The timing, it seems, could not have been worse. In last month’s issue I offered my considered and heartfelt defense of Father Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, against unfounded charges of sexual abuse. I meant and I mean every word of what I said there. Just after the issue had gone to press, however, scandals involving sexual abuse by priests in Boston exploded, creating a level of public outrage and suspicion that may be unparalleled in recent history. The climate is not conducive to calm or careful thought about priests and sexual molestation. Outrage and suspicion readily lead to excess, but, with respect to developments in Boston, it is not easy to say how much outrage and suspicion is too much.
Professor Philip Jenkins of Penn State University has written extensively on sexual abuse by priests, also in these pages (see “The Uses of Clerical Scandal,” February 1996). He is an acute student of the ways in which the media, lawyers, and insurance companies-along with angry Catholics, both liberal and conservative-are practiced at exploiting scandal in the service of their several interests. Scholars point out that the incidence of abusing children or minors is no greater, and may be less, among priests than among Protestant clergy, teachers, social workers, and similar professions. But, it is noted, Catholic clergy are more attractive targets for lawsuits because the entire diocese or archdiocese can be sued. That is a legal liability of the Church’s hierarchical structure. Moreover, the expressions of outrage by many in the media are attended by an ulterior agenda, namely, discrediting the Catholic teaching on human sexuality, about which they are genuinely outraged. These and other considerations can and should be taken into account, but the tragic fact remains that great wrongs have been done, and there is no avoiding the conclusion that, in Boston and elsewhere, some bishops bear a heavy burden of responsibility.
Children have been hurt, solemn vows have been betrayed, and a false sense of compassion-joined to a protective clericalism-has apparently permitted some priests to do terrible things again and again. For some Catholics, this is a time that will test their faith in Christ and his Church, as distinct from their faith in the holiness, or even competence, of some of the Church’s leaders. Catholics used to be good at that sort of thing, pointing to figures such as Alexander VI (Pope from 1492 to 1503) whose thorough corruption-he gained the papacy by bribery and used it to benefit his illegitimate children-was thought to prove that the truth of the Church and the validity of her sacraments were not dependent upon the holiness of her leaders. In the fourth century, the Donatist heretics took the opposite position, and Catholics have been exuberant in their condemnation of Donatism. We all have a steep stake in the rightness of that condemnation. At the same time, the orthodoxy of anti-Donatism is not to be confused with moral indifference. All three synoptic gospels report the warning of Jesus about those who corrupt the innocence of children. “It would be better for him if a millstone were tied around his neck and he were cast into the depths of the sea.”
Conformed to the Culture
The current scandals constitute a painful moment of truth for bishops, heads of religious orders, and others responsible for the moral integrity of the Church’s ministry. More often than not, the priests allegedly involved in these scandals are now in their sixties and seventies or even older. They received their formation and were ordained in the 1960s and 1970s when, in addition to false compassion and clerical protectiveness, there was in sectors of the Church a wink-and-a-nudge attitude toward what were viewed as sexual peccadilloes. Anyone who was around during those years, and had eyes to see, knows that was the case. Ecumenically, and especially among clergy involved in social activism, both Protestant and Catholic, there was frequent confusion and laxity with respect to sexual morality-heterosexual, homosexual, and unspecified. That is deplorable but should not surprise. In this way, too, the institutions of religion are too often conformed to the culture of which they are part.
Among Catholics, the situation is generally very different with today’s seminarians and younger priests. It is not unusual to encounter priests who claim they were ordained in, say, the 1970s with the expectation that the celibacy requirement would be abandoned within a few years. Many of them have since left the active priesthood. For others, the “acceptance” of homosexuality and the rejection of every form of “homophobia” was clearly the approved attitude. Today, I think it fair to say that seminarians and younger priests know beyond doubt what is expected of them in terms of faithfulness to the Church’s teaching. But the penalty for past laxity and malfeasance is now coming due, and has been coming due since the reality of sexual abuse by priests was brought to public attention more than a decade ago. Of course the Church will survive, and more than survive, but I expect this storm is not going to pass any time soon. I expect we have not yet seen its full fury. I very much wish that I were more confident than I am that every bishop understands that there can now be no returning to business as usual. The word crisis is much overused, but this is a crisis.
Despite all the talk about the pervasive “nonjudgmentalism” in our culture, about some things judgments are much harsher today. In anything having to do with children, for instance, what some viewed as embarrassing misbehavior in the 1970s was, by the 1990s, viewed as a heinous crime. Psychological theory, law, and public attitudes have all changed dramatically. The very subject of homosexuality was, not so very long ago, pretty much in the closet. Like most people, bishops did not know, or did not want to know, about rude things that men did together, and sometimes did with little boys. Today’s scandals notwithstanding, there was something to be said for such reticence and naiveté, even if the naiveté was sometimes feigned. When it comes to priestly adherence to the Church’s teaching, zero tolerance must now be the order of the day. The enforcement of zero tolerance, in this connection and others, can lead to ridiculous extremes and can inhibit natural and healthy interactions, especially in working with young people, but that, too, is probably part of the price to be paid.
There was a similar sense of crisis following the first public revelations of sexual abuse by priests in the mid-eighties, but then the issue receded after CNN notoriously sensationalized charges against the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago in 1993 and the charges turned out to be false. That incident helped remind people that priests, too, are to be deemed innocent until proven guilty. In the current climate of outrage, we need to be reminded of that truth again. Unbridled outrage can too easily become hysteria. One recalls that during the same period, there was a blizzard of criminal charges and lawsuits over alleged abuses, including satanic rituals and other grotesqueries, perpetrated by people working in day care centers. Whole communities around the country were caught up in a frenzy of mutual recriminations, and many people went to jail, until the heroic and almost single-handed work of Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal exposed the madness for what it was.
Other Casualties
Among the potential casualties of the present scandal is severe damage to what has historically been called the “liberty of the Church” to govern her own affairs. Catholics have a distinct tradition of canon law that goes back to the Council of Nicaea in 325 and took lasting form with Gratian’s Decretum in the twelfth century. This history of ecclesiastical liberty is basic to the various exemptions and immunities in current law and practice that protect religious freedom not just for Catholics but for everyone. The right of religious institutions to govern themselves may be gravely eroded under pressure from lawyers, insurance companies, and the state. The ruthlessness of many in the legal profession should not be underestimated. As Peter Steinfels writes in the New York Times, it has now been “discovered that lawyers for plaintiffs could play hardball, too, inflating charges and using the news media to play on public fears and prejudices in hopes of embarrassing the Church into settlements.” With respect to self-governance, “confidentiality” is now commonly translated as “secrecy” and “discretion” as “evasion.” The cultural revolution popularized the slogan that the personal is the political. So also, it now seems, the religious is the political, and the legal. All of life is to be lived on the front pages or in the courtroom, or at least under the threat of the front pages and the courtroom.
News reports claiming that a certain number of priests have been charged with abuse and that the claims were settled out of court must not be interpreted to mean that the priests are guilty. Some of them insisted and insist that they are innocent, but bishops were advised by lawyers and insurance companies that a legal defense against the charges would cost much more than settlement out of court, and could well end up in a guilty verdict entailing even greater financial liability. In some cases, settlements were agreed to with the guarantee that they would remain forever confidential. In Boston, that guarantee has now been broken by court order. This can be seen as an ominous encroachment by the state on the Church’s right to self-governance. It can also be argued that the Church forfeited that right by failing to govern itself, and by surrendering episcopal governance to lawyers and insurance companies.
At least in some cases, there can be no question of the state’s legitimate interest. To cite the most notorious instance, that of the defrocked John Geoghan, he is already convicted of one criminal act, and is charged with many more. Sin is the business of the Church, and crime is the business of the state. There was once a time, centuries ago, when there were ecclesiastical courts to deal with clerics who committed sins that were also crimes. Although it had no standing in law, that way of handling things continued in a vestigial and informal way up to our day. If the cops suspected Father of criminal activity, it was reported to the bishop in the confidence that he would take care of it. No more.
Another potential casualty is an erosion of confidence in the possibility of repentance and amendment of life. Such confidence is dismissed as “naive” when it comes to priests being given another chance. But the belief in the power of the grace of God to transform lives is at the heart of Christian faith, and is overwhelmingly supported by Scripture and the experience of innumerable Christians. Belief in the gift of grace, however, is perfectly consistent with knowing that the gift is not always effectively received. When a priest repents after being caught dipping into the collection plate, there is forgiveness. There is even forgiveness, if he is repentant, after he has done it several times, but there are also secure measures for denying him access to the collection plate. Children and the integrity of sacred vows are immeasurably more valuable than the collection plate. It is now evident that it is much easier to keep violators away from collection plates than to keep them away from children.
The Meaning of Episcopos
Bernard Cardinal Law of Boston was already in 1993 thought to be taking a “hard line,” going through diocesan files to find any cases in which priests had believably been accused of molestation, and trying to make sure they were not assigned to positions involving regular work with minors. It now seems obvious that some priests eluded such scrutiny. In other cases assignments were made on the basis of medical and psychological counsel that at the time was thought to be perfectly sound. There were also experts who warned that simply getting rid of a priest would loose a sexual predator on the society. The beating that Cardinal Law has taken is, in large part, because of his inability to anticipate changes in medical and psychological thinking about sex abuse and sex abusers. At the same time, the medicalizing of gross wrongdoing too often lets ever-changing psychological theory trump commonsense judgments about sin and its consequences. In any event, Cardinal Law has confessed that, in all of this, he has made “tragic mistakes.” It is not possible to disagree. The word bishop is derived from the Greek episcopos, which means overseer, and there would seem to be no doubt that there have been grave deficiencies in the moral oversight of some of the clergy of Boston.
An outraged reader writes that, if I do not publicly call for Cardinal Law’s resignation, I am clearly “circling the ecclesiastical wagons in defense of the indefensible.” Nonsense. Saying who should be placed or replaced as a bishop is way above my pay grade. Many people, including many devout and orthodox Catholics, are calling for the Cardinal’s resignation. A wire service story is headed, “Boston Cardinal Vows to Stay, Despite Poll Numbers.” In the Catholic Church, bishops do not run for election. Nor are they to be viewed, or at least not chiefly, as CEOs of a corporation. In the Catholic Church, a bishop is a successor to the apostles appointed to his see by the Bishop of Rome. The bishop’s task is “to teach, to sanctify, and to govern.” Cardinal Law has been an outstanding teacher of the faith, and was instrumental, not incidentally, in producing the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Nobody can complain about his fidelity to his sacramental duties. In the third task, that of governing oversight, he has, as he has confessed, made tragic mistakes. His future as Archbishop of Boston is a matter between him, his conscience, and the Pope. He may conclude that the effectiveness of his ministry in Boston has been crippled beyond repair. I sincerely hope not. His resignation would be a severe loss to the Church in the United States. Nor dare we despair of God’s bringing great good out of these terrible events. There cannot help but be a deeper awareness of sin, its consequences, and our radical dependence upon grace-and such deepened awareness is a precondition for spiritual renewal.
There is an unseemly readiness on the part of many, including some Catholics, to believe the worst. What we know for sure is wretched enough. We would not know what we do know without the reporting of the Boston Globe. It is pointed out that the Globe, like its owner the New York Times, is no friend of the Church. The suggestion is not that we should kill the messenger, but that we should be keenly aware that the messenger has, on issue after issue, points to score against the teaching and claims of the Catholic Church; that the messenger is not a neutral party. All that is true, but it is of limited pertinence. It is also true that Catholics should not be apologetic about wanting to defend the Church. It is their duty. Doing that duty, however, is not incompatible with, but in fact requires, a recognition that, in this case as in so many others through history, leaders of the Church are guilty of giving ammunition to those who would attack her. Throughout his pontificate, John Paul II has been urging such a candid recognition, which is at the heart of our understanding that the Church is a community of sinners called to be saints.
That having been said, what has happened in Boston is inexcusable. Those responsible can be forgiven, but what they did cannot be excused. And again, Boston is not an isolated instance. Catholics and others who wish the Church well should be braced for the probability that the storm of scandal is by no means past. It will only be magnified if bishops and heads of religious orders have not learned from what happened in Boston. They must take the governance of the Church back from lawyers, insurance companies, spin doctors, blackmailers, and priests who are misguidedly protective of colleagues engaged in great evil. Meanwhile, these pages will continue to address this crisis-closely, candidly, and with a wrenching sadness tempered by, I pray, the virtues of faith, hope, and charity.
Cultural Masochism
The New Criterion and Mark Steyn are well matched. The former, edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball, delivers each month a sophisticated thumb in the eye to the several cultural elites who exuberantly undermine culture in the cause of anti-elitism. Steyn, who, in addition to his contributions to the New Criterion, appears regularly in the London Spectator, Canada’s National Post, and almost everywhere else worth reading, wields what may be the most humorously devastating pen in today’s culture wars. Kramer and Kimball invited him to be part of their series on “the survival of culture,” and in the course of his contribution on multicultural madnesses Mr. Steyn illustrates his argument by reference to a strange development that has been discussed from time to time in these pages. Steyn notes that shortly after September 11, a resolution came before Congress to observe “Native American Month.” The resolution contained the usual platitudes, and then this: “Native American governments developed the fundamental principles of freedom of speech and separation of powers in government, and these principles form the foundation of the United States Government today.” The reference is to the Iroquois Confederation, which, multiculturalists would have us believe, served as the blueprint for the U.S. Constitution. Mr. Steyn then makes the connection to the aforementioned strange development:
“Until relatively recently in Canada, many natives went to ‘residential schools’ run by the Christian churches on behalf of the federal government. They learned the same things children learned in other schools: there was a map on the wall showing a quarter of the globe colored red for the Queen-Empress’ realms; there was Shakespeare and Robert Louis Stevenson, and ‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume’; there was not a lot about the Iroquois Confederation. No doubt, as in any other school system, there were a number of randy teachers and sadistic brutes.
“In the Nineties, a few middle-aged alumni came forward to claim they’d been ‘abused’ while at the residential schools. How did the churches react? Here is Archbishop Michael Peers, the Anglican Primate of Canada, making his first public statement on the matter in 1993: ‘I am sorry, more sorry that I can say,’ he said, ‘that in our schools so many were abused physically, sexually, culturally, emotionally.’
“At that point, there was not one whit of evidence that there was any widespread, systemic physical or sexual abuse in the residential schools. There is still none. But His Grace had lapsed reflexively into a tone that will be all too familiar to anybody who’s attended an Anglican service anywhere outside of Africa or the Pacific isles in the last thirty years. In the Sixties, ‘Peter Simple,’ the great satirist whose work appears in the Daily Telegraph, invented a character called Dr. Spacely Trellis, the ‘go-ahead Bishop of Bevindon,’ whose every sermon on the social issues of the day reached a climax with the words, ‘We are all guilty!’ Riddled with self-doubt and an enthusiastic pioneer of the peculiar masochism that now afflicts the West, the Anglican Church has for years enjoyed the strange frisson of moral superiority that comes from blanket advertising of one’s own failures. It was surely only a matter of time before some litigious types took them at their own estimation.
“So, in the wake of Archbishop Peer’s sweeping declaration of his own guilt, more victims spoke up-dozens, hundreds, totaling eventually some fifteen thousand ‘survivors’ with some five thousand claims of damages. Though none has yet been tested in a court of law, by 1999 the costs of merely responding to the charges were threatening to bankrupt not just the several Protestant and Catholic dioceses but the entirety of both churches throughout Canada. Yet still the clergymen felt it would be bad form to defend themselves. A United Church of Canada employee, John Siebert, spent six years researching the history of residential schools and their impact on native culture and pointed out several helpful facts:
• Native children were not forced to abandon their own beliefs and become Christians; in 1871, before the first residential school ever opened, 96 percent of Canada’s Indians identified themselves as either Anglican or Catholic.
• When, over the years, the Federal Government and the churches wanted to close residential schools, it was the Indian bands (the tribal councils) that wanted to keep them open.
• . . . ah, but there’s no point even going on. The defendants weren’t looking for a defense, only a way to plea-bargain themselves into oblivion.
“So Mr. Seibert’s former employers at the UCC wrote to the papers, indignantly dissociating themselves from his position, facts notwithstanding: ‘It is the position of the United Church that the national residential schools system was an integral part of a national policy intended to assimilate First Nations people into the dominant Euro-Canadian culture,’ they said. ‘There are simply too many stories of the pain and cultural loss experienced by survivors of the residential schools system to conclude that this policy and its expression in the residential schools system represents anything but a profound failure in the history of the relationship between First Nations and non-First Nations peoples.’ With defendants like this, who needs plaintiffs? The Canadian Government, a codefendant, prepared for an optimistically priced out-of-court settlement of some $2 billion, split between fifteen thousand ‘survivors’ of ‘crimes’ never recognized by any court.
“Nonetheless, ‘pain and cultural loss’ are categories worth separating. Is it possible even the horniest vicars could sodomize fifteen thousand kids? Well, no. Ninety percent of the claims are for the vaguer offense of ‘cultural genocide,’ a crime we’ll be hearing a lot more of in the future. ‘Cultural genocide’ is similar to traditional forms of genocide-such as being herded into ovens or hacked to pieces with machetes-but with the happy benefit, from the plaintiff’s point of view, that you personally won’t have to be killed in order to have a case. All you need are blurry accusations, historical resentments, and a hefty dose of false-memory syndrome. Against craven clerics like the Anglican Church, that’s more than enough.”
“Craven clerics” may seem somewhat harsh. They understand themselves to be practicing the virtue of sensitivity, which, if it is a virtue worth practicing, is worth practicing to excess, even to excruciating excess. There must be a better word than craven.
After Israel
I remember many years ago being taken aback when at a dinner party a friend concluded her vigorous defense of Israeli policy with the seemingly off-hand remark, “But of course, in the long run, Israel won’t survive.” When I pressed her, she explained that the Arabs, with such overwhelming numbers, will never be reconciled to the existence of Israel on “their” land. In other words, demography is destiny. It is true that the twenty-two nations of the Arab League have a fast-growing population of 300 million, compared with less than six million in Israel, with more than a million of those being Arabs. The population imbalance will become ever more dramatic, and Israel is such a small sliver of territory in such a vast region. I am no longer surprised when I hear people, including some in positions of considerable influence, say, usually sotto voce, that Israel will not survive “in the long run.”
In this connection, I took note of a Commentary article by Norman Podhoretz-a more hawkish hawk on Israel than whom is not to be found-in which he argues that there is, in fact, no “peace process” between Israel and the Palestinians. Responding to Podhoretz, Ron Unz, the prominent California businessman and political activist, wrote: “As someone whose grandparents helped found Israel, I felt immense sadness after reading Norman Podhoretz’s powerful analysis. There appear to be only two possible outcomes to this conflict. Israel may eventually choose to . . . exterminate or expel Palestinians from Israel and the West Bank. Or the endless bloodshed will produce an accelerating exodus of Israeli Jews to America and other more peaceful and affluent places, eventually leading to a collapse of the Jewish state. Since I doubt that Israel will ever develop a consensus for killing or expelling millions of Palestinians, I expect the country’s trajectory to follow that of the Crusader kingdoms, surviving for seventy or eighty years after its establishment in 1948 and then collapsing under continual Muslim pressure and flagging ideological commitment.”
I was even more impressed by Podhoretz’s response to Unz: “I do not accept that Israel will wind up as another Crusader kingdom. . . . It would be foolish to dismiss this possibility altogether. . . . But I am still convinced that, if the Israelis can hold on tight against the forces [Unz] specifies, the day may yet come when the Arab world will call off the war it has been waging against the Jewish state since 1948.” He agrees that killing or expelling millions of Palestinians is simply not an option. He then goes on to say that much depends on whether the U.S., in its current war against terrorism, treats Israel as a partner rather than an obstacle to its purposes in the Middle East. But there is a wan note to Podhoretz’s response to Unz’s prognosis: “I do not accept . . . I am still convinced . . . if the Israelis can . . . the day may yet come.” And this from the archenemy of any hint of defeatism. I do not say this in criticism of Podhoretz. But it does seem to me that, for the first time in a very long time, there is now an explicitness about-and in some quarters an openness to-the possibility that Israel will not make it, and I find this profoundly troubling.
In Patrick Buchanan’s new book, The Death of the West, he reports a conversation with former President Richard Nixon, known as a strong supporter of Israel. Buchanan’s wife Shelley asked Nixon if Israel will survive. In the long run? he responded. He then turned his hand and put his thumb down. The answer was No.
What would it mean for the future of Judaism and world Jewry (the two are not separable) were the state of Israel to disappear? Of course I do not know. Nobody does. I don’t mean what would happen if Israel was obliterated by an Arab atomic bomb, as some Arabs contemplate with relish. I mean, rather, the prospect of Israel being abandoned by Jews as a noble but failed Zionist dream. I suppose it is possible that five million Jews could go elsewhere, mainly to America, and flourish in security. It seems more than possible that a substantial number would, remembering Masada, be determined to die with the dream.
These are grim and unwelcome thoughts. As too many people are eager to remind us, Israel is doing bad things to the Palestinians. And, as too many fail to say, Palestinians are doing bad things to Israelis, and it is not always easy to sort out which is action and which reaction, which is aggression and which defense. There should be no difficulty, however, in sorting out the difference between the one party that has the declared purpose of destroying or expelling the other party, and the other party that wants only to live in security and peace. This, I think, we know for sure: there could be a real peace process and a real peace if the Arabs believably accepted a sovereign Jewish state in their midst. This, sadly, does not seem to be in the offing. So maybe the present conflict will go on for another five years. Ten years? Sixty years? How long is “the long run”? I may be wrong, but it seems to me that more supporters of Israel are asking that question, and asking it out loud. I’m not sure what should be made of that, but I am sure it is not unimportant.
Mainlining in the Basement
Winston Churchill once observed of Clement Attlee: “He is a modest man, with a great deal to be modest about.” There is the appearance of considerable modesty in Charles T. Matthewes’ essay in Theology Today, “Reconsidering the Role of Mainline Churches in Public Life.” Do not be misled by the snappy title. The essay is a low-key reflection on what has happened to oldline Protestantism since the days when the “church and society” bureaucracies of the United Methodists, Presbyterians (USA), United Church of Christ, et al. made public waves with their perpetually prophetic pronouncements styled as “speaking truth to power.” Although much reduced, those bureaucracies are still in place, but they are not even mentioned by Mr. Matthewes, who appears to be skirting the embarrassment of their failure by turning it into a virtue.
Matthewes, who teaches religious studies at the University of Virginia, takes as his text a new study by Robert Wuthnow of Princeton, The Quiet Voice of God: Faith-Based Activism and Mainline Protestantism. The study finds that “the mainline’s typical forms of involvement in civic life and public discourse are multitudinous and subterranean,” of the kind that often go unnoticed. The mainline is not “noisy” like the religious right but is “quietly influential.” A chief source of its influence is in providing space for numerous civic activities, many of them not “Christianly indexed” (i.e., they are not specifically Christian). By providing space, Mr. Matthewes means, quite literally, providing space, as in letting all kinds of groups meet in their otherwise empty church facilities. “To place these findings in conversation with Robert Putnam’s work on social capital,” Matthewes writes, “mainline Protestant church basements may save us from bowling alone.” He continues, “Whether or not the public square is ‘naked,’ as Richard Neuhaus suggested, might depend on whether or not one thinks that church meeting halls are part of the public square.”
Church basements are multitudinous and subterranean, and yes, they can be seen as part of the public square, but that is not what I chiefly meant by the public square, nor what oldline Protestantism meant by the public square back in its noisy days before it was forced to take refuge in the conclusion that God’s voice is very quiet. The noteworthy item in the Wuthnow-Matthewes view, however, is the suggestion that, whether publicly prominent or publicly ignored, the voice of mainline Protestantism is the voice of God.
Matthewes does not assume that all is well, and he calls for some changes. For instance, for mainliners there needs to be a stronger connection “between what happens on Sunday mornings and what happens during the rest of the week.” Connecting Sunday morning with real life: it may not be thinking outside the box, but it’s hard to argue with it. Matthewes approves of the idea that the civic order has its own integrity quite apart from any specifically Christian reference, and he cites Martin Luther’s famous maxim, “Better to be ruled by a wise Turk than a stupid Christian.” (The evidence from exhaustive research is that Luther never said that, but it is certainly what he might have said, if he had thought to say it.) But, Matthewes writes,
