Last
week I posted my comments on a discussion we had at Catholic Thought book club at Goodreads
on the Church abuse scandals and I promised to write on how St. Catherine of
Siena, the patron saint of blog, has been mentioned in several articles should
be a model for we laity in forcing the issue on our Church leaders.
First
let me finish with my comments.
Comment
6
I've commented on
categories (a), (b), and (c) I think the last thing I have to comment on is the
recent Cardinal Vigano letter (it's 11 pages by the way, not 13) accusing Pope
Francis of knowing that Cardinal McCarrick was an abuser and active homosexual
and not only not following up with reprimands but undoing the restrictions Pope
Benedict XVI had put in place while McCarrick was under investigation.
Technically this falls
under criteria (b) of a bishop - this time the Bishop of Rome - knowing about
an abuse by an underling. If true, Pope Francis technically should be relieve
of his office, but as Pope there is no person that can relieve him of his
office or method of relieving him of his office. You cannot force a sitting
Pope to abdicate. That is what led to the schism of the 1340s.
I can't seem to find the
letter itself in any search. So I have not read it. All I get are articles that
reference the letter and quote from it. If anyone knows of a link to the actual
letter I would love to see it.
What to do? The
allegations seem credible to me. We know for a fact (I think it's a fact) that
Pope Francis eased the restrictions on McCarrick, so the dispute is whether the
Holy Father knew of McCarrick's abuse.
So there are two
possibilities, either he knew or he didn't know. If he didn't know, then no
harm done, it was an innocent mistake. If he knew, we have a problem. Pope
Francis has refused to answer the allegation. This leads us to suspect he did
know.
So here's my opinion on
it all. If he didn't know he should come out and say it and put it to rest. If
he knew, then I would just let sleeping dogs lie and move on and never address
the issue. Pope Francis was not overseeing McCarrick in that kind of detail. It
amounts to more administrative bungling. The harm to the Church of having a
Pope forced out and perhaps create a schism just when the church has been
weakened would be huge and would not justify the maladministration. Pope Francis
is 81 years old. He's not going to be there much longer, either from passing
away or reaching a point where he can't keep up with the job and feels it's
best to retire. Whatever political points some are trying to strike against
Pope Francis (and I'm a conservative) are wrongheaded and counter productive.
Comment
7
This is a fascinating
read. The author of this takes the Pennsylvania report, crunches the statics,
compares it with the historical dat, and draws some insightful conclusions.
"The Pennsylvania Report; By the Numbers":
That
last paragraph in my comment six, starting with “So here's my opinion on it
all,” took some criticism. It was
written at the end of August with the crises fresh in people’s minds, and it
looked for sure that Pope Francis would be compelled to do something or a
revolution would take place to force him out.
Well, Pope Francis has done nothing and a revolution hasn’t taken
place. It’s amazing how a leader can
change the subject and a raging issue can be mollified. Pope Francis will not be forced to resign
over this as some thought. However the
Church keeps puttering along, never seeming to resolve the issue.
With
that, I want to bring in St. Catherine of Siena.
During
the scandal, I came across three separate articles on why we need another St.
Catherine of Siena to come along to push the Pope and Bishops toward true
reform.
Over
at The Catholic World Report Mary Rezac wrote, “The Siena Option: What one saint did in the face of a troubled
Church.” Rezac gives the background to the situation
in Catherine’s day. It too was filled
with corruption and amazingly, homosexuality, and the height of the problem was
the Avignon relocation of the papacy.
Rezac quotes Catherine scholar, Fr. Thomas McDermont, O.P..
When St. Catherine talked
about the Church, she often referred to it as the Body of Christ, in the
tradition of St. Paul, McDermott noted.
“She says the face of the
Church is a beautiful face, but we’re pelting it with filth,” he said. “It has
a beautiful face, that’s the divine side of the Church, but we human beings are
pelting it; we’re disfiguring the body of Christ through our sins.”
Catherine,
who was essentially a mystic and a local doer of good deeds, somehow decided to
get involved on a global scale.
Catherine was drawn into
the Church politics of her time not because of a misplaced sense of ambition,
McDermott said, but because she loved the Church as she loved God.
“It wasn’t her motive to
be involved in the politics of the Church, but what was best for everyone and
for the church led her into politics,” he said. “But it’s not like she was
interested in politics itself.”
As part of her attempts
at solving the problems of the Church, Catherine joined the call of many other
Catholics of the time for the Pope to return to Rome.
After some
correspondence, Catherine set out on foot with her followers to go meet with
the pope in person.
“It was a remarkable
thing for Catherine who was a homebody to take off on foot for France with her
disciples, but she was prepared to do anything for the Church because the
Church was the Body of Christ,” McDermott said.
After scores of people
pleading with the pope to return to Rome between 1309 and 1377, St. Catherine
seemed to prove most persuasive.
During her visit,
Catherine referenced parts of the pope’s dream, about which he had told no one.
“It was astounding to him
(that she knew about the dream) and he took that as a clear sign from God that
he was speaking to him through this woman,” McDermott said. So after decades of
exile, within a few weeks of Catherine’s visit, the pope packed up his things
and headed back to Rome.
Rezac
then goes on to speculate how Catherine would handle today’s crises. She quotes Dr. Karen Scott, a historian of
Catholic studies at DePaul University.
“What would she say
today? I think that’s a dangerous question,” Scott said, “because we can’t say
how she would relate to the current issues and complex questions, except that
she would know very well what the moral stance is, that bishops and priests and
lay people should all follow.”
Catherine would set the
highest of standards for honesty and integrity and pastoral concern for the
laity, Scott said, as well as the highest standards “for avoiding schism and
being close to the papacy.”
“Beyond that I think she
would advise people to take the time to pray and discern and not have knee-jerk
reactions to things,” she added.
Another
article comes from Msgr Charles Pope’s blog, Community in Mission, titled ‘“This Is All I Can Do Now” – Applying
a Practice of St. Catherine of Siena to Our Current Crisis.’
Msrg
Pope gives a similar background to Catherine’s times, and concludes that with
this:
She loved the Church but
remained gravely concerned with the condition of the beloved Bride of Christ.
Particularly egregious to her was the condition of so many clergy, right on up
the ranks. Even the popes of her time, whom she acknowledged as the sweet
Vicars of Christ, and her beloved father could not escape her expressions of
grave disappointment and her calls to conversion.
The
monsignor quotes extensively from St. Catherine’s Letter 74, to [Pope] Gregory
XI at Avignon. Here are a couple of
excerpts of the excerpt. She starts off
as she starts a number of her letters:
In the name of Jesus
Christ crucified and of gentle Mary, mother of God’s Son.
Very loved and reverend
father in Christ Jesus,
I Caterina, servant and
slave of the servants of Jesus Christ and your poor wretched unworthy daughter,
am writing to you in his precious blood. I long to see you the sort of true
gentle shepherd who takes an example from the shepherd Christ, whose place you
hold. He laid down his life for his little sheep in spite of our ingratitude …
And
she gets to the heart of the issue.
You know that the devil
is not cast out by the devil, but by virtue. [Mt. 12, 26-27] … You hold the
keys, and to whomever you open it is opened, and to whomever you close it is
closed. This is what the good gentle Jesus said to Peter …
So take a lesson from the
true Father and Shepherd. For you see that now is the time to give your life
for the little sheep who have left the flock. You must seek and win them back
by using patience and war—by war I mean by raising the standard of the sweet
blazing cross and setting out against the unbelievers. So, you must sleep no
longer, but wake up and raise that standard courageously. I am confident that
by God’s measureless goodness you will win back the unbelievers and [at the
same time] correct the wrongdoing of Christians, because everyone will come
running to the fragrance of the cross …
And
then comes to her passionate exhortation.
Ah, my dear Babbo
(Father), see that you attend to these things! Look for good virtuous men and
put them in charge of the little sheep. …
Up, father! Put into
effect the resolution you have made concerning your return and this crusade.
You can see that the unbelievers are challenging you to this by coming as close
as they can to take what is yours. Up, to give your life for Christ! Isn’t our
body the only thing we have? Why not give your life a thousand times, if
necessary, for God’s honor and the salvation of his creatures? That is what he
did, and you, his vicar, ought to be carrying on his work. It is to be expected
that as long as you are his vicar you will follow your Lord’s ways and example.
And
finally Msgr Pope calls for us lay to follow her example:
Such words still ring
true today! We must exhort Pope Francis to hear our cries for investigation and
reform. We must speak in love and with respect, but we must also speak
insistently and with clarity.
Finally
the third article is by Kathryn Jean Lopez writing in Angelus News, titled, “What St. Catherine of Siena would say to
today’s bishops.”
Lopez
focuses mostly on Catherine’s letters where she finds exhortations to the
religious of her day to reform the Church.
If you’ve ever dipped
into the letters of St. Catherine of Siena, you know she is forever encouraging
holiness.
She wants people inflamed
with “blazing charity” and bathing “in the blood of Christ crucified.” She
wants to see people be who God made them to be and she wants his Church seeking
to be worthy of her identity as the bride of Christ.
So, she would urge
sisters and cardinals and the pope and lay people alike to “keep living in
God’s holy and tender love” and go on in some detail about how that might look
in their specific lives.
Her letters were written
during a time when the Church was in serious trouble. While the Black Death
ravaged Europe, the papacy had relocated to Avignon, France, and several of the
republics and principalities of Italy, including the Papal States, were at war
with one another. Many clergy had fallen into corruption.
Lopez
quotes from a letter to Pope Urban VI, who’s election after Pope Gregory XI
caused a schism in the church.
“You cannot with a single
stroke wipe out all of the sins people in general are committing within the
Christian religion, especially within the clerical order, over whom you should
be even more watchful. But you certainly can and are obligated to do it, and if
you don’t, you would have it on your conscience. At least do what you can. You
must cleanse the Church’s womb — that is, see to it that those who surround you
closely are wiped clean of filth, and put people there who are attentive to
God’s honor and your welfare and the good of holy Church. …”
And she warns:
“Do you know what will
happen to you if you don’t set things right by doing what you can? God wants
you to reform his bride completely; he doesn’t want her to be leprous any
longer. If your holiness does not do all you can about this — because God has
appointed you and given you such dignity for no other purposes — God will do it
himself by using all sorts of troubles.”
And
she quotes from a 1376 letter to an apparently wayward priest.
“Where is the purity of
the ministers of God’s Son? Reflect that just as you demand that the chalice
you carry to the altar be clean and would reject it if it were dirty, so God,
supreme eternal Truth, demands that your soul be pure and clean, without stain
of deadly sin, especially the sin of impurity. ... These days we are seeing the
exact opposite of the purity God requires! Not only are they not God’s temples
carrying the fire of God’s word, but they have become stalls, lodging for pigs
and other animals! They carry within the house of their souls the fire of
anger, hatred, animosity, and ill will. For they harbor pigs, a filthiness that
is incessantly rolling about within them like a pig in the mud. ... How
bewildering to see Christ’s anointed ones giving themselves over to such
wretchedness and immorality!”
Wow,
I can see St. Catherine in writing that in fury. And she was not shy about speaking similarly
to a Cardinal.
“Shame, shame, on our
human pride, our self-complacency, our self-centeredness, when we see how good
God has been to us, how many gifts and graces he has given us — and not because
he has to but because he wants to! Obtuse as we are, we seem not to see or feel
this love so hot that, if we were made of stone, it would long ago have burst us
open! ... I can see no other reason except that the eye of our understanding is
not on the tree of the cross. For there is revealed such warm love, such gently
persuasive teaching filled with life-giving fruits, such generosity that he has
torn open his very body, has shed his life’s blood, and with that blood has
baptized and bathed us. We can and should make use of that baptism every day
with continual remembrance and great love.”
And
Lopez concludes her survey of Catherine’s letters by returning to thecurrent
scandal.
Reading Catherine’s
letters we are reminded we are in this journey — which is about eternity —
together.
Reading testimony and
accusations against a former cardinal archbishop of one of the most prominent
episcopal sees in the United States — one of which involves the first child he
ever baptized as a priest — we are all called to urgent duty to prayer and
service, including encouraging and insisting on Christ in our daily lives and
Church leadership. Anything short of it is not of God.
I’ve
only given you the gist of these articles.
Go read them in their entirety. They
show what a pillar of strength St. Catherine of Siena was, and how she would be
appalled at today’s crises, and how she is a model for us to force our Church
leaders to the right direction.
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