When priests make headlines

An angry article in The Huffington Post, attributed to Richard Greener, asks two questions that ought to be answered.

What would be different, he asks, if men accused of sex crimes against children were not priests, but laymen, “such as janitors, security guards, maintenance workers” and others? Would the church and law enforcement agencies treat them differently?

The writers offers no evidence that they would be treated differently. Who knows how many janitors are accused of these crimes? It is not a matter of great interest to the news media. There are not many news articles updating the public on accusations against maintenance workers and security guards. Priests offer instant headlines, by virtue of their vocation, and stories about them provide any who are so inclined a blend of religious prejudice and purity.

The second question asked by the writer is this: “What does it take to make someone walk away from the Catholic Church?”

That’s like asking a citizen what it takes to make someone walk away from the USA, because of scandals and corruption involving officials of government at almost any level—police, Congress, governors, mayors. Is walking away from American citizenship the way to show contempt for American corruption?

There are jokes about people who try to be more Catholic than the Pope. But the Pope is no more Catholic than any member of the church. Every Catholic is part of the church, even as every American citizen is part of the United States. Catholics don’t “walk away” from their Catholic heritage just because they are shocked by the behavior of other Catholics. Responsible people do not “walk away” from the concerns of their family, their country or their religion. They sometimes try harder.

The Catholic Church needs the energy of its members who are committed to Christ Jesus, and to the ongoing reform of his living church. When the Vatican is perceived to neglect its pastoral mission, and leaders fail to lead, all of its members are called to pray and work for what the catechism calls “the church established by Christ on the foundation of the apostles.” It is an “assembly of the people God has called together from ‘the ends of the earth.’”

Optional celibacy for single Fathers

There have been better times to be a church administrator.

In the late 1960s the Catholic Church, especially in America and Europe, was in disarray following Pope Paul VI’s rejection of modern birth control methods and attitudes.

Pope Paul VI had assembled an impressive group of theological and scientific experts to study contraception issues. Those experts reported to the pope that the traditional teaching should be significantly updated. The pope rejected their advice. The pope’s reaffirmation of traditional thou-shalt-nots for Catholic families was spelled out in July 1968 in an encyclical called Humanae Vitae, which dismayed huge numbers of lay and ordained Catholics. Some described the encyclical as choosing biology over morality.

A decade later the Catholic Theological Society of America commissioned a study of human sexuality, which said that “the Bible does not provide us with a simple yes or no code of sexual ethics.” Now, 45 years after the encyclical was published, it is supported by conservatives and largely overlooked by others.

Sometime in the mid-1960s Cardinal Lawrence Shehan appointed me to a panel he called the Abortion Committee of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. It included a noted doctor and a famous theologian. Among other things we were to develop recommendations for Cardinal Shehan and the doctor to take to Rome, where they were to serve on the papal commission.

The encyclical was eventually announced to press and public by one of the commission members, Ferdinand Lambruschini, who later became Archbishop of Bologna. I interviewed him at his home, where he told me that he and Cardinal Shehan were members of the commission majority who voted against the position Paul VI finally chose.

After defiance of the new encyclical had made newspaper headlines day after day, Cardinal Shehan one day looked up from his desk and said, “Oh, to be a bishop in Ireland!” He could not have foreseen the year 2010, when Irish bishops were resigning in disgrace.

Since Shehan’s time Catholic attention to human sexuality has taken on a new edge. In the U.S. and Canada, Mexico, Germany, Denmark, Brazil—well, you name it, there are numerous accusations of priestly pedophilia. Nobody knows the ultimate cost to the victims, mostly boys, or the long-term effect on the credibility of the church.

This is not a new issue, but it is newly publicized. A few decades ago a Catholic might risk excommunication by suing for damages after a fall on the church steps. Catholics didn’t sue the church. They seldom reported abuse. When I was a police reporter the paper did not consider the arrest of priests on sex charges to be suitable news for family reading, and they were not reported.

When an Italian journalist said that Paul VI was gay, virtually everyone denied the possibility that one so highly placed could ever lapse from celibacy. Since then accusers have named cardinals and bishops. Lawsuits have cost billions of dollars in settlements and fees. Some dioceses have filed for bankruptcy.

When Cardinal John Cody was Archbishop of Chicago in the 1970s, sexual activities by priests were top secret. I was a member of the Archdiocese of Chicago Finance Committee at that time, but was given no information about possible cases or costs. The cardinal was preoccupied with resisting a federal grand jury’s curiosity about other matters, while also resisting efforts to dislodge him from his post and trying to shrug off tense relations with the press.

Many of my friends are priests, bishops, deacons and religious—exceptional people, devoted to Christ and always ready to serve him. Some of these friends are gay, some are not. Some take a kind of refuge in a celibate priesthood, where nobody nags them about getting married. If celibacy were optional, like vegetarianism, the beautiful humanity of the ordained and the religious could move beyond Don’t ask, Don’t tell, without reference to gender inclinations people are born with, or to the color of their eyes, hair or skin.

Let the church, especially its clergy and religious, replace celibacy with renewal. Let the church get back to doing the things it does best, things nobody else can do.

No pill cures all critics

If someone stays late in a neighborhood pub, sipping vodkas until even the bartender loses count, nobody will be surprised when the drinker speaks with a slurred tongue and walks on lurching feet. Folks who overdose on alcohol or drugs have made a choice to confound their brain, their nervous system, even their vision.

Friends may have a different problem with a neighbor who does not drink, but who walks unsteadily, sometimes mumbles, trips over invisible obstacles, even gags and chokes for no reason anybody can see. This is the neighbor with an incurable neurological disease called olivopontocerebellar atrophy (OPCA) or multiple systems ataxia (MSA). It is not Parkinson’s, but it is a form of Parkinsonism.

Many of its victims look fine, as long as they don’t stand up. Anybody looking at them might have no idea how risky it is for them to climb a flight of stairs, how dizzying it is to walk down the hemmed-in straightness of a theater aisle, or to drive across a bridge with steel supports rising on both sides.

You can’t blame anyone for not spotting the symptoms. Most doctors practice a lifetime without ever treating a patient for OPCA or MSA. Skilled neurologists may test a patient for a year or two before reaching a correct diagnosis.

There is no pill, no medical treatment of any kind, for the cure of this disease. Doctors may prescribe something for pain or dizziness or another symptom, but there’s nothing yet for the disease itself.

One of my friends who suffers pain and severely diminished activity because of OPCA parked in a handicapped space and walked into a pharmacy. A bystander yelled obscenities at her because she didn’t look disabled to him. Not long ago I reluctantly discontinued weekly visits by a deacon because OPCA made it impossible for me to participate as I had in the past. Even this was misunderstood by people who ought to know better, people incapable of imagining how a neurological disease may affect an unlucky patient.

Someday there will be wider understanding, and less uninformed judgment. Until then, the disdain of others is just one more symptom that can’t be stopped with a pill.

Never alone in prayer

This week I turn 85, and people still ask me, as they have for several years, why I moved from semi-retirement in Central Florida to northern Illinois. Actually, I may be smarter than I seem. The move placed me in a condo just one mile from seven persons I love a lot, my daughter, son-in-law and five of my six grandchildren. There was another plus I knew nothing about ahead of time.

That was a welcoming parish church, St. Francis of Assisi, and its founding father, Fr. Edward Upton. St. Francis of Assisi in Orland Park, IL, is celebrating 20 years of service and growth. My wife died about a year after we moved here, and anonymous parishioners became caring as brothers and sisters. I had been diagnosed with a rare neurological disease, and before long I had to stop going to church.

Never mind. Until this week Deacon Joseph Truesdale came to my home every Sunday with the Eucharist and morning prayer. At other times during the liturgical year the pastor came.

This curious disease I live with is progressive, which means it keeps finding new ways to be a pain in the neck or elsewhere. It has no cure. It began to interfere with my swallowing apparatus, causing a lot of anxiety and stress. It makes feet stumble and eyes blur. This form of Parkinsonism includes brain atrophy, although I have never been a member of Congress. I began having to cancel the deacon’s visit Sunday after Sunday. Now I’ve asked him to remember me in prayers, but to visit someone else.

Those of us who can’t get to a church miss the give and take of people assembled in community, but that doesn’t mean we’re left out. Spiritual communion is a union with Jesus in the Eucharist through desire for it.

In Corpus Christi: An Encyclopedia of the Eucharist, Michael O’Carroll, C.S.Sp., writes that the practice of spiritual communion “was encouraged by great authorities in the spiritual life, such as St. Teresa of Avila and St. Francis de Sales. Theologically the basis was sound: spiritual communion is the expression of desire, desire directed towards the Eurcharist, preferably explicit. The source of this desire is faith in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. This desire supplies for the act.”

Many read all or part of The Liturgy of the Hours, sharing with millions of priests, religious and laity who are reading the same scripture passages and prayers.

Today the Mass is offered via television and Internet screens, and for Christians who must stay at home there are many ways to pray with others. The Liturgy of the Hours is powerful choice, in full or abbreviated forms. Sunday readings are easily available via the Internet. Those readings may draw a person into Bible browsing, illustrated in the picture, upper left, which miraculously survived 68 years in storage. Since it was taken I've discarded thick pencils in favor of thin computers, as shown upper right.

In this 21st century some Christians even poke around in sacred writings of others.

The point is: Nobody has to be alone in prayer.