in the course of that development, while, on the other hand, the West would recognize the Church of the East as orthodox and legitimate in the form she has always had.

Earth-Shaking Popes

I am of course fascinated by the papacy, and have had a few things to say about it in my Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy: Ut Unum Sint and the Prospects of East-West Unity. Others, especially historians, have long been fascinated by the papacy as well. Of the writing of books about the papacy there is no end. Of contemporary historians of the papacy, as I have remarked before, very few are as reliable as Eamon Duffy, especially in his really quite splendid Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes, 3rd ed. (Yale Nota Bene, 2006). In that book, Duffy accomplishes the near-impossible: to write a history of the papacy in one volume that is faithful both to the best of historical scholarship and to the Church of which he is a part. He has a deft hand and maintains the balance promised in his title, seeing the popes neither as uniformly saintly nor uniformly wicked but as human beings, some of whom were indeed saints while others were not, and still others positively iniquitous (The Borgias being the current favored example of the latter).

Now Duffy, who made his mark early on as a really important historian of the English Reformation and its fall-out (see his very critically acclaimed The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580 as well as his Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor and Marking the Hours: English People and Their Prayers, 1240-1570) has turned his hand again to the papacy in a new book published only last week: Ten Popes Who Shook the World (Yale University Press, 2011), 166pp.

About this book, the publisher tells us:

Catholic popes have been powerful spiritual leaders for nearly two millennia, but their influence is not confined exclusively to Church matters. Many popes have played a central role in the history of Europe and the wider world, not only shouldering the spiritual burdens of their office but also contending with the political crises of their times. In an acclaimed series of BBC radio broadcasts, Eamon Duffy enthralled listeners with vivid stories of the ten popes he judges "the most influential in history." With this book, readers may now also enjoy Duffy's portraits of ten exceptional men who shook the world.

The book begins with St. Peter, the Rock upon whom the Catholic Church was built, and follows with Leo the Great (fifth century), Gregory the Great (sixth century), Gregory VII (eleventh century), Innocent III (thirteenth century), Paul III (sixteenth century), and Pius IX (nineteenth century). Among twentieth-century popes, Duffy examines the lives and contributions of Pius XII, who was elected on the eve of the Second World War, the kindly John XXIII, who captured the world's imagination, and John Paul II, the first non-Italian pope in 450 years. Each of these ten, Duffy shows, was an extraordinary individual who helped shape the world we know today.

I look forward to reading this and reviewing it.

Church-State Relations in Russia, China, and the West

Church-state relations in Russia continue to be the object much scholarly attention. Recently we've seen a number of books, including Wallace L. Daniel, The Orthodox Church and Civil Society in  Russia; John and Carol Garrard, Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent: Faith and Power in the New Russia; and Benjamin Forest et al, eds., Religion And Identity In Modern Russia: The Revival Of Orthodoxy And Islam.

Now Cambridge University Press has recently brought out an edited collection that treats such relations in a wider context:

James D. Tracy and Marguerite Ragnow, eds., Religion and the Early Modern State: Views from China, Russia, and the West (Studies in Comparative Early Modern History) (CUP, 2010), 436pp.

About this book the publisher tells us;

How did state power impinge on the religion of the ordinary person? This perennial issue has been sharpened as historians uncover the process of 'confessionalization' or 'acculturation', by which officials of state and Church collaborated in ambitious programs of Protestant or Catholic reform, intended to change the religious consciousness and the behaviour of ordinary men and women. In the belief that specialists in one area of the globe can learn from the questions posed by colleagues working in the same period in other regions, this 2005 volume sets the topic in a wider framework. Thirteen essays, grouped in themes affording parallel views of England and Europe, Tsarist Russia, and Ming China, show a spectrum of possibilities for what early modern governments tried to achieve by regulating religious life, and for how religious communities evolved in new directions, either in keeping with or in spite of official injunctions.

 Three chapters in particular treat East-Slavic realities:

• 2. Ecclesiastical elites and popular belief and practice in seventeenth-century Russia by Robert O. Crummey
• 6. Orthodoxy and revolt: the role of religion in the seventeenth-century Ukrainian Uprising against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by Frank E. Sysyn, author of other important works on Ukrainian history in particular.
• 9. False miracles and unattested dead bodies: investigations into popular cults in Early Modern Russia by Eve Levin, author of a fascinating 1995 study Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, 900-1700

In addition, the volume contains a chapter by the Cambridge historian Eamon Duffy:

• 12. The disenchantment of space: Salle church and the Reformation

Duffy is the author of not only what I regard as the best one-volume study of the popes, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes; Third Edition but also several other very important works that have dramatically corrected and revised our understanding of the English reformation, starting with a "micro" history,  The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (2003) and then expanded in his widely discussed The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580. More recently we've had from him a re-examination of so-called Bloody Queen Mary: Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor.

I look forward to seeing Religion and the Early Modern State: Views from China, Russia, and the West  reviewed in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies.

The Papacy Since 1500

The East, while never denying the seniority of the Roman bishop in the patriarchal τάξις of the early Church, has nonetheless objected to certain innovations in the modus operandi of the papacy, especially in recent history--i.e., from 1870 onward. Since the 19th century, particularly in the papacy of Leo XIII (1878-1903), we see papal roles change dramatically with the loss of the Papal States and the rise of the pope as "global teacher" whose writings begin to increase in number and scope alongside his increasingly well-financed claims to authority, most egregiously (and ecumenically intolerably) manifested in the claim (in the 1917 Pio-Benedictine code of canon law) that the pope is the one who appoints all the world's bishops. This is so startling an innovation, so unprecedented a claim (until the end of the nineteenth century the popes were not even appointing all the bishops on the Italian peninsula--never mind the rest of the world), so wholly without theological justification, that Eamon Duffy, author of the best one-volume papal history Saints and Sinners rightly called it a "coup d'Église."  This idea that one man appoints all the other bishops will never fly in the East.

Now a new volume out from Cambridge looks at other transformations, focusing, in the main, on individual popes from Julius II onward. This is not a comprehensive history like Duffy's, but still looks fascinating.

James Corkery and Thomas Worster, eds., The Papacy Since 1500: from Italian Prince to Universal Pastor (Cambridge UP, 2010), 286pp.

Going back even farther, into the latter part of the first millennium, we have another new work out from Cambridge:

Caroline Goodson, The Rome of Pope Paschal I: Papal Power, Urban Renovation, Church Rebuilding and Relic Translation, 817–824 (CUP, 2010), 408pp. + maps + illustrations.

Goodson's book looks to be a continuation of the arguments first begun by Pope Leo the Great, and analyzed by Susan Wessel: viz., the project of rebuilding (in Paschal's case quite literally) a "spiritual" Rome to recover "universal" respect and allegiance after the transfer of the capital to Constantinople and the collapse of the empire in the West.