J
JReducation
Guest
Don’t you think that it’s time that Catholics begin to think of the Church and the diocese as they do about their family? We don’t air our family laundry.
I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember, but I was stationed in the Archdiocese of Washington when the Clinton affair broke out. What was a case of adultery suddenly became a public spectacle. It was disgusting. I remember that adults had to hide the newspaper from their children, because it gave detailed descriptions of the President’s sexual activities in the Oval Office. Many people were outraged at the fact that such dirty laundry was being aired when it was a matter of adultery and a man lying under oath. The only part that should have been public record was the legal part. He lied to a grand jury. The rest was a family issue.
Today, Catholics are doing the same thing. We are talking about our Church, our Apostolic Succession, defending our primacy among all other Churches and ecclesial community and it is Catholics, not Protestants or Jews, who accuse their bishops of all kinds of things, who claim that their bishops are conspiring against the Church, who make derogatory remarks about their bishops and the Conference of Bishops and sometimes about the popes too. We do it all over the Internet. What is posted on the Internet will never disappear, even after people change their mind.
There are procedures and systems for handling these concerns internally. Our credibility suffers when we say to a non-Catholic that the Church rests upon the bishop and by the way, the bishop is a corrupt son of a gun. That blows the mind of the non-Catholic.
If we observe Jews and Protestants, especially the high churches, they are very discrete in expressing their concerns about Rabbis and clergy. Jews, especially, have a very strong sense of family and fidelity to their Rabbis. This does not mean that Rabbis are saints or that Jews believe they are. It means that they know how to deal with problems without attracting undue attention. This is how we would handle a problem with a spouse or a child who has gone errant.
The Church is our family. All families have problems. All families have problem children. The Church has never been an exception to that rule. But today’s Catholic has made a fatal mistake that will cost him or her very dearly in his or her spiritual life. Today’s Catholic has put the spiritual masters on a shelf as one does with an expensive porcelain figure. Look at it, but don’t touch it. Instead of learning from the spiritual masters how to deal with these situations and what to say and when to say it, we make up our own rules that are often in conflict with Traditional Catholicism.
Traditional Catholicism is not just the Extraordinary Form of the mass, statues, rosaries and devotions. Traditional Catholicism is also a school of spirituality and a way of responding to the world and to sin inside the Church and outside. Traditional Catholicism has always been very attentive to the Masters. This is how the great religious families came into existence and how they made such an impact on the European world. People looked at the masters for guidance in these situations.
We have democratized Catholicism. Each of us now decides what to say, when to say it, how to say it and to hell with the damage that it can do to the Church. A St. Francis, St. Dominic, St. Ignatius, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Catherine of Siena, Bl. Teresa of Calcutta or Bl. John Paul II dearly loved the Church and taught everyone who would listen to love it, to protect it, and to be discrete. They taught us when to speak, how to speak, and when to keep our own counsel.
If we want the Church to be the Church that it was, we can’t do it with the EF alone. We have to recover the great schools of Christian spirituality and Christian asceticism and apply their rules in our dealings with each other, especially in our dealings with the hierarchy. These folks did not deal with saintly popes and bishops. They dealt with worse than we have today. But who can find a single word in their writings or their teachings against these leaders?
Even the great Catherine who wrote letters to the Holy Father about many concerns always did two things. First, she ended all of her letters profession her filial devotion to the pope, whether he was right or wrong. She would end by saying that she would accept his decision. Second, she punished and even banished from her community anyone who dared to speak a negative word about the clergy or religious to anyone except her.
St. Francis would listen to the brother’s concerns and to those of the laity. He prayed over them. He would go back to the person and ask the person to pray and to offer his suffering as a penance for the sinful cleric or prelate. When he had the chance, he would speak to the cleric or prelate. It is said that his words were so kind that the person left feeling overjoyed. He was not angry or confrontational and he never shared what he was told or what he observed. That was between him and the person. There is nothing in writing by any of these people about the abuses in the Church during their time. On the contrary, their writings defend the Church and condemn those who would criticize her. That is Traditional Catholicism. You defend the Church and we do not hold her up for public scrutiny. History will do it’s job, good or bad. It always does.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
