[After reading my post yesterday of Sr. Joan Chittister’s comments on the
crisis in Irish Catholicism, MOJ friend (and former MOJ blogger) Greg
Kalscheur, SJ, law prof at Boston College, sent me “A Response to the Murphy
Report” by Gerard O’Hanlon, SJ, a theologian and former provincial of the Irish
province.Here are some excerpts. The piece was posted on the Irish Jesuit website www.amdg.ie on February 9.]
This is,
without doubt, a period of deep crisis in this archdiocese’ – from Statement of Archbishop
Diarmuid Martin, Friday, Dec 18, 2009.
Archbishop
Martin’s observation was in response to the resignation of Bishop Donal Murray
in Limerick, on foot of negative findings in the Report into the Catholic
Archdiocese of Dublin, commonly referred to as the Murphy Report. I want to
propose in this article that the crisis extends far beyond Dublin to the heart
of the Catholic Church, and that this crisis offers us an opportunity for the ‘radical
change’ also referred to in the Archbishop’s statement. . . .
The report
[S]ince, as
Fr Donald Cozens points out ‘the Dublin report details a pattern of church response to
clergy sexual abuse that mirrors that of countless other archdioceses and
dioceses throughout the Catholic world’, we need urgently to enquire into the
deeper causes of the ‘secrecy and denial that have abetted and compounded
unspeakable evils’ (The Tablet, Dec 5, 2009, 6-7). Cozens even dares to hope that
‘the Catholics of Ireland will show the rest of the Catholic world how to face
up to one of the saddest chapters in the history of the Church – for the good
of the people of God, for the good of children’ (Cozens, 7).
Deeper
causes: sexuality and power
‘But tidying
up cooperate governance and instituting a more transparent culture is not going
to resolve the scandal of clerical sexual abuse. That will require the church
to face up to a much more profound problem – the church’s own teaching on
sexuality’ (Maureen Gaffney, I. Times, Dec 2, 2009).
Young people
need to be presented with ‘a more persuasive sexual ethic than the no longer relevant
traditional teaching, to which for the time being the church remains committed’
(Garret FitzGerald, I.Times, Dec 19th, 2009).
Fianna Fail
backbencher Mary O’Rourke on the ‘sheer discourtesy of a body called the Congregation
of the Doctrine of the Faith, or something with an equally convoluted title…this
wonderful doctrine body, whatever it is, does not reply to letters…consider the
discourtesy of it and the discourtesy of the head of the Vatican (sic),
parading around Ireland in his wonderful glitzy clothes, but not replying to
letters and not seeing fit to talk to his counterpart…It is just not good
enough’ (I. Times, Dec 4, 2009).
No one with
knowledge of Irish public life would accuse distinguished figures like Maureen Gaffney,
Garret FitzGerald or Mary O’Rourke of being rabidly anti-Catholic. On the
contrary, I believe most people would acknowledge both their fairness and their
constructive attitude towards the Catholic Church. Taken together I believe
they are pointing to a problematic nexus of issues around sexuality, power and
the relationship between them, which are deeply corrosive of Catholic Church
moral authority and credibility.
The roots of
this crisis lie buried back in the 1960s. First, in the Second Vatican Council,
there was a clear emphasis on the Church as the People of God – we are all, as
the great Dominican theologian Yves Congar once put it, first and foremost
brothers and sisters: it is only secondarily, and in service of mission, not in
exercise of power, that we are laity, priests, religious, bishops, Pope.
Baptism comes first and remains primary, and all baptized people are called to
exercise that Priesthood of the Faithful which is part of our service to the
wider world, a kind of sacramental sign intended to give hope to all men and
women that our relationship with God is both our source, our constant
nourishment and our final home. To that end, with Baptism and Confirmation,
with Eucharist, we are given the presence of the Holy Spirit, those who are
tasked with
leadership roles in the Church will need to consult with the lay faithful in
order to discern the sensus fidelium, the ‘sense of the faithful’, which is
intrinsic to sound church governance and teaching. All this of course is
entirely consistent with the well-known principle of subsidiarity, so prominent
in Catholic Social Teaching.
Sadly, for a
multitude of reasons, this dream of Vatican 11 of a more collegial church, with
active lay participation, and a balancing of the power of the papacy with the
influence of local churches (Episcopal conferences, informed by lay input), has
for the most part not been realized. The dominant culture of our Church remains
that of a dysfunctional, autocratic clericalism, as Cozens makes so clear. So
many women religious, not just laity, know this only too well. We have had in
Ireland some small steps forward with, for example, the development of Parish
Councils, but there has been little sense of urgency about this whole movement.
Perhaps this has been due in no small part to what theologian Nicholas Lash has
identified as the conflicting interpretations of Vatican II,
the success of the Roman Curia in resisting reform and effectively ensuring
that collegiality has yielded to a more entrenched centralization.
But if there
was one event which crystallized this crisis of power and linked it with the crisis
of sexuality it was the promulgation of Humanae Vitae in 1968. (3) The Papal
Commission leading up to this promulgation included lay men and women, married
couples, medical and other experts. It found – much to its own surprise, since
this was originally a commission to advise the Pope on issues of population
control in response to developments in the UN and initially simply accepted
without question the traditional church teaching on contraception – that it
could not establish the intrinsic evil of contraception on the basis of natural
law or reasoning. Four theologians (from a Commission variously estimated as
comprising between 58 and 70 persons) dissented from this finding. Paul VI in
his Encyclical took the side of the four dissenting voices and
effectively decided the issue by papal authority and power.
However a
large majority of practicing Catholics have not ‘received’ this teaching as
true, they do not find it persuasive. Theologians have pointed to an overly
physicalist notion of natural law underlying the teaching, as well as an overly
static notion of what tradition entails, tendencies which continue to be the
case with regard to the many other neuralgic areas of sexual teaching which
Maureen Gaffney identifies (such as premarital sex, remarriage, homosexuality,
the role of women in ministry and mandatory clerical celibacy). It is also
worth noting, in particular in the context of the novel introduction of
teaching on sexuality into Catholic Social Teaching in the recent Encyclical
Caritas in Veritate, how absolute this teaching is in contrast to the more tentative
stance on disputed economic and political matters. Is it not curious that the
Church can claim such certainty on a matter as complex as human sexuality,
while being more modest about truth claims in other spheres and even admitting
that the natural law is not something that we know fully but rather something
about which we grow in knowledge?
It appears that the only way to take up a commenter's offer is to seek his or her further contribution is by another post. There is no way to contact the commenter directly through TypePad.
And so I write to Phil. I should like to take him up on his offer to provide me with "the peer review scientific literature that attests to his" contentions and disagreements with me.
So, before I do respond to what he said, I should like to have the benefit of his offer.
This is nice news for all of my friends in Holy Cross, the religious community honored with the care of the mission of the University of Notre Dame:
Known popularly as the "miracle man of Montreal," Brother André Bessette, C.S.C.-an unassuming porter who became legendary for his ministry to the sick and needy of Montreal-was formally recognized today by the Vatican as one of six candidates who will be canonized a saint later this year.
A divide that may not be bridged, by Sister Joan Chittister,NCR, 2/19/10
Being in Ireland as the country and the
church continue the torturous process of resolving -- if that's possible -- the
standoff between victims of sexual abuse and the local episcopacy ...
I've been watching the Irish sex abuse situation here for years. And learning
about communication from every minute of it. This is not the United States of
America. This is Catholic Ireland. Nothing could be more different than these
two cultures in their approach to a church problem. In the United States when
the sexual abuse crisis erupted and the church retreated behind a plexiglass of
legal responses, people picketed churches, signed petitions, demonstrated
outside chanceries, and formed protest groups.
In Ireland, the response had another kind of chill about it, however. In
Ireland the gulf got wider and deeper by the day. It felt like the massive
turning of a silent back against the bell towers and statues and holy water
fonts behind it. No major public protests occurred. "Not at all," as they are
fond of saying. But the situation moved at the upper echelon of the country
relatively quietly but like a glacier. Slowly but inexorably.
A country which, until recently, checked its constitution against "the
teachings of the church" and had, therefore, allowed no contraceptives to be
sold within its boundaries, unleashed its entire legal and political system
against the storm.
They broke a hundred years of silence about the abuse of unwed mothers in the
so-called "Magdalene Launderies." They investigated the treatment of orphaned or
homeless children in the "industrial schools" of the country where physical
abuse had long been common. The government itself took public responsibility for
having failed to monitor these state-owned but church-run programs. And they
assessed compensatory damages, the results of which are still under review in
the national parliament....
The survivor's response to the meeting of Pope Benedict XVI with the Irish
Episcopacy had the ring of repugnance about it. "Pope Benedict," Andrew Madden,
a spokesperson for the survivors said, "has not articulated full acceptance of
the findings of the Murphy Report, as we asked him to do," (RTE1 News, February
16.) That is needed, he went on, "to quell the rise in revisionism and the surge
in denial from some quarters within the Catholic church in relation to its
findings."
The message is clear:
First, until the church, in an official way, admits that the findings of the
Murphy Report on the overwhelming amount of child abuse that went on in Dublin
are true and accepts responsibility for the climate that made cover up an
episcopal practice, the case, at least in the victims' minds, is not closed.
Archbishop Dermot Clifford of Cashel lamented that the Murphy investigation
might well be extended to all the dioceses in Ireland. If that happens, he said,
"the past won't be past for a long time.
Second, until the bishops who were part of the cover up all resign, the
victims argue, the church will not have proven either their rejection of the
practice, their determination to change or their ownership of the problem.
Point: Four bishops criticized in the report have offered their resignations,
but so far the pope has officially accepted only one of them. a fifth bishop
criticized in the report, Martin Drennan of Galway and Kilmacduagh, has said he
did nothing wrong and won't resign. All were auxiliary bishops at the time of
the first reports of abuse. They did nothing to bring the situation to light.
But none of them, no one in the Irish episcopacy, has yet to admit to their own
role in a cover-up. No bishop, in a land where the burden of guilt fell heavily
on the backs of Irish people, has admitted his own guilt, his own defense of the
institution rather than the care of the children. No one has said, "The church
-- I -- was wrong in the handling of this scandal. Therefore, I, too, am
responsible for this abuse."
So how are the Irish people reacting to the impasse? Well, as they opened
Catholic Schools Week in Ireland this month, the Market Research Bureau of
Ireland was reporting that 74 percent of the population think that "the church
did not react properly to the Murphy Report" and that 61 percent of the
population "want no Catholic control of elementary schools." Little more than
half of the respondents think the church will really change to prevent abuse in
the future, and 47 percent feel more negative than before toward the church.
Most telling of all, perhaps, is the fact that the support of the older
generation which, at its best, was once only marginally higher than the support
of 18-24 year olds, may be shifting even lower. "The fallout from the Murphy
report was a shock to the bishops," Archbishop Clifford said, and "had a far
greater negative effect on older people than the previous two investigations had
been."
"While they were preaching at us they were damaging our children," an old
woman said. "What more can you say?"
From where I stand, it seems that the long-awaited meeting between the pope
and the bishops of Ireland is over now, more with a yawn than a standing
ovation. In true Irish fashion, everybody's talking about it, but if the data is
saying anything, it may be that the love affair between the people and the
church is on very rocky ground; one side is not hearing the other and the gulf
is growing wider every day.
In connection with some of our recent back-and-forth on lobbying interests and Congress, I think today's post by Neil Buchanan over on Dorf is especially compelling. In case it's of interest to any of our MOJers or readers, you can find it here: http://www.dorfonlaw.org/2010/02/lobbying-and-corruption.html. For what my two cents here might be worth (presumably less than two cents), I think that Neil -- a warm, caring spirit who is altogether lovealbe for his never-dimming capacity still to be shocked by the routine corruptions of our political process carried out seemingly every day through representatives of both of the major political parties -- is one of the most effective commentators we have on matters of taxation, public finance, and macroeconomic policy.
This might be the item Elizabeth, via Michael, was pointing to in her post just below, in which case I hope all will pardon the duplication. I got a 'no page' sign when clicking on the link, but this might be the product simply of an outdated web browser. The likelihood of the latter, incidentally, stems from the same source as my not knowing this television program -- viz., my living more or less in the 19th century with occasional weblogging, emailing, and word-processing constituting nearly the sole exceptions.
A fundamental tenet of the contemporary disability rights platform is "self-advocacy" -- letting people with disabilities speak for themselves, rather than having others speak for them. (This is nicely captured in the slogan: "Nothing About Us Without Us.") In that vein, here is what Andrea Fay Friedman, the voice actress who portrayed the character with Down Syndrome in the controversial Family Guy episode has to say. A very interesting interview (HT Michael Perry). (And the interview DOES tie all of this nicely to Catholic Legal Theory, because she reveals that she works at a law firm.)
UPDATE: I was trying to link to the same article Bob Hockett identifies in the post above, but somehow messed up the link. I tried to fix it twice, and it's still not working for me. So use the link in Bob's post. It's well worth it!
This letter is available at education-researcher Jay Greene's blog:
Dear Senator Durbin and Secretary Duncan,
Warmest greetings from the University of Notre Dame. We hope this letter finds both of you well, and that the new year has been filled with grace and blessings for you and your families.
We write today because we are all deeply disappointed by the turn of events that has led to the imminent demise of the Washington DC Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP), and we are gravely concerned about the effects that the unprecedented gestures that have jeopardized this program will have on some of the most at-risk children in our nation’s capital.
For the past decade, the University of Notre Dame, through its Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE), has served as the nation’s largest provider of teachers and principals for inner-city Catholic schools. Since 1993, we have prepared more than 1,000 teachers and hundreds of principals to work in some of the poorest Catholic schools in the nation. That experience, along with the research that we have sponsored through our Center for Research on Educational Opportunity, leads us to an unqualified conclusion: the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program provides an educational lifeline to at-risk children, standing unequivocally as one of the greatest signs of hope for K-12 educational reform. To allow its demise, to effectively force more than 1,700 poor children from what is probably the only good school they’ve ever attended, strikes us as an unconscionable affront to the ideal of equal opportunity for all.
Three decades of research tell us that Catholic schools are often the best providers of educational opportunity to poor and minority children. Students who attend Catholic schools are 42 percent more likely to graduate from high school and are two and a half times more likely to graduate from college than their peers in public schools. Recent scholarship on high school graduation rates in Milwaukee confirms that programs like the OSP can, over time, create remarkable opportunities for at-risk children. And after only three years, the research commissioned by the Department of Education is clear and strong with regard to the success of the OSP, as you both well know. This program empowers parents to become more involved in their children’s education. Parents of OSP students argue that their children are doing better in school, and they report that these scholarships have given their families an opportunity to break the cycle of poverty. If this program ends, these parents will be forced to send their children back to a school system that is ranked among the worst in the nation, into schools they fought desperately to leave just a few years ago.
At Notre Dame, we have recently witnessed the painful but logical outcomes of your failure to save the OSP. For the past three years, the University of Notre Dame has worked in close partnership with Holy Redeemer School, a preK-8 Catholic school community located just a few blocks from Senator Durbin’s office on the Hill. In fact, Senator Durbin visited the school and expressed his deeply favorable impression. We too have witnessed the transformative capacity of Holy Redeemer, a place where parents report feeling a sincere sense of ownership in their children’s education for the first time in their lives. Indeed, over the past three years strong leadership, excellent academics, low teacher turnover, and committed parents have all contributed to truly outstanding gains in student achievement. The children at Holy Redeemer were, unlike so many of their peers, on the path to college.
So we were deeply saddened to learn that the impending termination of the OSP has put the school in an untenable situation, leading the pastor to conclude that the school must be closed. Families are presently being notified that their children will have to find a new school next year. The end of the OSP represents more than the demise of a relatively small federal program; it spells the end of more than a half-century of quality Catholic education for some of the most at-risk African American children in the District. That this program is being allowed to end is both unnecessary and unjust.
We—and many others in the Notre Dame community—are wholeheartedly committed to protecting the educational opportunity of these children. We encourage you to reconsider protecting the OSP and the children it serves from this grave and historic injustice. You are joined by Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education, by the faculty and students on Notre Dame’s campus, by tens of thousands of Notre Dame alumni nationwide, and by millions of Catholic school families across the country in a steadfast commitment to ensure that these children continue to receive the educational opportunity that is their birthright.
Please know of our deepest appreciation for your consideration of this request. We hope and pray that we can work together with you to save this program.
Patrick Lee and I will be publishing a response to Andy Koppelman's paper. Andy is a very smart and very good guy, and a worthy opponent. We believe we can show, however, that his declaration of victory over advocates of traditional norms of sexual morality and the conjugal conception of marriage is no more warranted than Andy's previous declarations of victory. See, for example, Koppelman, Andrew, "Is Marriage Inherently Heterosexual?" American Journal of Jurisprudence, 42:51-95 (1997), and John Finnis's devastating reply in "The Good of Marriage and the Morality of Sexual Relations: Some Philosophical and Historical Observations," American Journal of Jurisprudence, 42:97-134 (1997).
One of the many propositions we will set forth and defend (and defy Andy and others who take his line to defeat) is that the redefinition of marriage to remove the element of sexual complementarity perforce eliminates any ground of principle for supposing that marriage is the union of two persons, as opposed to the union of three or more in a polyamorous sexual partnership. On this point, we find ourselves in agreement with many to Andy's left, including Gloria Steinem, Barbara Ehrenreich, Chai Feldblum (though she had her name removed after she was nominated to serve on the EEOC), Kendall Thomas, Nan Hunter, Judith Butler, Michael Warner, and the more than 300 other self-described "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) and allied activists, scholars, educators, writers, artists, lawyers, journalists, and community organizers" who believe that the principle on the basis of which marriage should (as they see it) be redefined to accommodate same-sex partnerships entails the like recognition of inter alia polyamorous unions (relationships in which there is "more than one conjugal partner"). See their statement Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A Strategic Vision for All Our Families and Relationships. Professor Lee and I will argue that though their premise (shared with Koppelman) is unsound, their logic is impeccable. So we believe that this debate is really (and unavoidably) about two radically different visions of sexuality and marriage; it is not properly characterized (as Michael P. characterizes it) as a debate about whether to grant or deny "access to civil marriage to the same-sex couples who intend for their unions to be lifelong, monogamous unions of faithful love." Speaking of Michael P., I notice that he was "struck" by Koppelman's conclusion:
Opponents of same-sex marriage today face [an] embarrassment. They are eager to protect their distinctive conception of family. But that conception depends on marginalizing the families of others and denying them legal recognition. In the long run, the invocation of “family” as a reason to beat up on gay people will seem as weird as the invocation of “freedom” did as a defense of the Confederacy.
Laying aside Andy unworthy rhetoric (especially for a guy who, as Rob rightly says, usually "takes his opponents' arguments seriously") about "beating up on people" and the utterly dubious effort to tar defenders of traditional norms of sexual morality and the conjugal conception of marriage as being like those Confederates whose high-minded claims were embarrassed by the fact that the freedom they were fighting for depended on the slavery of others, I would like to know (and perhaps some of the signers of Beyond Same-Sex Marriage might like to know) whether Michael would be equally "struck" by the conclusion if it read as follows: "Opponents of polyamorous relationships and their legal recognition face an embarrassment. They are eager to protect their distinctive conception of family. But that conception depends on marginalizing the families of others---including (Newsweek reports) the more than 500,000 polyamorous families in the United States today---and denying them legal recognition. In the long run, the invocation of 'family' as a reason to beat up on people who find love and fulfillment in multiple partner relationships will seem as weird as the invocation of 'freedom' did as a defense of the Confederacy." I'm "struck" by the question Steinem, Ehrenreich, and their colleagues in effect put to their fellow supporters of same-sex marriage: Do you intend to throw other sexual minorities overboard because they happen to find their fulfillment by living in ways that do not mimic the traditional norm of monogamous and exclusive love?
