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While there has been much ink spilled on analyses of the sexual abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States and elsewhere, C. Colt Anderson’s Clericalism [2026] addresses the disease from a rich and interdisciplinary overview that should send all of us back to the starting line in our efforts to uproot the infection. I must admit that I approached this work in the belief that it focused upon the arrogant pastors and bishops we encounter from time to time during a lifetime—tone deaf proud men, dictators, social climbers, possibly clinical narcissists. I was aware that chronic personality-disordered ordained men were symptomatic of deeper issues in the Church, and of course “the scandals” were a massive jolt. But I had not come across a synthetic analysis of what we were [and are] seeing, at least until now.
Clericalism takes us much further into the dangerous theological interpretations of Holy Orders that Church hierarchy has cultivated and enhanced to this day. Specifically, I refer to the teaching that the roots of the present-day theology of priesthood rest upon the catechetical and magisterial insistence that ordained clergy are “ontologically different” from all other baptized persons, all other persons period, really. Anderson makes the argument that princely clericalism—reinforced by the teaching that sacerdotal anointing itself can make every priest an instant king--destroys clerical sanctity while rendering the Church itself flawed and at times dangerous to the entire Catholic community of faith. In his introduction [p. xvi] Anderson describes clericalism as “the idealization of priests and the Catholic Church as an organization [which] hurts everyone.” He opens his work in an interdisciplinary fashion; though a professional Catholic theologian, teacher, and author, he competently draws parallels from the fields of sociology and business to illustrate the kinds of systemic authoritarian overreach to which the Church is not immune. From the business world Anderson borrows the term isomorphic mimicry, “how organizations can take on the appearances of being something they are not.” [p. 28] A specialist in Church History, Anderson lays out for the reader an overview of priestly identity from Apostolic times. He does not pretend to give us the last word on the subject, but his bibliography is thorough. The historical overview begins with the Apostles and their commissioning. Although we think of the first “ordination” as a Last Supper event, the post dinner narrative recorded in Scripture nowhere describes the Eleven as “ontologically perfected” or exempt from present or future sin. Four centuries later St. Augustine would leave with the Church the understanding of original sin; while Baptism was empowered to forgive our inherited guilt of Adam, the African Church Father pulls no punches about the remaining weakness and tendency to sin in all human nature. Two areas of Anderson’s historical analysis worthy of special attention are his treatment of the Church’s relationship with secular rulers, on the one hand, and the independent development of fraternal monastic structures on the other. Christianity in 300 A.D. was spread throughout the Roman Empire but still subject to persecution from time to time. During the reign of Emperor Constantine [306-337 A.D.] not only did Christianity become legal, but it also became a player in civil affairs virtually to the twentieth century. By the end of the first millennium, the forces of Church and state came to blows, sometimes physical, over issues such as the power of appointing bishops and/or the ownership of monasteries, universities, etc. Anderson cites Pope St. Gregory VII [r. 1073-1085] as a prime mover in the evolution of clerical power and authority. The universities of the Middle Ages created for the Church a supportive philosophy/theology to crystalize definition of universal power, using the categories of the time to describe, for example, how ordained men, by the nature of their ordinations, were different from and superior to laymen. My AI describes ordination as a “spiritual and existential configuration that enables the priest to participate uniquely in Christ’s priesthood while remaining fundamentally human and dependent on divine grace.” While true, it is a definition which can be and has been stretched to justify—sometimes for the official Church, and too many times for erring clerics—the excessive use and abuse of power. Using a contemporary example, Anderson describes the difficulties of lay employees in parishes and dioceses, for example, who can be fired at whim by an ordained employer with no recourse to HR, as none exists in a clerical bureaucracy. One can understand, too, how the early clerical sexual abuse victims had so little luck in seeking acknowledgement from a bishop/diocese: victims had no standing! There is another factor to consider: the fraternity of monks and religious. To grasp the full dimension of clerical brotherhood and its impact today, consider that by the fifth century the monastic life was well on its way, and later, religious orders would flourish, too. Not unreasonably, monastic spirituality and rules embodied brotherhood as a major virtue. The early Jesuit Peter Faber [1506-1546] wrote that “brotherly concord” included a prohibition of judging the deeds of others. [pp. 92-93] A noble inspiration, to be sure, but one with little or no room for fraternal correction. In present-day America, if recent research is correct, many clergy are highly reluctant to report misconduct for fear that the accused would in turn reveal something unseeming about the reporter. Anderson’s interviews with seminarians bear this out, as does a recent spike in newly ordained priests leaving the ministry as early as five years after ordination, per The Catholic Project [2023] and National Catholic Register [2025]. St. Pius X [r. 1903-1914] famously wrote: “It is not fitting that the servant be applauded in his Master’s House.” Anderson’s closing sentiments fall under the heading, “Changing the Narrative.” [pp. 131ff] He advocates an embrace of humility for those men ordained to minister, and a baptismal partnership with lay and cleric under the Catholic tent.
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We are coming up upon the feast of St. Patrick next week, and later this summer Margaret and I will be heading back to the Emerald Isle for a six-week visit, this one primarily in the southwest quadrant. Margaret passed along an extraordinary history, Celtic Christianity [1998], by the Benedictine monk Thomas J. Joyce. The author had good reason to undertake this research, for Ireland was something of a bulwark in the founding and development of the monastic life. I would add that this is an eminently readable text; even if history was “not your thing,” you would find this book captivating, and it still sells briskly on Amazon in its third decade.
Ireland did not begin with Patrick. There was a bishop in Ireland when Patrick arrived. In fact, the forces which shaped modern Ireland go back much further to the demographic populace known as “the Celts.” Joyce explains the historical emergence of “a Celtic people” through similarities to other peoples centuries before Christ. The word “Celt” comes from the Greek vocabulary, surprisingly, on its spread westward to Gaul. In his treatment of the Gallic Wars, Joyce records Julius Caesar’s depiction of the Celts as “a fierce and worthy enemy, though inevitably inferior to the military and political prowess of Ceasar and Rome.” [p. 2] The Celts eventually settled the future lands of Scotland, Wales, England, and most of the Island of Ireland itself. They brought with them a way of living and thinking that distinguished them from other peoples and were quite distinct from the Roman West. For starters, Celtic culture unfolded in a curious marriage of the “fine arts” with the warrior’s strength. This is not surprising in retrospect when one considers that Celts had absorbed something of the Greek aesthetic and the Roman ars militaris. Celts were poets, story tellers, musicians, and for want of a better word, naturalists. By the same token, Celts were warriors. The Roman army in Caesar’s day wanted nothing to do with them, and in succeeding centuries the Celts settled in a variety of sites, including Scotland, Wales—and England itself—until the Angles and Saxons established a permanent beach head around the fifth century in what is now modern-day England. Joyce observes that Ireland was “never taken seriously as a people of import” [p. 6] by the continental mainland. He speculates that Irish culture’s development was quite foreign to the centralized Roman Empire before and after continental Europe became “Christianized.” Celtic Irish society was tribal, small clusters of families who periodically fought each other while maintaining a unifying consciousness of a spiritual world manifested in nature and the affective side of the human experience. Their local leaders were known as Druids, who served as judges, philosophers, and teachers who maintained some concept of an immortal soul. Ireland did not develop cities or a national sense or organization until the Middle Ages. Which of course leads to the question of how Ireland gained its reputation as the most Catholic country in Europe. Christianity came to Ireland from Gaul [France] through England. France accepted Christianity early, before 200 A.D., and by 400 A.D. the Christian faith was growing throughout Ireland. In fact, there seemed to be little or no struggle in the island’s conversion because the richness of the Celtic tradition meshed so well with Christian spirituality, particularly in mystical teachings on the Trinity—that God is triune—and the role of Jesus as perfect expression of the Father’s love. Celtic life, as we have seen, was already open to the mystical experience of “the other side.” However, isolated as it was from Europe, Ireland was not represented nor was it prepared for the sacred councils of Nicaea [325 A.D.], Ephesus [432 A.D.], and Chalcedon [451 A.D.], the councils that formally shaped our most basic doctrines as found in the Nicene Creed [professed at every Sunday Mass]. Ireland, of course, received the Creed without objection, but its Celtic soul contributed to a different sort of reception. The Irish believed strongly that human beings were created by the Father from an excess of love, which led to a belief in the innate goodness of humanity and the need to respond in a lifestyle of love and sacrifice. Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in the development of monasteries as early as the sixth century. The monastery became the civil and spiritual center of Irish Christian life. This is not to say that everyone became a monk; the austerity of the monastery may have been the longing of many but only for hardy souls. Monks were known as “white martyrs” because they gave up their lives, so to speak, without spilling their blood. Monasteries were the geographic centers of the Irish Church until the early Middle Ages. Ireland had no cities to speak of, and the monasteries centered the Irish Church in place of dioceses and cathedrals in continental Europe. Monastic spirituality, on the other hand, inspired the religious identity and practice of Irish Catholics who were well disposed by Celtic tradition. The Irish world view was mystical and therefore embraced a more joyful cosmic picture of human nature. In addition, the development of Christianity in Ireland seems to have absorbed little, if anything, of St. Augustine until recently. On the continent, Christianity in Western Europe was strongly influenced by St. Augustine [354-430 A.D.]. The absence of Augustinian influence in Ireland is a crucial factor to remember. As Catholic Frequency puts it, Known as the “Doctor of Grace,” Augustine’s legacy is deeply tied to his theological explorations of grace, sin, and human nature. His articulation of original sin—that humanity inherits a flawed nature from Adam’s fall—revolutionized Christian doctrine and provided a framework for understanding the necessity of divine redemption. Works like Confessions, a raw and introspective account of his spiritual journey, resonate with readers across centuries for their honesty and psychological depth, while City of God offered a bold defense of Christianity amid the collapse of the Roman Empire, framing history as a struggle between divine and earthly cities. We can add to this description that Augustine defined original sin and the essential corruption of humanity, which was hardly in sync with the Celtic Christianity of divine optimism in human creation. The labors of Irish monastic spirituality were not desperate measures to avoid hell, but what I would call “labors of love.” Ironically, our Sacrament of Penance emerged from the Irish monasteries. The monks ended each day with a “chapter of faults,” a sort of clearing the air before retiring. The abbot would then bless the community with a general forgiveness. Given the close relationship of monks and laity, this personal recognition of offenses was extended to the laity and then to the personal and confidential exchange we call “confession.” Soon the monks compiled books of sins and misdeeds which still survive in museums and reference libraries today. I reviewed a book on the penitentiaries in 2005—so long ago—and you can see how my understanding of Irish practice has evolved over a quarter century. Celtic Christianity is much richer than I have described here to this point, and I encourage you to consider reading Father Timothy’s Celtic Christianity for more detail than I have provided here. As the second millennium began, outside forces of multiple varieties exercised influence on the direction of the island. The Vikings were a major intrusion with their infamous long ship raids, particularly against an island like Ireland. But eventually many Vikings stayed and settled the land. River ports took on greater importance. Cities such as Dublin and Galway began to emerge. But in terms of Irish religious life, it was the papacy itself, beginning in the eleventh century, which worked to bring Ireland in line with European practice. During that century popes saw the monastic life in Europe, and consequently Ireland, as the great hope to restore Western European Catholicism. The French monk Hildebrand was elected to the papacy as [St.] Gregory VII, who among his many reforms [see here] worked to unify and purify monasticism in line with the Rule of St. Benedict, written six centuries before. Ireland’s situation prompted Gregory and his successors to strengthen the diocesan/parish structure over the longstanding rule of Irish monasteries. [Dublin, for example, built its first cathedral in the 1200’s, late by medieval standards.] Second, the Gregorian reform worked to restrict the independence of women monastics in favor of a more cloistered existence. Women’s and men’s monastery structures often physically coexisted prior to the Gregorian era. An interesting sidebar: a comparable situation regarding men/women religious arose in the early 1200’s when St. Clare and her religious sisters wished to work side by side with male Franciscan friars in Italy to help the poor, having been followers of St. Francis of Assisi. After Francis’ death, the “Poor Clares” were strictly cloistered by the pope. The male friars were not. [A fascinating read is Clare of Assisi and the Thirteenth Century Church: Religious Women, Rules, and Resistance [2016] by Catherine M. Mooney.] The third reform issue was more subtle but very real. By the medieval era, the Western Roman Church had embraced the old Roman organizational principle of order and society. This included adherence to philosophical/theological principles. Western Europe was solidly Augustinian in its view of man as a fallen being, cursed from the beginning by original sin. Rome believed that Irish theology was too independent and dangerously close to heresy, specifically Pelagianism, which at the very least was much less pessimistic than Augustinianism. At this juncture I will need to wrap up our journey for the moment and pick it up soon with the last five hundred years of Celtic Irish Christianity—a period of tragic suffering for Catholic Ireland which included English suppression, famine, and wholesale emigration. This is a satisfying work: timely researched [2025] and unbiased reporting on the rise and fall of the practice of sacramental Penance in the United States. “For I Have Sinned” is a straightforward narrative of confessional practice in America dating from the founding of this nation. By setting clear boundaries on time and place, the author can credibly focus on the specifics of American confessional practice, the variety of pastoral approaches of priests in the confessional, and the motivations of penitents for confessing. The author, James M. O’Toole, Ph.D., provides a brief summary of penitential practice through the ages, a subtle way of suggesting that if confession isn’t “working” for many Catholics, the rite and its underlying spirituality is not beyond redemption, though the author puts forth no specific blueprint for such renewal, given that the Church as a whole has not addressed the confessional exodus except to blame it on modernism.
Catholics did not come to American shores in significant numbers until the nineteenth century, some to growing cities but many to the wide expanse of the Midwest. To be sure, they brought the fear of hell and European existential angsts of damnation with them—thanks in no little part to the Jansenist heresy—but having settled in ethnic pockets from the Alleghanies to the Rockies, frequent confession was rarely available, if at all. In truth, Mass itself was infrequent in most locales, and the arriving priest on Sunday would begin hearing confessions virtually after dawn, giving everyone assembled a chance to confess individually before the noon Mass and receive Holy Communion. Chapter Two examines the grassroots American understanding of sin fostered by sermons, Catholic magazines for faithful laity, and journals for priests, such as Homiletic and Pastoral Review, which continues to publish to this day. With the establishment of Catholic seminaries beginning in 1791, Catholic moral thinking was steered to a large degree toward the form and content of personal confession; what, precisely, were God’s laws as defined by the Church, and how did a priest determine the seriousness of the penitent’s testimony of remorse. Confessors labored to do justice to the dictates of the Baltimore Catechism of the 1880’s, where each penitent was expected to render, to the best of one’s memory, every mortal sin in number and species; popular prudence strongly recommended confessing venial sins as well. Prior to the twentieth century the emphasis upon exactitude of confession and absolution fit the times in a very practical sense; priests were hearing many more confessions, particularly in the larger cities. The author found significant documentation in the notes and memoirs of priests around the turn of the twentieth century who tallied their confessions [some bishops asked]. It was not unheard of that a parish priest might hear more than one-hundred confessions in a day, particularly around the feasts of Christmas and the Triduum. Clearly there was little time for elongated advice regarding a particular vice or spiritual direction. In complicated moral cases, priests referred to the volumes of canons which catalogued and interpreted sin. The time between the Reformation and the Council Vatican II [1962-1965] is popularly referred to as “The Manualist Era” in treatments on morality. One of the most valuable chapters of this work is the sixth, “Psychology.” Catholicism, for the most part, initially took a dim view of Sigmund Freud; Bishop Fulton Sheen railed against the early psychoanalytic movement. But as the “talking cure” evolved through the twentieth century, there were pioneer Catholic priests—notably, Father Thomas Verner Moore [1887-1969]—who began exploration of a condition that attracted the attention of many parish priests on the front line—scrupulosity, or a compulsive fear of forgetting a sin or how often it was committed. O’Toole records the growing trend toward elementary clinical awareness in seminaries beginning in the mid to late 1960’s, and soon it was generally expected that priests bring at least a rudimentary healing approach to the Sacrament of Penance. There is also a captivating treatment of the use of psychological testing of seminarians themselves prior to admission to Holy Orders. Chapter Seven, “Collapse,” is an overview of the Vatican II era [1965--] and efforts—the good, the bad, and the ugly—to hurriedly implement Biblical and ritual reform of the seven sacraments. Those of us who lived through that era will find in the author’s even-handed assessment a probable taste of how future historians will assess those times, which continue to this day. The decline—better described as a crash—in the numbers of confessions has never been critically treated, that I am aware of, aside from the search for a “smoking gun.” O’Toole states for the record that he does not believe the papal teaching, “Humanae Vitae” ]1968] which prohibited artificial birth control, single handedly brought down the confessional. But he does see a shift toward more autonomous moral thinking [p. 226ff] and the end of the Manualist Era. He adds a practical piece of the confessional puzzle; when most U.S. Bishops gave permission for Saturday vigil Masses, they inadvertently put an end, for all practical purposes, to the long-standing parish practice of Saturday afternoon and evening confessions. Concurrent with the previous chapter, Chapter Eight, “Revelations,” explores the Sacrament of Penance vis-à-vis the recent awareness of clerical sexual abuse. In one sense this chapter is a continuation of Chapter 8, affirming that Catholics were right to turn to their own consciences for moral judgment before God without a clerical intermediary. The author clearly regrets that face-to-face confession and “confessional rooms” made grooming and sexual advances easier for predatory priests. O’Toole does not project into the future, but he is clear about where we are today. His Chapter 6, “Psychology,” suggests that as a Church we may wish to examine the possibilities of integrating human insight with Biblical/spiritual insight and a rite of both affirmation and challenge. The contemporary rise in the number of Catholics seeking spiritual small groups and directors cannot be overlooked in gazing into the penitential/sacramental future. Fed-Ex, Amazon, USPS, and the other delivery services make frequent stops at the Café, and the books get piled on my desk while the drivers stop for coffee. As the house reviewer, I generally read all of them, though there is often a lag before I can post a review/discussion on the Café site, and sometimes on Amazon’s review site. I read peer reviews of books before I order a new one, and generally that works out well. But it does happen that occasionally I read a book I don’t fully understand, or I find difficulty in conveying it accurately and attractively to Café readers.
It took me a while to get the drift of The End of Theological Education [2023] by Ted A. Smith, a Presbyterian minister and highly respected professor, author, and academic dean, now Charles Howard Candler Professor of Divinity [Emory University in Atlanta.]. The light finally clicked when I realized that Dr. Smith was attempting to address for his Protestant tradition what Roman Catholic thinkers/academics have been anguishing over ours—what ever happened to our churches since World War II or Vatican II, and what can we do about our mass exodus [no pun intended.] It later dawned on me that earlier this year I had written an Amazon review of the Catholic theologian Massimo Fagioli’s work on the decline of Catholic education in the U.S. [See review here.] Smith’s title to his work here, The End of Theological Education, can be taken in two ways. Is he addressing the purpose or ends of theological study, or is he preparing us for the funeral of the sacred sciences in their traditional form? If the latter, this would be a massive loss to all Christianity, including the Catholic community. Mainstream Protestantism has a long history in the United States and Europe of pastoral ministry and theological excellence. We forget that almost a century ago Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu [1943] allowed Catholic scholars to use the methods of Biblical research that Protestant scholars had developed as early as 1900. I myself begin my personal biblical thinking and study using the “form and redaction critical methods” developed by Protestant scholars, particularly Germans, in the first half of the twentieth century and taught in my Catholic seminary in the late 1960’s and beyond. Smith, a devout Presbyterian, employs what one might call a “sociological overview” of Protestantism in America, e.g., how did Presbyterians, Methodists, and other churches organize themselves in this country, maintain healthy congregations, and establish strong roots through theological colleges and seminaries. A major factor was timing. Protestantism arrived on our eastern shores of the thirteen colonies long before Roman Catholicism, and it arrived energized by John Wesley and the Methodist revival. While the new American Constitution established separation of church and state, this separation applied only at the federal level; post-colonial state governments still permitted established religions in individual states. Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island were three states where the state paid for the upkeep and salary of the [Protestant] pastors. But when the public University of Virginia was established in 1819, Thomas Jefferson threatened to withdraw his sponsorship/endowment because the state planned to charter the school as a religious institution. By the 1820’s, however, the principle of separation of church and state carried the day even at the local level. Through the first half of the nineteenth century the influx of settlers to America was primarily European and Protestant. Minnesota, for example, was a favorite settlement of Lutherans. Mission country extended from east of the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains. New Protestant seminaries turned out pastors to establish congregations even in small towns. The local churches, in turn, nurtured themselves through numerous parish societies, an excellent model that met civil needs of order and religious needs of catechesis and common Bible study and prayer. Roman Catholic immigrants, for the most part, came later, at a time when large cities were well established: New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. There the need was cheap labor. Immigrants were advised to immediately see the pastor for aid and the ward boss for a job. It is not hard to see that the need for Protestant pastors would serve as the impetus for the development of seminaries and religion establishment universities. Increase Mather, Cotton Mather’s brother, was the first recipient of the Doctor of Divinity Degree from Harvard University—in 1692! St. Mary’s Catholic Seminary in Baltimore, the first U.S. Catholic seminary, opened its doors in 1792, and it owned slaves. Smith emphasizes that Protestant seminaries succeeded in large part because of the religious tradition’s then broad understanding of ministry. Protestant seminaries for mission work formed what we would call today social workers and case managers as well as preachers to serve the needs of their congregations and the broader needs of the towns in which they were settled. Thus, across many denominations the “Social Gospel” movement stepped forward to help the poor and kept alive the long tradition of community service; Lyndon Johnson, according to one biographer, was religiously influenced in his youth toward social justice, and of course is famous today for Head Start and Medicare in the 1960’s. Demographics through World War II reflected the U.S. as a predominantly Protestant country; the election of Catholic John Kennedy to the American Presidency in 1960 was not without considerable controversy. However, after World War II the GI Bill allowed millions of blue-collar Catholic veterans to seek admission to Catholic colleges and others across the country. My father, who mustered out of the service to manage a small country movie house, went to business school in Buffalo on the GI Bill and ultimately became a hospital administrator in 1961. Stories like these are too numerous to count. Regarding church life, while it is true that “all ships rise at high tide,” some were rising ahead of the tide and others were taking on water. Smith devotes considerable time and space to the decline of postwar Protestantism [and religion in general] to “individualization.” It is hard to precisely define the word, though Smith treats it at length [pp. 65-93]. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary example uses the word in a positive sense: “Teachers should individualize their lessons to address differences in their students.” But many observers of religion, not just our author, saw a profound shift from organized churches centered upon God, family, and community, to a dangerous extreme of individualism. For congregations, whose social underpinnings rested upon unified social faith and works, the post-World War II drift toward self-determination of faith would obviously present a major blow to a long tradition of practice. “I am a spiritual person; I just don’t believe in religions” did not become a slogan in the 2020’s; it probably summarized the thinking of Renaissance and Enlightened men of letters, Thomas Jefferson being a good example. But particularly after the two world wars and the Holocaust, no Western Christian religion could be the Biblical “city on the hill” of virtue, and it is hard to criticize any sincere person from despairing of organized religion in the post-war twentieth century. Denominations bound by familial groups and strong bonds would suffer significantly. Smith expresses concern that the post-war Protestant seminaries were not facing the crisis of shrinking denominations. For one thing, divinity school faculties still maintained the unspoken but real principle of “publish or parish,” i.e., academic tenure and reputation still reigned supreme in twentieth century institutions which still awarded professional certifications [degrees] with the same pride as medical and law school. Protestant seminaries were producing future academic cleric-preachers when the cry on the streets called for more soup kitchen clerics. Ironically, Roman Catholics, in its postwar mea culpa, convoked a universal rethinking of its mission in the world, the Ecumenical Council Vatican II [1962-1965]. Having spent centuries developing theology and pastoral practice centered around saving one’s soul in the solitary confines of the confessional, the world’s bishops threw open the windows for fresh air, or in Pope John XXIII’s famous call, “aggiornamento!” The thrust of the postconciliar decades was a more tangible community experience, from worship to social outreach. For years now I have heard Catholics disgruntled with the Vatican II reforms complain that “we’re turning into Protestants.” There is truth to that. When the first English Masses were convoked in the mid-1960’s, we turned to the Lutherans for “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” and other hymns with manageable arrangements that even men can sing. We drank from the cup at communion time; we elected parish councils; our bishops began meeting in synods twice annually. We even celebrated Penance in groups outside the confessional, at least for a while. And yet, no one can say that 2025 is a halcyon year for Catholics generally. Vatican II concluded 60 years ago. Have our reforms made us “better,” however one chooses to define that word? American Catholicism is more divided now than at any time in my lifetime, except that now we are publicly enmeshed in ugly partisan secular politics. Ted Smith does not have magic answers for the turmoil of the times, but his book does remind those of us in other Christian communities that renewal is hard. Hopefully, the seminaries in his faith tradition are teaching the true cost of discipleship, as I hope the seminaries in my faith community are doing likewise. Hidden Valley Road [2020] came to my attention through my wife’s book club. Margaret was engrossed by this non-fiction narrative of a large Catholic family beset with a cruel disease, side-by-side with actual medical hypotheses and studies, and as I am a psychotherapist, she would share her layperson's observations. So of course I purchased my own copy, and I have to say that rarely have I seen the suffering of mental illness in real time coupled with the agonizing and pressured research of scientists to find the cause of a specific and dangerous syndrome. I wish I could say this narrative was unique, but it is not…because mental illness impacts our church communities, including our priests, as this story reveals. The author is the award-winning New York Times’ Robert Kolker.
THE FAMILY NARRATIVE: First off, I need to assure you that all the family narrative is based on the best available evidence, including self-reporting and releasing of family medical records. The family names are pseudonyms to protect privacy. The story begins with the marriage of Don and Mimi Galvin. Don was a strict Catholic from birth; Mimi converted to Catholicism at some point in the marriage. They were married during World War II. Don’s exact position with his military superiors is never exactly defined in the book. Don is inclined to exaggerate his importance at times to his family, referring to himself as an intimate advisor to President Eisenhauer, for example. But he and Mimi were frequently invited to military high society functions. In their gravy years with the military the Galvins made close friends with a millionaire couple who play a continuing role in the Galvin story, though different Galvin children remember them as positive and negative influences. Also, a factor, Don Galvin’s income was considerably lower than that of his associates. The author notes that Don Galvin’s Catholicism was lived out in the couple’s having twelve children between 1945 and 1965, though Kolker, an author with the eye of a therapist, comes to believe that the later children may have been conceived for Mimi’s needs, even more than Don’s. The first ten were boys, the last two, girls. As their firstborn son, Donald, passed into adolescence, he began to manifest an angry, physical, aggressive behavior, particularly toward the next oldest sibling, who responded in kind. As the years progressed, six of the boys demonstrated this angry, aggressive behavior; four did not. Donald was the first—but certainly not the last--in his family to encounter the world of psychiatric treatment, and several self-destructive episodes led to the first entry in his chart, “possible schizophrenic reaction.” Schizophrenia. [p. 63] A CROSS NO ONE SHOULD BEAR: Kolker does an excellent interplay in whisking the reader between the growing drama of six sons presenting schizophrenic symptoms, on the one hand, and the development of treatment modalities over the many years of the family affliction. The Galvins’ children grew up during a time of considerable disagreement and animosity in the mental health community. On the one hand were the “talking cure” practitioners, descendants of Freudian psychoanalysis, who believed that all psychotic behavior was a product of inner conflicts which could be resolved by talking out and identifying the heart of the conflict. But on the other side were practitioners and researchers who believed that the disease was organic, most likely in one or more regions of the brain, and that the best treatments were medical—hospitalization, medication, and electroshock, if necessary. The six Galvin boys ran the gamut of such treatments and institutionalizations throughout their lives, but they [and the rest of their family] became the object of intense medical research across the country. Multiple cases of schizophrenia in a family are highly unusual; the odds against six identified subjects in a nuclear family are in the trillions. In the quest to study the genesis of the disease, all the members of the family were studied and tested to detect a genetic marker peculiar to or absent from the six afflicted boys, and the other way around, a process that went on for decades. The symptoms of schizophrenia, defined here by the Mayo Clinic, explain how hard it is for a patient to exist in a “normal setting” such as a home or apartment. This disease falls into the category of “personality disorder,” or disorder of thought, which one of my professors described as bad wiring in the brain. Schizophrenia and other personality disorders are worlds apart, treatment wise, from ‘disorders of mood” such as depression, anxiety, panic attacks, etc. Therapy assists depressed patients because the patients’ thought processes, although often mistaken, are intact enough to implement changes of circumstances and behavior with traditional therapy and modest medication. Medications for mood disorders are far more benign, although the risk of suicide increases with depressed mood. There is more known to science about mood disorder, though not enough. I myself have taken antidepressants since 1990—but it took seven different meds and ten years to find the right one. My drug, nefazodone, is an SNRI or “selective norepinephrine reception inhibitor” in the brain, a cousin to the SSRI Prozac/fluoxetine family, which inhibits serotonin reuptake. However, when I go for my refills, the pharmacy instructions always begin with “the full operation of this medication is still not entirely understood.” A fair statement for much of what we do in psychiatry and mental health practice. LIFE IN THE GALVIN HOUSEHOLD. Mimi strove to keep her family together. In practice this meant providing room and board for her six afflicted sons as they spent their adulthood cycling through hospitalizations, prisons, flop-house arrangements, and extended periods of wandering the countryside. Compliance with prescribed medications was hard to enforce. [See the side effects of thorazine.]Money was tight, particularly after Don’s retirement from the military. Often the family could not afford topflight mental health facilities and was forced to institutionalize sons in lower budget state facilities for months at a time. During their time at home at Hidden Valley Road, Mimi did her best to police some kind of order—regular meals, hygiene, etc.—but at best the atmosphere was chaotic, and at times dangerous. Personality disorders are marked by inability to feel for others. And while schizophrenia creates numerous impairments, sexual drive is often not impaired. As the Galvin family grew up, with multiple unhealthy men coming into the prime of adulthood and sexual drive, the situation of the two youngest girls [offspring #11 and #12] just coming into puberty created a seriously unsafe environment. At this juncture Mimi accepted an offer from an affluent couple in her circle to allow the oldest girl to live with this other family for some years, in a high society environment with the best schools. This was a cruel blow to the younger sister who for years afterward wondered why she had been left behind. I myself puzzled over the intentions of Mimi and the generous couple; if the latter took the older girl to save her, so to speak, why leave the younger and more vulnerable one behind? Don would eventually die of cancer, and the deaths of most of the afflicted sons would open a new psychological episode for the family: processing the questions and angers of the six who were not physically afflicted by schizophrenia. In the final chapters of this work, Kolker interviews the two youngest daughters at some length to explore the lot of the survivors, so to speak. Three of the four unafflicted brothers maintained relationships with Mimi and the homestead, though they wisely kept their children [and themselves] at a safe distance. The daughters likewise married, though they were wary of reassurances of researchers that their offspring were not at higher risk for inheriting schizophrenia. In fact, an autopsy of Don’s brain found no abnormalities, a point that Mimi did not acknowledge to herself. As Kolker observes, “Mimi knew what she knew.” In reading the family postmortem, so to speak, what appears to have troubled Mimi’s surviving children was their mother’s perfection and autocratic ways, specifically her determination to care for her sick boys above everything else. Mimi never totally accepted a medical cause for her sons’ illnesses—in her older years she blamed her husband’s family despite the absence of medical proof available at the time. But in her declining years in the 1990’s she learned of a stunning betrayal of her trust years earlier that, in her mind but probably wrongly, became the lynchpin of her interpretation of the family’s troubles in her final reckonings before her death. The two sisters, Margaret and Mary/Lindsay, “had issues” between them—as in why one got cut loose and the other left behind in the mayhem. However, they came to realize that they would be the final chroniclers of this long and tragic epic, as well as the glue that held the surviving family together, and both became valuable sources as Kolker rounds out his narrative. LOOKING AT THIS NARRATIVE FROM THE VANTAGE POINT OF CATHOLIC LIFE: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops lists the “corporal works of mercy,” and it says this about the sick: “Offer to assist caregivers of chronically sick family members on a one-time or periodic basis. Give caregivers time off from their caregiving responsibilities so they can rest, complete personal chores, or enjoy a relaxing break.” This is excellent counsel, to be sure, although some forms of illness present with dangerous symptoms—infectious conditions, for example, or schizophrenic chaos. If a parish is considering a ministry to the sick and to caregivers, it would be wise to seek professional input in staff planning and recruiting volunteers as well as periodic continuing education for those working with the sick. It is a common feature of personality disordered individuals to deny they are ill or different in any way…and hence, can be highly resistant to prescribed drugs, or even suggestions meant to help. I learned this the hard way in the confessional. I had a penitent who was caught up in a situation which caused serious anxiety and guilt. After some weeks I became confident that the penitent might be suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder as the root cause. So, I said, “You know, the next time you see your doc, ask if a tricyclic antidepressant might help you regain control.” The penitent roared back: “I don’t come in here for headshrinker bull----. I come for absolution.” So much for my good intentions. But it is true that some forms of disease require unusual and extraordinary methods of comforting access. And to paraphrase Jesus, some issues are addressed only by prayer and fasting. The same is true with family members of the sick. Mimi, for example, had her way of caring for family business. An astute parish minister visiting her house might take considerable issue with the makeup and management of the home, but still need to find the prayer, the interaction, and the practical assistance to lift the spiritual and possibly even the physical burden of the caregiver for a time. If you are an extraordinary minister of the Eucharist, you should probably discuss the condition of your patient[s] and their settings with your pastor in reference to their symptoms and behaviors as well as the possibility to administer the sacrament in a meaningful and devout fashion. [When I ran this sentence past my wife, who had read the book before me, she said “you mean, a minister might feel awkward giving communion with adult Donald walking stark naked through the house,” as was his wont.] The story detailed in Hidden Valley Road covers nearly a half century. Although the author is able to identify some progress of science over that time including the extraordinary sacrifices of individual scientists, a definition of schizophrenia, let alone a cure, remains far into the future. The treatment and containment of patients today is basically the same as that employed in the care of the Garvin boys. We have a long way to go to ameliorate, let alone cure, many diseases that cripple individuals and disrupt families and marriages. While Catholic teachings in recent years such as Fratelli Tutti have exhorted us to become more engaged in thinking and acting as a community in the care of the planet, health care in our country and the world is a demanding issue crying for help. It is also an issue that involves individuals of all faiths and cultures. Catholic Americans can be rightly proud of our history of the care of the sick. Historians of both the Confederate and Union Armies of the Civil War highlight the extraordinary interventions of Catholic sisters in treating wounded soldiers across the entire landscape of that war. Today, health care is a business, and everyone is a player—and a present or potential client as well. Each of us is also a taxpayer, hopefully an informed one. The past years and months have not been kind to honest medicine. Massive federal and state cuts have impacted the health services currently available, Medicare and Medicaid, among others. Monies for research are harder to come by. Each year during “Medicare reset time” either I or the people close to me relate how our long-time providers are no longer “in-network” and our copays, naturally, are increased. Kolker is eminently fair in his narrative, but he does observe that Big Pharma has not been motivated to aggressively pursue new formularies for schizophrenic disorder. In our sermon last night [Saturday, September 27], our celebrant developed a magnificent theme about Lazarus the poor man. Lazarus was not just poor; he was also “covered with sores,” as St. Luke describes him. “The dogs came and licked his sores.” Lazarus was shut out from sustenance and health care by the gate at the rich man’s residence. And, more chilling, the day is coming when the circumstances will be reversed, and Lazarus will recline in health and rest in Abraham’s bosom while the rich man was consumed in the fires of judgment. That day is coming for us, too. Let it be said that we opened our mouths and cried for a national compassion and a just system of healing. God expects that none of his children will be locked out of humanity and left to be licked by dogs. Martin Luther did not single-handedly redefine western Christianity. His friends and confidants, and later agents of “civil” governments, promulgated and expounded the central keys of Luther’s theology in a variety of ways and for multiple purposes and interpretations, such that baptism no longer meant the same things across individual and communal consciences by the time of his death. By the same token, his opponents and enemies chose to interpret his body of work in the narrowest of constraints as devoid of any relevance to the pastoral condition of the Catholic Church, in a monumental effort to protect and preserve the historical structure of belief and practice.
Whether one admires Luther or not, he did enjoy exquisite timing. In his excellent history of the medieval era, the historian Kevin Madigan [Medieval Christianity, 2015] concludes by summarizing the mood of Catholics on the eve of Luther as torn between frantic efforts to be saved [e.g., indulgences], and massive depression and despair of the very possibility of salvation. Luther, if I remember all the details of this work, never resorted to the rush to efficacious relics for salvific guarantees, even if his protector, Frederick the Wise, owned over 19,000 of them. Luther’s desperation was the “perfect sacramental confession,” which sometimes stretched to six hours. Scrupulosity was his idol in his early years, but Luther at least came to gradual insight to know he was living a sick variant of a religious life. This unbearable tension on the question of salvation played out in the flesh and bones of Martin Luther. Eric Metaxas understands his subject, Luther, and his times equally well. But the author stays thoroughly with Luther throughout his work. To be sure, there are engaging figures passing through the German landscape in the religious upheavals of the times. The anguish of the tormented Augustinian monk, his scrupulosity and fear of damnation, summarizes the catch-22 of thoughtful Christians throughout the medieval era. Luther’s unique position in history is his eventual understanding that the malaise of religion was not simply a matter of reforming it. Wycliff and Hus had trod that road before, to their peril, and even Francis of Assisi and Innocent III did not dare pose a redefinition of the road to salvation; until Luther, the stock solution toward reform was repaving the road, not dismantling it. Luther came to understand that the psycho-religious crisis of his time required a new hermeneutic or interpretive key: a turn to the Bible and an interpretation of the Word in which God’s mercy, manifested in the crucifixion of Jesus, became a highly personal encounter. Luther does for religion what Rene Descartes would do for philosophy a century later with the Frenchman’s “I think, therefore I am.” For Luther, it was belief in the God within him by which the Christian can state, “I am.” Metaxas carries forth the narrative of Luther’s insight and conversion with precision and detail, in a way that the reader can sense the psychological peace that Luther found in his discovery of God’s personal affection and the very real possibility of divine communion, heart to heart. Luther was not an intentional iconoclast, though it might seem so from the distance of time. His theological reflections led him to disengage his followers from traditional church practices that, in his view, interfered or obstructed the believer’s access to a personal communion with the Word of God. For example, his reduction of Church sacraments from seven to two is based not just on the premise that Christ, in his view, never explicitly instituted five of the sacraments, but also on his reservations whether all the sacraments do what they are purported to do. Consider Holy Orders. Luther was a priest himself, and he certainly witnessed other priests of weak faith and immoral conduct. In the theology of the time, and even today in Roman Catholic practice, the integrity of the rite superseded the disposition of the priest. A “bad priest” can bring saving grace, so to speak, a premise Luther found erroneous. [Of course, the reader is free to respond with the question of whether any priest is truly holy enough to affect the consecration of the bread and wine or other miracles of God contained in the sacraments.] At the same time, the author does not whitewash the sufferings of an aging man who is of sound enough mind to realize, as his influence spread, that his theology of the Bible and personal salvation was as divisive as it was freeing. At some point, community was necessary to set boundaries of behavior and belief, one reason being the very integrity of the Scriptures themselves. Luther and his friend Erasmus, among others, realized that the official Church translation, St. Jerome’s fifth century Latin Bible, the Vulgate, was plagued with translational errors. Luther devoted enormous amounts of time to a German translation of the Bible, corrected and accessible to all members of the church in his region. As Metaxas points out, Luther came to realize that reformed churches needed structure. But he was not pleased with many of the new forms of church bodies erupting throughout Europe—which seemed eager to police congregations. By the time of his death the Calvinist movement and the anabaptists were energetic and attainable, depending upon where one lived. As he grew older, married, and raised a family, Luther was no longer the directing prophet of change in this religious era of reinvention. As a husband he was bachelor-like, and his wife complained that he was too wrapped up in his work. He seemed, however, to enjoy the atmosphere of familial living. This work is a splendid introduction to Luther and his special position in religious history. It occurs to me that in 2025, when one of the largest denominations is “Nones,” we may be seeing a resurgence of the religious divide that Luther faced: the frantic on one hand, and the depressed on the other who have given up religious hope. I am doing something I have never done before—review a book after reading just the first half. But I am preparing to leave in a few days for a month in Europe, visiting Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Fatima, Notre Dame, Avignon, the White Cliffs of Dover, and the Eiffel Tower, among other sites. The Catechist Café will publish frequently, hopefully daily] from overseas for the next four weeks. I’m flying red eye from Orlando to Amsterdam, and I promise I’ll finish reading this book on the plane…unless there are good movies.
I can see it now…most bishops, pastors, and laity would need smelling salts after reading section one of Gone for Good: Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transitions [2024, Eerdmans] by Editor Mark Elsdon and contributing partners. While circumstances differ from diocese to diocese in the United States, and from region to region, it is true that many Catholic parishes have closed their doors for good, with the congregations summarily dispatched to neighboring parishes, in many cases against their will. That sort of ordeal has never occurred in my present diocese, Orlando, nor have I heard of such a thing in present-day Florida, where the Census Bureau reports that 1,218 people per day emigrate to the “Sunshine State,” a sizable number of them Catholic. But clusters of parish and school closures have been announced in dioceses including New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Chicago, to name just some. With that in mind, I turn our attention to the author, Mark Elsdon. If you Google his name, you will get descriptions such as “cofounder of RootedGood, which supports catalytic and innovative church leaders working on property development, money and mission alignment, and social enterprise. He is also executive director at Pres House, the Presbyterian campus ministry at the University of Wisconsin’s Madison campus, and of Pres House Apartments.” From the portions of his book I have read to date, he strikes me as a highly energetic individual with several agendas sacred to him: expanding the healthy potential influence of Christian churches rather than closing them; assisting pastors and congregations to re-imagine the use[s] of their property, establishing congregations as closer partners within their neighborhoods in meeting standards for a higher quality of life in their neighborhoods, and developing the charitable outreach of all communities bearing the birthright of Christian baptism. I knew I would enjoy this book from the start when he introduced the “halo effect of local churches.” Bottom line: churches, in their mission and planning, do not consider their influence in anchoring the adjoining physical community’s identity. Churches in fact are particularly important to their physical surroundings, hence Elsdon’s term the “halo effect.” Elsdon’s surveys cover all Christian denominations, so it is impossible to extrapolate Catholic parish numbers for the most part. But in most cases, Catholic parishes, in my recollection, used to be “community connected.” Part of this was due to ethnic community identity. In one major study, a count was done on the number of people who set foot on a church’s property in each week, and then the attendance at church in the same week. Nationally, of the folks who visited the property, only 9% of them attended Sunday service [or in our case, Mass]. It sounds crazy until you expand your thought horizon a bit. Who are these 91%? In our case, every child and parent in a Catholic school who does not attend weekly Eucharist. Or the men’s club which plays basketball every week in the school gym but miss Mass. Or any kid who plays any sport on parish grounds. Or weekly AA, NA, or grief groups, using church facilities. Or those seeking counseling, those who receive food subsidies [which in my parish can attract several hundred cars periodically], those seeking social services through the St. Vincent de Paul Society or other established outreach, customers of the parish book store, visiting school athletic teams with families in tow, rentals of the church’s social hall for wedding receptions at rates exponentially lower than Disney Destination wedding rates, etc. A church near my house has been a voting site for all civil elections for years. Some readers may highlight the Catholics among the 91% who, by this survey, don’t worship at weekly Eucharist. Elsdon makes the case that the church is an important external mover and shaker in the broader community, and probably more so in economically depressed areas. He would encourage pastors and church ministers to become “civil figures” in addressing community needs, in league with neighboring pastors of other traditions, city officials, and private charities and foundations. He believes that community involvement builds the pride and evangelical mood of lethargic congregations, ultimately reinforcing a church’s sense of mission. At my last pastorate, the principal of the parish school became the first woman member of the city’s Rotary Club, and she invited the city mayor to serve on the parish school board. [Ten years later, she became my wife, too, but that is a story for another post.] Both Catholic and other churches can be “narrow thinkers” where the use of land and buildings is concerned. The author describes a dying church of another tradition whose surviving membership instinctively opted to remodel the worship space as a way of increasing the membership. But a faith-based consulting firm put the church on to the idea of using the money to construct a small but multifaceted market center on land it owned, for a variety of services not available in the economic “desert” that inner cities have become—a barber shop, for example, or a fresh food shop. [Interestingly, there are public and private funds available to participate in varying amounts to those who know where to look.] The congregation was deeply divided on the plans--I imagine mine would be, too—but the mayor of the city is quoted in the book as grateful for what has proved to be a small but successful regeneration of a stagnant part of his city. As a child growing up, my parish in East Buffalo was a neighborhood “hangout” for kids with six basketball courts and a deli across the street. But the pastors of my youth had no sense of interracial cooperation with community leaders or politicians as Buffalo went through a hard “white flight” process and my parish closed in the late 1970’s. The church and property were sold to a Baptist Church which remodeled the worship structure and appears to be healthy and thriving. See the drone video of how my old church dominates my childhood neighborhood today. I notice, too, that several aging structures have been demolished to increase parking spaces, so the church must be full on Sundays; the website notes multiple community ministries. Drones can point out the importance of Catholic churches in our neighborhoods, but the technology is far ahead of our thinking on the identity and mission of our parishes’ existence. When I get back home, I will expand on several other aspects of Elsdon’s ideas, points we will want to take into the future of American Catholicism. SOURCE: The New Commentary on the Code of Canon Law [2000]
Canon 985. The director and assistant director of novices, and the rector of a seminary or of any other institute of education, are not to hear the sacramental confessions of their students resident in the same house, unless in individual instances the students of their own accord request it. Canon 240 §1. In addition to ordinary confessors, other confessors are to come regularly to the seminary. Without prejudice to the discipline of the seminary, students are always free to approach any confessor, whether in the seminary or outside it. §2. When decisions are made about admitting students to orders or dismissing them from the seminary, the opinion of the spiritual director and confessors can never be sought. It does happen in Canon Law that certain laws repeat themselves because they apply under several different headings in the Code. In this case Canon 240 appears in the section under “The Formation of Clerics.” Canon 985, almost identical to Code 240, appears in a later section covering “Ministers of the Sacrament of Penance.” Both deal with the Sacrament of Penance, but here with subtle shades of meaning. The main concern of the Law here is the integrity of the Sacrament of Penance, and specifically the “seal of confession,” the one facet of the sacrament that is known to any man on the street. The State of Washington passed legislation this year that priests hearing confession are “mandated reporters” of child abuse, and face prison if they do not report said information to authority. See Bishop Robert Barron’s commentary here. Both Canons 985 and 240 address the issue of seminarians preparing for ordination, and presumably young men preparing for solemn vows or promises as brothers in religious orders or fraternities where the rector/superior and others on the staff are priests available for confessions. Religious orders and communities of women do not have the precise problems outlined in 985 and 240—although my guess is that the conflict of privacy and spiritual direction in both men’s and women’s houses of formation is always a concern. The conflict, to be precise, is votation. In seminaries and houses of formation the faculty and administrators must vote periodically on the progress or regression of candidates to vows and orders. Canon 240-2 states “the opinion of the spiritual director and confessors can never be sought.” I worked summers for a former seminary rector who told me of a case where a seminarian/cleric had systematically confessed to every voting member of the seminary board, and thus there was nobody who could say a bad word about him at votation. [The situation was referred to Rome; I guess that ploy had been tried before.] Canon 240-1 states that outside confessors “are to come regularly to the seminary,” to give a seminarian a full range of choices when frequenting the Sacrament of Penance. On the other hand, 985 offers the choice to the student to confess to his director/rector, giving the candidate the freedom in conscience to seek insight and counsel from someone he trusts. My novitiate class in 1968-69 was visited every Tuesday by two friars from a neighboring parish to hear our confessions, but they told my Novice Master that “nobody was going.” Those were the 60’s, all right. In scanning related material in the New Commentary, candidates for orders and solemn vows/promises go through a considerable screening which includes a psychiatric component and competent references outside the Sacrament of Penance. At the same time, the final decision to be ordained is also a moral one on the part of the cleric that, in the best of circumstances, is made with a trusted and knowledgeable confessor and an experienced spiritual director. DO THESE CANONS APPLY ELSEWHERE? The Irish monks, as early as the 400’s A.D., were developing the format for the Sacrament of Penance as we know it today: sorrow for sin, oral confession of specific misdeeds, absolution, and a post-confession act or deed to make reparation. For most of our history, then, confession has embraced a “defensive posture,” i.e., deliverance from the devil and evil that we might enter the Kingdom of God. As I get on in years, the Sacrament of Penance looks less to me like an insurance policy, and more like a challenge to recognize the wondrous God who created me from a love I will never fully understand. The “offensive posture” of rushing to meet God’s love sounds foreign to us in a confession discussion, where we so often confess in anonymous code that the “seal of confession” is almost redundant: I was uncharitable/I missed Mass/I lied/I drank too much/I used the pill/I was impure. Good priests know by grace, study, and experience that their ministry in the confessional is far greater than stamping passports to Purgatory. Unfortunately, we don’t talk much about the confessor as a spiritual director who, with the penitent’s openness, kindly probes for the core of our spiritual hunger and emptiness. [Clock time, of course, is a major factor, but for something so important, we can figure something out.] In the confessional the priest is as much an alter Christus, “another Christ,” as he is when he consecrates the bread and wine at Mass. In the Sacrament of Penance, it stands to reason that we encounter Christ with the same intensity as receiving communion, but here we take the role of Zacchaeus. The conversion of Zacchaeus as it appears in Luke Chapter 19 seems very quick and dramatic, and it may be that standing face to face with Jesus had something to do with that. Luke was, after all, a literary artist. Based upon years as a confessor, a psychotherapist, and a struggling Catholic though, I would venture to say that, practically speaking, for most of us conversion is a history, a lifelong journey through the desert to the Promised Land on poor sandals. We don’t talk about confession that way—it is usually described as a clean start, an erasure of the past. In fact, I sat through a sermon a few months ago where the homilist was talking about confession, and he kept repeating in a mantra, “God forgets.” Once confessed, forever gone. That didn’t seem right. Comforting to some, maybe. But it is not a true way to catechize the Sacrament of Penance. Our life with God is a whole. Like the AA Big Book says, alcoholics like myself do the Fourth Step—the moral inventory—repeatedly till we die, in the comfort that our Higher Power forgives us. As we age, we look back. Confession is a place for that. I confess twice a year—to a Trappist and a Franciscan—and I take out my spiritual GPS and describe to them my walk through the desert, where I’ve been and where I need to go in the years I have left. I am not Luther; I believe in the sacraments’ forgiving of my life’s sins, but I still regret many things over my life and even more that I left undone. My confessors seem to understand that and reframe the narrative, often using my past as an interpretative guide to the future. I might add here that I take the Penitential Rite of the Mass very seriously--our venial sins are forgiven by the words of Absolution at the beginning of Mass if we are sorry. [Some celebrants whiz through the Penitential Rite like Jesse Owens.] Canons 985 and 240 boil down to giving seminarians a wide freedom of selection in choosing a confessor and a spiritual director within the formation structure for vows and orders. As a pastor, there was another population I thought about where penance and spiritual direction was concerned: my employees and advisors. I tried from time to time to bring neighboring priests into the parish during Advent and Lent to give my staff [and the whole parish, really] the opportunity to confess or seek counsel from someone other than their pastor. I wouldn’t say there was a stampede, but I still believe in the principle. THE HARD NUMBERS
Chapter Three of Maureen K. Day’s et.al. new publication, Catholicism at a Crossroads: The Present and Future of America’s Largest Church [2025] is devoted to both a detailed numerical summary of Catholic cultural demographics across the country and interviews on the question of parochial inculturation. The numbers don’t lie; the authors report how much we have changed in the past four decades. In 1987, of all Catholics polled that year, 86% identified themselves as white. In 2017 that number dropped to 56%, meaning that we are rapidly approaching a day when a white Anglo-Saxon Catholic is a minority in his or her diocese in the United States, at least in many locations. [pp. 103-104] The largest increase, ethnically speaking, in this study is Hispanic respondents [10% in 1987 to 35% in 2017]. Black/non-Hispanic Catholics reported in at 3%, and others, including Asian Catholics, at 6%. The authors cite the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 as a factor in the present-day diversity of Catholics, and certainly of the U.S. population. Prior to 1965 U.S. immigration policy favored northern and western Europe, the old “quota system.” The post-1965 wave of immigrants came “from Catholic-dense countries and regions such as Mexico, Central and South America, and parts of Africa and South Asia.” [p. 104] Some other takeaways in the raw numbers: while Hispanic Catholics are more likely than either White or Black Catholics to take the Church’s ban on artificial birth control seriously, it is not a radical difference; Hispanics answered affirmatively on obedience to this teaching at 25%; White Catholics 12% and Black Catholics 5% respectively. On the need for personal confession to a priest: Hispanic 42%, White 28%, Other 27%, Black 25%. Black Catholic respondents scored highest in the obligation to extend charity to the poor at 58%. In this chapter of Catholicism at a Crossroads, the authors wisely recognized that the numbers, per se, are not the whole story. If anything, the raw numbers indicate a need for evangelization and faith formation in all quadrants in many ways and degrees. But there are two key issues that defy quantification. First, all the populations polled in the surveys have long histories with and against each other. Second, the American Church must address itself to unity in sacramental/communal life, however difficult that may be. THE LONG HISTORY It probably depends upon where in the U.S. you live or grew up in, but certainly east of the Mississippi the strained relationship of race—Anglo-Saxon to African American—continues to this day. Some portions of this history we learned in school, though some states—including my own state, Florida—have attempted to sugarcoat their textbooks when dealing with a painful truth, that the first people from Africa arrived on North American soil for purchase and involuntary servitude to sustain the American economy. It is a particularly sad chapter of American Catholicism. If you are a student of history, you probably are aware that professional historians are examining Catholic involvement in the slave trade and the Church’s purchase and use of slave labor. To its credit, Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., has owned up to the Jesuit ownership of the “GU272,” or 272 slaves [about half minors] sold by the university/order for the retirement of debts. See this current link, Collaborative on Global Children's Issues, for the full story and Georgetown’s efforts to make amends. The post-Civil War era of relations between the races is so complex that I cannot summarize it here, and in fact I doubt if anyone could. Many of us white Catholics grew up in predominantly white urban parishes where, after World War II, middle class whites moved to the suburbs or the countryside as African Americans moved into our neighborhoods, a phenomenon referred to as white flight. The belief among whites was that an influx of persons of color lowered housing values…a belief later undermined by the process of gentrification, whereby the old neighborhoods were refurbished and restored to luxurious standards and placed on the open market at massive profits to the developers and investors. One thing that is clear: Black Catholics themselves seemed to have embraced the energy of Vatican II; the Council itself [1962-1965] was held during a time of massive civil rights battles in the U.S., in government and on the streets. Black Catholics across the country engaged in two decisive strategies to enhance their pastoral care. First, they petitioned Rome for the appointment of black bishops. Second, they actively embraced the development of their cultural style within the reform of the Mass, particularly in music. The Vatican responded by appointing auxiliary bishops in New Orleans and elsewhere in the 1960’s; in 1991 James Lyke was appointed Archbishop of Atlanta [1991-1992], and Wilton Gregory has served as the Archbishop of Washington, D.C. until his retirement last year. The book’s commentators make an interesting point—in long established Black parishes in the United States, contemporary immigrants from various African nations such as Nigeria experience degrees of stress in the process of inculturation with Black American Catholics. [p. 116] Looking West, Spanish Catholics settled in what is now the United States long before the thirteen colonies got themselves organized. The past generation has seen significant academic research into the introduction of Catholicism to the Indigenous populations of the Pacific Coast, Central and South America. Again, the history of this process is too long to treat of in detail, and there continues to be heated discussion of the intentions of the European Spanish missionaries and the establishment of the mission-Church. Were the missionaries saviors of souls, importers of European culture, or task masters? Mexico in the 1800’s was a Catholic country; the Battle of the Alamo pitted Catholic Santa Anna versus Davy Crockett [though the church habits of both men are uncertain.] After the U.S.-Mexican War [1846-48], the United States acquired from Mexico the future states of New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, California, Texas, and western Colorado. Much of this acquired territory was already divided into Catholic dioceses; Mexican bishops were replaced by primarily Irish bishops, unfamiliar with the culture of the landscape. THE QUESTIONS ABOUND The two preceding examples of ethnic-pastoral history have been presented here in response to the authors’ concern for the dignity of all people and the principle of unity in the Church. We know from St. John’s Gospel that Jesus prayed “that all may be one” and from Tradition that all sacramental celebration is communal. This being the case, several questions need to be addressed. They are open ended; I have no concrete answers but rather “table questions” for every Catholic gathering. Must, or can, we apologize? I am writing as a white male, so take that into account. I start with the thorny question of reparations. There is sentiment that the no-brainer in this consideration is the Native American: whites stole the land, livelihoods, and ultimately the children. In both the Canadian and the U.S. West, there were structured programs—government and religious—running into the twentieth century whose purpose seemed to be deprogramming Native American children from their culture and recreating them to be absorbed into predominantly while society. If you are a sports fan, there is a very recent [2022] biography of the Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe [1887-1953] by David Maraniss which describes in detail the travails of Native Americans. Thorpe, incidentally, was raised Catholic. If one is looking for a “legal and binding” sort of reparation, I have significant reservations. It is too big a challenge for paper and pencil; the specifics alone—as in who gets what and how much—would add to lingering estrangement for decades. A better approach is truth. Florida is a state rich in Native American culture. Given my state government’s sudden interest in history, I wonder whether Native American culture receives respectful attention in public and Catholic schools. I do believe in public apologies. Pope Francis in 2022 issued strongly worded remarks about the [Canadian] system which extended into the 1990’s, describing the schools as a form of “cultural genocide.” Again, one cannot undo either the ignorance or the arrogance, but we can listen to the memories, engage in the cultural beauty, and visit the lands sacred to Native Americans to this day. The sufferings of a few—or even one—are my sufferings, too. In 2021 Margaret and I visited the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890 in South Dakota, near Badlands National Park. I felt disturbed by the paucity of symbols and care of this memorial. Can we worship together? Last year I attended an Easter Mass in the Athens, Greece, cathedral, celebrated in a Philippine tongue for residents of that ancestry. In Belgium we attended a Mass in the local tongue in a church claiming to have a vial of Christ’s Good Friday blood, which was processed through the church to its sacred enclave in the structure. Even in Ireland, where we spent three months last year, the brogue can be so thick that conversation is nigh impossible. Every time a new pope is elected, here in the United States many outlets of Catholic media immediately look for clues as to whether the new pontiff will allow/encourage/command the celebration of the Mass in the Latin Rite of Pope Pius V and the Council of Trent [1545-1563], the Mass we old timers remember. Every now and then I do wonder if the struggle for Church unity might be strengthened by the unity of Mass in Latin. However, I quickly come to my senses. The claims by some [certainly not a majority] that the Tridentine Latin formula is the only valid form of the Mass is absurd. I belong—as you probably do—to the Latin Rite of the Catholic Mass, which is one of about two dozen rites in communion with Rome. For two millennia we have been a Church which accepted a variety of forms and languages. To mandate a universal Latin Mass format for the entire world would be yet another dismantling of culture. Beyond that, I just pray that Pope Leo XIV will lead us in an enlightenment of our hearts and a love of the Eucharist that will spill out in warmth to anyone with whom we worship, at home or on the road. Language is not our only means of engagement. Is there anyone who does not understand the language of hot coffee and donuts, for starters, after church? Or baklava in Budapest? Here's a priest for any culture! My hero! Bending Toward Justice [2025] "When the bishop and the realtors come sniffing around your church.""5/13/2025
In 1986 I was a pastor in Florida when I received an invitation from former parishioners of the church where I was born and raised in East Buffalo, St. Mary Magdalene on Filmore Avenue, to offer a Mass at a reunion. I say “former parishioners” because St. Mary Magdalene was formally closed by the Diocese of Buffalo in 1978 and the property was purchased by the Antioch Baptist Church. The reunion event was held at a fire hall picnic pavilion in Bowmansville, N.Y., and I said Mass under a large tent. The organizers had asked to buy space for a public invitation in the Buffalo Catholic paper, but the chancery wouldn’t give them the time of day, hoping to keep all publicity and details of the closing and sale hush-hush. I guess my Aunt Margie did not want to get a local priest in trouble with the bishop, and I was happy to fly up, see my family, and form some impressions.
I grew up half a block from St. Mary Magdalene and witnessed firsthand what was called at the time “white flight.” More families of color moved into my neighborhood, and eventually most white households moved to the suburbs. Eventually St. Mary Magdalene, its 1900 elementary school long demolished, served a miniscule congregation. At sunrise on the morning of the 1986 reunion, I drove to the old church several hours before the Antioch Sunday Worship to visit the site where I was born into Catholicism, which I had not seen since 1962. As the church was still locked, I went to the old rectory—now an administration building—and found the pastor at his desk painting his nails. So, I sat down across his desk and talked for quite a while. Noting the size of the former parish plant--the church itself and two large residences converted to other uses--I inquired about the price the Diocese of Buffalo had asked for. He replied, “We got everything for $40,000.” Later in the afternoon at the reunion I was sitting with some elderly relatives next to the Genesee Beer tap recalling my morning visit, and they asked me what the selling price was. I said, “$40,000.” There was a pause. Then one of them exclaimed, “I knew if we could get the right white man in there, he could get some [N-word] to tell us the truth.” As I flew home to Orlando, it occurred to me that the author Thomas C. Wolfe was right: “You can never go home again.” [And Antioch Baptist Church has been magnificently restored in recent years.] I began with this elongated episode to illustrate that the closing of parishes is not a “new thing” in the American Catholic Church. What the tipping point for my childhood parish was, I can only speculate that many white Catholics embraced suburbia and the countryside and/or felt constrained by the changing culture to move elsewhere. The new residents were Baptists or Evangelicals if the success of Antioch Baptist is any indication. [If any Buffalo readers can fill me in, please do so in the comments section below or contact me privately.] From where I sit right now, it would seem the parish simply dissolved. In some dioceses, bishops might convert the style and human services of a parish like SMM into a sacramental-Catholic Charities inner city outreach, but to my knowledge no such project was considered for St. Mary Magdalene. St. Mary Magdalene’s story in Buffalo was hardly unique, at least in the Northeast U.S. and the Rust Belt. Other parts of the country were doing well. Two years after that Buffalo reunion, I built a church in an Orlando, Florida suburb in 1987 for $4,222,698.06 in 2025 dollars, and in this diocese several more new churches would follow into the next century. Florida has for years served as a destination for people relocating from other states and countries. However, this flow into the state has decreased significantly; earlier this year Newsweek reported: “The net migration of people moving to Florida from other American states has fallen sharply from 317,923 in 2022, to just 63,346 in December 2024, according to a Vintage population estimate released by the United States Census Bureau.” On a separate track, we have the national statistical decline of Catholic membership, which is well documented by many sources, plus the Covid disruption of much of Catholic life. Thus, even in sections of the country like Florida, where Catholic parishes are thriving or at least holding their own, Catholics cannot become complacent. Financial stress—even to the point of closing parishes and or institutions—may someday overwhelm the present-day Church in Florida or the state where you live. In 1980, would you have thought that New York City, Boston, Cleveland, St. Louis, and Philadelphia, to name a few, would all have wholesale programs of parish mergers and closings in 2025? We talk about the “shortage of priests” but in fact the United States has rarely produced enough homegrown vocations. As I understand it, the years 1940-1960 were the only ones where we can say the American Church enjoyed self-sufficiency in terms of ordained priests. The evidence of a shrinking clerical pool was evident already from statistics in the 1960’s. It is fair to say that few ecclesiastical leaders addressed the problem, believing that “things would get better.” Instead, things got much worse. The sexual abuse of minors by Church clergy led to defections from Catholic parishes by outraged or saddened laity, as many as 10%, though studies vary. Whereas parishes in the past sometimes simply dissolved due to pastoral absence of need, today 25% of U.S. dioceses have declared bankruptcy resulting from lawsuits in civil courts, lawyers’ fees, therapeutic services to victims, etc. How much money are we talking about? It is impossible to put a price on human suffering, but in dollars the costs [so far] range from $6-10 billion dollars. The Diocese of Buffalo is burdened with a $150,000,000 settlement; neighboring Syracuse at $100,000,000; Los Angeles $1,500,000,000. [You read that right.] What has resulted is a new and exceptionally large class of aggrieved victims: faithful Catholics served by fewer priests whose parishes are being closed and sold on the open market to developers to meet the staggering costs of settlements. Of particular pain was the failure of many dioceses to consult individual parishes in open meetings and/or formalized consultations, and the suppression of information. But, as we all learned in Catholic schools or CCD programs, bishops have unlimited powers in such matters. Or do they? Go fill your coffee cups and come back for the story of a Catholic nun, one of few women Canon [Church] lawyers in the U.S., whose doggedness and genius with the fine print of the 1983 Code of Canon Law saved the futures of dozens of parishes across the United States. [Imagine intermission music.] Our book is Bending Toward Justice: Sister Kate Kuenstler and the Struggle for Parish Rights [2025] by Sister Christine Schenk, CSJ. Mary Kathleen Kuenstler, born in 1949, was raised in Wendelin, Illinois, and adopted by a Catholic couple when she was four months old. “Kate’s” parents were parish leaders, and the local convent was staffed by the Congregation of the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ [PHJC]. As a teenager Kate was on the fast track toward becoming a farmer, but she entered a local high school/junior college for potential candidates to the PHJC community. She followed through and professed final vows in 1976. Kate’s religious career is intriguing: several years of classroom teaching, troubleshooting, and earning a master’s degree in theology. She established a catechists’ certification program for the Diocese of Belleville, Illinois, and later for other regions of Illinois. It was not until 1988, when Kate was 39, that her community asked her to study Canon Law. As is well documented, the Vatican under Pope John Paul II was uncomfortable with the direction of women religious in the United States. Did the PHJC community foresee a need for “in-house counsel” in dealing with the John Paul and Benedict XVI papacies? My guess is quite possibly, but the book does not address this in detail. After a period of internship in the South Bend, Indiana Tribunal, where she learned to process annulments, she left to study in Rome. According to the author, Kate graciously turned down an offer from Fort Wayne Bishop John D’Arcy to pay for her studies in exchange for ten years’ service to the Fort Wayne-South Bend diocese. Rather, her religious community funded her Roman studies. [Privately she joked that “I’m no cheap date.”] The author subtly brings to the fore the maxim that “he who pays the piper calls the tune.” Women religious are lay persons, not clerics; Kate herself seems to have developed a theological appreciation of the rights of all baptized persons and did not desire a future as a diocesan house lawyer, so to speak, representing individual bishops in church business--a true turning point in her career. Chapter Three, “Canon Law Studies in Rome,” is captivating. Kate elected to pursue her canonical doctorate at the University of St. Thomas Aquinas, also known as “The Angelicum.” A top-flight school for canonists? This is the Canon Law-Italian equivalent of Stanford or Yale civil law schools in the U.S. One of its graduates was an Augustinian priest named Robert Prevost…whose doctoral dissertation was “The Role of the local prior [superior] in the Order of Saint Augustine.” I’m guessing you’ve heard of him, if not his dissertation... But for Kate, the Roman years were hard. The Angelicum conducted its lectures and examinations—including the grueling oral comprehensives—in the Italian tongue. The language, the living situations, the unreliability of Roman public transportation, and the absence of her religious community were formidable obstacles, and they are best described in the book itself. But it is worth noting Kate’s areas of academic concentration: annulments, international law, and sacraments. Of the latter, Kate would say that Canon Law addressed sacramental life but “never in a theological way. It’s always in a procedural way.” She also studied “temporal goods” in the 1983 Code of Canon Law—matters of finance and property management of a diocese. She was, in fact, preparing herself to become something of a pioneer in American Catholicism, a defender of lay rights where parish entities were involved, based on the theological principle that Baptism confers rights upon all members of the Church. Her dissertation was her first exercise of muscle, an account of a conflict between the Carmelite Order of women religious—then renewing its constitution and structure--and Pope John Paul II’s Curia or administrative bureaucracy. Evidently no career-minded soul in Catholic academia rushed to assume the cause of the Carmelites in a public forum until England’s Cardinal Basil Hume personally asked Kate to write a frank history of the affair. [A sixteen-page summary of her dissertation, “The Fractured Face of Carmel,” is posted on-line for free.] Before delving into the specifics of Sister Kate’s work, it is important to say a few words about Canon Law itself, which governs every aspect of Catholic life. I studied Law under the 1917 Code then in force. I was ten years ordained when the new 1983 Code was released; our Orlando bishop, Thomas J. Grady, brought in a team of nationally known Canon lawyers for a week’s workshop for all the priests of our diocese to familiarize us with the changes from the 1917 legislation. It was one of the finest educational programs I have ever attended. Florida was in full growth mode—there was little or no discussion of legislation on closing parishes. Most of us were looking for new legal guidelines on such matters as annulments and marriage laws. I am embarrassed to say that I do not own a copy of the 1983 Code—it got lost in a move--but fortunately the Law in its entirely is available free on-line and in English. Of particular interest for us in this post are two provisions which play a significant role in Sister Kate’s work: Can. 1222 §1. If a church cannot be used in any way for divine worship and there is no possibility of repairing it, the diocesan bishop can relegate it to profane but not sordid use. §2. Where other grave causes suggest that a church no longer be used for divine worship, the diocesan bishop, after having heard the presbyteral council, can relegate it to profane but not sordid use, with the consent of those who legitimately claim rights for themselves in the church and provided that the good of souls suffers no detriment thereby. It is the “grave causes” wording that created serious difficulties in many dioceses and disheartened many Catholics. The local bishop alone makes the final decision on what constitutes “grave causes;” the presbyteral council must be “heard” but it is not legislative, i.e., it cannot override the bishop. [I was president of Orlando’s Priest Council for two terms; the limitations of Canon Law I know.] In everyday language, Canon 1222 would seem to say that closing parishes and all the attendant implications are solely matters for the bishop, with a cautionary reminder to respect the sensitivities of Catholic parishioners regarding the future use of the church and parish facilities. You wouldn’t want your parish church sold to a gambling establishment for “business purposes.” The ‘post-abuse” era created a new dilemma, i.e., the closing of healthy, vibrant, solvent parishes in dioceses with heavy debts, penalties, and bankruptcies. Does the evangelical spirit and identities of such parish communities count for nothing in a bishop’s decision to close the facilities and disperse the faithful to other parish communities? Again. Canon 1222 does not consider this question. Generally, bishops interpreted the “grave causes” phrase exclusively to financial circumstances and shortages of priests—a dangerous road because the law thus interpreted implies that a parish is buildings and assets, nothing more. The Baptismal community of its members—its sacramental identity—had no bearing on the final destiny of a parish. These would be the kinds of parishes likely to seek the services of an independent Canon Lawyer such as Sister Kate, though she took up this ministry at a time when lay Catholics were painfully learning that demonstrations, church occupations, and media blitzes had little to no impact on local bishops, let alone on Vatican appeals courts. And as the author documents, the Catholic Church closings themselves were bittersweet, even cruel. In one diocese the bishop personally celebrated the final Mass of every closing parish in his territory and then padlocked the doors behind him. Kate’s gift to the Church in this crisis was a gallant attempt to bring the Biblical-theological sense of parish as a Spirit-filled communion of faith into the nuts and bolts of canonical-legal considerations. In short, Faith must count for something in the deliberations of the Church. She was asking the Church Court system in Rome—and American bishops in their administrative behavior—to bring to law the teaching of Vatican II that parish communities are grace-filled creations exclusive of their temporal assets. I would be remiss if I neglected to comment on how plowing new ground brings together a true variety of souls. In 2010, during Roman litigation of parish closings in the Diocese of Camden, New Jersey, Kate engaged in fascinating correspondence with Cardinal Raymond Burke of the Apostolic Signatura [akin to our Supreme Court]. Burke is known to many Catholics as the ultra-conservative defender of the Tridentine Mass, an advocate for the right of Catholics to worship in the Latin Rite of the Council of Trent [1545-1563] and a fighter for the rights of Tridentine Catholic Churches. The heart of the book is a detailed account of several dioceses where Sister Kate was retained as an independent Church canonist to defend parish communities against arbitrary dismantling of their membership, closure and/or sale of their church buildings, and dispersion to other Catholic churches. These include parishes in the dioceses of Syracuse, Camden, Cleveland, and New York City. While the problems of each diocese are similar, each one cited here had/has unique personalities, issues, and timelines; you would not be reading the same plotline multiple times. The author notes that for every hour of “lawyering,” Kate spent multiple hours of counseling broken, angry Catholics from across the country. Frankly, there was true pastoral need for the care of this new cohort of victims. One could call the heart of this book “Bishops Behaving Badly.” My little sister’s parish—St. Bernadette’s Parish in Orchard Park, New York—was decreed closed last November, effective May 1, 2025, just a few days ago. My understanding is that her parish has retained counsel for a Vatican appeal. If you’ve never seen a diocesan “Dear John” letter, here is St. Bernadette’s. I commend the parish for making this correspondence public, and I offer prayers for the resolute priests in Buffalo, Chicago, Cincinnati, and around the country who are ministering solicitously under very troubling conditions. I know that my family is grateful. Obviously, one issue I have not tackled is the outcome of cases. Even when Sister Kate and other canonists were able to win reprieves or reverses in Roman court, there was and is still the issue of enormous indebtedness. If you read the St. Bernadette letter, you saw that the pastor-administrator was told to clean out all accounts and to alert parishioners that major fund drives in all parishes would be held to retire a $150,000,000 indebtedness. Frankly, I think that is impossible for Buffalo, and I will do a follow-up posting as developments warrant. Please feel free to let me know what is happening in your parish/diocese. The intensity of Kate’s work came to an end when she died of cancer in 2019. I was reading my notes and writing this review when Cardinal Prevost was elected to the papacy last Thursday. It is hard for me to imagine that the scenarios played out in Bending Toward Justice will repeat themselves with a practicing Canon Lawyer, Pope Leo XIV, at the helm. Better interpretations of the Code and clearer understandings of baptismal rights are to be hoped for. And on top of that, the pope’s childhood church in Chicago, St. Mary of the Assumption, was closed and converted into a community center. [See photo on Cafe online sites, courtesy of the Cardinal Newman Society.] He has skin in the game, as they say. In a few weeks I will return to revisit this discussion with an emphasis upon Church debt –a real thing, as we saw the numbers above—and a perceived shortage of parish leadership. |
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