Faith Filled Friday: The Church Scandals and St. Catherine of Siena, Part 1

If you are Catholic and follow Catholic Church news, you have probably heard about what seem now to be perennial church sex abuse scandals.  Many of these do go back 70 years and it seems the Church has put in place a good system (see here) that has nearly eliminated child abuse that was the issue.  You can’t eliminate any abuse entirely but within the Catholic Church I’m confident it’s down to nil.  The recent investigations have dug up cases prior to the reforms and that’s good. 

But also recently in the news are the allegations of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who may not only have abused children (though how many are not mentioned) but more shocking he abused seminarians and other priests and within his circle may have been a group of homosexual priests who had affairs.  You can read about that here if you have not read on it before.    

Though I’m reluctant to talk politics and news at my Catholic Thought book club, I did open a thread to respectfully discuss what has been in the news.  I posted several comments on the issue, and I want to repost them here.

What does this have to do with St. Catherine of Siena?  A number of columnists who comment on the catholic scene have cited St. Catherine as to how we lay Catholics should address this.  I will get to what those columnists say after I post my comments.  Perhaps a more important question would be, why is this posted under the “Faith Filled Friday” category?  Don’t the scandals undermine faith?  Not if you look to St. Catherine.  Her response will increase your faith.

First here are my comments. 

Comment 1:

In my usual Dominican way (ala St. Thomas Aquinas ala Aristotle) my mind has categorized the situation into three issues, though they are interrelated.

a) The priest abuse of minors

b) The bishop's administrative cover up of it

c) The gay network within the church that John refers to as "the lavender mafia."

Kerstin uses the word "betrayal." I do not feel betrayed by (a). The statistics have shown that the clerical abuse is no different than public school boards or any institution that deals with minors. Human nature fails and while one expects better of priests I can understand their fallen nature.

I am a little more dismayed by (b) but again I don't feel betrayed. I work in a bureaucratic world and I see administrations try to balance things/problems and many times they take the wrong course of action. If they truly believed the abusers would repent and reform, I can understand trying to soften the situation. Not good policy and unjust to the persons abused, but it's not necessarily betrayal.

Now as to (c) I have to say I do feel betrayed. I don't care if priests have same sex attraction and internally are gay. It's that they consciously acted on sinful behavior with other consenting adults and in many cases other priests. Check this excerpt that came out of the Pennsylvania report:

"One priest worked in close proximity to the archbishop in the archdiocesan chancery for a number of years. “There were the ‘nephews,’ for sure,” he said. “He had a type: tall, slim, intelligent – but no smokers.” …

While the Archdiocese of Newark declined to confirm the name of the accused priest remaining in active ministry, several priests in the archdiocese identified him as Fr. James Weiner, and told CNA that he has a reputation among the clergy, dating back to his time in the seminary, for active homosexuality.

In recent years, several priests said, Weiner is known for hosting cocktail parties in his rectory, which other homosexual priests of the archdiocese are known to attend.

One recalled that he attended a cocktail party, thinking he had been invited to a simple priests’ dinner. “I was led into the room to a chorus of wolf-whistles,” he said. “It was clear right away I was ‘on display.’”

That excerpt came from this article, which links to the report:

That is appalling! Appalling. That is a direct disregard for casual, unmarried sex as sinful. And yes, there are appalling testimonies of heterosexual affairs that would also turn your stomach. But the majority of these behaviors happen to be homosexual. How could bishops cover that up? How could they cover up priests having homosexual experiences with each other?

What it comes down to it, they did not see this as sinful. And here is my main point: along with the current culture (post the sexual revolution), many in the church have abandoned the concept that improper sexuality (proper being between a husband and wife) is sinful. I have come to believe that many in the church are in agreement with the culture at large when it comes to sex, either homosexual acts or pre-marital sex as sinful. They may have to follow the doctrine, but deep down the sexual revolution has infiltrated the church.

I can understand fallen nature, I can understand bureaucratic mistakes. I cannot understand loss of faith on key Catholic dogma. That is a betrayal of their clerical duties and a violation of their sacrament of orders.

Comment 2:

I want to again emphasize that there are three separate issues as I've listed in a, b, and c. Sometimes when we talk we talk passed each other because one is referring to "a" while the other is referring to "b" or "c."

As to (a) the child abuse issue, I do think the reforms are working. The Pennsylvania report was in my opinion a bit of a low blow, or at least the media presented it as if it were new information. The allegations go back 70 years. Very few if any were recent allegations post the reforms. According to the Catholic League, "No entity in America today, private or public, has more institutionalized mechanisms in place to check for the sexual abuse of minors than the Catholic Church." Since the reforms "in the last two years for which we have data, only .005 percent of the clergy have had a credible accusation made against them (see the Annual Reports on this subject, July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017, and July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2016; they are posted on the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops)." .005% is actually microscopic. So while we need to be upset and if you wish, feel "betrayed," the issue has been resolved. We need to keep proving it over time. That's why the McCarrick allegations so hurt the Church. Just when it was proving to the world we had corrected our problem, a separate problem that gets blurred with the original problem crops up. From what I've seen the Church has paid over $3 billion dollars in reparation for the child abuse. We are doing penance for it, we have stopped the problem, and we are trying to live up to our faith and expectations.

Most gracious Blessed Mother, pray that we and the entire Church be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

You can read the Catholic League defense of the reforms here.

Comment 3

I addressed issue (a) above. Let me now address (b), the administrative cover up. No one of course approves it. What should be done? As Irene says, some of this had to do with an erroneous understanding of psychology. Again the modernist thinking is at fault here, the thinking from Freud that through psychoanalysis - what garbage that term is - people can be cured of deep rooted compulsions. So they sent these problem priests to be cured, traded them away to another parish/diocese to give them a new start, accepted their confessions and promise to do better. That's the more innocent version. As John points out, there's a more sinister version, that bishops sent these problems off to get them off their hands and pass the problem on to someone else. Maybe they said a prayer and hoped for the best, but it was avoidance of responsibilities. The truth is that both occurred and sometimes in between.

So what to do about it now? While justice would dictate some lesser penalty for those involved in the more innocent version, I think it's impossible to distinguish the innocent from the sinister. Plus I don't think the victims care and the public relations would be horrible. So any bishop that was involved in passing on a abusive priest or having knowledge of one and doing nothing needs to be stripped of his office. It's zero tolerance for misadministration. I don't care what the excuse, how long ago, or whatever. I will not accept anything less.

I have to say I have lost a lot of respect for the bishops these last few weeks. It does seem bishops are not promoted based on their holiness but on their administrative skills, which of course many have failed at anyway. I was not for another investigative body to root out past abuse. My thinking is it's over and we have corrected it, so let's move on. But now I see there is some purgative value to digging out past crimes, so perhaps (and I'm still somewhat reluctant) to put together an investigative body to bring to light the past. However, I do not believe this body should include any Church hierarchy. It should be composed of lay people and perhaps even fair minded non-Catholics.

Comment 4

I've given thoughts on (a) and (b), I might as well give my thoughts on (c), the gay network within the church. I have no idea how widespread this is, but given so many references over the years and given what has come out in the Cardinal McCarrick allegations, there is no question in my mind that it exists. Here's another article in case you didn't see it: "Honduran Seminarians Allege Widespread Homosexual Misconduct." http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/...

In Honduras? I've heard about it in several countries around the world. I believe that there are many gay priests in the church, but how many are active in gay sex? In doing searches around the internet I've found numbers from as little as 6% to as high as 50%.

Now 50% sounds ludicrous. The general population is only 2% gay, so 6%, the very lowest claimed, is three times the population rate. So whatever it is, I think the claim that the priesthood has a tendency to attract homosexual men is true. The reality is, I'm afraid even higher than six percent, perhaps a lot higher. And what to do about it?

(1) If a priest has same sex attraction and never acts upon it, I have no problem it. I am not looking for a witch hunt or some sort of filter to screen out homosexuals before they are ordained.

(2) Anyone who is caught in a homosexual affair or act - and I'm referring between consenting adults - should be reprimanded. If Catholic school teachers get fired for similar, then you have to punish priests as well. Now this goes for heterosexual acts as well. Priests caught in heterosexual acts must face the same punishment. Priests are supposed to be celibate. Period.

(3) Priests caught engaging in homosexual acts with other priests or seminarians both must be lacized. Period. That is such a heinous betrayal of the sacrament of orders that a nuclear option must be put in place.

(4) Bishops covering or ignoring non celibate priests must be stripped of their office. That is just a failure of their administrative responsibilities and their duty of teacher of the faith.

(5) The Catholic church needs put forth a campaign on what true sexuality is and what disordered sexuality is.

Well, I can pontificate all I want, very little of this is going to happen.

Comment 5

Frances wrote: "Why isn't it going to happen? Catholics will insist on action. If no changes are forthcoming, there will be two types of response to this kind of moral deterioration: stay in the Church but donate ..."

What I was referring to that isn't going to happen are Bishops resigning or demoted or the Church go on a campaign to fully explain what is ordered sexuality and what is disordered. They don't have the guts nor the will and frankly what I believe is that many in the Catholic Church, including Bishops and perhaps up to the Pope himself is that they no longer believe in disordered sexuality as a sin. I think they've bought into the modern notion that as long as it doesn't hurt anyone it isn't a sin. As long as sex is within consenting adults, it's not really a sin. But that's not the full definition of sin as preached by Christ and St. Paul. I truly believe that is the real crises within the church. Pope Pius X with his anti-modernism was the most intellectually sound Pope of the last several hundred years, even more so than JPII and BXVI. He really had the foresight of what modernism would do to the world. He was right and frankly Pope John XXIII's attempt to accommodate the Church with the modern world was wrong. Accommodation with the modern world has led to accommodation with sexual sin.