(SOME PEOPLE DID NOT RECEIVE MY EARLIER MESSAGE SORRY IF THIS IS A DUPLICATE FOR YOU!)
From now until the Fourth of July I will be on the road: a bit of vacation, time for my own spiritual reflection, and time to do some professional research.
As I pack my bags, I encourage you to remember the Peter Principle. It has great significance in our contemporary church.
The Peter Principle we devoutly recall is a belief that in an organization, like the church, the organization’s leaders will eventually be promoted beyond their level of ability. The principle is commonly phrased, “employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence.”
The Peter Principle was formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book “The Peter Principle,” a humorous treatise, which also introduced the “salutary science of hierarchiology.”
Hierarchiology certainly resonates with our contemporary Catholic scene…..
According to the science of hierarchiology, leaders are promoted as long as they work loyally and obediently. (In our hierarchy we know of course that the big leaders are rewarded with red dresses. It is hard to ask in our hierarchy “who wears the pants in this church?”) Eventually the obedient leaders — we used to call them sycophants — are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (they have exceeded their “level of incompetence”), and there they remain, being unable to earn any further promotions.
In time, every leadership post tends to be occupied by a leader who is incompetent to carry out his duties.
Institutional self-worship and self-justification take over. Leaders look for scape-goats and side issues to shift public attention away from their own incompetence and negligence.
A common refrain from incompetent leaders is: “They are taking away our freedom…They are persecuting us.”
A some point a reformation occurs……
We need a Fourth of July in the Catholic Church……..
++++++
And unless something really extraordinary happens….like Cardinal Tim Dolan publicly endorses the US presidential candidacy of Barack Obama…Or Pope Benedict appoints members of LCWR to the College of Cardinals, I will be silent throughout the month of June.
Peace be with you!
John W. Greenleaf
PS My email will be working for urgent thoughts….jwgreenleaf@gmail.com
From now until the Fourth of July I will be on the road: a bit of vacation, time for my own spiritual reflection, and time to do some professional research.
As I pack my bags, I encourage you to remember the Peter Principle. It has great significance in our contemporary church.
The Peter Principle we devoutly recall is a belief that in an organization, like the church, the organization’s leaders will eventually be promoted beyond their level of ability. The principle is commonly phrased, “employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence.”
The Peter Principle was formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book “The Peter Principle,” a humorous treatise, which also introduced the “salutary science of hierarchiology.”
Hierarchiology certainly resonates with our contemporary Catholic scene…..
According to the science of hierarchiology, leaders are promoted as long as they work loyally and obediently. (In our hierarchy we know of course that the big leaders are rewarded with red dresses. It is hard to ask in our hierarchy “who wears the pants in this church?”) Eventually the obedient leaders — we used to call them sycophants — are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (they have exceeded their “level of incompetence”), and there they remain, being unable to earn any further promotions.
In time, every leadership post tends to be occupied by a leader who is incompetent to carry out his duties.
Institutional self-worship and self-justification take over. Leaders look for scape-goats and side issues to shift public attention away from their own incompetence and negligence.
A common refrain from incompetent leaders is: “They are taking away our freedom…They are persecuting us.”
A some point a reformation occurs……
We need a Fourth of July in the Catholic Church……..
++++++
And unless something really extraordinary happens….like Cardinal Tim Dolan publicly endorses the US presidential candidacy of Barack Obama…Or Pope Benedict appoints members of LCWR to the College of Cardinals, I will be silent throughout the month of June.
Peace be with you!
John W. Greenleaf
PS My email will be working for urgent thoughts….jwgreenleaf@gmail.com
Give us the wisdom, strength, and courage of Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli!
Shortly after becoming Pope John XXIII in 1958, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli announced he would call for a second Vatican Council. Immediate reactions were mixed. Leading people in the Curia Romana were negative. Even Giovanni Montini, who later became Pope Paul VI. Montini remarked to a friend: “This holy old boy doesn’t realize what a hornet’s nest he’s stirring up.”
John realized very well of course exactly what he was doing……
Pope John’s frequent habit of sneaking out of the Vatican late at night to walk the streets of the city of Rome earned him the nickname “Johnny Walker.”
Very different from his current successor whose nicknames are “God’s rottweiler,” “the Enforcer,” and the “Panzer Pope.”
Pope John was an action man. Fifty years ago he was losing patience with the narrow-minded bureaucratic ecclesiastics at the Vatican. “The time has come,” he told the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Cicognani, ” to put an end to this nonsense.”
“Either the Biblical Commission will bestir itself, do some proper work….and make a useful contribution to the needs of the present time,” John said, or “it would be better to abolish it….”
Pope John was angry at the backward, literalistic views of the Biblical Commission and its attacks against Cardinal Agustin Bea, Rector of the Pontifical Biblical Institute, where progressive approaches to biblical scholarship were favored.
________________________________________________
Come Holy Spirit!
Help us put an end to contemporary church nonsense!
Come Holy Spirit!
Bless those who question, search, and challenge!
Come Holy Spirit!
Fill us with the faith and courage that animated Pope John!
Tony Coady, Roman Catholic and Professorial Fellow in Applied Philosophy at Melbourne University, is currently Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford Uehiro Centre for Applied Ethics.
(Here are excerpts from his 18 May 2012 article in Practical Ethics, University of Oxford.)
The Vatican Response
The Vatican response to the spread of critical questioning from within has been to exercise what power it has to suppress ruthlessly any signs of dissent, even the mildest. Since the laity is these days largely immune to ecclesiastically imposed sanctions, the primary focus for the exercise of brutal power has been on the clergy (with occasional less effective forays against politicians).
Numerous Irish priests, including Fr. Tony Flannery and Fr. Brian Darcy have been disciplined recently for speaking and writing about contentious issues that the Vatican regards as closed. The Congregation for the Doctrine and the Faith (formerly known as The Inquisition, or more fully and pompously as The Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition) has been prominent in these suppressions of the priests, several of whom belong to Ireland’s 850-strong Association of Catholic Priests. The ACP held a meeting in Dublin on May 7, this year, to discuss changes to the Church and it was attended by over 1000 people. The ACP also recently commissioned a survey of Irish Catholics which found that 90% would support the introduction of married priests. The survey also found that 77% of Irish Catholics want women to be ordained, while more than 60% disagreed with Church teaching that gay relationships were immoral.
Several recent examples serve as models to demonstrate the Vatican’s modus operandi.
An Australian Case
The first is the case of Bishop Morris in the Australian diocese of Toowoomba. Bishop Morris had been subjected to a campaign of hostility from Vatican episcopal bureaucrats since he was reported by some conservative people in his diocese for a supposed inclination to downplay personal confession in favor of the general form of confession involved in what is called the Third Rite of Reconciliation. A pastoral letter in 2006 in which the bishop discussed some of the problems facing the church with diminishing clerical vocations and an ageing clergy proved the final straw. In that letter, he argued that the church should be open to discussion of such possibilities as ordaining women, ordaining married men, welcoming back former priests and recognizing the validity of Anglican, Lutheran and Uniting Church orders.
This was particularly offensive to the Vatican since Pope John Paul II had prohibited even the very discussion of the issue of women priests. The Vatican appointed Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver (now Philadelphia, JG) to investigate the matter and after speaking with various laity, bishops and priests in Australia he made a secret report to Vatican authorities as a result of which Bishop Morris was forced to take early retirement.
Bishop Morris has openly stated that in his conversations with various authorities, including Pope Benedict, he was never told what specific charges had been made against him and hence given no right to defend himself. Nor did he ever see the Chaput report.
Alarmingly, Bishop Morris revealed that in the Pope’s final letter to him Benedict had claimed that ” Pope John Paul II had said irrevocably and infallibly that women cannot be ordained.”
The very idea that a disciplinary rule could be subject to infallible decree is nonsensical, and if the Pope and his associates think that the prohibition on the ordination of women is a matter of faith or doctrine they are surely deluded. To the best of my knowledge this is the first time that the previous Pope’s edict has been treated thus. The comment should probably be viewed as a piece of rhetorical exaggeration from an embattled leader.
Those Troublesome Nuns
As is commonly the case in organizations dominated by men, the Church’s top officials are especially apprehensive about the thoughts and conduct of the women in the ranks, especially the nuns. …. significant is the recent Vatican move against the United States Leadership Conference of Women Religious (USLCWR).
Since the liberalizing winds of Vatican II, the various orders of nuns have been in the forefront of new thinking and fresh policies in religious life. The Vatican had been investigating the feisty American ladies for some time and the result is that their major organization has now been placed under the guidance and oversight of, guess what, a MAN, the Archbishop of Seattle.
The Vatican apparently found fault with the Conference’s fidelity in promoting church teaching particularly on life issues. As another Australian Jesuit Andy Hamilton pointed , this move, though so far much milder, has echoes of the way the Church’s male leadership tried in the early 17th century to smash Mary Ward and her plans for a new congregation of religious women who would depart from the enclosure within a convent and who, adopting the Jesuit rule, would engage in pastoral work and teaching on an international basis without the supervision of men. Her congregation was suppressed and she was imprisoned for a short time.
The papal bull that suppressed the congregation expresses beautifully an attitude to women by church rulers remnants of which linger today. It said:
“Free from the laws of enclosure they wander about at will, and under the guise of promoting the salvation of souls have been accustomed to attempt and employ themselves at many other works which are most unsuitable to their weak sex and character, to female modesty, and particularly to maidenly reserve — works which men of eminence in the science of sacred letters, of experience of affairs of innocence of life undertake with much difficulty.”
It concluded, “we totally and completely suppress and extinguish them, subject them to perpetual abolition and remove them entirely from the Holy Church of God… And we wish and command all Christian faithful to consider them and think of them as suppressed, extinct, rooted out, destroyed and abolished.”
In spite of all this, Mary Ward’s sisters continue today and the picture of the role of nuns expressed by that papal rhetoric is, one would hope, merely comical and embarrassing even to Pope Benedict and his assistants…..
Church and Structures issues
(Today’s) Church structures steeped in a lost world of monarchical, absolutist sovereignty, secretive processes and male domination will have to be renovated to make them more consistent with the profound insights of the ideals of liberal democratic governance, even if those ideals are frequently betrayed and ignored in practice in the democracies that openly profess them.
It is understandable that those who believe that the current image and structure of the Church is somehow divinely ordained are reluctant to embark on such a journey. Less laudably, resistance to serious change is supported by anxiety about loss of power and about decline in the influence of the institutional offices and structures within which the lives of so many bishops, clergy and religious have been given meaning.
These latter factors, of course, were also prominent in the disgraceful reaction of the institutional church for so long to the sex abuse offences of clergy and religious. But the abuse scandal has shown that closing ranks, cover-ups, and stubborn resistance to admitting mistakes and failure are poor substitutes for facing facts and for changing attitudes.
In the era of Pope Benedict XVI (and for that matter his predecessor) the hope for such turbulent renovation may seem very dim. I would certainly not be confident of an early transition, but there are several factors that make for a small degree of optimism.
One is the great decline in vocations to the priesthood and religious in the industrialized world indicating that, outside the poorer, largely pre-modern regions of the world, the incumbent image makes little appeal.
Another is the battering that the idealized “holy Mother Church” has received from the treachery of the sex abuse scandals; this betrayal of trust, though not directly connected with doctrinal matters, did show up the degree of hypocrisy associated with much of the public clerical stance on sexual matters (some of the worst abusers were loud in their denunciation of condoms and in promotion of “family values”).
In fact, the insensitivity and confusion of the hierarchy’s attitudes to clerical child abuse was highlighted by the recent Vatican document revising canonical rules for dealing with the matter. The revised list of rules also treated attempts to ordain women priests as “a grave crime” suggesting that it was somehow in the same category as brutal raping of a child.
Vatican spokesmen denied this implication, describing the attempt at female ordinations as “a sacramental crime” rather than “an egregious violation of moral law”, but the damage had already been done (See “Vatican Revises Church Law on Sex Abuse”, National Catholic Reporter, July 15, 2010).
A third concerns the fact that not only are very many laypeople who still describe themselves as Catholic alienated from or indifferent to official teachings on the morality of sex, abortion, euthanasia, the role of women and much else to do with personal morality, but a great number of theologically literate clergy and laity are impatient with the rigidity of what one theologian has called “Vatican theology.”
Rome wasn’t built in a day and it won’t be reformed in a day, but massive, top-down political structures have a way of unexpectedly collapsing under the weight of their own incapacity to adapt to changed environmental forces, as we saw with the demise of the Soviet Union. – Tony Coady
……… And let us not forget Gandhi’s advice to reformers:
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
It is up to us as we hear in the Ascension account in Acts of Apostles: “You Galileans, why are you standing there staring up into the sky?” It is time to stop staring off into space…..It is time to get busy.
Or as my old hero Desiderius Erasmus said:
If you keep thinking about what you want to do or what you hope will happen, you don’t do it, and it won’t happen.
Maybe the old boys club would just like to have a church full of old boys.
According to David Crary, writing for the Associated Press, Girl Scouts USA is now suspected of deviant thinking and wayward behavior by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
At issue are USCCB concerns about program materials that some conservative US Catholics find offensive, as well as assertions that the Girl Scouts associate with other groups holding positions that “conflict with church teaching.” The Scouts deny the claims and defend their alliances.
The US bishops’ inquiry coincides with the Girl Scouts’ 100th anniversary celebrations. In effect the Catholic hierarchy is saying: Unhappy Birthday you naughty girls!
What terrible things have the Scouts been doing?
Last year, the Scouts angered some conservatives by accepting into a Colorado troop a 7-year-old transgender child who was born a boy but was being raised as a girl.
Some of the concerns raised by Catholic critics are recycled complaints that have been denied by the Girl Scouts’ head office repeatedly and categorically. It says it has no partnership with Planned Parenthood, and does not take positions on sexuality, birth control and abortion. “It’s been hard to get the message out there as to what is true when distortions get repeated over and over,” said Gladys Padro-Soler, the Girl Scouts’ director of inclusive membership strategies.
Girl Scout leaders hope the bishops’ apprehensions will be eased once they gather information. But there’s frustration within the iconic youth organization — known for its inclusiveness and cookie sales — that it has become such an ideological target, with the girls sometimes caught in the ideological crossfire.
To the Girl Scouts, some of the attacks seem to be a form of guilt by association. Critics contend that Girl Scouts materials shouldn’t contain links to groups such as Doctors without Borders, the Sierra Club and Oxfam because they support family planning or emergency contraception.
Another complaint involved a Girl Scout blog suggesting that girls read an article about the Girl Scouts’ CEO, Anna Maria Chavez — who is Catholic — in Marie Claire magazine. Critics said the blog’s link led to a Marie Claire home page promoting, among other items, a sex advice article.
With the USCCB now getting involved, the stakes are high. The Girl Scouts estimate that one-fourth of their 2.3 million youth members are Catholic, and any significant exodus would be a blow given that membership already is down from a peak of more than 3 million several decades ago.
The inquiry coincides with a broader effort by the bishops to analyze church ties with outside groups. Rhoades’ committee plans to consult with Girl Scouts leaders and with the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry, which has been liaising with the Scouts for two years about various complaints that alarm our bishops.
Our bishops remain silent of course about ongoing sexual abuse within the church and past and present episcopal coverups.
And speaking of coverups, I found it highly symbolic that the bishops covered up the big sign (see below) in front of their Washington DC office building, when protesters gathered their to protest the bishops’ crackdown on women religious.
Please note: they did not cover up Jesus. Maybe Jesus put up his arm and warned them: “Keep your hands off me!” Good advice for sure.
There is a sinister spirit pontificating in contemporary Roman Catholic leadership. It is a kind of religious fundamentalism; and it is unwelcome, unhealthy, and unacceptable.
In the name of orthodoxy, today’s Catholic fundamentalists condemn and denigrate believers who study, ask questions, and call for a serious discussion. Increasingly silent about about sexual abuse in the church, and about past and present episcopal complicity in sexual abuse, they shout instead about the evils of questioning celibacy for ordained ministers, respecting the nature and dignity of gay men and women, and asking why women cannot be ordained.
Men in Renaissance robes who loudly proclaim “respect or life” are working overtime to squeeze every bit of life out of their church. People who challenge their authoritarian crack-down are labeled “disobedient,” or “anti-Catholic,” or “in grave sin.” Priests are silenced and removed from leadership positions and theologians are condemned, often without any genuine discussion about their research and thought. There is a major Catholic exodus from the church and our bishops applaud it as a necessary institutional purification.
We are not living in the middle ages. Every man and every woman has dignity and rights: to be, to enquire, to think, and to express one’s thoughts.
And every Roman Catholic man and every Roman Catholic woman has rights stated and guaranteed in Roman Catholic Church law.
Here a few significant Catholic rights (and the number of the canon in church law that affirms it):
Basic Rights
All Catholics have the right to follow their informed consciences in all matters. (C. 748.1)
Officers of the Church have the right to teach on matters both of private and public morality only after wide consultation with the faithful prior to the formulation of the teaching.4 (C. 212, C. 747, C. 749, C. 752, C. 774.1)
Decision-making and Dissent
All Catholics have the right to a voice in all decisions that affect them, including the choosing of their leaders. (C. 212:3)
All Catholics have the right to have their leaders accountable to them. (C. 492, C. 1287.2)
All Catholics have the right to form voluntary associations to pursue Catholic aims including the right to worship together; such associations have the right to decide on their own rules of governance. (C. 215, C. 299, C. 300, C. 305, C. 309)
All Catholics have the right to express publicly their dissent in regard to decisions made by Church authorities. (C. 212:3, C. 218, C. 753)
Due Process
All Catholics have the right to be dealt with according to commonly accepted norms of fair administrative and judicial procedures without undue delay. (C. 221:1,2,3, C. 223, 1,2)
All Catholics have the right to redress of grievances through regular procedures of law. (C. 221:1,2,3, C. 223:1,2)
All Catholics have the right not to have their good reputations impugned or their privacy violated. (C. 220)
Ministries and Spirituality
All Catholics have the right to receive from the Church those ministries which are needed for the living of a fully Christian life, including:
a) Instruction in the Catholic tradition and the presentation of moral teaching in a way that promotes the helpfulness and relevance of Christian values to contemporary life. (C.229:1,2)
b) Worship which reflects the joys and concerns of the gathered community and instructs and inspires it.
c) Pastoral counseling that applies with love and effectiveness the Christian heritage to persons in particular situations. (C. 213, C. 217)
Catholic teachers of theology have a right to responsible academic freedom. The acceptability of their teaching is to be judged in dialogue with their peers, keeping in mind the legitimacy of responsible dissent and pluralism of belief. (C. 212:1, C. 218, C. 750, C. 752, C. 754, C. 279:1, C. 810, C. 812)
Social and Cultural Rights
All Catholics have the right to freedom in political matters. (C. 227)
All Catholics have the right to follow their informed consciences in working for justice and peace in the world. (C. 225:2)
All employees of the Church have the right to decent working conditions and just wages. They also have the right not to have their employment terminated without due process. (C. 231:2)