The Courage To Be Catholic
Crisis, Reform, and the Future of the Church
by George Weigel - published by Basic Books, 2002

A Book Review by Father John McCloskey

George Weigel, the noted biographer of the Holy Father, has written an important book, The Courage To Be Catholic: Crisis, Reform, and the Future of the Church, published by Basic Books in the US in 2002 (soon to be published in Spanish by Planeta in Spain).

In The Courage To Be Catholic, Weigel has written a masterful short history of the priestly sexual abuse scandal that erupted in the last year. However, the book is more than that. It is also an acute analysis of the history of various aspects of the Church in the United States since the close of the Second Vatican Council. Although the book is written specifically about the United States, it mirrors in many respects similar problems in the Church in Western Europe over the last forty years. What makes this book different from others that have come out, and others to come, is that Weigel sees this crisis as an opportunity–"an opportunity to deepen the reforms of the Catholic Church begun by the Second Vatican Council in 1962-5, which are precisely the reforms urged by Pope John Paul II." George Weigel is a Senior Fellow at a leading think tank at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, in Washington, D.C. He with Michael Novak, a Templeton Prize winner who holds a chair at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, and Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, editor of First Things a journal of religious opinion in New York City, form an influential triumvirate of leading forward-looking faithful Catholicism in the U.S.

Weigel's book is a straightforward and relatively brief chronological account of the crisis and its underlying causes, and finishing with suggestions for reform. This examination is realistic and strong without being overly accusatory and pessimistic. Weigel clearly knows the history of the Church, both in the world and in the United States. He points out that the great majority of Councils have been called to address the need for reform and renewal in reaction to problems in the Church and the world. Consequently they almost always have been followed by some decades of turmoil while its conclusions are implemented. Given the unusual nature of the Second Vatican Council, which was more pastoral than dogmatic, it was to be expected there would likely be more confusion than usual. What perhaps was not expected was that the post-Conciliar times would coincide with immense upheavals in world culture in many areas, including the arts, world politics, technology, and the media? Weigel says, "The Catholic Church opened its windows just as the modern world was barreling into a dark tunnel full of poisonous fumes."

This post-conciliar turmoil came to a head with the priest sexual abuse crisis of 2002 As Weigel puts it, "In the first months of 2002, the Catholic Church in the United States entered the greatest crisis in its history. When Lent began on February 13, the penitential ashes imposed that day on millions of Catholics felt leaden. Something had gone desperately wrong. Something was broken. Something had to be fixed." That something was deep-rooted, as we will see ahead. However the immediate cause of the crisis, that can be said to be coming to an end with the resignation of Boston's Cardinal Law, was an uninterrupted six months starting in January 2002 of revelations of numerous incidents of sexual abuse of minors by priests over the last thirty years and, in some cases the apparent cover-up of these crimes by bishops. Many of these priests, including serial pedophiles, had been returned in past decades to active parochial work after supposed treatment and rehabilitation. Several bishops, guilty of sexual abuse themselves, resigned, and dozens of priests were, at a minimum, suspended from active ministry and many removed permanently. Aside from the serious psychological harm done to many young people and their families by these heinous acts in some cases dating back decades, the damage done to public image and trust of the Church and to the pastoral work of its ordained clergy has been incalculable.

Weigel rightly lays the blame not on the Second Vatican Council, but rather on the immense confusion regarding the interpretation and implementation of the conciliar documents that ensued over the next fifteen years and began to diminish with the election of John Paul II. The effects of this period linger on. Most particularly Weigel centers on its distortion of the identity of the priest. As he puts it, "The Catholic priest is not simply a religious functionary, licensed to do certain kinds of ecclesiastical business. A Catholic priest is an icon, a living re-presentation, of the eternal priesthood of Jesus Christ. He makes Christ present in the Church in a singular way by acting in persona Christi," at the altar and in administering the sacraments.

This distortion is related to another significant one: rather than emphasizing the universal call to holiness, which John Paul II has identified as the central message of the Council, the laity were confused by those who would "clericalize" them by insisting that the more they were involved in para-liturgical ceremonies and even in the "power" structure of the Church, the more they were fulfilling their vocation as laypersons: in short, the famous clericalization of the laity, and the laicization of the clergy. The results have been disastrous, as seen in the mass exodus of tens of thousands of priests, the priestly sex abuse scandals, the drop in priestly vocations, and an undercatechized, confused laity that have abandoned the Church many cases to fundamentalist Protestant sects. Those who have remained have dropped by half, at least, in their participation in the sacramental life of the Church. This confusion has also spawned a plethora of nominal Catholics in public life who boast of their Catholicism, attend Mass and Communion, but hold views on fundamental moral issues such as contraception, abortion, and homosexuality that differ with unalterable teachings of the Church. It appears, given some recent statements both from the Vatican and the USSCB (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops), that the American hierarchy is toughening its stance against nominal Catholics who hold positions and vote accordingly in favor of laws that go directly against objective Christian morality on such issues. Several Bishops have issued warnings to politicians in their jurisdictions that they may be refused communion if they persist in their errors.

Weigel takes pains also to point out what the crisis is not. There was much confusion (including in Europe) throughout the early months as to precisely what it was all about. Was it simply a question of pedophilia (abuse of pre-pubescent children by a few priests) or was it a media-created anti-Catholic program to destroy the Church and the priesthood? In fact the great majority of cases were of molestation of male adolescents, which clearly leads to the conclusion that those committing the great majority of these crimes were priests with homosexual inclinations. The relatively few serial pedophiles were not only abnormal among sex abusers but also hardly existent among priests. As Weigel puts it, "This, in turn, led to fears that the crisis of sexual abuse was ongoing, massive in scope, and out of control, when, in fact, few instances of the 1990's came to light." Indeed, sexual abuse cases had been coming to the public eye by dribs and drabs certainly since the late seventies. What caused this culminating crisis was the case of the serial pedophile abusers ex-priests Shanley and Geoghan, both from the same Archdiocese–Boston, and the gradual uncovering of what was clearly either a cover-up or immense misjudgment on the part of the local ordinary and his assistant bishops in repeatedly putting the two in for treatment and then returning them again and again to active ministry where they could prey on children once again. Weigel does not impute bad will but rather extraordinarily bad judgment on the part of some bishops who seemed to place more trust in the declaration by psychologists or therapists that serial abusers could be rehabilitated than in the welfare of the families under their pastoral care.

The media certainly made mistakes in its probes of the scandals; largely because of their ignorance of basic facts about the Church itself, its hierarchy, priests, and most importantly its teachings. Although fewer than 2% of priests over the last forty years were guilty of this conduct, and although the incidence in other Christian ministries, and indeed among health professionals, and even more astoundingly among parents who abused their own children was considerably higher did not dampen the media's laser-like focus on the Catholic priesthood. Indeed, they often held in higher esteem the opinions of therapists who had treated the abusers and Catholic dissenters who were arguably, according to Weigel, part of the problem and not of the solution. The inevitable solution proposed by these "experts' was the abolition of the requirement of celibacy, a married priesthood, or even approval of homosexually stable relationships between priests. No one acknowledged that if this small part of the clergy had lived up to their promise of celibacy, there would have been no problem, or that virtually all of the predators were homosexuals, who should have not been admitted to the seminary and for whom marriage would have been no remedy to their inclinations.

Many members of the media also saw this as an opportunity to take pot-shots at the supposed lack of interest in the crisis by Pope John Paul II. The very same reporters who over so many years had complained of too much Roman interference in the so-called autonomous American Catholic Church were now joining dissenting Catholics in complaining that the Pope was not paying attention to America. They seemed not to understand that American Catholics only form less that 6% of the total of Catholics worldwide and that the Vatican has many more important issues to deal with worldwide than problems that the Church in America had brought on itself. Weigel says, "Criticism of Pope John Paul's 'silence' by reporters, editorial writers, and columnists seems strained. The Pope had in fact spoken and written extensively about the reform of the priesthood for twenty-three years. Moreover, it made no sense to expect that the Pope could function as a kind of super-personnel manager for every Catholic diocese in the world."

Nonetheless, it must be recognized if the media had not pursued the truth regarding these cases, they would not have come to light and the necessary reforms would not be made. The media did not produce the crisis. Weigel says, "Two indisputable facts remained: clergy sexual abuse was a serious problem in the Catholic Church for decades; many bishops did not recognize the problem, or recognizing it, failed to act on both the problem and its sources...This is not a media crisis. It is a Catholic crisis–a crisis of fidelity."

Weigel argues that the more immediate causes of this particular crisis in the US grew out of a three-step betrayal. The first, he calls to the so-called "Truce of 1968," when following the issuance of Humanae Vitae, the Cardinal Archbishop of Washington Patrick O'Boyle placed ecclesiastical penalties on several dozen priests of his archdiocese for non-adherence to the teachings of the Church on contraception, was not backed up by authorities in Rome and was ordered several years later to rescind the sanctions placed on the priests. According to Weigel, "Paul VI wanted the 'Washington Case' settled with out a public retraction from the dissidents, because the Pope feared that insisting on such a retraction would lead to schism, a formal split in the Church of Washington, and perhaps beyond." Thereafter, theologians, priests, and nuns who publicly dissented from Humanae Vitae–who said that the Church teachings about the morally appropriate way to regulate birth were false–were encouraged by the truce to continue and even amplify their dissent.' This rebellion led, in turn to a notorious book being published by the CTSA (Catholic Theological Society of America) in l977 on "Human Sexuality" which flatly challenged Catholic teaching on virtually every issue of sexual morality, including contraception, masturbation and homosexuality." Naturally this public statement apparently condoned by authorities eventually led to future priests being taught that "faithful dissent" was an option. Many of those seminarians when eventually ordained simply did not preach authentic Catholic teaching on these matters, either ignoring them, or giving spurious advice in spiritual direction in the confessional. Eventually moral theology, in some seminaries, was so poorly taught that many priests fell into personal misbehavior that led to widespread defections. Those who remained saw themselves as "Wounded Healers" (an epithet based on a famous book by the late Belgian author Fr. Henri Nouwen)–priests who themselves had fallen into habitual grave sin and used the recognition of their own sinfulness as a means of healing wounded sinners through pop psychology and empathetic therapy rather than through prayer, sacramental absolution and penance, and a change of behavior.

After analyzing the provenance of the crisis, Weigel moves on to some possible solutions. The most important one is a reform of the seminaries in the US. They produce the priests and future bishops, and their track record has been abysmal over the last several decades. Their poor training of priests has led to uncertainty concerning key moral and doctrinal issues, as well as to a lack of understanding of the proper role of the laity. The priests produced did not understand that the Council was about the role of the lay Catholic in the world, not in the hierarchical structure of the Church. Among the worst abuses have been noted in the area of the Divine Liturgy where most Catholics receive weekly spiritual nourishment. The Holy Father, along with several Vatican Congregations will be addressing this last problem in a very pointed way in the coming months with an encyclical and documents on the Eucharist.

The assessing of future candidates for the priesthood has to be done in the future not only through psychological testing, but also, more importantly, through an assessment of their knowledge, practice, and fidelity to the faith and their capacity for their mission as evangelizers. The author points out they must have the ability to live the virtue of chastity as preparation for apostolic celibacy and must be educated in the greatness of celibacy as a gift by which Christ configures them to himself. They must be trained in "the theology of the Body" of Pope John Paul II and in that way will also come to an understanding of the concomitant greatness of the sacrament of marriage. Only in this way will they be effective as integral priests capable of making "the sincere gift of self" that lies at the heart of every Christian vocation.

The author also insists on a more rigorous selection of seminary faculty who are wholly faithful to the teaching authority of the Church. "The remedies include seminaries securing faculty members who are unimpeachably orthodox, who understand the distinctive nature of theological education in a seminary, and who themselves lead lives as priests, religious, or lay Catholics....‰ To repeat, insisting on orthodoxy among seminary faculty should be understood less as a disciplinary issue than a matter of Catholic intellectual integrity. They, in turn, will transmit the Catholic teaching whole to a more select body of seminarians." The seminarians must be challenged, according to Weigel. In Pastores Dabo Vobis Pope John Paul II urged a more demanding formation for seminarians, principally in philosophy and theology...for, the Pope insists, theology, is at bottom a means of nourishing one's personal relationship with Jesus Christ!"

The author says, "Priests are made, not born. Although his discipleship must deepen during the course of his ministry, a man must be a thoroughly converted Christian disciple–convinced that a man considering the priesthood is committing himself to become another Christ, alter Christus, another witness to the truth that God intends for humanity a destiny beyond our imagining: eternal life within the light and love of the Holy Trinity. ..That is why Pope John Paul II has insisted throughout his pontificate that the priesthood is about service, not power."

How will the apparent shortage of priests in North America be remedied ? Weigel answers "by bishops and priests taking vocation recruitment much more seriously." I only partially agree with him here. While his assessment makes an important point, mention could be made of other factors for an increase in vocations such as prayer and sacrifice offered up for vocations, the attractive example of happy, holy zealous priests, and by no means, the least, a return to Catholic families having considerably larger families. The author is correct in saying that, "Dioceses in which the bishops talk about vocations to the priesthood at every Mass, have an alert and aggressive vocations office run by a capable priest, and invite young men to meet with them regularly to explore the possibilities–have found that the response is a generous one. Young people want to be called to lives of heroism." Actually vocations to the priesthood in the US have turned upward in recent years and with the coming reform of the seminaries produced, in part, by the apostolic visitation, we can expect a substantial increase in new vocations to the priesthood although the absolute numbers may fall drastically in the decades ahead due to the large number of elderly priests.

Weigel finishes his book by calling American bishops to leadership. "Leadership," Weigel says, "is eminently possible if it is rooted in conviction, and in the courage to be Catholic." He calls for a deep reform of the American episcopate following the pattern of classic Catholicism, developed by great bishops from Augustine to Wojtyla. "That pattern is formed by fidelity wedded to courage and lived in sanctity. Bishops must come to know, again, that they are genuine vicars of Christ in their own dioceses, not vicars of the Pope or vicars of their national conference. Bishops must come to think of themselves again, as men, to whom the Holy Spirit has given the fullness of the sacrament of Holy Orders, not a promotion in a corporate structure." He says, "The apostles were not managers of local branch offices of an up-and-coming religious organization trying to find its market niche. They were witness to the truth of God revealed in Jesus Christ, to 'the ends of the earth' and unto death."

It is too much to say that Weigel's book has any glaring weaknesses. However, I think the reader would have appreciated his view of the future of the Church in the United States. He also does not spend any time in speaking about the new ecclesial institutions, communities, and movements (many of post-conciliar origin) that are making such a difference in the Catholic Church through the world. They are already producing an abundant fruit of vocations: lay, priestly, and religious. I would hope that he addresses these themes in his next book. .

Weigel has written a plain spoken but theologically deep book that finishes on a positive note. His agenda is none other than the renewal of the Church in the United States according to the mind of the Second Vatican Council as interpreted by the magisterial teachings of John Paul II. I think he senses that the priest abuse crisis of the past year was the inevitable result of the liberalism put into practice by the "progressive" theologians who hijacked the "spirit of the Council" before anyone had ever read the letter. He believes the crisis of 2002 sounds the death knell of what he refers to as "Catholicism Lite." He believes, as I do, that the future for the Church is bright as we undertake the "new evangelization." The words that most often resound throughout his book are courage, leadership, and truth. We need men and women, both clerical and lay, all the faithful of the Church, to be leaders in living and proclaiming the truth courageously with the same courage of our early Christian forbears some of whom died for their Faith. The great majority of those early Christians, almost all of them unknown, through their total commitment to Christ and his Church transformed the great Roman Empire into one form of a Christian society. We are called to produce, with God's grace, another.

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