Of Human Dignity

Everyone carries the baggage of their past. The world has been blessed by recent Popes who are not Italian. While this has brought new air into the Vatican, some of that new air isn’t pure and clean. We’re human.

These new popes have come from left-leaning and right-leaning totalitarian regimes. These regimes tried to discredit the Church by falsely accusing priests of sexual misconduct. Pope Francis and Pope John Paul II tried, with disastrous results, to uphold the dignity of priests by shielding them from being wounded by attacks of this type.

I know that when I had children I tried to arm them against the problems that I had faced as a child. I tried, with greater and lesser success, to defend them against the world. But they were not me and their world was not mine. I had to reconsider what they needed to be defended from.

Our popes have tried to do the same thing with the Church and particularly with its priests. There are many attacks which persist and priests are falsely accused in all ages. The innocent must be protected. The guilty must not be allowed to continue in their wickedness. Unfortunately our recent Popes have embraced clericalism, which allows the wicked to go unpunished.

By Laura Weston, widow of Deacon Michael Weston

IF YOU LIKE, READ ALONG WHILE YOU ARE LISTENING:

I remember when I first started getting interested in the diaconate, we had to go to programs.  And one of the things that they talked about that we had to be careful of was the sin of clericalism. 

Have you ever heard of the sin of clericalism?  Nah?  I felt the same way.  What in the world are you talking about? 

The Second Vatican Council was a pastoral council.  It wasn't a dogmatic council, it wasn't defining dogma.  It was describing how the Church, as a pastor of the souls, should be acting, and the interaction of the members of the Church. This is why I wanted to read the whole thing from Corinthians.  Because that’s very much in the line of the interaction of the members of the Church and the recognition of the importance of each part the body.  The body being the Body of Christ which is the Holy Catholic Church.

And we see both in the first reading, where he is talking about the one body, and then we see in the gospel, where Jesus goes to a city which was a city that was different from where he normally is and you notice that the focus of the attention was on a widow. 

Widows at that point in time were pathetic.  They were in trouble, especially as in this case: the boy who died, the man who died, was her only son.  Which means she had no husband, she had no son, and she had no one to take care of her.  And one of the extraordinary things of Jewish religion, was that, way back when, they tried to take care of the widows.  But for the most part, the life of being a widow was a very uncomfortable situation.  You didn't have anybody taking care of you.  They weren't housing you, they weren't feeding you.  You were on your own, dependent, in most instances, on charity.

So we see Jesus very much rejecting the idea of any hierarchical relationship.  We see the same thing in St. Paul.  And that though, has been a model of the Church. But again, the Church is a human institution.  It is divine, but its members are human.  And any time you have an institution, someone is going to be more important within that institution than other people. 

There is going to be a heirarchy. You are our leader.  You are the one who provides the bridge cards that we have every week.  You are the one, the important one, who does it.  There is a hierarchical nature to human relationships, and you see it within the Church.

And the Church warns against it.  It is contrary to the teachings of Christ because it creates within the Church a situation of... let's assume there are ten people getting together for a common purpose... there is going to be one person who is the leader.  And that one person has the tendency to think of everyone else as "them", or "the followers", or his or her "people".  It becomes a hierarchical situation.  

The hierarchical situation is a dangerous thing to have occur.  And we see, after Vatican II, where there were so many priests that were lost and the removal of the stress on clericalism.  We see a situation that arose within the Church involving clericalism, ironically, one of the things that the Vatican Council was trying to counsel against. 

And it is, again, like I talked about yesterday, and it is something very important. "Us" and "Them" creates a situation where you can justify sin.  I can justify treating you differently because you are a woman.  I can be nice to him because he is a man.  I can be nice to him… aw, we don’t have any old people around here today… I can be nice to her because she and I are the young ones around here.  But... you old people... whew! 

Well, in the church you have the ordained ministers.  The deacons being the lowest of the bunch.  But... I am still ordained.  If I walk into a group of priests and bishops standing around talking, and I say, "Hi!  I am Deacon Michael," they will welcome me.  [If] you walk into a group, unless they know you, they're gonna go, "What do you want?" 

The danger is, when we get past the teachings of St. Paul, and the teachings of Christ, is, what does that lead you to?  And, in my opinion, this is one of the contributing factors, among a whole bunch of other stupidities, that lead to the sexual abuse scandal that we have, particularly on the concealment.  Because, there’s "us" and "them."  You're "them."  If someone in the "us" group says something to the "them" group, and the "them" group says, "Well, Fr. So-and-So did this to me," the natural reaction is, "Aw, she's just a hysterical woman.  You know how women are."  Or, "He's just a hormonal young man, you know how 'they' are."  And there is a tendency to discard the statements of someone, to not treat them as St. Paul asked us to treat them, understanding that each and every one of them is a member of the body of Christ.  That each one of them is given the dignity, the lowest of them particularly, by Christ.  The dignity of being a child of God. 

So you have a natural tendency to say, if Beth comes in and complains to me about the bisho to say, "Aw, come on, Beth!"  That is a normal reaction, but that reaction gets out of hand when you have an insular community.  And in the situation that we faced with the sexual abuse: the bishop would hear about it, and the bishop would say, "Robert's a good priest.  I like Robert.  We need to take care of the situation.  Robert, we are going to send you to such-and-such clinic.  Or, we are going to take you from Mary Immaculate and we are going to put you down in St. Cecilia's.  We are going to move you somewhere else, away from the temptation," failing to recognize the reality of what has occurred.  And that is also a sin.  Because, again, it flows from "us" and "them."  The very "us" and "them" that Jesus, and St. Paul and all of the apostles teach us that is wrong. 

It isn't "us" and "them."  And so one of the things that we have to watch out for within our Church, is to recognize that tendency. We have the tendency… and I'm sorry... I shouldn't say this... but this last statement about Francis about how it was really Satan attacking the bishops [by] raising questions about the concealment of sexual abuse, and the sexual abuse itself, is a prime example of "us" and "them."  You, as a complainer, don't have merit, because you are simply the tool of Satan.  That is an epitome of the sin of clericalism. 

And that is a major issue that our Church is going to have to face in the next ten, twenty years.  It is that very fundamental operation within our Church of, "Well, let’s conceal, not conceal, protect ‘us’ from ‘them,’"  And them being all of you, and probably me because I'm not very high in the hierarchy.  “Let's protect,”... instead of taking the reaction that you would anticipate someone giving as a person of God, of, when someone comes to me and says, "Father 'Andrew' did something to a young man," and any time that I have the reaction of something other than total and complete revulsion about what was done and the instinct that that has to be fixed, immediately, there is something wrong.  There is something fundamentally wrong.

Now the cardinal of the Galveston/Houston diocese has come out with a very simple statement... and I think Bishop Burns has done the same thing; I haven't read his. He says if you face the situation where a priest has done something, that if Robert did it, what was your reaction?  If someone came in and said that Robert did the following thing, what would your reaction be? And if your reaction would be, “Call the police and arrest him,” do exactly the same thing for a priest.  Exactly the same thing. 

That is very fundamental.  Because that insulation of the priest through clericalism has led to where we are.  That the revulsion that you would feel knowing that a man was abusing 13-, 15-, 16-year-old boys... sexually abusing them... was insulated by his position and by others saying, "Well, we need to protect him.  Well, we need to treat him within the hierarchy." 

No. He is nothing special in that regard.  If he has a degree to which he is special, he has lost that specialness by virtue of his conduct. 

And that’s where the Church fell off the rails in my opinion.  Not with regard to how did we get those people around, but how we protected them.  Because the Church, our Church, didn’t act with total and complete revulsion of what was going on, and say, in the case of Mayve… I’m just picking on you… that when Mayve comes and says, "That priest abused me," the reaction was, "Well, she must be crazy," or "Let’s be real careful. This is a man who is a good priest, let’s take him away from the temptation," instead of saying, "No, it’s wrong."  Because the priests are human and by doing it otherwise, we’re engaging in what the Church itself describes as the sin of clericalism.

September 18, 2018 2