* A young man applies to study for the priesthood and is interviewed
by a committee whose chairman, a high-ranking diocesan official, asks
him his "feelings" about the ordination of women. The candidate
replies that the matter has been settled by the Holy Father. The
chairman replies, "We're not asking what the Pope thinks. We want to
know how you feel about it." The young man states simply that he
accepts the Church's teaching on the matter. He is subsequently
informed that the committee has found him unsuitable for the
priesthood. An indirect appeal to the bishop of the diocese brings
the response that all candidates must be recommended by the screening
committee.
* In another diocese a young man enrolled in the seminary finds that
a feminist nun has much influence in approving candidates for
ordination and that she has identified him as "insensitive to the
needs of women." Once again an indirect appeal to the bishop brings
the response that he will not "interfere" in the workings of the
seminary and that the candidate must somehow gain the nun's support
in order to qualify for ordination.
* In two dioceses bishops hire lay editors for their diocesan
newspapers-men known to be conservative in church matters. But as the
new editors try to bring their respective papers into line with
official Church teachings, protests mount, and before long both are
removed from their posts.
* Two dioceses introduce sex-education programs which deviate from
Catholic teaching on important points, bringing protests from
parents. In both cases new bishops promote the directors of the
respective programs to even more important positions in the local
hierarchy.
* A lay woman is appointed "pastoral minister" in a parish where no
priest is available. She soon begins wearing priestly vestments
while conducting Communion services and openly announces her desire
to be ordained.
* A bishop issues a pastoral letter on the state of women in the
Church which, while stopping short of calling for their ordination,
employs an unwavering feminist perspective which describes women as
systematically oppressed by both Church and society.
* A bishop appoints as his diocese's chief representative on "women's
issues" a woman known to be critical of Catholic teaching not only
concerning the ordination of women but of celibacy and various
aspects of sexual morality as well. She openly talks about having
"enlightened" local priests on these matters. Complaints to the
bishop are ignored.
Mere matters of opinion?
Many worse vignettes could be collected to show the precarious state
of American Catholicism. What makes these items especially
significant is that in each case the problems occurred under bishops
known to be "conservative" and identified as part of John Paul II's
"counter-reformation" or "restoration."
The inadequacy of the terms "liberal" and "conservative" for
ecclesiastical issues has often been acknowledged, but they have
become so convenient that, if properly understood, they are as useful
as any for briefly indicating the divisions which now plague the
Church. Yet the casual way in which these divisions are accepted
itself ought to be shocking, indicating as it does that questions of
fundamental belief have been easily relegated to the status of mere
partisan opinions, on which Catholics may legitimately take different
positions.
With very few exceptions "conservative" bishops do not go beyond what
is strictly mandated by official Church teaching or policy. Almost
all of them permit altar girls in their dioceses, and some did so
even before Rome authorized the practice. Almost none is a strong
devotee of the Latin Mass.
Enshrining "liberal" and "conservative" even with respect to bishops
in effect means giving legitimacy to positions which actively diverge
from one or another official Church teaching, which are reduced to
opinions or matters of taste, almost to matters of temperament -some
people move faster than others and are more comfortable with change.
Although it has not been recognized, the roots of liberalism among
American bishops actually date to the period immediately after the
Second Vatican Council, when legendary episcopal giants like Cardinal
Francis J. Spellman of New York were still in office. With few
exceptions such prelates themselves showed signs of post-conciliar
confusion. Often they did little to clarify this confusion for
others, or they acted in what seemed like quixotic and inconsistent
ways, imposing strong sanctions against certain kinds of deviations
while blandly tolerating others which were even worse.
The Council and the crisis
The great failure of the older generation of bishops was their
failure to gain control of the post-conciliar process of education.
All over the United States interpreters of "renewal" arose to skew
the meaning of the Council in numerous ways, a process which only
grew worse over time. Few indeed were the bishops who attempted-even
in their own dioceses, much less nationally-to establish an authentic
program of education in the "new Church."
The result was that, over the next decades, Church officials on all
levels -from bishops themselves to kindergarten teachers-were
systematically inducted into a view of "renewal" which was
increasingly at odds with official teaching and with the actual words
of the Council. By 1975, if not before, the Church in the United
States had lost perhaps the majority of its "middle management" to
stronger or milder degrees of dissent, as most bishops watched
passively and even approvingly.
The storm of dissent which followed the birth-control encyclical
<Humanae Vitae> in 1968 was a crucial moment whose opportunities were
quickly lost. Apparently the American bishops made a collective
decision that they would not try systematically to educate their
people in the teachings of the encyclical, and dissent thereby gained
immense credibility. (The issue was shrewdly exploited by certain
theologians precisely because it had direct relevance to most lay
people.)
Common sense would have dictated that, faced with massive dissent
from official teachings, bishops would have made every effort to
identify the core of Catholics, clerical and lay, who accepted those
teaching, given them every encouragement, and used that core as a
base from which to reach out to others. Instead the American bishops
seem to have made the collective decision almost to ignore such
people, who were soon left to fend for themselves, as practically all
pastoral efforts were turned towards those who dissented. Now,
however, the purpose of those pastoral efforts was not to bring back
lost sheep but to reexamine the very concept of being "lost," opening
the possibility that the lost sheep were in fact the new leaders of
the flock.
In deciding not to support <Humanae Vitae> except verbally, the
American bishops made the fundamental strategic mistake which has
been the undoing of liberal Protestantism. For over a century liberal
Protestantism has steadily surrendered Christian positions deemed
incredible by a particular historical age, the better to protect the
core of the faith. But in each generation, more such surrenders are
demanded, until there is finally nothing left, and surrender itself
becomes the chief expectation which liberals must meet.
Thus by giving up on birth control, the bishops of 1968 probably
thought they were preserving their credibility on other questions.
But inevitably there has been a steady erosion of every distinctively
Catholic moral position. Finally in 1995 a survey has shown that a
solid majority of Catholics do not accept the Church's teaching about
the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The strategy of
tolerating selective dissent can only have such results, and the area
of dissent can only continue to widen.
The phantom renewal
In an episode which still remains mysterious, through most of the
1970s the Holy See appointed bishops in the United States who were at
least tolerant of dissent and in some cases personally sympathetic to
it, a pattern of appointments which continued several years into the
pontificate of John Paul II.
Beginning around 1980 this pattern seemed to be reversed, as word
circulated that the men being made bishops were orthodox,
tough-minded, and charged with the task of salvaging authentic
Catholicism from the near chaos of spurious "renewal." Conservatives
were buoyed by this new spirit for most of the decade, and only
towards its end did it begin to dawn on informed people that somehow
the promised counter- reformation was not taking place.
In dioceses where a conservative bishop has followed a conservative
predecessor, there have usually been few problems. However, such
cases have been rare, because during the 1970s it was clearly Vatican
policy to replace conservative bishops with liberal ones. Hence the
only solidly conservative dioceses are those whose ordinaries
happened to be in office from prior to 1970 well into the 1980s.
In the largest number of dioceses, therefore, conservative bishops
have followed bishops who either were themselves liberal or were
tolerant of liberalism, and in perhaps a majority of those cases the
conservative bishop has not seriously disturbed the situation which
he inherited.
The perils of moving cautiously
The dynamics of this process are easy to comprehend. Whatever his
intentions, a new bishop quickly discovers how tightly the liberals
control the diocesan machinery-the school office, the priests'
senate, the office of social justice, and other bureaus-and he
realizes that dislodging such people will be no easy task and will be
unpleasant.
He thus resolves to proceed slowly, until he has a firm understanding
of the situation, comes to know his personnel, and devises an
effective strategy. Very quickly he is pressed by conservatives,
mainly lay people, about abuses, but he declines even to admit that
these are abuses, pending the time when he can see a way of
correcting them.
But time rapidly passes. Soon the bishop realizes that, while he had
entered his see with some apprehension over the problems he would
face, his tenure has in fact been pleasant. At some point his
chancellor may say something like, "Candidly, bishop, there were
people here who expected the worst when you were appointed, but
everyone is pleasantly surprised. You have confounded your critics."
Given such reinforcement, it would be a determined bishop indeed who
would proceed to make the sweeping changes necessary for authentic
renewal. Human beings are capable of finding endless excuses for
putting off unpleasant tasks, and the bishop tells himself that he
must have the freedom to accomplish his mission in his own way and in
his own time.
Meanwhile, however, the conservatives in the diocese, who had perhaps
always been unrealistic in their expectations, are becoming
increasingly impatient. Of necessity, given his unwillingness to act,
the bishop finds himself defending things which he knows are
indefensible, and he also finds himself becoming annoyed at the
people who seem not to understand his problems and who demand that he
act instantly. At some point his chancellor may smile wryly and say,
"Now, bishop, you can see what we have had to put up with from those
people all these years."
Step by step, through a process
which is largely unconscious until almost completed, the bishop is
recruited as an ally by the very people whose practices he was
supposed to correct. Unless he is cynical, he cannot continue to
defend things which he knows are wrong, hence he eventually comes to
believe that alleged abuses are not abuses at all and that the
problems in the diocese stem from those who "do not accept the
reforms of Vatican II." To the degree that the bishop has a lingering
bad conscience over his failure to act where action is needed, his
discomfort is projected onto his conservative critics.
The strategy of waiting a decent interval before acting has things to
recommend it. But it is worth noting that it runs counter to
established management practice in government and industry, where
each new chief executive has his "hundred days" or his "honeymoon,"
during which he makes sweeping changes of personnel in order to
install people who accept his own agenda. An administrator who
continues in office people suspected to be out of sympathy with his
objectives is rarely offered gratitude. Instead his inaction is
correctly sensed as weakness, and his subordinates begin acting
accordingly.
The liberal bishops appointed during the 1970s invariably followed
that practice, replacing conservatives in the chancery office with
their own people. But many conservative bishops have not seen fit to
do the reverse, presumably in the belief that administrative
continuity insures the peace of the diocese. Thus old policies
continue almost unaltered under the new regime. (In one diocese a
conservative bishop continued in office his predecessor's vicar
general, and a local priest observes: "Everyone knows it is far more
dangerous to offend the vicar general than to offend the bishop.")
Clericalism on the rise
None of this is understandable without recognizing a fact which has
been systematically obscured for three decades-the post-conciliar
Church is more clerical than it used to be, not less.
In many ways the clericalism of the pre-conciliar Church was tempered
by the very legalism which liberals denounce -priests and bishops had
authority which was carefully circumscribed by Canon Law, and they
were not free, for the most part, to act capriciously. In the "open,"
anti-legalistic Church, however, clergy are often free to impose
their own theologies, their own liturgies, their own moralities,
their own ecclesiologies, on defenseless parishes, since there is no
effective way by which the authenticity of renewal can be judged, nor
any effective way by which priests can be made to conform to Church
law. The Church is also more clerical now because a large number of
lay people have in effect been inducted into the ranks of the clergy,
as diocesan or parish bureaucrats.
One of the great mistakes made even by the "old" bishops of the
conciliar period was to accept the notion of professionalism almost
without quibble. Thus bishops can usually be intimidated into silence
by the reminder that they lack the professional credentials to judge
the work of educators, canonists, or liturgists. These professionals
soon after the Council organized themselves into national bodies
which in effect control the terms of the discussion. In many dioceses
there is an endless parade of speeches and workshops in which
certified "experts" are imported to speak to local people. Usually
the bishop, even if conservative, makes at least a token appearance
at such gatherings and gives them his formal blessing. Seldom does he
attempt to stop them or even seriously to moderate them.
When they acknowledge the obvious evidence that Catholics reject
official teachings on a large scale, bishops usually point to the
secular culture as the cause (for the decline of religious vocations,
for example). And rarely do they seem to recognize that official
Church organs-the schools, the Catholic press, officially sponsored
conferences, even the pulpit-have themselves been the most effective
channels for disseminating dissent. Since the Council, Catholics
have, in a sense, been reprogrammed into a new kind of faith, and
against this new program formal reiterations of official teachings
make little headway.
Bishops judge that their disciplinary powers cannot be exercised
sweepingly, and there are agencies over which they have little
control, such as Catholic colleges. But, short of actually imposing
sanctions on dissenters, bishops can at least publicly contradict
them, which they also seldom do. Thus even if the local Catholic
college is a center of organized dissent, the bishop almost always
attends its major public ceremonies, where he invariably expresses
gratitude that the diocese enjoys such a vibrant center of Catholic
learning. Catholics who wonder if what they are hearing from those
channels is authentic Catholic teaching will seldom be enlightened by
the bishop. To all appearances the bishop and the local dissenters
share the same faith.
By contrast there is no such thing as "lay opinion," since lay people
are divided dozens of different ways. Even if there were, there is no
established organ through which lay opinion could be expressed.
Thus when a bishop enters a diocese he already knows that he does not
have to pay attention to aggrieved lay people, while he does have to
defer to his priests' senate or to the religious communities in the
diocese. For all practical purposes, when it comes to the bishop's
formulation of administrative policies, such groups are the Church.
Put another way, authoritarian pre-conciliar bishops were free to
disregard clerical or religious sensibilities if they chose, while
modern bishops are not. In neither case does the laity have an
effective voice, nor does a priest or religious who is outside the
"mainstream" of local organized clericalism.
The unspoken compromise
What precisely bishops fear is not clear. Sometimes they probably
feel constrained by the scarcity of personnel; priests and religious
are in short supply, and the bishop cannot afford to offend the few
he has. But this is a self-perpetuating problem since, as we noted
above, conservative young men are sometimes discouraged or actually
prevented from becoming priests by the existing diocesan bureaucracy.
In some ways having a liberal diocese presided over by a bishop known
to be conservative is better for the liberal cause than having a
bishop of their own, since the conservative bishop gives a mantle of
respectability to liberal policies. Complaining laity can be even
more easily dismissed, on the grounds that "even our conservative
bishop does not make them happy." Often there is an unspoken
compromise the bishop says inspiringly orthodox things on public
occasions, even as diocesan policies move in quite different
directions.
Conservative lay people find it practically impossible to make a
credible stand for orthodoxy in a liberal diocese, precisely because
their opinions are defined as merely that-opinions. Although the Pope
and the bishop may both state orthodox teachings clearly, in
particular situations the bishop seldom allows himself to identify
lapses from that orthodoxy. Thus conservative lay people protesting
diocesan practices always come to be regarded as cranks, since the
bishop himself does not recognize the abuses they see.
Allies in the media
For all their talk of "pluralism," liberals understand very well that
a Church divided against itself cannot stand, which is why, wherever
they' re in power, they move relentlessly to push conservatives to
the margins of the community, a move with which conservative bishops
sometimes cooperate.
Indispensable to the success of the liberal strategy have been the
media. Before the Council was even over, liberals were using the
media's insatiable appetite for religious controversy, their
uniformly liberal viewpoint, their eagerness to publicize internal
church conflicts in such a way as to force bishops' hands. The
strategy has continued unabated over thirty years, to the point where
the threat of hostile media often need not even be uttered- everyone
is fully aware of it at all times.
Bishops notorious for their tough authoritarianism were, soon after
the Council, the unfamiliar experience of being pilloried in the
media. It was a lesson the next generation of bishops learned all too
well, and often bishops now seem motivated primarily out of fear of
unfavorable publicity if, for example, a key diocesan official is
replaced.
Conservative secular journalists have cynically invented the "Strange
New Respect Award" which the media bestow on conservative public
figures willing to betray their principles. Every bishop, whether or
not he hankers after the award, knows that it exists. (Thus in one
diocese a bishop with a national reputation for conservatism before
he was appointed now enjoys regular encomia from the local media,
even as he actively cooperates in portraying conservative Catholics
as unbalanced fanatics.)
There are elements in American culture, notably the expectation that
bishops and other "community leaders" will be affable men who "fit
in" with the local scene, which strongly reinforce the natural human
tendency to avoid hard decisions. Particular conditions in a given
diocese do the same. No doubt also the Holy See has sometimes been
disappointed at the inaction of men it has appointed. It is not
possible to understand the phenomenon of the inactive bishop,
however, without understanding that the Vatican also bears its share
of the responsibility.
The Vatican role
Italians can almost be said to have invented diplomacy. It was an art
which came to perfection in Italy during the Renaissance, none
practicing it more skillfully than the papacy itself. That venerable
tradition has continued into the present and, despite being sometimes
denounced by liberals as a form of centralized control, it often
serves liberal interests in the Church.
The art of diplomacy can be defined simply as the attempt to gain
one's objectives by skillful manipulation of one's opponents, through
strategies which those opponents often do not even comprehend until
they are accomplished. But if war is indeed the continuation of
diplomacy by other means, then the frequency of wars in human history
shows how often diplomacy fails.
Diplomacy tends to be especially ineffective in situations where
ideology rules, where contending parties have beliefs which they
consider matters of principle and about which they have passionate
convictions, where they see nothing less than the entire well-being
of the world at stake. That is the situation in the Church today,
involving contending groups who sharply disagree about morality,
doctrine, and the nature of the Church itself.
Over the centuries the Holy See has often had to resort to diplomacy
because it lacked military and political power. ("How many divisions
does the pope have?") Such diplomacy even had to be used in internal
Church matters, where secular governments exercised a strong
influence over the appointment of bishops, for example.
It is ironic, therefore, and discouraging, that in the modern
democratic era, when the Church enjoys the blessings of complete
independence from political control, such diplomacy still seems
necessary, now often concentrated on internal ecclesiastical matters.
It appears, for example, that the pope is not free simply to appoint
bishops as he sees fit, but that an elaborate process of
consultation, of checks and balances, takes place, after which
successful candidates are often people who have no highly placed
enemies.
The Holy See now appears to treat national episcopal conferences, and
the numerous religious orders, almost as foreign powers. Scrupulous
correctness is observed at all times, formal verbiage masks barely
hidden disagreements, and above all potential "incidents" are
avoided. Conservative Catholics cannot be encouraged to take strong
stands for orthodoxy at the local level, just as a government cannot
permit its citizens living in foreign countries to offend local laws.
(Thus liberals complained bitterly for ten years about the Holy See's
appearing to listen to complaints from conservative American
Catholics-whereupon the Holy See appears to have stopped listening to
those complaints.)
This endemic practice of diplomacy within the Church has yielded
small results. Abuses have been tolerated not for the sake of unity
but merely for the appearance of unity, which itself soon becomes an
over-riding concern.
Style over substance
As the Vatican began appointing apparently more conservative bishops
after 1980, it also appears to have developed a profile of an ideal
bishop which describes a majority of John Paul II's appointments
personally orthodox and pious but low-keyed, cautious, and
"non-confrontational." By inference the Vatican's strategy for
reforming dioceses is to appoint bishops who will act with such
caution and skill that change will come about in time-without people
even being fully aware of it. Entrenched liberal elements will not
resist, nor will the media interfere, because they do not even
understand what is happening.
But in an environment governed by ideology, this scenario really
cannot play itself out. Liberals are quick to notice even small
"backward" steps by their bishop, and they test him by relentlessly
pushing ahead with their agenda, so that he must either confront them
or surrender. Even if this were not the case, the strategy of
painless, uncontroversial, almost unnoticed reform is one which even
the most brilliant diplomat would have trouble effecting.
Thus conservative bishops who prove to be disappointments in their
dioceses often are so because they were chosen by the Holy See for
certain personal qualities which were bound to produce that result.
The ancient maxim, "suaviter in modo, fortiter in re"- "smoothly in
manner, firmly in substance"-easily degenerates into a preoccupation
with "modus" at the expense of "res."
Once appointed, a conservative bishop finds other obstacles besides
those in the diocese itself. Despite fifteen years of episcopal
appointments by John Paul II, the National Conference of Catholic
Bishops remained essentially a liberal body, in which determined
conservatives have difficulty merely staving off serious defeats,
much less winning substantial victories. Once again it requires a
particularly resolute kind of man to accept the status of a defined
minority within a body which seems to place great importance on the
spirit of belonging. If nothing else, a new bishop is likely to
discover quickly that he will be consistently on the losing side
unless he moderates his positions substantially.
The considerations which dictate such moderation are not
insignificant, which is why the Holy See itself appears to value them
highly. Bad publicity never helps the Church, especially when it
highlights bitter internal divisions. Ideally the bishop should
command the loyalty and respect of his whole diocese and not be a
focus of controversy. The spirit of collegiality dictates that the
NCCB not simply be disregarded.
But a disinterested secular student of Catholicism must conclude that
few religions in the history of the world have placed more emphasis
on doctrinal purity, liturgical correctness, and moral authenticity
than has the Catholic Church. As someone has pointed out, the
Anglican tradition has been that of tolerating almost endless degrees
of liturgical and doctrinal diversity, in order to avoid schism,
while the Catholic tradition has been almost the reverse.
If at almost all times in the history of the Church, a concern for
orthodoxy has been paramount, the contemporary Church has an eerie
feel about it precisely because of the absence of that concern. At
the diocesan and national levels it is possible to raise questions
about pastoral strategy, administrative competence, economic
feasibility, human sensitivity, awareness of injustice, and numerous
other things but never about orthodoxy. The very word, and its
opposite-"heresy"-is seldom uttered, and even conservative bishops
give the impression that they are embarrassed to be caught thinking
in those terms. (Thus heterodox individuals may sometimes be removed
from sensitive positions by giving reasons which everyone knows are
spurious, and this brings even greater recrimination.)
Often episcopal inaction in the face of obvious abuses is explained
by the principle of collegiality-much as the bishop might like to
act, he cannot do so unilaterally but only through consensus. But the
inadequacy of that explanation can be exposed by the application of
the Ku Klux Klan test-if a priests' senate, for example, were
controlled by overt racists, the bishop would act firmly and swiftly,
without regard for protocol. When he chooses not to do so, it is
because he does not believe that the issues (doctrinal purity,
liturgical correctness, loyalty to the Holy See) are sufficiently
important.
Heroic prudence?
The governing virtue in American episcopal circles at present appears
to be prudence, which is a legitimate virtue but, it should be noted,
a virtue which exists only in relation to other virtues. (As the poet
Roy Campbell jibed about neo-classicism in literature, "I see the bit
and bridle alright, but where's the bloody horse?") Prudence seeks to
achieve goals in a way which does not violate other virtues. It is
not simply a synonym for caution.
In the entire history of the Church probably not a single saint was
ever canonized for the conspicuous virtue of prudence, and many were
(from a worldly standpoint) quite imprudent. This applies to
canonized bishops, many of whom were martyrs and almost all of whom
were involved in severe conflicts of various kinds. (When St. Charles
Borromeo began to reform the diocese of Milan, the inmates of a
particular monastery actually hired an assassin who shot at the
bishop during Vespers.)
By the logic of prudence as it is now understood, the Church should
not have canonized John Fisher, the only bishop who withstood Henry
VIII, but instead Stephen Gardiner and Cuthbert Tunstall -men who,
although not devoid of principle, nonetheless managed to survive the
ecclesiastical changes of three reigns. (Although the fact is well
known that all but one English bishop conformed to Henry VIII in
1534, much less well known is the fact that in 1559 no English bishop
conformed to Elizabeth I, and all were deposed, including Tunstall-a
fact which demonstrates the feasibility of thoroughly reforming a
national hierarchy.)
Today's bishops may feel understandably discouraged at being asked to
correct conditions which have gone unchecked for three decades, and
whose roots are often traceable to precisely the generation of
allegedly strong prelates at the time of the Council. But this
illustrates a homey principle-every problem, from a moral flaw to a
leaky roof, merely gets worse if not addressed. Despite the claim
that he is a rigidly counter-reforming pope, these problems are more
intractable now than they were when John Paul II ascended the papal
throne, and they will only continue to worsen if not addressed.
Of one American bishop a newspaper has said that he provoked more
controversy during his first year in office than his predecessor did
in twenty. While no one ought to welcome controversy for its own
sake, the grim realities of the situation dictate that similar things
will be said about any bishop who sincerely tries to fulfill his
divine commission.
James Hitchcock, a founder of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars,
writes a syndicated column for American diocesan newspapers.
This article appeared in the May 1995 issue of "The Catholic World
Report," P.O. Box 6718, Syracuse, NY 13217-7912, 800-825-0061.
Published monthly except bimonthly August/September at $39.95 per
year.
