The Long View 2006-10-16: Crunchy Convert; Cardinal Invisible; Stinger Countermeasures
Both Rod Dreher and now Damon Linker have quite publicly left the Catholic Church in reaction to the on-going sexual abuse scandals. Both of them have also publicly said that part of their reason for doing so is their disappointment in the behavior of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus in reaction to the sexual abuse scandals.
I wasn't there, so I shan't comment, other than to note, as I have before, that since Neuhaus is now dead, we only get one side of that story.
I feel about all of this very differently than Dreher and Linker do, but I have to ask myself, what would push me over that edge? Perhaps a similar kind of revelation about my own Bishop in the Diocese of Phoenix, but I know that he has disciplined a number of priests for sexual improprieties, including reducing some to the lay state. I suppose anything is possible, but I would be genuinely surprised.
Hints have emerged from this controversy that Pope Emeritus Benedict was quite ineffective as pontiff, but I don't find that surprising. He never wanted to be the Pope, and he got out when he had a chance. Despite being slandered as "God's rottweiler", Joseph Ratzinger is a shy and bookish man who was most at home in the university. Now it looks a lot like he resigned because he was defeated.
When Pope Francis was elected, he was supposed to be a head-breaker who could finally crush the corruption in the Vatican. I think this is an accurate assessment of his personality, it just happens that he isn't really interested in doing that job. Pope Francis is really good at the dramatic gesture, and got people interested in the Church who had drifted away, or simply had never considered it, but now it isn't clear if that was worth the price.
Another thing I like about Pope Francis; he really knows how to stick the shiv in:
The day before a newly elected Pope Francis was to be formally installed at the Vatican in 2013, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was celebrating Mass in St. Peter's Basilica when he passed out at the altar and had to be rushed to the hospital.
It was a scary moment, and especially odd to see McCarrick stricken; even at 82, the energetic former archbishop of Washington always had a reputation as one of the most peripatetic churchmen in the Catholic hierarchy.
Doctors in Rome quickly diagnosed a heart problem -- McCarrick would eventually get a pacemaker -- and the cardinal was soon back at his guest room in the U.S. seminary in Rome when the phone rang. It was Francis. The two men had known each other for years, back when the Argentine pope was Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires. McCarrick assured Francis that he was doing fine.
"I guess the Lord isn't done with me yet," he told the pope.
"Or the devil doesn't have your accommodations ready!" Francis shot back with a laugh.
Benedict never would have gotten that jibe in.
Crunchy Convert; Cardinal Invisible; Stinger Countermeasures
If this is the kind of blog you read, then you probably already know that Rod Dreher, famous convert to Roman Catholicism and Mr. Crunchy Con himself, has joined the Orthodox Church (a Russian Orthodox diocese in Texas, no less). Promising not to burden his readers with the subject further in the future, he explained his reasons last week in a long article in Beliefnet.com. Much of the article consists of horror stories about diocesan dissimulation in connection with the clerical sexual-abuse scandals, but I think these lines are the heart of his explanation:
The sex-abuse scandal can't be easily separated from the wider crisis in the American Catholic Church, involving the corruption of the liturgy, of catechesis, and so forth. I've come to understand how important this point is, because if most other things had been more or less solid, I think I could have weathered the storm. But I found it impossible to find solid ground....What I didn't understand [when I converted to Catholicism], nor anticipate, was how difficult it would be to find an orthodox [Roman Catholic] parish here. We have lots of faithful Catholic friends here, and I don't think it's unfair to say that most of them are doing what most (but not all) orthodox Catholics in this country do: grit their teeth and white-knuckle it out in their parishes, doing what they can to hang on.
Well, yes: tell me about it.
I regard myself as a sort of convert, too, having stopped going to church from the time I was in high school until I was about 30. I walked right into the Spirit of Vatican II determination to define the Church simply as a community that people joined for essentially social reasons.
Though the individual members of the clergy were usually pretty reasonable, I quickly became aware of the institutional and catechetical indifference, indeed hostility, to the real reasons for which most converts convert. As I think back, I am appalled to contemplate how much time and energy were spent on matters like the use of gender-neutral language in the liturgy, a project that no one in the pews supported, but which the diocesan and national bureaucracies ensured would be the chief topic of conversation at every conference of bishops. While they bishops and their advisors were chattering about this non-issue year after year, the priest scandal was being brought to a slow boil by the malpractice of the Church's own lawyers and psychologists. But don't get me started.
The most sympathetic reaction to Dreher's move I have seen so far comes from Fr. Neuhaus at First Things, himself a Catholic convert.
I hope every Catholic bishop and priest will read his essay, and especially those bishops and priests who are inclined to heave a sigh of relief that we have weathered the sex-abuse scandal. And every Catholic engaged in the standard intra-church quarrels, whether on the left or the right, should take to heart what he says about Catholics being more preoccupied with church battles than with following Jesus.
We should note that, at least in terms of Catholic ecclesiology, Dreher's relationship to the Church is now ambiguous rather than broken. Catholicism holds that Orthodoxy retains the Apostolic Succession and the validity of the sacraments. I would not do what Dreher did, and I don't think anyone else should either. I think that partly because Orthodox ecclesiology is somewhat defective. I have also been told that Orthodoxy, which its proliferation of autocephalous churches and schismatic groups that are not on speaking terms, is much more like American Protestantism than like pre-Vatican II Catholicism. Still, let us cut Dreher some slack. We may hope he'll be back, either by returning to the Roman communion directly, or by the reconciliation of his new Orthodox communion with Rome.
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Speaking of ecclesiastical politics, there is great unrest in the Archdiocese of New York:
The timing has upset priests already being urged to challenge Egan's leadership in a letter circulated by an anonymous group of clergy....Egan is said to be furious about the letter, which was circulated earlier this week by a group calling itself a "committee of concerned clergy" and criticizing his leadership style.
The authors called Egan "vindictive," "arrogant" and "cruel."
Actually, the worst I have heard myself about Cardinal Egan is that he focuses on little besides getting the archdiocese's finances in order. Good management should never be discouraged. However, the cost of that policy has proved to be that he barely ranks as a public figure. I had occasion to mention the cardinal of New York City a few weeks ago. I found that I had forgotten the man's name, so I had to look it up. When last has the cardinal of New York been obscure?
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As for the other kind of sky pilot, I see that the condition of a select few may be made a little safer:
The FAA move is the latest in a stepped-up effort to protect "commercial derivative" aircraft from missile attacks. Commercial derivative aircraft are essentially commercial airliners the government has modified for official use....
The anti-missile device being installed is known as LAIRCM, or Large Aircraft Infrared Countermeasures System, which detects ultraviolet light coming from an attacking missile's exhaust and then directs a pulsating laser beam at its homing device, or "seeker." The laser sends false tracking information, causing the missile to lose track of the target aircraft.
The Air Force already requires LAIRCM for large transport aircraft that fly to and from Baghdad.
It is not true that bringing the troops home from Iraq would bring the war home from Iraq. The war is already here.
Copyright © 2006 by John J. Reilly
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