Immediately with the conclusion of Vatican II, the Church in America came under fierce attacks. These were not from outsiders: not from Communists, Jihadists, Free Masons, Anti-Papists, Nietzchean anarchists, Vikings, Visigoths or Vandals. It was from within our Church. The infection of progressivism spread viciously within the organism of the Church...and has been wrecking havoc since.
Notwithstanding the valid achievements of the Council, the American Church in 1965 was weakened by 20 years of prosperity, contentment, and global dominance. In large part, Catholicism in the USA had gone bourgeois, suburban, materialist, complacent, meritocratic, self-satisfied, consumerist, and secular. The spiritual immune system of Catholicism was gravely compromised. The infection spread rapidly and disastrously.
Let's consider twelve specific events or markers in this development.
1. Triumph of the Therapeutic.
Emblematic is Eugene Kennedy, Maryknoll priest-psychologist who taught in Maryknoll College Seminary when I studied there 1965-9. An enormously gifted, charming man, he was a Catholic rock star at the time and elicited the esteem of most of the seminarians. At that time, of my relatively liberal youth, I was alone in my visceral hatred for his agenda. He left the priesthood, married, influenced very many priests/nuns, and went on to become antagonist of the John Paul and his theology of the body. He himself was an ardent protege of the humanistic psychology of Carl Rogers.
He is a significant, singular player in the catastrophic social dynamic identified in Triumph of the Therapeutic by Philip Rieff already in 1966. Some years later, Christopher Lasch would develop this line of thought further in The Narcissistic Personality of our Time. In the snap of a finger, as if by magic, in 1965, the centuries old ethos of discipline, sacrifice, and communal commitment was replaced by one of self-indulgence and personal fulfillment. In the late 1960s, the teachings of Rogers and Maslow were introduced into religious communities to "renew them." Most infamously, the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in California were entirely destroyed by this new ethos of self-fulfillment. Broadly across religious communities and Catholic higher education, psychological models (values clarification, Jungian psychotherapy, etc.) replace traditional practices of prayer, obedience and discipline.
2. Kennedy Family Hyannis Port Theological Conference on Legalized Abortion 1964.
Anticipating the imminent culture war, the Kennedy family convened a conference of progressive Catholic moral theologians (Curran, McCormick, Drinan, etc.) who used (I would say "misused") the thought of John Courtney Murray to allow a Catholic politician to be "personally opposed" but still support legal abortion. Courtney had famously distinguished the moral from the legal: it was possible that a moral evil be legally permitted for the common good. For example, at this very time he wrote that Catholic, while opposed personally to artificial contraception, might well vote to decriminalize it for the overall common good. He died in 1967 without clearly judging legalization of abortion. The Kennedy Conference (which was followed later by related meetings) decisively opened the door for Catholic Democrats to be pro-legal-abortion. This was later strengthened by Mario Cuomo in his famous Notre Dame speech and gives us Pelosi, Biden, and all the Kennedys and Cuomo's.
3. Notre Dame Conferences on Population and Contraception (Summers 1963-7).
In the "population panic" of the time, Fr. Ted Hesburg convened a series of conferences to confront the expected crisis by developing a new Catholic approach to contraception. These were largely funded by the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, WASP organizations which were threatened by the high birthrates of competing ethnicities: especially black Americans and Roman Catholics. This occurred also during the explosion of the Sexual Revolution with its urgent compulsion to detach sex from procreation. Participants here later advocated for change in the Papal Commission which approved of contraception but was overruled by Pope Paul VI in his historic Humanae Vitae. These conferences were influential in the rising tide in favor of contraception. It is ironic that Hesburg was working so closely with these WASP, elite interests even as he convoked the Land of Lakes Conference.
4. Land of Lakes Conference 1967
Fr. Ted Hesburg of Notre Dame gathered leaders of the most prestigious Catholic universities, notably Jesuit ones, and together they declared their academic independence from the Church hierarchy and the Catholic faith. They embraced an ideal of academic freedom, of detachment from the Church, even as they were fervently emulating Ivy League and prestigious secular schools. Fr. Ted McCarrick was there representing Catholic University of Puerto Rico. From this point, the Catholic Academy was divorced from the Church and entangled in a depraved union with cultural progressivism.
5. Fr. Charles Curran and the Rejection of Humanae Vitae 1968
Immediately upon the release of Humanae Vitae, Curran led 87 theologians in public rejection of the teaching. He received the support of his bishop, of Archbishop Bernadine, and much of the American Church. Cardinal O'Boyle of Washington and Chancellor of Catholic University called for his dismissal. The Board eventually deferred to a faculty decision to protect his academic freedom. O'Boyle did discipline 39 local diocesan priests who had signed the letter, withdrawing permission to preach, teach or hear confessions. The Vatican overruled this, reinstating the priests without penalty. This is known as "The Truce of 1968." The Vatican aligned with the faculty against the Cardinal, allowing a de facto, openly divided Church on this issue, avoiding consequences of a clear judgment. In 1984, Cardinal Ratzinger under John Paul revoked Currans certification to teach in a pontifical institution so he left Catholic University for Southern Methodist University in Dallas. This truce or compromise of 1968 decisively gave form to the subsequent Church as divided on contraception.
6. Fr. Robert Drinan S.J. Congressman 1971-81
As Jesuit-Priest-Politician Drinan fiercely defended legal abortion. He opposed Clinton's veto of a bill to outlaw partial birth abortion. He was widely lionized in the Jesuit order, under the leadership of Fr. Arrupe, and maintained a high status career in academia after he retired from politics in deference to the order of John Paul that no priests hold political office. He strengthened the Kennedy legacy that allowed Catholic to support legal abortion.
7. Cardinal Bernadine's "Seamless Garment Doctrine" 1984
In his time as Cardinal in Chicago (1982-96) Bernadine was surely the most influential American prelate. For example, he got a consensus of American bishops to affirm a statement on nuclear weapons that, paradoxically (self-contradictorily?) allowed for nuclear deterrence but never actual nuclear usage. A man of extraordinary talent, he was irenic to a fault, seeking above all peace in the Church. With his famous, influential "seamless garment doctrine," and book of that title in 1984, he articulated a consistent Catholic social ethic in defense of all human life and against all threats including abortion but also capital punishment, poverty, war, hunger and so forth. In the abstract, of course, this is precisely the heart of Catholic social ethics. It's defining error was a failure to contrast actions that are inherently evil (abortion, euthanasia, IVF, adultery, deliberate killing of innocents) from the broad range of problems that admit of a variety of prudential responses (housing, war, tax policy, immigration, poverty). The actual effect of this ethic in the American Church was to empower progressives to renounce abortion in principle, but then assert the liberal position on prudential issues to be in fact the Catholic view. This allowed them to vote consistently prochoice Democrat with seamless Catholic self-confidence and condemn those with different judgments as bad Catholics. His legacy has been continued by McCarrick, Cupich, Tobin, Gregory, McElroy and in softer fashion by Pope Leo.
8. Ratzinger Letter and McCarrick Duplicity 2004
Vatican's Cardinal Ratzinger wrote a private letter to McCarrick and Bishop Gregory, for the bishops, clearly directing that Catholic politicians who persist in campaigning for abortion, after warning, are not to be admitted to communion. McCarrick did not read the letter but misconstrued it to advocate a softer, ad hoc approach. This convinced the bishops to avoid the clear policy of Ratzinger and leave it to the pastoral discretion of the local bishop. This again enhanced the ambiguity and confusion over Catholic acceptance of abortion.
9. Feminist Theologians
Starting in the 1970s, the advocacy for female priests and the meta-narrative of patriarchy ...Daly, Fiorenza, Reuther, Chittister, Carr...reconfigured the Catholic Church as sexist, misogynist, and intrinsically unjust. This newfound contempt for the institutional Church became pervasive across academia and especially in women's religious orders.
10. Priest Sex Scandal
By far the greatest assault upon the Church in our time, this was actually two distinct but related scandals: first, the abuse of youth by priests; and second, the failure of bishops to respond to it. Both dimensions of the scandal were "perfect storms" of converging dynamics: the context of the sexual revolution, large number of "gay" priests, clerical protectiveness of the reputation of the Church, fear of litigation, a false confidence in the therapeutic, loosening of our traditional Catholic sexual ethos, and other. With over 80% of victims being adolescent males, it was overwhelmingly a homosexual crisis, and not primarily one of pedophilia which is abuse of prepubescent children.
11. Gay Militance and Fr. Jim Martin S.J.
Fr. Martin is easily the most articulate, appealing and influential voice within the Church for the normalization of homosexuality. Recent polls show that 70% of American Catholics accept this practice as normal. In this view, of course, our traditional Catholic ethos of sexuality is reconfigured as homophobic, hateful and unjust. Pope Francis with his infamous "blessing of same sex unions" has effectively endorsed this view. Pope Leo promises to continue this. After an apparently happy meeting with Fr. Martin, he met with Courage, a group that advocates classical chastity. He is trying to reconcile the irreconcilable.
12. Franciscan Fr. Richard Rohr
Fr. Rohr is arguably the singular most popular, influential voice in current American Catholic spirituality. He is today what Eugene Kennedy was in the 1960-70s. He offers the appealing "spiritual, not so religious" option in the Catholic environment. Again, he is immensely talented, intelligent and charming. He blends the therapeutic, 12-step practice, and Catholic traditions with a winsome, softly-mystical gentleness. He wants to forget about sin, and talk about our wounds. He dislikes boundaries. You will not find here fascination with the passion and death or a cult of sacrifice. This is an irresistible offering for the bourgeois American Church. Under his grandfatherly affection and charm, however, he harbors a resentment of the actual, institutional Church. He sees the Church institution as essentially legalistic, dogmatic, controlling, infantizing and unloving. His is a sophisticated, appealing anti-papalism. It harshly judges the sacramental, hierarchical, magisterial Church (whose representatives are, we know so well, sinners like us) as corrupted and offers a more "enlightened," inclusive, compassionate Catholicism. It is Catholicism soft, light, accommodating, and superior to the Church of two millennia.
Conclusion
We have here a "rogue's gallery" of those who have done much damage to the Church of our time: Eugene Kennedy, the Kennedy family and friends, Charles Curran, Hesburgh, Drinan, McCarrick, Bernadine, Martin, Rohr, and a legion of others.
Note Well: The above is not to impugn the character of these actors. They are first of all extraordinarily intelligent, talented, charming and influential. Many are known for their moral caliber and personal holiness. Each has made immense contributions to the Church. It is, of course, precisely these outstanding qualities and contributions that have given their judgments such consequences.
Each has done direct, significant damage, in all self-righteousness, to Mysteries sacred to our faith: the inviolate dignity of every innocent human, the spousal (unitive, procreative) meaning of sexuality, the masculine priesthood as representative of Christ as spouse of the Church, the sacredness of the institutional/magisterial/sacramental Church, the union of faith and reason. They in large part replaced traditional Catholic ethics and worship with a cult of the therapeutic, sterile sexuality, and leftist politics.
While we admire them and give thanks for the good they have done, we in truth see clearly the harm they have inflicted on the Church of our time.
No comments:
Post a Comment