What happened to the Church?

The pacifist Cardinal in England about whom Reliapundit commented represents a failure of leadership. But it is more than that; he represents a failure of education. It is astonishing to think that such an empty-headed prelate is the result of an educational tradition, that in theology and philosophy at least, goes back nearly 1,000 years to the founding of the first Universities in Europe.

But there is an even worse example of the failure of the Church to educate its own leaders on our shores.

On May 14, 2009, the New Duranty Times published a sympathetic article about retired-in-disgrace Archbishop Rembert Weakland, in an effort to help promote his soon to be forthcoming memoirs. Lauire Goodstein's article beings:

In spring 2002, as the scandal over sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests was escalating, the long career of Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee, one of the church’s most venerable voices for change, went up in flames one May morning.

On the ABC program “Good Morning America,” the archbishop watched a man he had fallen in love with 23 years earlier say in an interview that the Milwaukee archdiocese had paid him $450,000 years before to keep quiet about his affair with the archbishop — an affair the man was now calling date rape.

The next day, the Vatican accepted Archbishop Weakland’s retirement. [Emphases added.]

The Times characterizes Weakland as "one of the church’s most venerable voices for change" and notes that the Archibishop "had been the intellectual touchstone for church reformers."

Did you get that? "The intellectual touchstone." Not "an intellectual touchstone," but "the intellectual touchstone."

And what is a "touchstone?" "As a metaphor, a touchstone refers to any physical or intellectual measure by which the validity or merit of a concept can be tested." [Wikipedia.] In other words, Rembert Weakland set the intellectual standard by which would-be church reformers measured the validity of their thinking.

So then, after years of reflection in retirement, what wisdom, what philosophical insight does Archbishop Weakland offer us? Just this:

“If we say our God is an all-loving god,” he said, “how do you explain that at any given time probably 400 million living on the planet at one time would be gay? Are the religions of the world, as does Catholicism, saying to those hundreds of millions of people, you have to pass your whole life without any physical, genital expression of that love?”

That's a plausible question coming from a first-grader, perhaps. Or at least a first-grader who hasn't mastered his catechism. But coming from an "intellectual touchstone for church reformers"?? Is that question beyond the level of theodicy to which a Catholic Archbishop should have been exposed? The problem of reconciling the world as it appears to us with the world we would like to see is as old as Epicurus, or Job. There is a problem, it seems, in the vast gap that separates our world as it is, from the messianic world to come, which we think we should be living in.

After any natural disaster, many people wonder in anguish what kind of a world this is. The aftermath of the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 provoked a storm of discouraged philosophy:

The earthquake and its fallout strongly influenced the intelligentsia of the European Age of Enlightenment. The noted writer-philosopher Voltaire used the earthquake in Candide and in his Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne ("Poem on the Lisbon disaster"). Voltaire's Candide attacks the notion that all is for the best in this, "the best of all possible worlds", a world closely supervised by a benevolent deity. The Lisbon disaster provided a salutary counterexample. As Theodor Adorno wrote, "[t]he earthquake of Lisbon sufficed to cure Voltaire of the theodicy of Leibniz" (Negative Dialectics 361). In the later twentieth century, following Adorno, the 1755 earthquake has sometimes been compared to the Holocaust as a catastrophe that transformed European culture and philosophy. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was also influenced by the devastation following the earthquake, whose severity he believed was due to too many people living within the close quarters of the city. Rousseau used the earthquake as an argument against cities as part of his desire for a more naturalistic way of life.

And why should it matter if there are 400 million homosexuals in the world, 400 thousand, or merely 400? Would it make any more sense to Archbishop Weakland, if the behavior God forbids were confined to merely 4 human beings, each one of whom, we know from the Bible itself, is himself or herself formed in the image of God himself?

Fyodor Dostoesky (in The Brothers Karamazov) was consumed by the horror of a world in which even a single innocent child could be tortured:

"I don't want harmony. From love for humanity I don't want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it's beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket."

"That's rebellion," murmured Alyosha, looking down.

"Rebellion? I am sorry you call it that," said Ivan earnestly. "One can hardly live in rebellion, and I want to live. Tell me yourself, I challenge your answer. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature—that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance—and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth."

"No, I wouldn't consent," said Alyosha softly.

It is one thing for a philosophical tyro to grapple with such problems, but an Archbishop, a teacher of the Church, a man whose responsibility it is to promulgate, propound, and protect the teachings of the Church, and to ensure that those teachings are correctly and properly presented -- for such a man to deny the God of the Bible because the God of the Bible forbids his concupiscence the untrammeled freedom of the world -- that is just absurd.

The deaths of 250,000 people who were smothered in the Boxing Day Tsunami don't trouble Archibishop Weakland's faith. The millions who perished in the KonZentrationsLager, the tens of millions who perished in the Gulag, the scores of millions who perished before the evil hordes of the Nazis, the Japanese militarists, and the jihad -- they don't disturb this peaceful prelate in the least. No, he is perfectly happy living in a world in which innocent children die horribly painful deaths, disfigured by cancer, dehydrated by diarrhoea, mudered by terrorists, and starved by malnutrition. The suffering of child warriors who are forced to cut off each other's arms doesn't trouble his faith. No, what makes him decide that the God described in the Bible can not possibly exist, is the fact that the God of the Bible forbids Weakland to put his membrum virile in another man's rectum. Accepting that is just too much suffering for Weakland to endure.

Note here that I am making no judgment on Archibishop Weakland's proclivities, other than to express amazement at how he has chosen to resolve the contradiction between his desires and the teachings of his Church. He doesn't deny what the Bible says the God teaches; he chooses to reject that God altogether.

In 2002, on the other hand, after it was revealed that he had used his Church's funds to pay a settlement to the young man whom he had sexually abused, (compounding the original offense with the misappropriation of other people's money) Archbishop Weakland wrote:

At a tearful and somber prayer service, Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland apologized tonight to Roman Catholics here. He said he accepted ''full responsibility for the inappropriate nature'' of his relationship with a man who accused the archbishop of sexually assaulting him and was paid $450,000 in an out-of-court settlement.

''I apologize to all the faithful of this archdiocese, which I love so much, to all its people and clergy, for the scandal that has occurred because of my sinfulness,'' Archbishop Weakland, whose retirement Pope John Paul II accepted last week, said at the Archbishop Cousins Catholic Center. ''Long ago, I placed that sinfulness in God's loving and forgiving heart. But now and into the future, I worry about those whose faith may be shaken by my acts.''

Yes, the faith of other people has been shaken by the acts of the priestly predators whose torture of innocent children made them complicit in creating the sort of world that Dostoevsky abhorred.

It seems unfair to quote an Anglican Bishop in opposition to Rembert Weakland, but the words of the late J.C. Ryle, recently linked to by one of the country's most thoughtful bloggers, come to mind:

Beware of being wise above that which is written. Beware of forming fanciful theories of your own, and then trying to make the Bible square with them. Beware of making selections from your Bible to suit your taste. Dare not to say, "I believe this verse, for I like it. I refuse that, for I cannot reconcile it with my views." Nay! but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? By what right do you talk in this way? Surely it were better to say, over every chapter in the word, "Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth." Ah! if men would do this, they would never deny the unquenchable fire.

He is not just a theological simpleton; Archbishop Rembert Weakland is an idolater, who has chosen to worship a deity of his own creation, a deity fashioned in the image of his own concupiscence, rather than the God of Jacob. He demands that God conform to his desires, not that he learn to conform to the guidance of God. He must reconcile the Bible to his views, first, before he will accept it. And this is the result, it seems, of a lifelong Catholic education. That is what is so appalling. If this is the best that an Archbishop can do, if this is the philsoophical level reached by "the intellectual touchstone for church reformers" -- then it is easy to see why the Church no longer has the strength or the ability to withstand the Gramscian assault of the left, and the jihadist assault of Islam.

In 1989, after a meeting of American bishops with the late Pope John Paul II, Weakland expressed his satisfaction:

''Nobody knows whether there was really a meeting of minds,''Archbishop Weakland added, but, ''yes, I do think there might be more trust in the work of the American bishops.''

How much trust do the American bishops deserve? What do you think? It's interesting that then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, was also at that conference:

Archbishop John Roach of St. Paul and Minneapolis, a former president of the American bishops' conference, reminded the participants that American culture values compromise. In non-essential matters of faith, he said, compromise should be seen not as weakness but a way of keeping communications open. He said a flexible attitude by bishops might risk misunderstandings but give-and-take had often allowed conflicts between bishops and theologians to be resolved.

Cardinal Ratzinger appeared to reply to this position with a final admonition that truth must never be sacrificed for the sake of peace in a diocese.

Pope Benedict is head and shoulders above these would-be church reformers, both intellectually and emotionally, as can be seen in the text of his letter to the world's bishops regarding the recent issue of his attempt to reconcile the Church with members of Archbishop Lefebvre's movement. You can read it, here:

Another mistake, which I deeply regret, is the fact that the extent and limits of the provision of 21 January 2009 were not clearly and adequately explained at the moment of its publication. The excommunication affects individuals, not institutions. An episcopal ordination lacking a pontifical mandate raises the danger of a schism, since it jeopardizes the unity of the College of Bishops with the Pope. Consequently the Church must react by employing her most severe punishment – excommunication – with the aim of calling those thus punished to repent and to return to unity. Twenty years after the ordinations, this goal has sadly not yet been attained. The remission of the excommunication has the same aim as that of the punishment: namely, to invite the four Bishops once more to return. This gesture was possible once the interested parties had expressed their recognition in principle of the Pope and his authority as Pastor, albeit with some reservations in the area of obedience to his doctrinal authority and to the authority of the Council. Here I return to the distinction between individuals and institutions. The remission of the excommunication was a measure taken in the field of ecclesiastical discipline: the individuals were freed from the burden of conscience constituted by the most serious of ecclesiastical penalties. This disciplinary level needs to be distinguished from the doctrinal level. The fact that the Society of Saint Pius X does not possess a canonical status in the Church is not, in the end, based on disciplinary but on doctrinal reasons. As long as the Society does not have a canonical status in the Church, its ministers do not exercise legitimate ministries in the Church. There needs to be a distinction, then, between the disciplinary level, which deals with individuals as such, and the doctrinal level, at which ministry and institution are involved. In order to make this clear once again: until the doctrinal questions are clarified, the Society has no canonical status in the Church, and its ministers – even though they have been freed of the ecclesiastical penalty – do not legitimately exercise any ministry in the Church.

I think that's pretty good stuff, and it's probably better in the original. But the fine distinctions that the Pope makes in his letter are undoubtedly lost on bishops and archbishops who are at Rembert Weakland's impoverished intellectual level.

In closing, let me add that the problem of forbidden desires, of unfettered agency, and of the fact that we feel impulses which need to be controlled, is a question separate from the issue of theodicy that Weakland stumbles on. He also stumbles on this one, though. It is also an old problem, confronted by the Stoics, and the Rabbis, as well as by the Church. The wisdom of vanquishing desire is also the major theme in the teachings of the Buddha. Truly, the recognition that the human soul is compounded of divine and profane elements, and that many human impulses and desires lead only to more suffering, is universal.

That we are to indulge our desires rather than constrain them; that we are to find happiness in the free expression of every impulse, no matter how selfish, rather than in mastery over them; that we replace tyranny with no-government rather than self-government -- these are indeed novel and antinomian teachings to be espoused by an archbishop. They demonstrate that his supposed wisdom, the abilities that made him "the intellectual touchstone for church reformers" were the flotsam and jetsom of the zeitgeist, the debris of a decadent contemporaneity, rather than the culmination of a life spent in devotion and study of a tradition based on two or three thousand years of Western philosophy and theology.