The church in 2010 and France in 1940

Excellent article with a sad but true analogy. The last line is the one we must all say and pray everyday.

just a great analogy...... I love the last paragraph...

If Eugene Kennedy wants to get personal, then the "white haired octogenarian who had been a hero a generation before at Vatican II" is in principle no better than the white haired professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola Chicago who feels compelled to share his screeds with us. Except that when I was in Rome last Easter, I noted the throngs of young people who still regarded that "white haired octogenarian" as a hero, in contrast to the aging group that hopes in America and western Europe to use the sexual abuse scandal as a battering ram to force its vision of "Church" on the rest of the world which long ago tore off the calendar page 1968.

Yes, back when Paul VI was Pope, we were assured that the Holy Spirit would correct the "death grip" on the Church by sending us a Pope who was "of the Council" and "with the times." God gave us John Paul the Great, and the disaffected had 26 years to sneer. It was quite telling to me at his funeral, witnessing the literally hundreds of thousands of young people and the handful of the "68 generation" which way the Church IS thankfully going.

Going back to theological issues, however, I have no clue what kind of "Church" Eugene Kennedy envisions in his anti-hierarchical tirade. Catholics believe that the "white haired octogenarian" was actually chosen by God to lead that Church. Yes, you (and Mrs. Kennedy) can call me "crazy," but I believe that God's grace chooses and empowers the sons of Bavarian farmers, Polish soldiers, and Italian aristocrats as much as He chose and empowered sons of Zebedee and their fishermen partners. And yes I believe that call and empowerment is validated in perduring structures, such as the Church, and not in evanescent convictions (as in the case of those who "discern" vocations in those who cannot be ordained) evident only, again, in peculiar fashion to the "68 generation."

So, yes, call me "crazy," but .... what kind of Church do YOU believe in?

So true, but what can be done to change it.

St Paul famously said, "I am a fool for Christ". So in one sense we are the crazy ones here...let's hope it is for Love and not the selfishness and oddness that Rome calls religion.

Survival is better than revenge...

You nicely draw the parallels between the two stories. There's more to consider, albeit speculative in the case of the institutional church. For the church, are there current parallels to the Resistance, Charles de Gaulle, D-Day at Normandy, and the Liberation of Paris that were so vital in bringing France back from collapse? It took dedicated partisans, smart leaders, a major confrontation to turn the tide, and a lot of cleaning up afterward to return France to days of glory. Just waiting patiently for the final gasps of the dying church bureaucracy ignores the self-preservation gene commonly found in such organizations and offers little hope.

You nicely draw the parallels between the two stories. There's more to consider, albeit speculative in the case of the institutional church. For the church, are there current parallels to the Resistance, Charles de Gaulle, D-Day at Normandy, and the Liberation of Paris that were so vital in bringing France back from collapse? It took dedicated partisans, smart leaders, a major confrontation to turn the tide, and a lot of cleaning up afterward to return France to days of glory. Just waiting patiently for the final gasps of the dying church bureaucracy ignores the self-preservation gene commonly found in such organizations and offers little hope.

Hans Kung, Bishop Kevin Dowling, Eugene Kennedy..... a growing list of people outstanding in their field, along with Richard McBrien, all calling us to rescue the Church from the juggernaut of revisionism being foisted on us by the Curial clique who demand absolute assent to their statements under the pretence of infallibility.
Thank God for the young Joseph Ratzinger who reminded us forty years ago that conscience is superior to any human authority, even the Church, and that in the long run we are responsible to God and cannot surrender our responsibility to others.
As we prepare to canonize John Henry Newman we should also recall his early statement that God's gift of infallibility was given to the whole church and that the laity should be consulted too since they sometines got its teaching right before the hierarchy.

Brilliant, brilliant, just absolutely BRILLIANT, Gene. Thank you SO very much. The analogy is perfect and immensely helpful but your and your wife's advice to those of us who are having a hard time with these old bureaucrats is the icing on the cake: "Repeat at least twice a day,'I'm not the one who is crazy'." I'm sure that you have saved both the mental health and sense of humor of thousands today!

the assault of the sex abuse scandal on its badly breached defenses
...
The John Jay data firmly established that the sexual abuse crisis is the result of priests ordained during the era of the SPirit of VII. That includes both the abusers and their bishop-enablers (and in the case of Rembert Weakland among others, who are both abusers and enablers!).

I'm always amazed that a denizen of the Spirit of VII somehow feels we younger Catholics will react to the shameful period of the sexual abuse crisis of that era as somehow tainting our hope filled JPII era of restoration (look at the John Jay data on abuse or the CARA data on the Church; they both clearly delineate the rebound under JP the Great).

The Spirit of VII crowd, Mahoney, Bernardin, Law, Weakland, Ziemann, Ryan; the entire Jadot bench, is moving on and the younger bishops like Bambera, Gomez and Dolan are moving us forward

So hop aboard, NCR readers. We need your energy, b/c we've inherited a big mess from the 1970s that still holds us back today. There is much rebuilding to do.

Thanks! I've been losing lots of sleep recently, and needed to hear this.

Some years back I read "Why I am a Catholic." In chapter after chapter the author listed the crimes of the Catholic Church through the ages. At the end, however, he reviewed the Apostles' Creed. There it is! Still, how I would like some small touch of representation, and of accountability.

You nicely draw the parallels between the two stories. There's more to consider, albeit speculative in the case of the institutional church. For the church, are there current parallels to the Resistance, Charles de Gaulle, D-Day at Normandy, and the Liberation of Paris that were so vital in bringing France back from collapse? It took dedicated partisans, smart leaders, a major confrontation to turn the tide, and a lot of cleaning up afterward to return France to days of glory. Just waiting patiently for the final gasps of the dying church bureaucracy ignores the self-preservation gene commonly found in such organizations and offers little hope.

The more the Church consecrates right wing bishops with ignorant and backward thinking as well as "restorationist" ideas, the sooner the institutional Church will disappear from the radar screen. People of good will have pretty much had it with the right wingers and hypocrites that make up the Catholic hierarchy. Many more scandals will continue to follow and the more they shoot themselves in the feet, the sooner the imperial institution called the Latin Rite Church will fall. It is already in a final state of decay from its' own corruption.

Seriously, the Church is like Vichy France? A better comparison would be to Britain during the Blitz. The "Keep Calm and Carry On" mentality is what gave the British what they needed to survive, and it's what the Church needs now. Dropping everything and attending exclusively to a crisis isn't what long-lived institutions do, because if it were, they wouldn't be long-lived.

As a balance to Kennedy's picture, I would recommend a recently published article ("Razing the Bastions, Yet Again") by David Meconi, SJ. The problem with Kennedy's approach, however well intentioned, is that it perpetuates the polarization that characterizes the Catholic experience of his and the Baby Boomer's generations. For the most part, younger Catholics want to move beyond that deadlock. Here's the pertinent excerpt from Meconi's article:

I became a candidate for religious life two decades ago and then the divisions and tensions within the novitiate were thick. Holding fast to my defenses, I would dismiss someone just after one conversation. “Well, he’s one of them.” “He’s a dissenter.” At one level it was so understandable, so natural, yet so un-Christian. I see now that in a time of battle I allowed myself the uncharitable sally, the harsh judgment, the one-sided perspective, and then simply chalked it up to the tensions of the day or to the gravity of what was at stake. But how do we witness to the beautiful integrity of Catholic orthodoxy without putting up walls? For I now see how I used the faith, not as a means of building unity, but as a sword of division and as a way of making myself feel satisfied about my own position, my own worked-out systems, my own orthodoxy. Because I was not wholly motivated by love, fear was still present (cf. 1 John 4:18)—fear of looking dim, fear of not knowing more than those who criticized the hierarchy, fear that maybe the way I had learned or had come to explain the tradition was not as unassailable as it could be. How often the truth became a club, a place for my self-complacency and separation built on the implicit creed, “Oh, God, I thank you that I am not like other men—extortionists, the unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector” (Luke 18:13).

Yet twenty years later, I now realize that the teachings and practices central to our lives and worship as Catholics are never (and never were) going to change. The “revolution” of the sixties and seventies has obviously not come to pass and now after years of sway, the barque of Peter has been steered back on course. The self-appointed revolutionaries have grown old and with the passing of each day those battles lose immediacy and intensity, as what the Church teaches and where she is heading is clearer than ever. Today we encounter not so much an entrenched group of anti-Catholic ideologues, but rather a vacuum crying out for evangelization: for a bold and clear love of Jesus and the witness of his ability to convert all of humanity.

Most of the young people I know here at St. Louis University, for example, pray and worship and serve in a “post-dissent” Church. They take their daily reception of the sacraments very seriously, they clamor for Eucharistic Adoration and common recitation of the Rosary, and they organize their own Stations of the Cross on Fridays. They adored John Paul II and they are simply enamored with Pope Benedict; they pray for their priests and cannot wait until the next World Youth Day. During the week they also volunteer with the inner-city poor and illiterate. Over their spring break they go and work with Habitat for Humanity in Appalachia, with Sioux children on the reservations in South Dakota, or with the poor in Latin America. What these young people have taught me is that my concerns are not theirs, my “siege mentality” does not resonate with their own ecclesiology. They don’t appreciate my jibes against a post-Vatican II liturgy gone awry nor do they understand one of my favorite jokes involving the Dutch bishops and a hot poker! They are not reacting against anything internally within the Church but only outwardly against the alienating harshness of secular modernism. In fact, they want to be led more intensely into the depths of doctrine, the splendor of sacred Scripture, the beauty of Augustine’s Confessions and the symmetry of Thomas’ Summa. They see a Catholicism that only attracts, heals and transforms.

This is surely why, in comparison to just a couple of generations ago, many novitiates and seminaries must now renovate or build anew. Look at the diocesan seminaries of Detroit and Denver and the Josephinum in Columbus, visit the burgeoning houses of Dominican sisters in Ann Arbor or Nashville, Franciscan sisters in the Bronx or in Alton, or the Apostles of the Sacred Heart in Hamden, Connecticut, to observe how the Holy Spirit is still calling young men and women up the mountain of prayer and sacrifice. Moreover, these “children of John Paul II” (as I call them) constitute one of the healthier generations in quite a long time. In a recent study Benedictine Sister Jane Becker finds this telling:

The core of the student population [today has] settled down as a less polarized group than in the eighties and a more psychologically sound group than in the seventies. The majority [of today’s seminarians and religious] are simply conservative youth seeking the sacred—God, Church, commitment, and symbolization of these values.4

Unlike Catholics a generation ago, this generation is more psychologically sound and in comparison with the similar sample group of thirty years ago, there is less polarization between “liberal” and “conservative.”

The full article can be read here:

http://www.hprweb.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=245%3...

The "mess" is not just from the 70s. Knowledge of Church history tells us the "Mess" is much much older.... It existed in my generation of children, some of my grammer school classmates suffered (I´m 78 years old). My uncle died several years ago at the age of 90 was acosted by a priest when he was a teen ager. It has even existed before that time, in the history of the church it has existed for centuries. In many parishes in Latin America the parish priest not only had families but also first dibs on a newly wed bride. Let us look at reality not just at a false idealism. God was incarnate in our reality. Lived in flesh and blood reality.

Also to those who think all Popes were elected by the Holy Spirit we need to remember the Medici, and others of that ilk, also that at one time there were 3 popes, and the work of the great st. Catherine of Siena calling them back to Rome and a deeper spirituality..... The good thing is that it is now out in the open, and the truth shall make us free. The mess can be cleaned up. It was like a festering wound hidden by bandages, but not healed. How wonderful that now the wound can be healed because we all know about it and the Church can become what Jesus wanted it to be.

Dear Anonymous Scrantonian, last I heard libel/slander was a serious mortal sin. Archbishop Weakland made the "mistake" of falling in love with an adult. There is no proof whatsoever that he ever abused anyone and I, for one, am sick of you continually spreading this vicious libel on the world-wide internet.

Is it not becoming eminently clear that the sex abuse has been going on for generations from long before Vatican II? The Church has imposed statutes of limitation to avoid having to deal with the earlier cases. The earlier victims and abusers have died off, but it was going on. It has nothing to do with Vatican II. The fact that even a good and wise man like Rembert Weakland got involved in a same-sex affair shows that sexual attraction is often stronger than all the vows and virtues, and that being a priest, probably even more, being a bishop, is a lonely job. If the Church were realistic about sex in God's creation we could figure out some sensible way to deal with the way men and women are created. That would possibly reduce the amount of abuse, but probably still not end it entirely. Human beings are sexual beings and the Church should get its head out of the sand and recognize this. Sex is normal and good.

I've lived in several different countries and have come to see that we Americans are sometimes idiotically literal-minded. In Japan people laughed at us for getting all uptight over President Clinton's affair with Monica. In Turkey people laughed at me for believing that the US was the world's good guy who generously bestowed all manner of assistance on poor countries. In fact, even the military stuff we gave Turkey was often old, with no replacement parts. On top of this, the US insisted that our generous aid should be delivered on US ships, when Turkey's excellent Maritime Lines would have cost much less. In Europe, and Latin America, parish priests have long included men with paramours and even families with children, and few people seem to have thought about complaining. (What would have happened if they did?) Sexual abuse was undoubtedly as common. This is a human characteristic. The problem today is that the Church feels it has to deny that this happens, or that anything in its rules might exacerbate this problem. The Church instead of admitting and apologizing feels its more appropriate to blame the victims than to blame the abusers. The Church holds that its priests have a right to be protected, not even charged, that its frequent offenders are more important to protect than the abused. The Church sees this as its right and hardly notices that being a Christian means loving, not using, means caring for the weak and infirm instead of the person with power. A human being acting on his or her need for sex is not an aberration. A Christian feeling that it's important for the shepherd to have power instead of love for the people in his care, that's an aberration. The Church has forgotten the way to follow Jesus. The "era of the spirit of Vatican II" tried to remind us of what it means to be a Christian. But the hierarchy has rejected that lesson and refused to let go of the power it needs to feel secure. Too bad. So don't try to say it's Vatican II that caused any of this bad stuff going on in the Church now. VII was an attempt to get back to the way of Jesus and for a minute or two, even bishops and cardinals were lifted up by that idea. It didn't last long, however. Power is hard to let go of.

Mr. Kennedy, fortunately the hierarchical structures of the church will still be here and thrive long after you are gone.

Regarding the comments by AnonymousScrantonian, I see the situation quite differently. I grew up in France and was schooled before Vatican II. It was then commonplace and well-known among the students at boys' Catholic boarding schools that priests could be very sexually predatory on the students. Having a priest come to the dormitory and abuse a student right there, or remove the student to his room and abuse him there was not uncommon at all. These things were not to be spoken of and we rarely did then, other than to issue a warning to a close friend. We the victims were very ashamed and tortured of mind. The argument that this sexual scandal is new is naive at best. None of this is new at all. The difference now is that things that were once rarely mentioned, and then only in frightened and hushed tones, are now just said more openly. After discussions with my American friends and contemporaries, I have learned that many men remember similar stories from their pasts and are able to retrieve them from their shamed memories. Europe simply has a much longer and corrupt history of allowing abusive license to the aristocracy and the clergy. Have you ever noted that revolutions that overthrough the aristocratic class have also been very anti-clerical? This has all been going on for a very long time and to suggest otherwise is ridiculous and betrays a gross ingnorance of history and human nature.

GREAT ARTICLE. No analogy or comparison corresponds in every last detail, but its major thrust is quite valid. Out of touch and limited vision rulers, both in France and in the Church, blindly attempt to retain the status quo and their own power and control as their institutions crumble. What a tragedy. Evident to everyone except them.

Would like to see Kennedy address the very practical question: What do the faithful do in light of the crumbling of its current leadership?

Michael J. Stephen, Ph.D.

Anonymous Scrantonian,

Sexual abuse of children and seminarians has been an ongoing problem in the church for centuries, but was frequently hidden from the public. Read more deeply and broadly than just the John Jay report, which deals only with the present offenders. Look at all the research and writing that A.W.Richard Sipe has done in his lifetime; look closely at all his documentation and footnoting, then put the big picture together. It's not pretty.

What we are looking at is a very dysfunctional clerical system, immature and toxic views of sexuality, an alternate reality that is hard for the laity to comprehend and accept, but we must face the truth if there is to be any hope of healing this crumbling church. I have been shocked as I discovered how unhealthy and ill-equipped my childhood parish priests were to deal with their own sexuality and the complex family issues of parishioners. The evidence of criminal behavior that was covered up (not only sexual abuse) is truly shocking.

The good priests of conscience in Boston who signed a petition requesting Cardinal Law to resign were consistently punished with transfers and parish closings. Those priests have suffered mentally, physically and spiritually for following their conscience. Is that what Jesus would have done to those trying to protect children from harm?

Until this church is willing to take an objective look at its behavior and history, to stop using homosexuality as a scapegoat and is willing to accept women to the priesthood and their perceptions and concerns as equally as valid and essential as men, then it will remained warped in its thinking and mired in a fog of denial. It's all so very tragic.

The analogy limps in places, but there are some similarities for sure. Thanks to E.Kennedy for pointing them out.
Perhaps he has written on this topic and I missed it, but has Mr Kennedy ever written a retrospective of his thoughts 35 years after producing his psychological investigation of American priets in the 1970's?
Surely if anyone was in a position to see the sex abuse crisis coming, he was.
I believe the report gave indications that there were problems, were there indications that things were reaching the level of criminality?

The Holy Spirit will bring us a Vatican III. It will happen much sooner as a result of the captivity by the reactionary elements that acquired power with the election of John Paul II. I have no doubt that Vatican III will happen as a result of the past thirty-two years of restorationist rule by prelates that have no idea what is going on in the real world of suffering and starvation by millions of human beings. There will be a heavy price to pay for the immoral shenanigans of the last three decades. The Church was hijacked and the entire spirit of the Second Vatican Council was suppressed. We all know this happened. Renewal and reform ceased and the Church returned to museum status and now it approached its' final decay and ultimate implosion. The model that Christ gave us as a way to live has been forgotten and abandoned by prelates so concerned with imperial power and trappings that they forgot about Jesus. NCR has been a voice that enlightens us and helps us look to the future Church. The old imperial model of the Latin Rite Church must now change or die. It has become irrelevant and arrogant. It is not working. I feel the energy of a world wide movement of Christians who will push for intercommunion between all branches of Christianity that is based on baptism alone. The models for "hierarchy" in all three branches of traditional Catholicism (Roman, Orthodox and Anglican) are in need of radical reform. It will happen. The theology of Church as the universal or catholic People of God will form what will become the face of institutional Church. All of the various mainline Christian Churches such as Lutheran, Methodist, Church of Christ, etc. will be in communion with the three traditional branches and the real model of discipleship of Christ will become a reality. Vatican III is around the corner and it is going to happen as a result of the reactionary captivity that began with John Paul II and continues with Joe (Benedict) Ratzinger. I have no doubt the Holy Spirit will provide the light for the new path we are about to travel. Vatican II set us on this course and Vatican III will complete the process needed to become a true model for discipleship of Jesus. I thank God for Bishop Dowling, Hans Kung and Eugene Kennedy. These are the prophets of the modern Church that began with Vatican II and I have no doubt that their voices will be fully heard when the Third Vatican Council begins. May God bless and protect these remarkable followers of Jesus.

Dear Anonymous Scrantonian,
You are in very serious error. I assure you the perpetrators of child abuse
were legion long before Vatican 2. I was recruited for a baby seminary in
1954 in Ireland. Turned out the man was a paedophile. I had questions about
the Christian Brothers some of whom had an after hours interest is some students. Those were very bad times and assuredly prevatican2.
It is not good to bolster an argument with false claims. The Jay report is
largely a discredited source at this point.
It would behoove us as Catholics to remind ourselves that there is but
One Church, One Christ, One Body. In short we catholics are only a small
part of a whole which includes other branches of Christianity. Out with
the arrogance in with inclusivity. The idea that any such bureaucracy which
the Vatican espouses and tries to continue has any essential connection to
Jesus' message is more than far fetched its inherently heretical. We need
and it appears we will get a fresh start... no doubt, a gift from the Holy
Spirit.
God Bless!
TomC

Having survived WWII as a child in Europe, I can relate to the analogy between what is happening in the institutional church and France in 1940. There has been a paradigm shift, the ground has shifted under our feet and not everyone noticed. However, there are many people who have noticed and we are not all crazy.

to anonymous scrantonian,
I take exception to your statement blaming the sexual abuse crisis on priests ordained during or after Vatican II. I was an altar boy in the 1950s and early 1960s for 3 different priests during those years prior to Vatican II. Each of these 3 priests have been accused of sexual abuse of children. One of them had been assigned to my parish after two previous moves because of multiple confirmed cases of child sexual abuse. His application for a military chaplain position was withdrawn by his archbishop because of his history of pedophilia,, so his archbishop definitely knew he was a pediophile priest. The point I want to make is this priest and his bishop that moved him from parish to to parish because of his pedophilia record were all ordained much earlier than Vatican II. So do not insult all the now older victims who were abused in the 50s and 60s by pre-Vatican II priests by blaming post-Vatican II-ordained clergy as the main culprits in these horrible crimes to childhood.

Bravo! Brilliantly written article. Like watching someone's life ebb away in a hospital ICU. Sad. For myself, observing all the hierarchical contortion and reaction, I am reminded of the Elizabeth Kubler Ross studies of the stages of acceptance of death.
I can't help but wonder about an institution, which places so much emphasis on the eternal, fixate and panic on the temporal. Take heart sister and brother Christians! The truth of Jesus can never be extinguished. The hope and counsel of His Holy Spirit continues to bind up and carry us all.

The Church will prevail, as many have pointed out, but not in the form we currently know it. The Mass will still be the central act of worship, but the celebrants will mirror the Church as it exists, male and female. Rome will still command respect, but in a collegiate atmosphere in which the Cardinals who will emerge from the present paradigm shift and the Bishops who may learn from history will share in both power and responsibility the task now unreasonably and insensibly -- and unwisely -- foisted off on one lone human being who cannot possibly function in the medieval Papal mode we are accustomed to. The absurd ecclesiastical foppery and trappings of power and position will diminish, the biretta will become a museum piece, and we'll see bishops in copes and mitres only on Pentecost, e.g. No one will be silly and shameless enough to parade about in the Cappa Magna ever again with the poor, the hungry, the diseased, and the destitute mere steps away from the sacristy door. In the rebuilding that is near and inevitable, the Church will once again renew itself, the ecclesiastical Princes will actually seek to be last and least among those whom they purport to serve, and the Church will find its mission anew to preach the Gospel, love the poor, care for the destitute and downtrodden, educate people in the love of God so freely bestowed upon us, and be a model of patience and forbearance and leadership for our troubled world. Women will be valued as human beings who have an equal place in the laity and governance of the Church, certainly their rightful place in the sacramental life of the faithful as priests and bishops. Catholics who are ready for this change have not abandoned the Church: the Church has abandoned the faithful in the empty exaltation of ritual over true religion, of empty form over truth and substance. It's time for a radical change in our beloved Mother Church, and we will see it in our lifetimes.

The RCC first made canon law about the abuse of children by clerics in the fifth century, and has been revising it on a regular basis ever since. Law does not exist in a vacuum. You do not need laws about murder if no one ever commits murder.

Dr. Kennedy you are tiresome. Your act went out twenty years ago, which is why you're so PO'd.

As a priest friend reminded me recently, Jesus promised us the Kingdom and what we got was the (institutional) Church. Sadly, once again in this comment section I see unchristian, hateful diatribes from those whose ego identities are so bound up with the institution of the Church that they cannot bear a word of criticism. What is more distressing, however, is reference to the young college students who, according to RJM on July 23, in "As a balance to Kennedy's" pray and worship and serve in a “post-dissent” Church. They take their daily reception of the sacraments very seriously, they clamor for Eucharistic Adoration and common recitation of the Rosary, and they organize their own Stations of the Cross on Fridays." RJM goes on to declare, "They adored John Paul II and they are simply enamored with Pope Benedict." While it is very inspiring of hope that these students also serve the poor, I fear that any adoration of one other than God and any enamored emotion are indicative of immature, ego-identified people placing their faith, hope, and love in men rather than in the God and source of all. We are the Church, God's People - not the institution that is meant only to point to the presence of God in his people.