For Roman Catholics and all thoughtful persons who respect the dignity of life, the study and implementation of bioethics is both clear and complicated, as stand-alone biology is a science with its own history, principles, and ethical debates. If you have the time, scan the “Bioethics” entry in the Encyclopedia Britannica to see the complexity of the field even before one enters the religious questions raised by science. Our book at hand, “Bioethics Matters” is a beginner’s introduction to the Church’s reasoning and teachings on the morality of medical issues impacting the human being. Author Moira McQueen emphases focus upon abortion, contraception, marital intimacy, and end-of-life issues, including physician assisted suicide. It is worth noting that the author writes from Canada [St. Michael College/University of Toronto], where bioethics issues presently occupy much attention in the nation’s parliament. I call Chapter Four Dr. McQueen’s “hold my beer” section, for the author has plenty to say surrounding “Euthanasia and Physician-assisted Suicide” as it plays out in Canadian politics. [p. 97-124.]
The author states that “lay people deserve to be as educated as possible in Catholic teaching.” [p. 9] Right off the bat, I have difficulties with the passive stance assigned to lay Catholics in matters of morality. Church moral teaching in the present day is de facto authority-driven, from directives of the sitting pope and/or solemn instructions from the appropriate office of the Vatican Curia. The author’s introduction goes on to explain Church moral law as a product of divine and natural sources. Ideally, Catholic moralists today draw from Scripture, natural law, the scholastic medieval tradition, and the papal teaching office of the Church called the Magisterium. However, there is no mechanism to hear the life experiences and consciences of baptized Catholics on precisely how moral teachings are formulated, taught, received, and enforced both within the Church community and in public society. Such dialogue might have prevented an embarrassing moment for the Church in 2022. The story of the 2022 Kansas Referendum is a good example of why laity needs to be heard in public moral formulations of Church life. The Kansas Referendum would have removed the civil legal right to an abortion from the state constitution; the ballot resulted in a 59-41% landslide vote to maintain the legality of abortion. Later analysis found that Catholic voters on the whole opposed abortion—but what Catholics opposed in the referendum was potential criminalization of minors, mothers of large families who would have died had they carried the pregnancy to term, the poor, victims of rape, etc. More nuanced discussion before the ballot might have had greater moral impact on the civil legislation. There are many instances in life where a human being is not willingly choosing evil over good, but rather, facing the lesser of two evils. Chapter One defines the various schools of ethical thought across society, i.e., how humans make decisions about conduct. “Natural Law” ethical thinking is highlighted as “the time-tested ethical approach used by the Catholic Church.” [p. 19] The term “Natural Law” populates many Catholic texts, schoolbooks, catechisms, and Church documents as the innate wisdom of God made evident in creation; in the 1200’s A.D. St. Thomas Aquinas taught that it was possible to reason from nature even the very existence of God, with help from the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, proof that the natural law or wisdom of the Christian God was bestowed across the human species. The problem here is that our understanding of what is natural in the human species continues to evolve. The Bible, as a moral source, is a complicated matter. McQueen goes on to explain the methods used by the Church to deduce the moral teachings of the Bible. We Catholics did not and do not approach the Bible with a simple literalism. If we did, we could justify the stoning of a homosexual couple, as Leviticus 20:13 commands, or similar punishment for a rebellious teenager, as Leviticus also commands in 20:9. The author goes on to explain how the modern science of Biblical study and meaning was brought forward in the debates of the Council Vatican II [1962-1965]. Natural law as a tight, specific moral code periodically reinforced by the pope faced a challenge as more Church scholars raised questions about how one determines right and wrong in an examination of conscience based upon his or her circumstances of life. The Conciliar reforms across the board are replete with a rediscovered Christo-centric refocusing of all aspects of Church life. What the Council could not do in its limited time was reorient the clergy and the laity toward specific Jesus-centered moral attitudes and actions. To be truthful, few of us were ready to integrate a Biblically inspired natural law into our personal practice of Catholicism. The terms “natural law” and “biblical teaching” were not generally hot button items in everyday parish life before Vatican II. At the time I was making my first confession in 1956, the term “natural law” was not a significant phrase in my parish’s Catholic lay vocabulary. If my memory is correct, the term in catechetics for natural law was probably “conscience,” as reinforced on TV by Jiminy Cricket on the Disney Show. [See this offbeat summary of Jiminy’s moral reasoning.] “Conscience” was God’s inner prodding to do good. We were expected to use the Ten Commandments in the confessional as our moral guide, at least the commandments we understood. [Adultery? Idolatry? Coveting thy neighbor’s wife?] In high school and college, however, during and after the Council our teachers—priests—told us that the Council was pulling away from practical confessional attitude and advocating a rearranging of our moral thinking, i.e., away from individual sins with measured satisfaction toward a general embrace of the Gospel of Love preached by Jesus, as we interpreted it. Magisterial moral law-- fasting from meat on Friday, for example--was replaced by an attitude of love, peace, and justice. In graduate school we were taught Karl Rahner’s phrase, “fundamental option” to the Gospel. Like, it was the 60’s, you know. “All you need is love.” The curious thing is that the post-Council era Church might have been helped by dialogue with secular science. Every psychotherapist worth his or her salt writes a client-specific treatment plan with specific behavioral goals and objectives for every patient, which coincidentally is a secular model for what was happening, or supposed to happen, in the confessional when a penitent is laboring with habitual sin. In Chapter Two, “The Human Person: Church Teaching,” the author reviews Church teaching and thinking on the nature, rights, and dignity of the human person in the face of modern science. She cites Canadian law that “we are not persons until we are actually born, and even then, not until we are completely delivered from the birth canal.” [p. 45] Obviously, this law is radically at odds with the 1987 papal teaching, Donum Vitae, that we are to be regarded as persons from the moment of conception.” Donum Vitae’s measure of precision regarding the moment of life does run up against scientific studies that most fertilized eggs do not attach to the womb, a significant point in considerations of abortion and birth control, particularly the latter. Dr. McQueen notes parenthetically that “for many in our society the prospect of new life is not greeted with joy.” [p.44] When a Catholic picks up a morality study for the first time, the first hurdle is the challenge of balancing what ought to be versus what is. The Book of Genesis, interestingly, cites the twin curses of Adam and Eve as work for the man and childbirth for the woman, which might give us some clue as to why a working mother might not automatically dance with glee at the clinical confirmation of another pregnancy. Church teaching documents, and many theological writers, do not fully acknowledge how painful life can be. To its credit, over the centuries the Church has sacramentalized forgiveness in a fashion where personal circumstance and pain play a significant role in the reconciliation process when the confessor learns how to listen as well as instruct. Most of Chapter Two is devoted to the issue of infertility and the clinical efforts to facilitate conception. This is valuable information for a Catholic, and it does clarify why the Church hold deep reservations about ancillary medical and social implications. When I became a full-time psychotherapist, one of the things that surprised me the most was the number of adult patients wrestling with infertility. [My third-party payers listed me as a “Christian psychotherapist” which perhaps skewed my intake population. My marriage counseling roster certainly increased when the word “Christian” was added to my other concentrations.] It is interesting, though, how the discussion of bioethics in this work seems to circle back to reproduction, reflecting the trend of the Church’s teaching office itself. Which is why I was most surprised at Chapter Three’s omission of the true game changer in Church and medicine, “the pill.” I don’t say this as a criticism of the author; many moral authors tiptoe around one of Catholicism’s best or worst kept secrets: a formal moral teaching that was not “received,” to use the theological term, by the faithful. If you are unfamiliar with the release of the encyclical Humanae Vitae [July 25, 1968], Wikipedia’s essay is surprisingly thorough and fair. When I think of Humanae Vitae, which in 1968 reiterated the teaching of Pius XI [1931] that artificial contraception is immoral, I think of Sunday Mass when I watch the assembly of two or three children families process to the altar to receive communion. It is hard for me to imagine that all these couples employ the “rhythm method” as it was called in the recent past, periodic abstinence during the fertile days of the cycle, Natural Family Planning, to space their children. Humanae Vitae was a watershed moment in the United States and Canada, among many other places, where most Catholics took the reins of sexual decision-making on all matters of their personal lives. Strangely, the Humanae Vitae event was a rare instance where laity was consulted, but the pope did not accept the strong recommendation of a commission to change the teaching. Chapter Four, “Euthanasia and Physically Assisted Suicide,” goes further into numerous moral dilemmas surrounding care of the sick and the dying. The author notes several changes over the last century in Church directives, including definitions of what constitutes “ordinary means” and “extraordinary means” of keeping a person alive. For most of my lifetime withholding food and water was considered an extraordinary means of keeping a dying person alive. It was Pope John Paul II who defined that all persons in such circumstances are entitled to food and water as a basic right of a human being. An issue not treated in the book but certainly a major one for my generation [upper 70’s] is the right to decline line-altering, expensive, and painful treatments in favor of palliative care and a probable shorter life. My wife and I gave considerable thought on this matter when we prepared our wills and instructions to our executors, but my understanding at the time—and remains so today—is that there is no Catholic moral prohibition of palliative care. In many cases, it may be the wise moral option. Of course, in much of Catholic moral teaching, we circle round to the Humanae Vitae teaching and the reality that only a small percentage of Catholics even think of such personal issues as Church matters. As a result, the good work of the author of Bioethics Matters and countless other teachers, preachers, and authors starts off at a deficit, that Catholics as a rule are not inclined to consider the Catholic tradition as a major source in personal decision making, most notably in matters of health and sexuality. Of course, this is a two-way street.
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Possibly because of its notorious weather, Ireland has a plethora of bookstores, and it was a pleasure to visit as many as I could over three months late last year. That there are first class book outlets in the cities in the north—Dublin, Belfast—was no surprise. But as we moved south into more rural settings, I noticed that there was no slack in availability of the printed word. Even Valentia Island, jutting into the wild Atlantic with a population of 600 souls, had a busy second-hand bookstore in 2015, where I bought Dante’s Inferno on my only other visit to Ireland, for a Euro. The bookstore has since closed to make room for small tourist condominiums in the tiny village of Knightstown.
In one retail and used bookstore—in Galway, I believe—I was hunting around and came to an entire shelf entitled “Institutional Religious Abuse,” which gave me a mild jolt. I had always entertained the idea that Church abuse in Ireland and the United States ran on parallel tracks. However, in reading, conversation, and physical visits to cemeteries and sites, I came to appreciate that while the crimes of clerics are publicly acknowledged in Ireland, as they are [supposedly] in the United States, there is a major measure of collective shame and guilt unique to Ireland for a lengthy church abusive system of a different sort, the “Magdalene Girls Laundries.” Before I continue, let me say that if you are looking for an insightful history of the last century of the Irish Catholic Church, you may find The Best Catholics in the World: The Irish, the Church and the End of a Special Relationship [2021] by Derek Scally. Scally is a major reporter and columnist for the Irish Times who had spent twenty years based in Germany. He returned to Ireland in the late 2010’s on a mission aptly described on Waterstone’s website. Waterstone’s, a relatively new [1982] chain book dealer with bookstores and cafes throughout England, Ireland, and Europe, summarizes Scally’s bestseller in this way: When Dubliner Derek Scally goes to Christmas Eve Mass on a visit home from Berlin, he finds more memories than congregants in the church where he was once an altar server. Not for the first time, the collapse of the Catholic Church in Ireland brings to mind the fall of another powerful ideology - East German communism. While Germans are engaging earnestly with their past, Scally sees nothing comparable going on in his native land. So, he embarks on a quest to unravel the tight hold the Church had on the Irish. He travels the length and breadth of Ireland and across Europe, going to Masses, novenas, shrines, and seminaries, talking to those who have abandoned the Church and those who have held on, to survivors and campaigners, to writers, historians, psychologists and many more. And he has probing and revealing encounters with Vatican officials, priests and religious along the way. …With wit, wisdom and compassion Scally gives voice and definition to the murky and difficult questions that face a society coming to terms with its troubling past. It is both a lively personal odyssey and a resonant and gripping work of reporting that is a major contribution to the story of Ireland. I posted this extended commentary from Waterstone because it states the heart of Scally’s thesis: that Ireland’s “healing” has a long way to go when contrasted with the recovery of other countries from national/cultural/religious scandal. In Germany’s case, where the author lived and worked for the Irish Times for twenty years, his impression was that twenty-first century Germans were not running away from their national history of shame, specifically Hitler and the Holocaust. In traveling to Nuremburg and other German cities a few years ago, I noticed many public plaques and markers at the former homes of entire Jewish families who were seized and shipped to the extermination camps. I read The Best Catholics in the World with an eye toward similarities and differences in the ecclesiastical abuse scandals in Ireland and the United States. The similarities are easy enough to note—serial abusing priests shuffled from parish to parish by bishops concerned with diminished devotion to the Sacrament of Orders above all other considerations. Irish bishops were finally brought to some grudging concession of the corrupt priests and victimization of youth by the courage of laity, particularly adults in later life who came to understand the nature and the atrocities of what had happened to them in their youth. But some intrepid youths did come forward to parents and local clergy, and in these cases the differences in culture become clearer. Pay close attention to Chapter 8, “The Fall of Sean Brady.” Scally describes “due process” for abused Irish minors in the 1970’s [pp. 100-114] who were typically denied parental/clerical/legal counsel in abuse interrogations before chancery investigators in secret interviews. The minor and his or her entire family were placed under an oath of secrecy with the threat of excommunication from the sacraments. The interrogatories for such investigations are bizarre, and Scally lists the typical church rubric. If, for example, a thirteen-year-old boy admitted to having ejaculated at any time in his life, including nocturnal emission, typically a bishop or representative ruled that the youngster enjoyed sex with men and was wont to invite them into such activities. Scally’s Chapter 8 is of historical interest because the diocesan recorder in the three-cleric interrogation of fourteen-year-old Brendan Boland was Father Sean Brady. A quarter-century later, the same Father Brady was named Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of all of Ireland and received the Cardinal’s Red Hat. Given that Boland’s complaint had been dismissed in the 1970’s, the abuser continued in his ways for decades with dozens of minor victims until major investigations in this century uncovered Cardinal Brady’s failure to report the priest to civil authorities. Brady was forced to resign his clerical offices to Pope Francis in 2014. To this point, it might be easy to conclude that Irish Catholics and American Catholics suffered the same pangs in the same way. We have horror stories of coverups, and of course our own disgraced Cardinal, Theodore McCarrick. But the roots of clerical abuse are different in the two countries. For starters, American Catholics make up the largest religious group in this country but only at 20% of the population, with ex-Catholics at 15%. We live in a nation where church and political governance is separate, and Catholics themselves are deeply divided about rites and practices, not to forget civil politics. I believe that in the 2024 U.S. Election the Catholic vote tended 60-40 toward Republican candidates and policies, give or take. Ireland, by contrast, is Catholic to its core, bound by blood, history, persecution, tragedy, and creed. The most recent figures put the Catholic population at 69% with an additional 14% calling themselves ex-Catholics—which means that four of every five people living in Ireland today. are or were in the Catholic tribe. How deeply engrained was Catholic identity in Ireland versus the United States, for example? Given the position of Irish Catholicism—which statistically was probably even higher in the 1970’s before the abuse scandal became public—Irish Church leaders enjoyed an autonomy of respect and authority far greater than we Americans live with here. One way to understand the difference between the two countries is to consider the authority and power bestowed by Catholic ordination. The Irish Church strictly observed the central doctrine of the identity of the priest which in principle is still taught universally in religious education and seminaries: that ordination creates an “ontological” difference in a man that makes him different from all other human beings in the world. Only the priest can utter the sacred words that change the bread and wine at Mass into the Body and Blood of Christ, i.e., transubstantiation. Only an ordained male can utter the words that save a human from an eternity in hell. Catholic doctrine in Ireland was tightly reinforced by its uniform catechetics, notably a green-covered Catechism of the Catholic Church. [See Chapter 6, “The Little Green Book.”] The memorization of the “Green Book” was only gradually replaced by modern texts after Vatican II—newer trendy styles that the author has little use for. The old catechism remained something of the fallback authority and mindset on many issues related to the abuse crisis well into this century. The visitation of priests to Irish homes were frequent, and occasions of pride and joy to the hosts, many of whom had priest chairs and/or a special place at the table for an ordained Catholic priest. It is not hard to put the pieces together: a unique man who spoke for God welcomed into the bosom of a family and trusted unquestionably. If the word “grooming” is running through your head, you are correct, and in the Irish culture the later sufferings of parents like the Bolands were multiplied by a misplaced guilt that they were unwitting co-conspirators of their children’s violation—and the fact that they were bound by oath to do nothing about their child’s plight. Parish priests, as a rule, were more socially engaged in Irish community life. I believe it was Cardinal Paul Cullen [1803-1878] who bragged that there was a Catholic Church within three miles of every Irishman. I bring up Cardinal Cullen here because, as the leader of Ireland in the years after the potato famine and the elimination of the British penal codes against the Church, he ruled Catholic Ireland with an iron hand and instilled strict observance of Catholic life and morals. He supported Vatican I’s [1870] declaration of papal infallibility. From his time until 2000 Catholic practice reflected the late Victorian bias that repelled the morally weak from their place in church and public society—by segregating them from the view of “proper society.” Thus, a new avenue of institutional abuse arose, one that has captured international attention—literary, stage, and film—and continued uninterrupted till 1996 and remains contested as of this writing. [And, I should add, may become an issue with U.S. immigration law.] What, specifically, are we dealing with? Conspiracy between Church and State. The literature on this form of abuse continues to grow under the generic title of “The Magdalene Laundries” [originally, “asylums’]. If the term is unfamiliar to you, Wikipedia’s lengthy entry on the laundries is an inexpensive place to start, for it provides a healthy list of books, TV specials, films, autobiographies, etc. I will provide a quite simple description of the laundries here, but Scally devotes several chapters, [Chapter 9, “Sex in a Cold Climate;” and Chapter 10, “The Necessary Lie,” among other citations.] Going back to the 1700’s Protestants in England had residences and institutions for women of “loose morals,” as a means of keeping public sinners out of sight [and prurient interest?] of “Christian society.” We tend to jump to the conclusion that we are talking about prostitutes, but by the post-potato famine era in Ireland such institutions were more likely to contain young girls who had borne children out of wedlock, or children and teens with behavioral, intellectual, or domestic problems, including the deaths of both parents. By the twentieth century communities of religious women operated such institutions. In 1923 the Republic of Ireland was established, and as a new government, it had no department equivalent to, for example, Florida’s Department of Children and Families. As a result, it turned to the largest existing private social ministry, religious orders. The Sisters of Mercy tend to be remembered as the main provider of domestic services, but there were several others as well who have been named in recent investigations. By the 1900’s such institutions had morphed into profitable laundries, attached to convents, which serviced much of Ireland’s middle class. Who was remanded to these domiciles/sweat shops? There was no recognizable observance of the habeas corpus principle. Any minor who didn’t fit anywhere, in the judgment of any adult, could be housed/incarcerated. Scally cites numerous examples. Children who told their parish priests about problems at home would be remanded on the direction of the priest. Parents could dispatch a child at their judgment. And teenaged girls who became pregnant with a boyfriend—or worse, through incest—could be conveniently hidden away. Residents were contained by lock and key. Whether there were schooling, health, or other human services available to “residents” is hard to say, for two reasons. First, as of this writing, the records of operations have not been released by the three or four religious communities most deeply involved in this arrangement; and second, the Republic itself is enmeshed and is not eager to serve subpoenas to its business partners since 1923. Where liability is concerned, the state does not have exposure to priestly abuse claims, but it does in the laundries. The author interviewed many Irish citizens who admitted they had some idea of these institutions but did not give much thought to the nature of these residences. Scally reports a cab driver telling him about a laundry he served: “They’re pregnant. That’s where their families hide them.” Apparently, the resident minors, mostly but not exclusively teenaged mothers, went to Mass on Sunday in their local parishes. Parishioners kept their own children away from these motley residents of the laundries who spent their time in factory work. What happened to the babies born in the laundries? Investigative reporting undertaken in the 1990’s and beyond indicates that the infants were farmed out for adoption without the consent of the mother, with many of the newborns finding new parents in the United States, among other sites. There is a network of survivors online calling upon Ireland and the religious orders to unseal their records on the minors who passed through these institutions. The story of the Magdalene laundries might never have reached the crescendo it did if in 1993 the Sisters of Mercy had not sold a parcel of land to a developer, who discovered 155 human remains—young women--on the former residential site. As I noted above, there is a considerable library of video and printed material on the laundries on the Wikipedia entry; my wife recommends the film Philomena. Scally devotes the final chapters of his work to more pastoral, philosophical and sociological questions about the structure of Catholic life in Ireland and how scandals like the ones above can survive—even thrive—in the heavily Catholic milieu. In the final analysis he concludes that his native country is only beginning to acknowledge and heal. As one analyst observed to the author, the end of the Magdalene Laundries system did not come about because of public outcry, but because most families could afford clothes washers. Another explained to the author that the silence and collective guilt of Irish Catholics upon the revelations of the laundries was much different from the revelations of priestly abuse, because “everybody brought their nappies to the laundry outlets.” MY PERSONAL TAKE I recently returned from three months in Ireland, with two week stays in Dublin, Belfast, Donegal, Galway, Valentia Island, Kinsale, and Thomastown-Kilkenny. As a visitor from the United States, much of the material discussed in this entry is hardly of the conversation starter type for a pub visit in Galway’s Latin Quarter. However, we did have opportunities to attend Mass in multiple settings, on Sundays and, if lucky, during the week. [Few churches have daily Mass given the declining number of clergy, but an effort is made to have Mass on a Tuesday or a Thursday for example, sometimes in the evening.] Aside from Dublin and Galway, most priests cover multiple parishes. The typical weekend Mass is brief--thirty minutes--and there is little or no congregational singing, but the Mass experience is devout and the number of families was encouraging. Scally, in the book’s title, refers to “the end of a special relationship” between the Irish and the Church. Is this due to multiple abuse scandals, or is there another factor to consider? It is safe to say that Irish Catholics, like those in other Western nations, do not fear the hierarchy as in the days of Cardinal Cullen, nor are they slaves to prescribed Catholic rules of life. I found interesting statistics; 91% of Irish polled disagree with the Church’s teaching on artificial contraception, Humanae Vitae, most recently issued in 1968 by Pope Paul VI. By contrast, 67% of American Catholics disagree with the same teaching. The scandals may have confirmed subterranean doubts about the “Little Green Book” order of things, but Ireland has been changing for quite a while. Having examined at least thirty church bulletins collected from the trip, I noticed the same omissions as those from American bulletins: an absence of adult religious education programs and spiritual direction opportunities. Scally discusses the “kicky relevant” [my generation’s term] religious ed texts of the late 1960’s and beyond for young people with a barely concealed dismay. It is fair to say that Catholic adults sustain themselves with Mass—30% attend weekly, slightly better than United States Catholics—and private devotions to the Blessed Sacrament, Mary, and the saints. The churches are open all day. One major difference between Ireland the United States: Every time you turn around in Ireland, you see stone ruins of medieval monasteries, churches, castles [13,000 of those], and homes. The Irish, for better and worse, have their long history in plain view. We, in the states, have the luxury of forgetting...and repeating our mistakes. I don’t like to repeat myself, but in a recent Café blog I quoted from Homiletic and Pastoral Review [May 24, 2024] Fr. Etienne Huard, O.S.B., who was defending the idea of extending seminary life to nine years and explaining why more and better formation is necessary. As he put it,
There are three critical areas of concern: psychological, spiritual, and intellectual health and ability. Psychologically, men [today’s seminary applicants] present with higher rates of anxiety and depression, personal and family trauma, isolation, and lower rates of people skills. Spiritually, men entering the seminary have less familiarity with Catholic tradition, piety, prayer, and common practices. Additionally, men often have a lower sense of worth and being a beloved son of the Father, possessing an obscured sense of masculine virtue and value. Intellectually, men tend to have a diminished ability and desire for critical thinking and expression, especially in writing and the basics of intellectual work. This issue has only been compounded since the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, there is a lower ability for hard, focused, and sustained work. It is my understanding that American bishops are looking at these issues as they consider seminary admissions and components of seminary life. St. Meinrad’s Seminary in Indiana has already added the ninth year, which it describes as an introduction to the clerical way of life, a year of discernment. The term used to describe this new first year at St. Meinrad is “propaedeutic,” which Meriam Webster defines as “preparatory study or instruction.” The preparation is for seminary-clerical life. I have a link to St. Meinrad’s propaedeutic philosophy here. Muted in the discussion is the “winnowing” in the psychological dimension of seminary life. Seminary staff—in coordination with licensed mental health personnel who understand Catholicism and the challenges of the ordained ministry—should follow the psychological health of seminarians over a longer period, with an increasing eye on career prognoses. There is a growing sense, too, that ordained priests do not always know how to take care of themselves, i.e., to rest, to cultivate private and group prayer, to maintain theological updating, to enjoy the arts, to work out, to write, to give presentations and retreats for a change of pace, and to prepare for retirement. Obesity, overwork, and alcohol abuse afflict the mood, ministry, and self-esteem of many priests. Could seminaries train future priests in the good habits and attitudes of post ordination life? This is the hope. The Church, obviously, wishes to improve upon a sorry record of ordaining or incardinating priests who are pathologically unsound. Until recently the Church was suspicious of psychology and depended upon its own observations of a candidate’s life in the chapel, the classroom, and the common room. Seminary life hides as much as it reveals. A factor of seminary secrecy was longevity—if a seminarian hid his true doubts and disfunctions and did not rock the boat, it became harder and harder each year for authorities to dismiss him. Secrecy was a factor for the seminarian, as he came closer to his ordination date, it is harder to confide personal misgivings to seminary officials. Like all people, seminarians can deny their problems. And, in my day [a half century ago] nobody ever asked me about anything. I was in the seminary for twelve years, and I can honestly say that I was never given either a battery of psychological tests or a sit-down with a board of examiners, aside from academic testing for a course. For me, the closest thing to an outside assessment did not come from a staff member or superior. In novitiate [year #7 in my training when I was 21] the novices were required to write an evaluation of each of their classmates before the superiors’ vote for admission to simple vows. “Peer evaluation” was popular back in the 1960’s. Each of us would then meet to review the results with the novice master, who in my time fancied himself as something of a psychologist, which he was not. [He himself left the order and married after my class completed novitiate and professed simple vows.] By some twist of fate, on the night of my review the novice master was away for meetings, and my reviews were assessed by the assistant novice master, an unflappable individual who years later would “transgender.” When he reviewed each point, I was surprised that most of my classmates evaluated me positively. There were about thirty of us left by that point, down from forty-three. We came to one of my last evaluations, though, and I was struck by [an anonymous] classmate’s impression of my life trajectory. He gave me high grades for friendliness and felt I would be an effective priest. But then my seven-year classmate added this: “I do worry that beneath his outwardly positive attitude, Tom suffers from a profound inner loneliness that may became harder and harder to cope with as he ages.” The assistant novice master asked me, “is this true?” I said I wasn’t aware of it, but inside me, I was anxious and unhappy a good part of the time. He nodded and moved on. Did I ever figure out who wrote this correct prediction? I had an idea, and truthfully, I respected him very much over the years. But we never talked face to face about his concern, and I never followed up my doubts with superiors, for the same reason athletes never visit the team doctor. [“They’ll take me out of the lineup.”] Well, three years later we were packing for our solemn vow [lifelong profession] retreat, ten years into the seminary, and my insightful classmate knocked on my door and asked me, “Are you really going through with this?” I answered affirmatively. The next morning, he did not make the trip for solemn vow retreat, and he departed the order to pursue a challenging humanitarian profession. That was 52 years ago. I was sorry to see him go. Perhaps we could have helped each other. Very slowly in my order and in others, the admission/review/evaluation process improved to a point where more open and honest evaluations were a feature of common seminary life; but not fast enough to meet the needs of all candidates for solemn vows and holy orders. PSYCHOLOGY AND FAITH: HOW DO THEY MESH? Seminary rectors and bishops are urged to consider closely in priestly studies three components in the life of every seminarian—psychological, spiritual, and intellectual—as they are interrelated to strong mental and spiritual health. In truth, everyone in Church ministry, indeed all of us who call ourselves Christians and Catholics, deserve regular opportunities to reflect upon our own health, our intellectual hunger, and our enthusiasm for the things of the Holy Spirit. Sadly, we do not talk much about this. One reason is our overkill of “legalism” in the Western Roman Church, particularly regarding the Sacrament of Penance. This sacrament has degenerated over the centuries to a brief encounter climaxed by the formal absolution. Yet, the essence of Penance is rebirth in Christ and a renewal of the spiritual journey along the lines listed above. It can never be trivialized. Church law and practice, in fact, recognizes such a thing as a “general confession” which, in the best of circumstances, includes a retelling of the major sins and moral failures of one’s life with an assessment of how one is living now, at this juncture of life, and how one is engaged in psychological, intellectual, and spiritual growth. One of the most basic principles of the spiritual life: if you are not engaged in growth, you are falling away from God. Does this process of confessional rebirth have a psychological component? Absolutely. For example, St. Thomas Aquinas [1225-1274] defines profound sadness [acedia or hopelessness in his day, depression in ours] as “the pain of the soul.” He warns against excessive sorrow, which can lead to despair and distance us from God, who is the source of hope. Aquinas actually recommends treatments for destructive attitudes and behaviors: [Self] Pity: Cultivate compassion for others. Anxiety: Trust in divine providence. Envy: Appreciate the blessings of others. [Depression] Torpor: Engage in virtuous activities and seek joy. Remember that these remedies can help alleviate sadness and guide us toward happiness. Aquinas adds: "a hurtful thing hurts yet more if we keep it shut up, because the soul is more intent on it: whereas if it be allowed to escape, the soul's intention is dispersed as it were on outward things, so that the inward sorrow is lessened." (I-II q. 38 a. 2). Six hundred years later in1886, a German physician, Josef Breuer, discovered that hypnotized patients talked more freely about their past lives in ways that brought them better understanding and acceptance of the difficulties of their past. Sigmund Freud embraced Breuer’s “Talking Cure” which eventually became known as psychoanalysis, with or without hypnosis. Psychoanalysis is essentially getting to know your true self with the goal of a better lifestyle. As a psychotherapist myself, I can tell you that many patients were reluctant or refused to “go deep.” A typical treatment request: “Teach me some techniques so I feel better.” My MD friends hear “prescribe something” all the time. I need to interject here that the relationship between Freud and the Catholic Church is very strained because of the doctor’s published views on several issues across the board. However, Adam A.J. Deville’s “The shrink and the spiritual director: Freud and the Jesuits” [2019] is a fascinating essay that discusses how the Jesuits—and other Catholic practitioners and communities--have integrated psychoanalysis into ministry. Several years ago, Pope Francis told an interviewer that he himself had undergone six months of psychoanalysis at some point in his life as a Jesuit. Aquinas’s admonishment to promote the verbalization of pain is a backbone of modern psychotherapy. What neither Aquinas, nor Breuer, nor Freud could appreciate in their times was the physical operation of the brain. In 1951 doctors discovered a drug [today called imipramine] which alleviated severe depression and discouragement. Medical science pressed forward to explore medications like imipramine that might alter the neurotransmitters of the brain: by the 1980’s the neurotransmitter serotonin was isolated as the “quarterback of the central nervous system” even though how and why this particular neurotransmitter [the backbone of such drugs as Prozac] aids in management of mood disorder “is still not fully understood,” as that long instruction sheet with the pills is honest enough to admit. A parish minister who enjoys his or her work will inevitably be approached for advice or support about anywhere and anytime. People seek the counsel of the priest inside and outside the confessional, to be sure—but consider deacons, youth ministers, hospital visitors, and the wide range of other ministers functioning with diocesan and parish blessing. Any of us involved in ministry have the same obligation as our medical confreres, the Hippocratic Oath: “Do no harm.” At the same time, we need enough skill to do the right things, too, and this is a skill set that gets neglected in ministerial training. As you may have read between the lines of my recent posts, seminaries are the canaries in the coal mine of pastoral life. The quality of seminarians’ prayer life, learning, and psychological bearings depend on the eight years [with possibly a ninth] in the major seminary. The Vatican and the U.S. bishops are working now to improve that experience, and their measure of success or failure will directly impact the quality of U.S. parish life. It stands to reason that we owe a more profound scope of preparation to parish ministers and Catholic school staff, and in fact to all baptized Catholics, period. Fr. Anthony J Stoeppel of St. Patrick’s Seminary & University in the Archdiocese of San Francisco posted an interesting essay on how seminarians are trained to hear confessions. He notes that “Some seminaries offer courses on pastoral counseling and psychology to present a more complete picture of the human person. Such courses also give seminarians an understanding of mental illness and teach them how to work with psychiatric and psychological professionals to help the penitent fully heal.” Mental health, to be sure, is getting a lot of press coverage these days, particularly the sufferings of the young. Father Huard’s essay above did a good job in isolating several specific psychological issues that seminarian candidates share with their peers and bring to admission, issues in fact that impact a wide swath of society: anxiety and depression, trauma, isolation, and poor interpersonal skills, complicated by a breakdown in reading skills and academic performance attributed to the Covid-19 interruption in normal schooling. Add to that the toll of drug overdose, the “gender issues” and the social divide we live with in this country. While some who approach us will obviously need a step-up to a licensed practitioner, there is nothing to stop us from assisting ourselves and our people in the community of our own parishes. In the next post on this stream, I will discuss how the Sacrament of Penance brings a holistic peace—the kind that comes from knowing and acknowledging one’s true self, and how we can all create the atmosphere where this can happen. WHAT POPE FRANCIS SAID THIS WEEK ABOUT SEMINARIES…
If this breaking story [excuse me, stories] did not lead your 11 PM local news this week, let me be the harbinger. Within the past week Pope Francis exhorted a meeting of Italian bishops to exclude homosexuals from admission to seminaries. Then, reporters picked up from some of the bishops present that Francis, speaking in Italian, spoke of seminaries marked by “faggotry” [English rendering of an Italian term.]. The Vatican quickly issued an apology but without an admission that the pope said that. In truth, the Vatican Congregation for Clergy had instructed bishops several times recently that homosexuals were not to be admitted to holy orders: in 2005 under Pope Benedict XVI, and in 2016 in the Ratio Fundamentalis Institutionis Sacerdotalis, the official Church teaching on the formation of priests, which is updated periodically. The 2016 Ratio, signed by Pope Francis, is a bit more nuanced on the subject than the pope’s instruction last week. In the 2016 document’s words, “The Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies, or support the so-called ‘gay culture’. Such persons, in fact, find themselves in a situation that gravely hinders them from relating correctly to men and women. One must in no way overlook the negative consequences that can derive from the ordination of persons with deep seated homosexual tendencies.” Curiously, with a few strokes of a pen, one could write the same instruction for “heterosexuals.” A bishop is not likely to ordain a sexually active straight man, either, nor one with a deep-seated preoccupation with fantasies about women, nor a card-carrying member of the Playboy Club. But then the 2016 Ratio continues: “Different, however, would be the case in which one were dealing with homosexual tendencies that were only the expression of a transitory problem – for example, that of an adolescence not yet superseded. Nevertheless, such tendencies must be clearly overcome at least three years before ordination to the diaconate.” It is interesting to note that both the pope’s words of last week, and the Ratio of 2016 single out what one might call “institutional gay culture.” The Ratio draws a line between public sexual orientation and display, on the one hand, and the individual who is privately [with Church counsel] working out his life, “an adolescence not yet superseded.” Again, you have to wonder how any candidate seeking seminary admission-- who today is a typically older individual than in, say, 1962, when my class entered St. Joe’s as high school freshmen—could enter with "adolescence not yet superseded." but evidently many seminarian applicants today bring significant deficits to vocation recruitment, as I will explain later in the post. However, in the following paragraphs I have included several sources which we can use for two points of discussion: [1] Did Callicoon prepare us with the age-appropriate assistance we needed during our critical formative adolescent and early adult years, and [2] is there something to what the Pope said, allowing for the messy way he said it? BACK ON AROMA HILL… “The Boys of Aroma Hill” blogsite has focused over the years on our individual and mutual experiences of life for up to six years in a minor seminary—with occasional forays into our major seminary years for those of us who did the dime plus two. It has been a long time since I posted a “Boys of Aroma Hill” entry…age and attention to other blog topics has kept me busy, but I didn’t want to lose connections with that significant part of my life and the community of guys around me who, more than they know, kept me sane and reasonably optimistic about the future. What was the purpose of any minor seminary, [i.e., a high school or junior college seminary] including the one I left my family for? In 1962 the raison d’etre of minor seminaries—many of which were boarding seminaries--was still the 1917 Code of Canon Law, which described the purpose of minor seminary personnel "to take care especially to protect from the contagion of the world, to train in piety, to imbue with the rudiments of literary studies, and to foster in them the seed of a divine vocation." Suitable boys were encouraged to graduate to a major seminary, where they would continue their tertiary studies for the priesthood. In the early twentieth century the popes were deeply concerned about the spread of secularism, i.e., the alienation of religion from the world at large. In 1910 Pope Pius X, in his encyclical Quam Singulari, moved the age of First Communion to age seven, to strengthen even young children from the modern ways of a changing world. This logic extended to seminary training, too, the earlier the better and far away from the corrupting influence of urban life. To be sure, Callicoon met those standards. However, the pre-Vatican II and post-Vatican II literature on minor seminaries enjoyed a certain enlightenment, too. Those who advocated them understood such schools as aids to life discernment and, curiously, as ministerial outreach to all who studied in them, wherever their destinies lie. The fact that many would not go on to collegiate seminary studies was accepted, and as the twentieth century progressed, Vatican directives instructed seminaries to maintain or initiate civil accreditation so that those students who left the priestly studies could transition into other careers. St. Joe’s was a New York State Board of Regents high school which made us eligible for $500 annual scholarships for our seminary college studies, the tuition of which was, conveniently, $530. [I hope my Uncle Nelson Rockefeller took care of you “Jersey Boys,” too.] In some parts of the country, a minor seminary boarding school might be the only Catholic secondary school, period, in a fifty-mile radius, as I later learned from my Catholic University classmates years later from other orders. I received acceptance to Callicoon, a boarding school, and to the Diocese of Buffalo’s high school seminary, a day school, at the same time in 1962. The Callicoon letter was welcoming. The Buffalo letter told me to avoid, among other things, unnecessary social contact with women and to avoid swimming pools as an occasion of sin for a future seminarian. Seriously. For better and worse, I tried to come to grips with my human and religious development during my six years on the hill, between my 14th and 20th years. Curiously, the few classmates I have recently discussed this with talk about a perceived spiritual deficiency during those years that they have worked to develop in adult life. We did not grow religiously in the direction of Thomas Merton or Thomas a Kempis. We were certainly regimented to daily Mass, regular confession, and devotions such as the Crown [Franciscan rosary] after supper. The language is telling. Spiritual “exercises;” like training for the Olympics. However, in the real world of the seminary, I cannot recall the idea of meditation or silent, wordless prayer ever mentioned to me or to my class, nor recommendations of any book of spiritual guidance. I had my own copy from home of Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ, which I reflected upon after receiving communion. I brought the book from home. It brought me my only measure of spiritual peace and consolation for several years. Looking back, it is worth noting that seminaries like St. Joe’s had one assigned spiritual director for everybody. Later, in the major seminary—for my class, Holy Name in Washington—each cleric was supposed to have his own director, although that was not always observed in the breech. But there are plenty of times in Callicoon I could have used personal and spiritual guidance and encouragement. We were separated from our natural fathers and the parishes/schools and clergy that launched us, and given the boarding seminary structure, our parents were cut out entirely from our development. In six years, my parents came to Callicoon three times—two graduations and a 1962 October visit in first year to make sure I was OK. I was not OK. I gained fifty pounds in my first year and my grades dropped two letters. Nobody on the faculty said a thing. The irony: in the fifth year I dropped fifty pounds, and Eddie Flannagan told me to stop dieting. To make matters worse, the “changes” in the Church were just starting to build to a crescendo through the 1960’s—more so in Callicoon in some ways than in many of our families’ parishes-- and in my sixth year a letter went out from the Rector’s Office [Columban Hollywood] to all the parents in my class saying in essence that a “healthier environment” for our priestly training would be achieved if our class enrolled in Siena College after sixth year; St. Joe’s College Division would be closing. I can’t speak for the other parents, but my mother was furious. My family could not afford Siena. She wrote Columban an unfiltered opinion of his missive. He never held it against me, though, and eventually the plan was scrapped, and my class entered novitiate after sixth year in 1968 as originally planned. To this day I do not know the politics of how that policy change was rescinded. We were administered the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory once, I think, and I have severe doubts that anyone ever actually scored them beyond screening for profound psychosis. In 1986, when I was thirty-eight and a friar pastor, I took the MMPI again, this time to learn how to interpret it as I was studying for a master’s degree in counseling at Rollins College. I had several elevated scores—anxiety, psychosomatic tendencies—but the one that alarmed me was an elevated schizophrenic score. I talked to my Rollins professor, and he explained that the number indicated a tendency to “think outside the box.” A valuable gift, he told me [unless your box is the highly structured clerical life.] I’m sorry that we didn’t get personal guidance and insight in the minor seminary. Even public schools had guidance counselors. How each of us progressed with our sexual identities is obviously a question I would not assume to answer except in my own case. My first stirrings of sexual feelings for a particular girl occurred before Callicoon, in the seventh grade. She and I had gone to the same school since first grade, and one day I looked at her…and she was a fully developed woman! And I realized I was a man. I went to her house every night to help her with math, and then, when the seventh-grade school year was over, she moved away to the suburbs. Life is cruel. But after she left, I flirted with other girls in my parish’s CYO. I liked the experience of womanhood in my life. I reasoned, though, that giving up girls, hard as it might be, would be more than compensated by the joys of clerical life. Later, in college, Eric Kyle commented on the joys of adulthood—wine, women, and song: “You guys can sing all you want.” Curiously, I think that the classes several years behind ours may have been a little more sexually liberated in Callicoon. In sixth year [1967-68] I was often a substitute waiter at table, and part of our job was to answer the phone down the hall and retrieve the student being called. Pretty soon we older guys noticed a steady stream of calls for certain of our younger brethren. We didn’t report it that I know of, and as things turned out, those younger classes were heading to Siena, a coed school, where presumably they wouldn’t need phones anymore. I don’t recall much serious thinking about same-gender attraction as an issue, or if any of my classmates were “queer.” I had already been taught at home that “some men love other men” but at 13 I just filed that away as an irrelevant topic for me. In Callicoon we used gay slang, on occasion, but more about people who engaged in activities or interests outside of the “jock culture” that pervaded a lot of life on the hill. The seminary handbook, written long before my class arrived and read every Friday, stated that PF’s [particular friendships] were forbidden; we were certain that this was related to homosexual mores, and we laughed the rule to scorn because close friendships are one of the best things we took from Callicoon. Was there sexual activity between students in Callicoon, heterosexual or homosexual? The institution was open for 72 years, so statistically it must have happened. I was not aware of any substantive “coupling” in my time between students. There were two expulsions from St. Joe’s in my six years for sexual conduct issues that I know of. In one case, a classmate tried to smuggle letters to a girl in another classmate’s mailed laundry case. Both guys got bounced. A few years later it was discovered that two guys had a porn stash in the trunk room. They, too, were missing by suppertime. But what of sexual abuse by adults in authority? About all dioceses and religious orders in the United States have made public those with credible accusations of abuse accusations. Holy Name Province’s public list is here, but it is unusual in that it does not list the accused assignments of the accused, the normal procedure. There are on this list two friars who served at the seminary during my time, as well as the friar who recruited me to the Order. The issue may have been more pronounced in Washington, our major seminary. I can say with certainty that at least two friars in formation in Washington were sexually assaulted by an individual in a position of authority. A year or two ago I received a private communication from a St. Joe’s student in a different class who had been physically beaten on seminary grounds by a friar in position of authority. This occurred in the 1960’s, but by the 2002 U. S. Bishops Dallas Charter guidelines, such an action, if investigated and corroborated, would have been grounds for removal of the friar from ministry and arrest. THE POPE’S REMARKS… The Pope’s instruction regarding the admission of homosexuals, has generated much controversy. My opinion, having read several commentaries, is that the pope’s remarks are directed at the institution of seminaries and their leadership as much as the individuals who people them. Father James Martin, S.J, noted for his LGBTQ ministry, observes that the offensive word in the pope’s remarks is better translated into English as “campiness.” When I arrived in Washington to study in 1969, where so many religious orders had houses of study and formation, it was “common knowledge” which houses were gay, and which were straight. How could one tell? The word “camp” was commonly used back then, and evidently still today in many quarters. In simple terms, camp is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as “ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical; effeminate or homosexual; pertaining to, characteristic of, homosexuals…” Campy seminaries? Apparently, the pope and the Italian bishops discussed the fact that as late as 2024 candidates are avoiding seminaries where such an atmosphere persists. The United States went through a period when a similar problem existed in some seminaries and among cliques of priests throughout some dioceses. The 1960’s marked the age of cultural upheaval in the United States, and this tectonic shift impacted Church life, particularly in the close quarters of seminaries. A blanket prohibition of admission of homosexuals to the seminary and priesthood does not make sense to me. I have close family members and friends who are gay, and every one of them is an exemplar and a witness to Christian living. Interestingly, the Catechism’s teaching 2357 admits that regarding homosexuality, “its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained.” In fact, we do not know or understand human sexuality as well as we claim to, and future Church moralists may revisit the Church’s body of moral teaching to embrace a fuller communion with what we know and don’t know about the human species. TODAY’S ADMISSION/FORMATIVE SEMINARY POLICIES VERSUS OURS…. It is 62 years since I entered St. Joe’s, and despite all the years, the Council Vatican II, and the reworking of priestly formation since then, there is more angst among bishops and seminary personnel about the screening of today’s seminary prospects than I remember. To be sure, Doc Fink weeded out the eccentrics back then and regaled us with stories about the odd balls, and today’s candidates enter older than many of us did. But the United States Bishops are adding a ninth year of seminary life due to the issues that candidates bring to the admission process. I came across a May 24 essay in Homiletic and Pastoral Review by Fr. Etienne Huard, O.S.B., defending the longer seminary format for American applicants, which many seminarians object to. This is an excellently composed piece which describes areas of deficiencies in formation which some of us observed a half-century ago and compares the cultural world from which we launched forth compared to the culture of 2024. If you have time read the full essay, I have attached it here. Here is a powerful excerpt: The culture young men are being formed in is no longer Christian. American society now promotes extremes in self-absorption, pleasure-seeking, and grave distortions surrounding gender, marriage, and sexuality. These experiences are combined with social media technologies’ isolating effects and influence (e.g., TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, etc.). The effect is that society and media have contributed to negatively forming men, where their sense of reality and mental habits of choice and belief have often been corrupted. The Program for Priestly Formation 6th edition [the U.S. Bishops’ directory for the acceptance and training of seminarians, 2022] understands that these factors create an environment where new seminarians lack the “requisite qualities for formation.” There are three critical areas of concern: psychological, spiritual, and intellectual health and ability. Psychologically, men present with higher rates of anxiety and depression, personal and family trauma, isolation, and lower rates of interpersonal skills. Spiritually, men entering the seminary have less familiarity with Catholic tradition, piety, prayer, and general practices. Additionally, men often have a lower sense of worth and being a beloved son of the Father, possessing an obscured sense of masculine virtue and value. Intellectually, men tend to have a diminished ability and desire for critical thinking and expression, especially in writing and the basics of intellectual work. This issue has only been compounded since the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, there is a lower ability for hard, focused, and sustained work. This is hardly a cheerful assessment. I wonder where the Church will find and finance the personnel necessary to address all three areas of concern. AND A PERSONAL NOTE… Seminary life—in Callicoon and in Washington—was difficult and disappointing at times, but for distinct reasons. St. Joe’s fostered something of an adversarial divide between the friars and the students. I was not used to that. In Washington, to be frank, nobody was in charge and many of us floundered in the chaos. For all of that, formation was successful in one particularly important aspect—learning the joys and the obligations of friendship. In 1998, at the age of fifty, I married my best friend, and she and I have enjoyed our common life for over a quarter century. Strange to say, I had no idea I was so suited for marriage. Now if you will excuse me, it is my night to cook. CAN WE DO A SECOND TAKE ON “RESERVED SINS?” [Asking for a friend.]
I did leave a lot hanging in the air in my last post on this stream, and probably none more controversial than “reserved sins,” those sins which cannot ordinarily be absolved in your parish confessional. Reserved sins [also known as “reserved cases”] must be addressed to a higher authority for absolution, either the local bishop, or in some cases the Vatican, specifically the Apostolic Penitentiary which speaks for the pope. I have very little specific information on how reserved sins are specifically handled, because Franciscan priests had faculties or privileges to absolve participation in an abortion when I was a friar. Abortion would be the most likely encountered reserved sin for most priests. Since 2016 Pope Francis has given permission to all validly ministering priests—including those in your parish—to lift the excommunication and thus absolve the penitent’s participation in the abortion process. Since the new 1983 Code of Canon Law, others involved—such as the biological father of the child, who may be pressuring the woman and/or paying for the procedure—must seek the confessional for relief from the excommunication and absolution from the sin. In researching today’s post, I learned an interesting point in Catholic Law: a minor under the age of eighteen is considered too young to incur excommunication for anything. This makes sense when one considers the other reserved sins which do incur excommunication: Apostasy, heresy, schism Violation of consecrated species [the post-consecration bread and wine at the Mass] Physical attack on a pope or bishop A priest who absolves an accomplice in sexual sin Unauthorized ordination of a bishop Direct violation by a confessor of the seal of confession Anyone who reveals the overheard confession of another. Pretended celebration of the Eucharist by a non-priest Attempt to hear confession by one who cannot validly do so. False accusation of the crime of solicitation in the confessional [if an adult states, falsely, that he or she was invited to have sex with the confessor during the confession, there is no way a priest can defend himself without breaking the seal of confession] Attempted marriage by a religious or cleric [for example, if a priest fails to seek laicization from Rome before marrying] Formal cooperation in abortion [with the above circumstances noted] If an individual engages with full consent and understanding in one or more of these acts, he or she is excommunicated on the spot by virtue of having done the deed [a latae sententiae excommunication as Latin would put it.] In short, an automatic excommunication. The process of the special appeal to the local bishop or even the Apostolic Penitentiary in Rome is lifting the excommunication so that the original priest confessor can confer absolution. This compilation of reserved sins was not cobbled together on Mount Sinai, and it has over the centuries added or dropped many kinds of sin. The most ancient Christian entry is the first one—apostasy—which is fitting, because it is not only an open, pronounced departure from the Church and a renunciation of one’s Baptism, but in many cases, it put the lives of Christians in danger vis-à-vis the Romans. But as personal confession itself did not take hold in the Western Roman Church till near the end of the first millennium, the number and specificity of “excommunicable sins” expanded in the West with remarkable productivity after 1000 A.D. Wikipedia has an entry entitled List of Excommunicable Offences in the Catholic Church, which makes for intriguing [if lengthy] reading. A few random excerpts from over the years: “Anyone who illicitly seizes the goods of a deceased bishop;” “All Christians who take their ships to Muslim ports from 1245 to 1249;” “All Christians who take their ships to Muslim ports from 1274 to 1280;” [not a misprint] “Clerics who pay too much attention to their hair or beards, or clerics who use silk and velvet instead of cloth and leather for their horses or mules, receives excommunication if he continues to do so after receiving a legitimate warning.” “Catholics who defend or promote materialistic or atheistic Communist doctrine (incur excommunication) [1949, Pope Pius XII].” HOW AND WHEN WAS ABORTION CLASSFIED AS A RESERVED SIN? It was exceptionally difficult to track down the inclusion of direct abortion on the list of reserved sins. Abortion has always been regarded as sinful, but Church fathers have debated the nature of embryonic development and thus the nature and gravity of the sin. St. Thomas Aquinas [1225-1274], for example, agreed with Aristotle that an embryo passed through developmental stages on the way to humanhood. With the invention of modern medicine—and the microscope, for example—Church moral theory and discipline was able to fine-tune confessional practice. For our purposes here, suffice to say that the 1917 Code of Canon Law decreed that the mother [alone] incurs a latae sententiae excommunication for obtaining an abortion. It is interesting to note, though, that the newer and current 1983 Code of Canon Law expanded the penalty to those who facilitate procurement. The mother is not singled out from a process that obviously involved other parties in most cases. This would certainly include the biological father if he were pressuring for the abortion or paying for it. Canonists today also hold that a minor under eighteen is exempt from latae sententiae excommunications by virtue of age. A teenager who confesses an abortion in the confessional may be absolved immediately by her familiar confessor, or any priest with whom she is comfortable. Pope Francis has granted broad powers for priests around the world to lift the excommunication and absolve those adults who procure and facilitate abortions. It is true that an abortion involving a minor may constitute a civil crime on the part of the male depending upon the specific American state and the circumstances. A priest in the confessional may [probably should] encourage a youth to seek professional/spiritual counseling outside of the confessional. Diocesan Catholic Charities or Counseling Services might be a good choice. Professional counselors and social workers—whether in the employment of the Church or not—are mandated reporters of abuse and fully trained in the delicate area of abuse reporting and interacting with law enforcement. A priest, of course, must maintain the seal of secrecy of the Sacrament of Penance and cannot report what he hears. Some states, such as Washington, are attempting to include priests as mandated reporters or have already legislated such requirements. Hopefully our American dioceses are discussing ongoing legislative proposals and confessional practice with their priests, attorneys, and diocesan state legislative lobbyists. A NASTY BUSINESS On the other hand, there is no church law forbidding a priest reporting indications of child abuse to civil authorities which he learns about outside of the confessional. In fact, much of our “clerical abuse crisis” involves the failure of bishops or priests to report and investigate suspected abuse in tandem with civil law enforcement. I was tangentially involved in a criminal report about 35 years ago while still in the active priestly ministry. I was working on my master’s degree in counseling while pastoring, and I had just been briefed by Rollins College at my internship site on the new reporting laws of the State of Florida. In the line of parish duty, I was meeting with a family in my church office about a real estate matter when I learned that one of the participants was engaged in inappropriate activity with two children under ten years old. I explained that I needed to report the situation to the Florida Department of Children and Families Protective Services, for the safety of the children. I suggested that the perpetrator make the call himself from my office, which he did. DCF told him it would meet him at his home. In fact, he was arrested on outstanding warrants involving drug trafficking. The perpetrator pleaded to reduce what was nearly a life sentence. I attended the sentencing in Orlando, and there was a very lengthy reading of the charges. For the first time I heard the full extent of the abuse—more than most of us can ever imagine. The judge interjected that the abuse was first brought to authorities by my intervention while “hearing confessions.” I had to insist that the court records be redacted to state that our encounter was of a business nature, and specifically not during a confessional encounter. In my later years as a psychotherapist, I made about two dozen reports and testified in several trials. Sadly, I learned that where there’s smoke, there is usually a raging forest fire. We will pick up this stream in a week or so on more info and questions related to the theology and practice of Confession. IS HEARING CONFESSIONS HARD WORK?
It has been 30 years since I last heard confessions, and my impression is that the logistics and pressures facing priests today are more intense than in my time. I can say that “yes, hearing confessions was personally consuming, but in an energetic sort of way. I am sure that the personality, spirituality, and theology of the priest has a lot to do with the spiritual and psychological blessings they receive in the sacramental encounter as well as their penitents. Whether hearing confession is a chore or a gift depends so much on a priest’s self-consciousness of what he is doing. Growing up, I was very fortunate to have had rather good confessional experiences in my parish. I do not recall my first confession, but I sure remember my second: a typical Saturday afternoon, long before Saturday vigil Masses, when our elderly monsignor-pastor spent several moments explaining to me that my parents’ rules and regulations were God’s ways of keeping me safe. A senior patient priest with spiritual advice for a seven-year-old kid! Not bad at all. Later, around the fifth grade, I had my first “regular confessor,” whom I would regularly check in with on Saturday nights at just before 9 PM when the church closed, along with the sports fields behind it. I learned later that he was an active alcoholic, but even in his impaired state he was always kind and friendly. I was a happy camper with confession then, though I could not help but notice that I was the only kid going to confession after those Saturday night ball games. Sixty years later, the St. Mary’s Press/CARA/Georgetown study would conclude that “when asked at what age they no longer identified themselves as Catholic, 74 percent of the sample said between the ages of 10 and 20, with the median age being 13 years old.” For a priest, confession can be a cross in certain circumstances: if he is an overly scrupulous individual who worries excessively about the judgments he makes regarding the severity of the sin he hears and/or the advice he gives; if spontaneous conversation is difficult for him; if the sheer numbers of people waiting in line pressure him into a brevity that he feels is disrespectful to the sacrament. This latter example is a particular issue on Saturday afternoons when the only priest in the parish is hearing confessions before Mass. Rather than disrespect the sacrament, at 4:50 I would gather the folks still in line around me, then acknowledge to them that they had the obvious intention of confessing, recommend that they return another time for personal confession, and that they had my permission to receive communion at the Mass just moments away. That was my own solution, but it reflected the professional attitudes of the moralists and canonists who taught me in major seminary, as well as my own instincts. I would add one more point here. In very recent research I discovered that before Vatican II there were discussions in the United States on the practice of “devotional confessions,” or put another way, weekly or biweekly confessions with no serious sin. In every devotional book of the day, frequent confession was hailed as the practice of saints. However, by 1960 the ancient understanding of penance as “Biblically inspired conversion” was coming back, particularly among younger priests, who asked a fair question: can you turn your life around weekly? Moreover, confessors after 1960 were wrestling with the artificial birth control issue. Maria C. Morrow’s Sin in the Sixties [see my Amazon review, particularly pp. 191 ff] observed that in New Jersey in the 1960’s, if you believed the pill was OK morally, you confessed in Italian parishes; if you believed artificial contraception was wrong, you confessed in Irish churches. In my family’s parish in New York State everyone knew which priests to confess to if you were using the pill. Many priests were getting sick and tired of the birth control wars in confession. St. John Vianney probably had it right when he taught priests not to probe into the conjugal matters of married couples, lest the consciences of the faithful be troubled unnecessarily. MAY YOU ASK FOR ADVICE IN CONFESSION ABOUT A PERSONAL ISSUE? Generally, yes. If a priest has the time to talk—that is, if there is not a long line of penitents behind you—feel free to raise an issue that is troubling your life. It does not have to be technically sinful matter. A parent might be worried about a son or daughter, for example. Now, if the same parent asked the same question of a psychotherapist, there are fifty minutes on the clock to work it through. [And some issues require multiple therapeutic meetings or sessions.] Public parish hours for confession do not usually allow the priest the time for lengthy personal advice. If the question is complex, the priest may suggest that you call the office and make an appointment with him at a time when he can provide 30-60 minutes of guidance in the office. Or he might suggest you consult a Catholic professional counselor, possibly with Catholic Charities. [In one of my parishes, I had two psychotherapists on my staff.] The priest is not putting you off; rather, he is attempting to provide the depth of attention you deserve. I should add, too, that the priest might suggest in confession reputable self-help programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous. ARE THERE SINS A PRIEST CANNOT ABSOLVE? Yes. First, a priest cannot hear confessions just anywhere [except in danger of death.] On the afternoon of my ordination, my superior walked up to me at the post-Mass reception, poked me in the chest, and said: “You have faculties.” A priest must have formal “faculties” or authority from his bishop to minister in a diocese. I had not thought about faculties then, and I had planned to spend the next five days celebrating Eucharist and hearing confessions at the schools and parishes where I had led youth retreats in the D.C. area. Good thing my superior took care of it. It is true that religious order priests such as the Franciscans have “special privileges” dating to the Middle Ages; in 1974 when I was ordained, Franciscan priests could absolve the sin of procuring or facilitating an abortion, for example, which normally was a “reserved sin.” [Some states require a civil “faculty” for marriages, too. In 1975 I performed a wedding at Georgetown’s Trinity Church while living at Siena College in Albany, and I had to pay the District of Columbia $15 for a minister’s license!] But there is a catalogue of sins, “reserved sins,” which incur a latæ sententiæ penalty, immediate excommunication. In some cases, a local bishop, having examined the situation, can lift the excommunication. But in other cases, the bishop must petition Rome for guidance on how to proceed. Here is a list of “reserved sins:” Apostasy, heresy, schism [leaving the Church by a formal, public act] Violation of consecrated species [consecrated bread and wine] Physical attack on a pope or bishop A priest who absolves an accomplice in sexual sin Unauthorized ordination of a bishop Direct violation by a confessor of the seal of confession Anyone who reveals the overheard confession of another Pretended celebration of the Eucharist by a non-priest Attempt to hear confession by one who cannot validly do so False accusation of the crime of solicitation in the confessional Attempted marriage by a religious or cleric Formal cooperation in abortion [I hasten to add that the “attempted marriage by a cleric” applies only to non-laicized priests. I have my letter from Pope John Paul II, and I receive a pledge kit every year for the Bishop’s Appeal, so I was never excommunicated. Do it by the book.] There is an office or “dicastery” in Rome, the Apostolic Penitentiary, which ministers to all penitential issues of this sort. I will return to the Confession questions in about two weeks. If you have any questions or topics in this theme, feel free to send them along to [email protected] As next week features Ash Wednesday, and with it the annual reminder to make a good confession before Easter, I thought it might be a good time to look at the particulars of the Sacrament as it is observed in the United States.
IS CONFESSION BIBLICAL? God’s merciful gift of redemption to all who call upon the Lord with humility in their hearts is among the very pillars of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. On Easter Sunday evening, according to St. John Chapter 20 Jesus said to them again. “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained. It is an interesting thing that Jesus identifies the forgiveness of sin as the primary empowerment from the Holy Spirit, on Easter Sunday, no less. St. Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, in the Pentecost account, affirms John in Acts 2:38, Peter’s sermon to the Jews: Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the holy Spirit. Baptism, as the primordial sacrament of forgiveness and entrance into Christ’s saving community, is the only forgiveness rite per se mentioned in the New Testament. The Church would develop the rites for the forgiveness of sins in several ways over the next two millennia. WHEN AND WHERE DID THE PRACTICE OF INDIVIDUAL CONFESSION BEGIN? [1] IN ROME: In the second and third centuries in Rome and other European sites, the sins of baptized believers were satisfied by prayer, fasting, and good works alone. However, several sins were recognized as serious enough to segregate a baptized member from his or her saving Eucharistic community. We are talking about murder, adultery, and apostasy [renouncing one’s baptismal membership.] In these cases, the sinner confessed the deed[s] to the bishop directly, and requested admission to “the order of penitents,” a local collection of grave sinners living an austere life of prayer, fasting, and alms collecting which lasted for about a year. These individuals were received back into the Eucharistic community on Holy Thursday through the laying on of hands by the bishop. It was generally understood that one could reenter the full community just once in a lifetime; hence this reconciliation practice was popularly known as the “last plank.” Typically, most Christians would never engage in this intensive personal rite of forgiveness because their failures had not reached a designated level of seriousness, betrayal, and scandal. What I find interesting is that by 200 A.D. the Church already had an early grading system of sins, a practice that medieval and modern theology would raise to an art form. [2] IN IRELAND: It may come as a surprise that our “Saturday afternoon confession” format comes to us from the Irish monks of the fifth through tenth centuries. In the monasteries, the prayer format included a daily evening rite called “the chapter of faults” where each monk would come forward and confess out loud before the community one misdeed for which he needed the forgiveness of God and his community. Because Irish monasteries played the part of dioceses and cathedrals in the Dark Ages on that island, several critical developments followed over time from this monastic rite. [1] The abbot’s acknowledgement morphed into the role of what we would call sacramental absolution. [2] This absolution, unlike the Roman style, was repeatable. [3] All sins—not just grave ones—were confessed. [4] Lay persons outside the monastery came to confess their sins. [5] Acts of satisfaction—what we call today “the penance”—were given to each penitent. With all Irish laity now confessing regularly, monk scholars composed books of sins and penances that monk confessors could consult in the ritual for each penitent. These were called penitentiaries, and by 700 A.D. they were quite detailed. Interestingly, the monks did not organize these first “moral theology” works around the Ten Commandments. Rather, they arranged their writing around the Seven Deadly Sins. The Irish manner of forgiveness crossed east into Europe through the end of the first millennium. Not surprisingly, this ritual met with resistance, including in Rome. But by 1215 A.D., at the Council IV Lateran in Rome, Pope Innocent III declared that Penance was one of the seven sacraments and mandated that all the faithful confess their sins once a year using the Irish model during the Lenten/Easter Season. That, and receiving the Eucharist, became known as “doing our Easter Duty.” In 2022 Commonweal Magazine carried a more detailed treatment than I have outlined here, called “How the Irish Changed Penance,” which should be free even if you don’t subscribe. It would make an interesting adult education presentation. WHEN DID CONFESSIONALS COME INTO PLAY? The confessional seems to have developed as part of the liturgical reform stemming from the Council of Trent [1545-1563]. This Council was the Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation. I have seen many paintings in my lifetime of confessions being heard out in the open church before the institution of confessionals. It could be that the Church thought it would be theologically significant and prudent to designate a particular spot in the church for this sacrament, like the baptistry for baptism. Enclosure of the sacrament in a boxlike configuration would protect the “seal” or secrecy of Penance. You will read in some history books that the barrier between the penitent and the priest [with the little grill for confessing] was instituted to protect women and children from the confessor. From what we know about confessional abuses in the twentieth century, the designers of the barrier confessionals in the seventeenth century may have had the same concern. [See this 2021 essay on women’s contemporary experiences in the confessional.] I have not seen a new church built with wooden confessional boxes in the builder’s design in years. When the Vatican II reforms for Penance were promulgated in the mid-1970’s, confessionals [referred to often as reconciliation rooms] were expected to allow the penitent to confess to the priest seated, face-to-face, if they preferred this to confessing anonymously. And, as the priest was proclaiming the absolution, he had the option of laying hands on the head of the penitent. I believe that laying on of hands in confession has been replaced by holding up the right hand in the direction of the penitent. In the priesthood and in the mental health profession, for that matter, physical touching of vulnerable people is verboten. WHAT CHANGES DID VATICAN II MAKE IN THE SACRAMENT OF PENANCE? In the Council Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium [1963] the bishops of the council called for a renewal of the rite of confession, but without details. The Vatican Office of Liturgy released the new rite with all its specifics, Ordo Paenitentiae, in 1973. The document ran to well over 200 pages; by the time the document was translated into English in 1974 or 1975 I was already ordained and pastor of a Catholic campus college. Theologically speaking, the most significant change in the Sacrament of Penance was Biblical emphasis. Commentaries remined us confessors that we were to function as an extension of Christ’s immeasurable mercy and love; we were not to act as lawyers or customs officials at the gates to grace. My professors had taught me that already, so my pastoral stance in the confessional was not significantly challenged. I was more taken by the ritual opportunities offered in Ordo Paenitentiae. OP put forward three ways to celebrate this sacrament, outlined here: Rite One was the individual confession of a person to a priest. However, the formula was extended to include, among other things, a reading of a passage from Scripture and a broad selection of “Acts of Contrition.” Clearly, this revised rite would take longer than the old one, and I wondered how Rite 1 would fit, so to speak, in the engrained custom of hearing lines confessions before weekend Masses. Rite Two was a public church service which included hymns, Scripture reading, a homily, an examination of conscience, and a common act of contrition. Then the participants approached one of the priests in attendance, confessed sins, received individual absolution, and returned to the pew. When everyone had confessed, a final prayer and closing hymn closed the service. As far as I could see, Rite 2 was popular during Advent and Lent. When I came to Florida, I was on the road several nights a week during the holy seasons to assist at my neighbors’ penance rites [as well as to enjoy a scrumptious rectory meal and a nightcap after the service with my local clergy friends.] Today I read a good number of church bulletins and I never see such a service posted. I have some ideas about that, for a follow-up post. Rite Three was quite controversial. It was frequently referred to as the “General Absolution” option. It parallelled Rite Two except that there was no individual confession. Rather, full absolution for all sins—mortal and venial—was administered from the sanctuary by the priest celebrant. I found this rite to be highly effective both at my college and later as a parish pastor. In 1986 my parish completed a RENEW program, and I scheduled an evening General Absolution service as a finale. I am told that hundreds of people never even got their cars on the church property, and having given up, moved down the street to Denny’s for an impromptu celebration of dessert. Rite Three caused considerable discomfort at the Vatican, and under Pope John Paul II local bishops were expected to forbid its use except in danger of death situations, such as soldiers entering battle. So, in answer to the question of how Vatican II impacted our penitential situation in our 2024 setting, I would say, “Very little.” __________________ I will pick up the Penance questions in about two weeks. If you have “confession topics,” send them to me at [email protected] I have about ten here on my desk I didn’t get to on this run. I am leaving the Café desk now for a week at the beach with my in-laws. Just my luck, my condo is across the street from a very nice Catholic Church. I called to make an appointment for my Lenten confession. I know the pastor to be an excellent spiritual director from previous experience. I pray that all of you will experience a moving Lenten Season with our Savior, Jesus Christ I was more than pleasantly surprised to find in my electric mailbox last week a lengthy essay from USA Today, “Cheating in sports: Michigan football the latest scandal. Why is playing by rules so hard?” The essay is the first in a series of ten by Dan Wolken which will appear in USA Today over the next few weeks. The essay had come to me via a longtime Catholic friend and fellow parishioner who has combined an outstanding business career with years of lay counsel to Church administrators locally and nationally. As cited above, the essay’s calling card is an invitation to explore the ethics of competition—how and when does cheating pervert the philosophical meaning of sports itself—the drive to excel, to prove oneself the best, to set new goals of excellence.
My credentials to tackle the subject? I did earn a master’s degree in theology with a specialty in morality [learned, if not always lived.] On the sports angle, as a high school and collegian seminarian, I tried out for every major varsity sport available in the seminary league and failed to earn a position in any. When I did play pickup football, I would play offensive or blocking guard because I was roly-poly and defensive players grew exhausted running around me to the quarterback. At college, my locker room friends consoled me with the reality that while I would never be an athlete, I was certainly an enthusiastic athletic supporter. And that much is true…at 75 I spent fifteen minutes last Sunday morning reading the gambling line analyses on the Buffalo Bills—Dallas Cowboys game. [Buffalo posted at -2, incidentally, and the o/u at 50. Final score proved to be Buffalo 31-Dallas 10.] Let me get down to business here. Philosophically, I have just one problem with Wolken’s project. He addresses the subject of sports cheating as if athletics is exempt from the world of humanity, which sad to say is corrupt to the heart. If you do not believe me, then let us gather at the river and pray for enlightenment, turning our Bibles to texts that never get much Catholic attention. In the immediate centuries before Christ, a serious pessimism settled over Israel which expressed itself in Biblical texts you rarely or never hear at Mass. For these writings dare to state what most of us privately believe and/or actively suppress: that each of us is sorely imperfect, differing only in degree; that sin mars every human and institutional transaction in an infinite number of ways, and that life after death is a matter of faith, not scientific or philosophical certainty. The Coming of Christ is the coming of unsullied goodness. But until I embrace the Gospel in full stride, I do not know God. Pope Francis gets into plenty of hot water when he reminds us of these hard truths. The Biblical texts I am referring to include the second creation account [Genesis 2:3ff], written in 400-500 B.C. by a religious thinker attempting to explain, in a brilliant narrative, the source of human sin and misery. The message is clear enough: even in the perfect circumstances of the Garden of Eden, humanity fumbled the opening kickoff. And where does this root evil come from? When we were kids, we learned that the talking snake was really the devil—an intruder from another universe, you might say. But alas, this is not the case. The second creation account tells us that “the serpent was the most cunning of all the creatures God had made.” That is unnerving, as if to say that sin and evil are baked into the cake. The creation author here has no answer to that dilemma, but he/she attempts to explain the origins of mankind’s miseries--such as the pain and danger of childbirth and the relentless need to toil under the hot sun to eat and survive—as the byproducts of the imperfect species we are. Other works of this later Israelite era include Qoheleth [or Ecclesiastes]. Written in the 200’s B.C., this work famously begins and ends with “Vanity of vanities, all things are vanity!” But the most famous writing in this schema is Job. The USCCB commentary puts this book at between 400 and 600 B.C. though it strikes me as a later book. I read Job in depth a few years ago; with age I experienced a greater sensitivity to the pain of this work. The theme is unjust suffering. God and the devil get into a fictional discussion about human behavior, the devil’s contention being that men behave well only when all is going well. The two protagonists decide to answer this question by inflicting one tribulation upon another upon a just human, Job, to see if he breaks his trust in the goodness of God and God’s creation. The USCCB or the U.S. Bishops’ Biblical commentary on Job notes that “the Book of Job does not definitively answer the problem of the suffering of the innocent, but challenges readers to come to their own understanding.” One more point needs to be made, this one from the mental health community. There are no identical people. Each human life is enormously complicated. There are one billion cells in the average human brain, each with the capacity to exchange neurotransmitters with a thousand other neurons—that is over a trillion variables possible where thought, feeling, and action are involved. Sadly, the biology of human behavior is enormously understudied; I have read dozens of Catholic morality books over the years. I have yet to see one which integrates the biology of the brain—where most depression begins, for example--into ethical conscience formation, altruism, or religious motivation. Returning to Wolken’s discussion of cheating in sports, we never know exactly why people do what they do. The author is not exactly treading new water here, either. The ancient Greeks have left records of cheating in chariot races [and all these years I blamed Messala in “Ben Hur.”] In the 1936 Munich Olympics, the U.S. Olympic Committee stepped in and demoted two starting U.S. sprinters in the 4x100-yard relay, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, because of their Jewish faith, in an effort not to offend Adolf Hitler. In this case justice eventually prevailed, however, because Glickman was replaced by Jesse Owens, who thoroughly embarrassed dictator and diplomats alike by winning four gold medals [and Glickman became one of America’s beloved sportscasters till his death in 2001.] In 2019 Major League Baseball sanctioned the Houston Astros, winners of the 2017 World Series, for employing a hidden camera in the outfield to capture the opposing catcher’s pitch signals. Baseball is still recovering from the Houston Astros high/low technology scandal of signal stealing involving a hidden video camera and a trash can. And if Pete Rose had bet exclusively on horses, he would be in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. Dan Wolken’s USA Today essay focuses as its lead-in an investigation by the National Collegiate Athletic Association [NCAA] of the University of Michigan’s varsity football program. A paid assistant coach arranged for and paid the expenses of scouts to attend the games of Michigan’s future opponents and video the visual signs coming from coaches on the sidelines. I have to say, when I heard this on the news very recently, I thought that was legal! However, as it turns out, there are grades of espionage, some acceptable, some not. [We naughty Catholics who enjoy the comedy of the late parish school educated George Carlin understand the hierarchy of evil very well; George proved, in a memorable sketch, that you could commit seven mortal sins with just one weak moment with Mary Ellen at “second base.”] The fuss that Wolken alludes to has much to do with Michigan’s winning a spot in college football’s final four tournament next week as well as the reputation of UM’s head coach, Jim Harbaugh, who was suspended from his team’s sideline for three games late in this current season for the road spying gambit. The tournament itself is under something of a cloud for another problem—the failure of the tournament selection committee to include Florida State University, an undefeated conference champion, into the final four. The State of Florida’s Attorney General, Ashly Moody, is seeking access to “all communications regarding deliberations from the selection committee” of thirteen members from across the country. Next year the playoffs expand to twelve teams! I agree with the author that every sport has its forms of cheating at every level—individuals, teams, conferences, and ancillary businesses, such as television networks, team apparel marketers, and of late the major gambling houses. In some sports the policing and safety is getting better, or at least an effort is being made. We did not have “concussion protocols” in the NFL until recently, nor rule changes to make baseball games shorter. NASCAR, one of “my” sports, has developed new safety policies for cars and tracks, but only after the death of its superstar Dale Earnhardt, Senior, at the 2001 Daytona 500, several hundred feet from where my wife and I were sitting on that grim February day. We can never know exactly what goes through a man’s mind, morally speaking, but we can speculate on the things that should be running through our minds in human interactions. Wikipedia’s lengthy and excellently researched entry on the Houston Astros scandal includes this: “[Baseball Commissioner Rob] Manfred had cleared [Jim] Crane of wrongdoing at the beginning of his report, saying that Crane was "extraordinarily troubled and upset" by the revelations and had fully cooperated.” Crane happens to be the owner of the Astros. Given that gossip about Houston spying spread throughout the league for several years, I must scratch my head at the thought that an owner knows nothing about his multi-billion-dollar investment. In the 1950’s the New York Yankees regularly hired investigators to monitor the late-night activities of Billy Martin. You know what you want to know and ignore the rest. Sad to say, some of the more famous sports scandals, such as the 1919 Chicago “Black Sox” fix of the World Series, bear uncomfortable resemblance to Catholic clergy scandals of later in the century. As the young Boston Globe reporter wailed in the film Spotlight, “They knew…and they let it happen!” What I propose to do for the rest of this essay is provide an overview of some moral issues and/or incidents affecting American sport, to stimulate conversation. Just call them “my concerns.” Human safety and wellbeing: This is a very personal issue for me as I witnessed Earnhardt’s death up close at the 2001 Daytona 500; in fact, Margaret bought me a Dale Earnhardt Sr. cap at a souvenir stand under the track at Daytona for my birthday before the race began. I still have the cap next to my desk. Earnhardt’s death—and the fact that fourteen other drivers had been killed at the Daytona track alone over the years—led NASCAR to overhaul many aspects of safety, efforts which continue to this day. All the same, I gradually disengaged from the sport in the early 2000’s on the grounds that Catholic teaching has, for centuries, interpreted the prohibitions of the Fifth Commandment to include the unnecessary risking of human life. And by no stretch can auto racing be considered a safe sport. In looking at the starting lineups for last weekend’s National Football League games, I was taken with the number of excellent players at every position who were not available to their teams, either on that weekend or for the balance of the season. Some years ago, I heard John Madden observe: “If you participate in one play in the NFL, your body is never the same.” Many players take painful or disabling injuries into their middle age and beyond. What is most troubling is the substantial risk of lasting head injury. Consider this release from the NFL’s news service in 2013: “The NFL has reached a tentative $765 million settlement over concussion-related brain injuries among its 18,000 retired players, agreeing to compensate victims, pay for medical exams and underwrite research…More than 4,500 former athletes -- some suffering from dementia, depression or Alzheimer's that they blamed on blows to the head -- had sued the league, accusing it of concealing the dangers of concussions and rushing injured players back onto the field while glorifying and profiting from the kind of bone-jarring hits that make for spectacular highlight-reel footage. “The NFL long has denied any wrongdoing and insisted that safety always has been a top priority. But the NFL said Thursday that Commissioner Roger Goodell told pro football's lawyers to "do the right thing for the game and the men who played it." The plaintiffs included Hall of Famer Tony Dorsett, Super Bowl-winning quarterback Jim McMahon and the family of Pro Bowl linebacker Junior Seau, who committed suicide last year [2012]. “Under the settlement, individual awards would be capped at $5 million for men with Alzheimer's disease; $4 million for those diagnosed after their deaths with a brain condition called chronic traumatic encephalopathy; and $3 million for players with dementia, said lead plaintiffs' lawyer Christopher Seeger.” Football, at its heart, is a game of physical dominance, where the “sacking of a quarterback” gets nearly as much cheer as a touchdown. Is it morally justifiable? For the good of the student: Just a year or two ago UCLA and USC, two schools with Los Angeles zip codes, announced that their sports programs were transferring from the Pacific Coast Conference or PAC-10 to the Big 10, whose teams spread from Iowa to New Jersey. [If you do not follow sports, every year the best football team in the PAC-10 has played the best team in the Big 10 in the New Year’s Day Rose Bowl game for about a century.] When USC and UCLA switched conferences, six other PAC schools followed suit. Only two teams remain in the west coast league, the “PAC-2” as my friends call it now. While college football analysts went into overdrive imagining the intriguing new arrangement of next year’s college games, the mental health and education communities looked at another angle of college football realignment, a forgotten population: the college student. College football conferences exist for multiple reasons including economics and the wear and tear of travel for teams--matriculating students who must maintain a certain grade to retain scholarships and eligible to play. I checked Southern Cal’s road schedule for autumn 2024, and its player-students will travel to Baton Rouge, LA [LSU], State College, PA [Penn State], Lincoln, NE [Nebraska], New Brunswick, NJ [Rutgers] and Seattle, WA [Washington]. Each of these games is a separate trip at two-week intervals; on the alternating weeks, the team plays games on its home field. All I can conjure in my mind is exhausted students cramming for Monday exams in the friendly skies over the Continental Divide. As long as I have followed sports there has been conversation over the tension within the term “student-athlete.” But take a step further: there is a lot of money made in college sports, for everyone except the players. In 2021 the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the trend a bit. In “NCAA versus Alston,” the Court ruled that a college student can make money on his or her “name, image, and likeness” or NIL. For the first time, a collegian could make football related dough by using his/her on-field exploits to sell Pepsi, Fritos, or Bran Flakes on TV without interference from his school or the NCAA. However, the NIL policy is hardly an across-the-board windfall; the few outstanding [read “marketable’] college players from big name schools have done well financially. But I checked my hometown college football team, the Buffalo Bulls of the MAC, or Middle America Conferences [that plays some games on Tuesday nights], and the Bulls actually have a web page for individuals or businesses who wish to start a NIL sponsorship for any Bulls player. I need to tell my little brother, who has season tickets to Buffalo Bulls games. As he says, “I’m never doing anything on Tuesday nights anyway.” Government and Sports The magnitude of organized sports at every level means that federal, state, and local governments--our elected officials—will necessarily play roles in the affairs of sport—though the extent of involvement varies greatly. For a century, the granddaddy of government and sports interaction was [and remains] Major League Baseball’s antitrust exemption, passed by Congress in the early 1920’s. According to the Sporting News, the exemption “resulted from a 1922 Supreme Court ruling that stated, somewhat incredulously, that the business of Major League Baseball did not constitute “interstate commerce,” thus making it exempt from the Sherman [Antitrust] Act, which prevents businesses from conspiring with one another in an effort to thwart competition.” There were—and are—egregious results of MLB’s antitrust exemption. When I was in college, a black St. Louis Cardinal all-star, Curt Flood, was traded from his team of longstanding to the Philadelphia Phillies over a $10,000 salary dispute. Philadelphia reportedly drew a virulently racist fan base at the time, and Flood refused to go there. He objected to the trade, arguing that under baseball’s existing rules he was essentially “owned” by management [in this case the Cardinals] like a slave, and if he failed to play for any owner who held his contract, he was effectively blackballed from all major league teams. Flood took his case to the Supreme Court, which ruled against him in 1972. However, the case brought into play a brilliant labor arbitrator, Marvin Miller, who raised new public consciousness of the limited rights of baseball players and strengthened the fledgling players association in its dealings with the pension, base pay, etc. Miller was recently voted into the Hall of Fame for strengthening the position of ball players in their dealings with ownership even as the antitrust exemption remains on the books. It is worth noting here that the National Basketball Association [NBA] and the National Football League [NFL] do not have antitrust protection from Congress. In recent years the Colin Kaepernick case in the NFL demonstrates that, hypothetically at least, players have more leverage to protect their rights. In 2016 Kaepernick famously began his protest gesture of not standing for the National Anthem, to bring attention to police brutality and racism. Wikipedia notes: “In November 2017, Kaepernick filed a grievance against the NFL and its owners, accusing them of collusion in keeping him out of the league. In August 2018, arbitrator Stephen B. Burbank rejected the NFL’s request to dismiss the case. Kaepernick withdrew the grievance in February 2019 after reaching a confidential settlement with the NFL. His protests received renewed attention in 2020 amid the George Floyd protests against police brutality and racism, but he remains unsigned by any professional football team.” Another issue—close to the collective consciousness of Buffalo Bills football fans these days—is public funding of sports arenas. The new football stadium for the Bills is scheduled to open in 2026, 2027, or 2028 depending on your source, at a cost of $1.54 billion, already increased from the initial $1.4 announcement. Who pays? Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was opposed to state funding, but after his forced resignation surrounding personal scandal, his successor, Governor Kathy Hochul—from the Buffalo area--lobbied vigorously for state support. It probably did not hurt that the NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell, lives in the Buffalo TV market. It is maddening to nail down precise numbers and facts about Buffalo’s proposed new stadium, but it is clear that until a few months ago the Bills would be receiving the highest public contribution for its football facility in the NFL, $800 million from the state and more from Erie County. The Tennessee Titans may exceed New York State and Erie County with their newly announced $2.1 billion stadium on the board. In both cases, however and many more—there is little public or religious discussion over the moral/ethical questions at hand, not to mention political unrest. In the first instance, is construction of a $2 billion stadium a defensible expense for ten dates of football per year? Have we passed the point of utility and progressed into the world of fetish? Do football stadiums improve the communities in which they are settled? [There was considerable talk in Buffalo of a downtown site for the new stadium before the suburban site was selected and with a dome, which was eventually ruled out.] Do new stadiums make the cost of family attendance prohibitive? And would these public funding grants be better spent on infrastructure, education, housing, health care, etc.? Buffalo, incidentally, is the 78th largest city in the United States, behind Chula Vista, California, and Jersey City, New Jersey. There are forty-two larger cities than Buffalo without NFL teams, many that would like to host one. The shelf-life of new stadiums is becoming shorter and shorter. Forbes reports that, in terms of market value, the Buffalo Bills are worth $3.7 billion, or 30th of the 32 NFL teams. Only Detroit and Cincinnati are lower in worth. Dallas is first, but even the Cowboys are rated at less than $10 billion in corporate value. The NFL is increasing its overseas exposure in South America and Europe, with hopes of establishing permanent teams in Mexico, Brazil, and several European sites. The “Christian Banker” within me worries about the viability of the smaller football markets in the United States and the moral questions surrounding the investment of wholesale public monies into situations with uncertain futures. COACHING: I am focused here on the attitudes and styles of coaches of younger athletes up to and including their college years. Having worked in colleges and followed my favorite schools, I was always puzzled—troubled, really—by the manner of coaches’ interactions with players. It has been my understanding—perhaps in error—that coaches are faculty members or administrators or employees of the school. Consequently, I never understood why so many coaches seem to get a pass on the decorum and respect that we classroom teachers were expected to show our students. I am aware, to be sure, that many professors play God and treat their students with contempt; we had a saying, “Once you close your classroom door, you are God.” I resigned from teaching at Daytona College in 2002, reluctantly, due to my opening a private practice/business. I suspect teacher-student interactions today are somewhat different from my time, from what I read in the papers, but human nature being what it is… If athletic competition is a school for life—particularly in institutions with a religious mission, e.g., Catholic colleges]—then what do we want our students to experience and learn from their time on the school gridiron or baseball diamond? Several things come to mind. Sports is an excellent classroom for students to develop respect, openness, and communication with authority figures, and to adapt to differing philosophies of strategies and life. The reverse is also true. True coaches recognize the distinct personalities of their charges, the distinctive gifts of each, and the best ways to communicate and correct with the varieties of young people still finding themselves. It is often forgotten that Larry Bird began his collegiate career at the University of Indiana under coach Bobby Knight. Bird, an immensely insecure country boy who arrived with few clothes into a Big Ten environment, was so overwhelmed he walked out to the highway and hitchhiked a ride home to French Lick. [Later he enrolled at Indiana State and became the Larry Bird of collegiate and NBA lore.] IN CONCLUSION… Sports are not immune to the problems and controversies of the day. In the past week I have seen in public media mostly anonymous allegations that professional football referees pace their penalty flags to help the teams with the highest TV interest. Others believe that eventually all NFL games will be streamed on pay-per-view at considerable price. Sports are inherently sinful…in the same way we are inherently sinful from the encounter with the talking snake. Within reason, sports are here for us to enjoy and to marvel at both the athletic and the academic marvels of players and coaches. The closer that school sports, professional franchises, and league officials protect the norm of the common good, the more we will enjoy both our viewing and our participating in sports. Morally speaking:
When Vatican II formally opened in October 1962, most seminaries were still teaching morality as an aid to their future priests for their confessional work in a fashion that was not noticeably more advanced than the Irish monks of the sixth century who invented personal and repeatable confession. The Irish monks composed the first written catalogues of sins and their satisfaction, i.e., “the penance” we receive in the box. These books written 1000-1500 years ago are collectively referred to as “Irish Penitentiaries” for those ordained monks hearing confessions. [Be careful if you google this.] After the Reformation a thousand years later, the Council of Trent [1545-1563] mandated the education of priests and the establishment of seminaries. By this time the old penitentiaries had been worked over for a millennium and were renamed “manuals.” When you read a history of moral theology today, you will see reference to the “Manualist Era” of moral theology, beginning around 1600 and gradually falling out of favor in the twentieth century.
The last published moral manual, per Amazon, appeared in 1962, the year Vatican II began, by Fathers Heribert Jone and Urban Adelman. Jone, I gather, was the specialist and Adelman the translator [Latin/English]. In 1971 I made my annual seminary retreat as a guest of the Capuchin Franciscan Father Adelman at a retreat house where he was superior. I mentioned to him that I had seen his work on sale in the Newman Bookstore, around the corner from Catholic University [as well as my favorite D.C. bar, Fred’s.] Father Adelman looked stricken and exclaimed, “Don’t tell me they are still selling that thing!” It wasn’t until this week that I researched examples of Father Jone’s work and understood Father Adelman’s dismay, and how far from the rest of Catholic scholarly theology and practice the manualist tribe had drifted. During my graduate studies in moral theology my class was exposed to the Irish Penitentiaries for historical background purposes; personal confession in early Ireland, which began as a nightly “chapter of faults” of the monks, was built around the seven deadly sins. The later Manualist Era was built around a rather simplistic structure of the Ten Commandments that tunneled deeper and deeper into infinite possibilities of human misbehavior; the emphasis appears to be the absolute integrity of the confession of all sins “in number and species,” as we used to say then. In fact, the controversial young Catholic-educated George Carlin, of all people, understood the Manualist tradition so well that in 1969 he developed a confessional comedy routine that sliced and diced the supposedly dying Manualist-style confession with amazing precision. [If you care to google “George Carlin Confession” on YouTube, remember this is adult material.] It is fair to say that by the time of Vatican II most Catholic academics, many of whom served as advisors at the Council, had long discarded the Manualist approach to morality. The approach itself was becoming, well, bizarre in its detail. Priests themselves were complaining to Pope Pius XII long before Vatican II that the format of confession had lost its impact as a motivator toward deeper faith and spirituality. The Council Fathers noted the separation of manual morality—specifically the rite of confession—from the fullness of the Church’s theological and sacramental wisdom; thus, on October 28, 1965, Pope Paul VI issued the Conciliar decree “Optatam Totius: The Decree on Priestly Training.” OT was a directive to bishops and seminary rectors to renew and improve the quality of both academic and pastoral training, to raise the bar such that all priests were familiar with every aspect of Church history and thought. OT added that continuing education of priests after ordination was a lifelong expectation and obligation. The Church needed better preachers, teachers, and pastors if the renewal of the Council had any chance of success. This teaching was long overdue. In the United States, for example, the noted Church historian Father John Tracy Ellis shook American complacency about its Catholic universities, colleges, and seminaries. In 1955 he published “American Catholics and the Intellectual Life,” a critique of the poor state of Catholic scholarship in this country. Interestingly, Cardinal Dolan of New York wrote on August 23 of this year that there are too many seminaries and too few excellent ones, and he advocated closing many U.S. seminaries to create regional seminaries of academic excellence. On the matter of moral theology and confession, OT stated this: Likewise let the other theological disciplines be renewed through a more living contact with the mystery of Christ and the history of salvation. Special care must be given to the perfecting of moral theology. Its scientific exposition, nourished more on the teaching of the Bible, should shed light on the loftiness of the calling of the faithful in Christ and the obligation that is theirs of bearing fruit in charity for the life of the world. [para. 16] Put another way, Morality, and the Sacrament of Penance, like all sacraments, needed to pivot away from excessive legalism to its original point of origin: the Revelation of Christ in the Scriptures and the conversion of the baptized to charitable works which bring God’s grace to the world. In my seminary [1971-1974], morality and spirituality [prayer] were joined in one department as a response to OT. However, when I was a student, the post-Council renewal of moral theology—as well as other theological disciplines--was still just beginning. My courses pointed out general directions for further reading, study, and processing. As a morality/spirituality major I did my master’s thesis on “women’s liberation and the Church,” for example, just as the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade on abortion was released in January 1973. Today I can remember only two Catholic woman theologians available to me in print from my bibliography. One was Mary Daly, whose 1968 work The Church and the Second Sex was very radical at the time and her first step in disengagement from the Catholic Church. The other was the more congenial Sidney Callahan, whose Beyond Birth Control: The Christian Experience also appeared in 1968. Callahan has been a prolific Catholic scholar and writer well into this century. I mention these two names to make the point that the renewal of theology called for by the Council for the Church at large was still just beginning a decade later and would take many years. The recently adjourned phase two of the Synod on Synodality cited the need for greater theological discussion on the involvement of women in the Church, a half century after this mediocre researcher plodded his way to roughly the same conclusion. Aware that it is a half-century since I left the theological classroom, I purchased Father James F. Keenan, S.J.’s A History of Catholic Theological Ethics. [2022]. It was a magnificent read, based upon the research of post-Vatican II Church historians, biblical scholars, philosophers, and moralists, guided by Vatican II’s documents. There is energy and unity in the narrative. I marked up my copy and enshrined it in my “working reference library,” though there are many things in the book I need to go back and unpack more satisfactorily. For a reader who wishes to know how the Catholic Church’s moral history unfolded—and what a story it is—this kind of treatment will carry you along, based upon the freshest scholarship available and sensitive to both ancient writing and new moral issues including genetics, gender and transitioning, environmental issues, etc. It also introduces the reader to moral trends and scholarship today in Asia, Africa, and South America. Father Keenan’s 456-page opus is a challenge. I believe it was the late Father Andrew Greeley who said that the Church is reluctant to recommend books to the faithful longer than 100 pages and without pictures. Amazon provides a healthy free sample of the book, including the table of contents. If you scan this information you will come across many unfamiliar names, philosophies, and controversies, but Father Keenan seems to know his audience…this is new material to just about everyone. I had no work of this nature available to me back in the day. You will meet or become better friend with such diverse folks as St. Thomas Aquinas [1224-74], the Angelic Doctor, whose philosophical-theological synthesis still holds a unique place in Catholic scholarship; and you will meet Duns Scotus [1287-1347] who worked to dismantle Aquinas’s principles. Aquinas’s generation of thinkers depended upon, among others, the earlier thinking of the monk Peter Abelard [1079-1142] and his young student Heloise [1101-1164]. Yes, the very same Abelard and Heloise who collaborated on more than just books. Father Keenan quotes Heloise on morality and marriage, in the twelfth century, no less: “A woman should realize that if she marries a rich man more readily than a poor one and desires her husband more for his possessions than for himself, she is offering herself for sale.” [p. 136] I mention Heloise here as a prime example of a woman scholar who is getting greater recognition today, in part because more lay and religious women are embracing advanced study and leadership in Church scholarship. Father Keenan takes us into the post-Reformation Manualist era and the internal wars between the manualist scholars. The most famous of these was over the issue of “probabilism.” To put it simply—as if I could--if a penitent tells a priest confessor that, when presented with a moral dilemma, in good faith he chose option A even though the prevailing moral scholarship of the day would have held for option B, he is judged innocent by a Probablist priest or guilty by a Probabiliorist priest. Many in the Church saw the Probablist position as more respectful of the penitent; those opposed called the position laxist. Fortunately, the Church canonized the moralist St. Alphonsus Ligouri, a Probablist who founded the Redemptorist Order. About St. Alphonsus from Wikipedia: "The penitents should be treated as souls to be saved rather than as criminals to be punished". He is said never to have refused absolution to a penitent. Probabilism has obviously dropped from current day Catholic usage, but the tension between mercy and law is still very much with us. Pastoral care for the LGBQ community was a difficult subject at the Synod this past week. But Father Keenan takes us further beyond United States concerns. His final section, “Moral Agency for a Global Theological Ethics,” addresses an issue I touched upon earlier. “Moralists are no longer singularly clerical priests, their training is not necessarily at Catholic institutions, and their professional positions are not episcopally controlled.” [p. 292] The author does not mention this, but Catholic scholars in general can publish frequently with secular powerhouses like Norton and Eerdmans’s. I get a regular catalogue from Yale University Press. Consequently, the old probabilism debates may continue nowadays on Amazon or your neighborhood Barnes and Noble. Beyond that, Father Keenan examines the state of moral theology around the world and who is teaching and writing today. Except for Antarctica, every continent has sizeable Catholic populations, schools, and indigenous theologians. Catholic moral thinking is diverse, particularly between richer and poorer nations. Building upon the theological teachings of Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis, many Catholic theologians from developing nations are focusing upon the dignity of the human person. To give one example, they are outspoken that climate change presents the greatest danger and suffering to the poorest regions of the world, and they maintain that Church teaching must address the lifestyles and priorities of more affluent societies. Any of us who hang out in parishes are painfully aware that some of our brethren refer to Pope Francis as a “socialist” [or worse] when he speaks of the need of equality for those struggling to survive. Given that we are hours away from Halloween—and my neighborhood is ground zero for trick-or-treaters, who arrive in vans, golf carts, and flatbed trucks—I am going to stop on a dime with the hope that sometime in the near future you pick up this book and explode your mind with an in-depth examination of history and morality that will enrich your appreciation of your Catholic heritage. Back in August I posted a photo on the Café social platforms Facebook and Linked In of a peculiar piece of furniture from a venerable Catholic Church along the Danube. I didn’t identify what it was, and I had several readers ask. Here is your answer: it is a confessional, and the bowl extended out front is, if you haven’t guessed, a collection plate. I don’t know if this plate was intended for free will offerings or if there was a set fee for confession—as with indulgences in that time—or higher rates for mortal sins. The architecture of confessionals was intriguing to me. The priest sat in the middle, as today, but in some churches the penitent’s area was richly decorated with life-sized figures which provided a kind of late-medieval and renaissance catechetics of the sacrament. The figure to the right appears to represent a saint reporting to the priest all the sins committed by the penitent, including the ones he is withholding. The figure to the left is an angel imploring…well, I’m not sure what. Perhaps mercy? I guess that is the secret of great art—open to multiple interpretations.
I came across a fascinating observation by Archbishop Charles Chaput, the retired Archbishop of Philadelphia, in a piece for the Catholic News Service regarding his views on the Synod. The former archbishop of Denver pointed out that “the most difficult problems facing the Church today are not matters of ecclesial structure and process. They’re tied intimately to Psalm 8 and the question of who and what a human being really is.” His observation resonated with me on several levels. In the first instance, what is a human being? All of us in seminary seeking to become theological masters and priests had to acquire at least a bachelor’s in philosophy before admission to do graduate theology work. I completed my B.A. in Philosophy at Catholic University in 1971, but the school of philosophy was going through a hard transition at the time, and it is only in recent years that I have come to understand how much that turmoil set me back in my first go-round with theology years ago. To enter the mysteries of the life of the Church, or for that matter, to engage in the synodal discussions now underway, we as individuals must come to grips with meaning, the ultimate purpose of everything. Now well into my 70’s, I find that many of the religious controversies within the Church do not capture my soul as intrinsically important as they might once have done. For the first time in my adult life, I find myself asking questions about standalone organized religion and whether it is necessary for the person who seeks God in the stillness of intense meditation. While this is not true around the globe, it seems that decline in organized religion in the United States and much of the Western World is pronounced, and in some quarters with “a good riddance.” My life and intellectual history makes it fairly unlikely that I would consciously sever an almost eight decade relationship, but aging has this way of moving one’s fixation from the housekeeping of the Church as well as the countless humanitarian injustices I had once hoped to heal, to a position somewhere in my inner cosmos where I feel the hunger to breathe the air between God’s infinity and my finity, if that is a word. [Microsoft Word says it is not.] I would wager that my preceding sentence relates somehow to those we call “Nones.” [Americans who identify themselves to researchers as having no religion; the term is also used widely for Catholics who have left the Church.] Paradoxically, “Nones” is probably the biggest misnomer of the day, for the adolescent who disengages from parochial Catholic life at age thirteen [as research has shown is the beginning age of the typical ecclesial divorce] is developing his philosophical instincts in a healthy stage of his development. Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher, was put to death for encouraging his countrymen to ask “Why? Why? Why?” He perceived about his society, correctly, in many cases, that not only the wrong answers were being provided, but the wrong questions were being asked. The instructions for the Synod called for dioceses to reach out to the Nones and the disaffiliated, but the synodal process in the United States was so erratic I doubt any meaningful answers will come from the results compiled by participating dioceses, which would be about half of the U.S. dioceses. [Results were not released in any case.] The twin questions of why so many have left the Church, on the one hand, and why many who have stayed are unhappy on the other, has been left to the bantering of the press, Catholic and secular, which has highlighted issues on sexuality, ordination, and accountability. Very few, if any, have raised a public discussion over how or if the American Church has picked up the torch of the Jewish psychiatrist and death camp survivor Viktor Frankl’s 1946 classic, Man’s Search for Meaning. I sincerely hope that the Synod is not another housekeeping Church meeting, a “rearranging of the deck chairs on a Titanic that never quite sinks” though Pope Francis has said dozens of times that this is not your father’s synod. I agree with Archbishop Chaput that any aggiornamento or reform of the Church must begin with the most daring of philosophical questions: Why? Why did the infinite God create us and become part of all of us? It was not necessary, after all. Who, exactly, are we? What is the nature of human existence? To which I might add human sexuality. The Catechism of the Catholic Church [para. 2357] admits that, regarding homosexuality, “its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained” but proceeds to label homosexual love as “disordered.” Perhaps the Nones could no longer stay with an institution they perceived as “stuck” with no interest in getting “unstuck.” This past week I looked at my youthful report cards from Catholic elementary school and six years of the minor seminary, and I showed them to my wife. A while later she observed, “You know, in the seminary you had six periods of Latin per week, and two periods of religion. That’s strange.” I replied that whenever I asked a professor about more religion, he would inevitably say, “You’ve got twelve years of seminary, you’ll get it later.” But here I was, having left home at 14 to live in a strict boarding school seminary precisely because I thought I could pursue a subject for which I had great enthusiasm. Maybe I am a semi-None. For years I was involved in religious education training of catechists, and I still follow the field through friends and blog posts. Someone forwarded me a piece from the late noted astronomer Carl Sagan that describes Catholic faith formation so well: “Every now and then, I’m lucky enough to teach a kindergarten or first-grade class. Many of these children are natural-born scientists - although heavy on the wonder side and light on skepticism. They’re curious, intellectually vigorous. Provocative and insightful questions bubble out of them. They exhibit enormous enthusiasm. I’m asked follow-up questions. They’ve never heard of the notion of a ‘dumb question’. But when I talk to high school seniors, I find something different. They memorize ‘facts.’ By and large, though, the joy of discovery, the life behind those facts, has gone out of them. They’ve lost much of the wonder and gained very little skepticism. Sagan’s analysis could be extended to account for the Church malaise throughout adult life. Perhaps it is that, as much as anything, that lies at the heart of the Nones Exodus. There was no more air left to breathe. We are like Alexander the Great, who reportedly wept when his army reached the Atlantic Ocean, with no more worlds to explore. In Sagan-ese, we Catholics spend a lifetime studying for the test instead of letting our divinely bestowed imagination prod us along the road to the angels. WHERE DOES CONFESSION FIT INTO THIS NARRATIVE? There is one Sacrament that “escaped unscathed” from the Vatican II renewal, and that is the Sacrament of Penance. We can look at the other six sacraments and point to their structure, understanding, and execution as modified [and sometimes reformed] in the post-Conciliar revamping of worship and theological understanding. But Penance/Confession is essentially defined and observed in the same fashion as it was in medieval times. That strange collection plate at the exit of an old confessional might just as easily been designated as “court costs,” for Penance is a sacrament fresh out of Perry Mason’s office. We can thank or blame the Irish for the ritual of confession we still use today. As early as 600 A.D. the abbots and thinkers on the Isle of Saints and Scholars arrived at the template of Penance familiar to us all. The relationship of God to man was seen as a zero-sum system. As God had created us and sustained us, each of our sins incurred a debt to God. The Sacrament of Penance—which most Christians prior to 600 never received—became a regular occurrence in the lives of the baptized, because God demanded payment of the debt. The priest’s role in this sacrament began—and in many senses remains—as the judge of sincerity and, more concretely, as the legal decision maker for what needed to be repaid to God in some significant action. Our “three Hail Mary” penances are tiny, symbolic relics of a day when a sinner might be told to make a journey to the Holy Land—in 600 A.D. During Vatican II there was strong sentiment to renew all the sacraments more closely with the Bible. It was 1974, the year I was ordained, that the new directives for Penance were released, Ordo Paenitentiae. The document and its commentaries—including the 1993 Catechism--reveal the struggle between the judicial mind and the mystical-spiritual mind. The juridical mind addressed confession with razor-sharp precision. The Catechism is awash in the listing of sins and their variants. On the other hand, if you have a moment, look at the Vatican II rite for individual confession provided here by the EWTN website. It is my understanding that the ritual enumerated here is supposed to be used in every confession, and a card or resource should be available in the confessional or reconciliation room for the penitent. [Let me interject here, by the way, that the absolution administered by the priest in the Penitential Rite of the Mass is a valid absolution, juridically speaking, if you are sincerely sorry for your “venial sins.” Mortal sins must be confessed directly to a priest confessor.] When I first saw the new format for confession, I had significant doubts that it would fly, and as it turned out, it was as successful as the U.S. attempt to switch to the metric system which was happening at the same time. I was a college chaplain in the 1970’s and while few ever frequented the confessionals, many would stop by one of my offices to sit and talk about the direction of their lives. They were good kids—not perfect to be sure; but none of us are. They were alive, conscious of role and responsibility and still sorting that out. It was common to talk over an hour about their moral issues as they put them forth, with an eye toward discernment and growth. They were not slaves to the juridical philosophy of confession—no calculated lists of sins on the newly invented typewriter called a computer--but rather, and pardon my odd comparison, they had something of an approach like St. Teresa of Avila, who sought much of her spiritual direction in the confessional. It is ironic, when you think of it, that my generation of seminarians and young priests in the early 1970’s here in the United States never made a connection between the disenchantment with the confessional box—even in its reformed rite—and the “democratization of psychotherapy.” In fact, there was a “human services” course taught at my seminary by a gifted Catholic laywoman, Sandra Sutherland Fox, which introduced us to the various ways of meeting pastoral needs then employed by social workers. She introduced me to basic principles of psychotherapy and in particular Dr. Carl Rogers [1902-1987], then the guru of American psychoanalysis. We hopefully have all experienced those priests in confession or “the parlor” with the gift of reading souls, who win us back to trust and communion with God as our Father, in the fullest sense of the term. It is also interesting that the Vatican, as early as the 1950’s, was getting complaints from priests and bishops around the world who were discontented with the format of confession, most notably the practice of habitual or “pious” confessions, the practice of weekly or biweekly confession where the same list of sins was repeated every time with no notable change of heart. [See Sin in the Sixties [2016] by Maria Morrow.] If I had to guess, many of those priests of the 1950’s may have had much more to offer penitents had the structure [limited time] and the legalistic history of the sacrament been altered. Unfortunately, the Vatican II formula and the times were not opportune to explore the ways that the encounter of Penance might enrich the Church. I must wonder—given that no hard data has been released of the Synod listening sessions—how many Catholics around the world asked for greater assistance in learning to pray, read the Scripture, and receive spiritual direction. I see more individuals seeking regular soul counsel and holy conversation pertaining to their lives, and not a few who are sacrificing time and money to learn the art of spiritual direction at an accredited Catholic university, to become spiritual directors—those with the balance of a healthy prayer life, a grasp of theology, and the art of the counselor. And, has anyone explored the interlocking of the Sacrament of Penance with the art of spiritual direction? The ritual of Penance and the support of spiritual direction both enjoy the same goals: self-understanding [thank you, Archbishop Chaput] and full loving union with the Father. Would someone bring this conversation to a discussion table or two? |
MORALITYArchives
March 2025
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