Conversion Moments And Personal Choices

Can the pope restore the purity of Catholicism?
By Timothy Shriver - Washington Post.com - Monday, April 5, 2010

The scandal facing Catholics today looks a lot like the Watergate scandal that engulfed the United States in the early 1970s. Then, what started as a crime committed by a few burglars slowly escalated to reveal corruption at the highest levels of authority. The White House counsel, senior advisers and others were punished for their roles. In the end, the president of the United States was implicated and forced to resign.

Is the Catholic Church on a similar pathway to the resignation of a pope?

On the surface, there are many similarities. A few years ago, the church was embarrassed by revelations that some priests were involved in the abuse of minors -- unlike the Watergate break-in, a major crime. Those priests were largely in Boston, but other abusers were exposed around the country. Reforms followed, and the scandal seemed to pass.

More recently, the equivalent of the Watergate tapes have blown open the church's calm. The Cardinal Archbishop of Ireland was involved in not only a failure to act but appears to have been an active agent of cover-up. And the trail seems to be leading even higher: the pope himself, while an archbishop in Munich, may have played a role in failing to respond to abuse.
Must he resign?

That's where the parallels break down. Watergate was not only a scandal; it was a threat to the republic itself. The head had to be removed for the country to survive.

The church is not a democracy. Bishops (and popes) are not answerable to polls; they're supposed to be dismissive of popular trends in search of a higher truth.

But the church's indifference to public opinion is not designed to protect those who condone blatant violations of gospel principles. Yet that is exactly what has arisen in our time. An episcopal culture that placed defense of the structure over the defense of children is broken, pure and simple. The pope may not be guilty of any wrongdoing, but the culture is.
So if the pope isn't going to resign, can the hierarchy survive?

The first part of the answer will depend on justice: Catholics and non-Catholics alike must hear a full confession -- evidence of contrition so pure that it cannot be mistaken. We must see bishops leave their teaching positions because their moral authority is lost. We must believe that civil justice will be served when crimes are committed.

But that isn't enough.

And it's not enough to say that 95 percent of priests and nuns are heroic and dedicated servants of the faith, baptizing our children, caring for the sick and the poor, ministering to our families and burying our dead. They are of course all of that.

It's not enough to say that the church has created an enormous diversity of religious practice and expression, giving birth to contemplative, monastic, scholarly and popular forms of faith that have brought the gospel to life for billions -- even though it has.

It's not even enough to argue that the church traces its roots to Jesus himself -- that it is His church. It does indeed trace its roots to gospel times. But not even that is enough to justify confidence in the bishops.

The capital of trust between the people of the church and their leaders is dangerously close to empty. The bishops cannot take the people for granted any longer. We were raised to love the gospel, to seek the truth, to serve justice, to grow in the bosom of the sacraments. But we will not do it under their leadership unless they change.

What's needed is a conversion of the bishops and the pope himself. That's right: It's time for the pope and the bishops to convert their culture to one that is centered on loving God from the depths of their souls and to leading a church that is as much mother as father, as much pastoral as theological, as much spiritual as doctrinal. It is time for them to listen to the deep and authentic witness of the people of faith, to trust the spirit that blows where it will, to abandon their defensiveness of their positions and trust only the gospel, and not their edifice of control. Conversion is a total experience -- letting go of the old and putting on the new.

The conversion we seek for them is the same conversion they invite for us: Put on a contrite heart and fall in love with God, recklessly, totally and passionately. Let the love of God be the only measure of their actions.

We live in a spiritual age, and until the bishops and the pope learn to lead a people hungry for authenticity, trust and spiritual nourishment, we will look elsewhere. There are millions of Catholics with deep spiritual wisdom -- millions of faith-filled people who love God in transformative ways. We will trust their faith and witness if the bishops fail us.

My faith is not shaken by these scandals. My hunger for my own conversion to a more loving, more just and more peaceful way of living is undiminished. On Easter, my family and I celebrated the hope beyond all hopes and did so with the Eucharist.

But this is Altargate. The hierarchy, not the faith, is in jeopardy. The pope need not resign. He must do something far more difficult: convert.

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I found myself thinking along these same lines this past couple of weeks. I listened to the blame throwing and the diversionary excuses coming from the Vatican and US bishops and thought in some frustration: "Will you act on what you say you believe and stop this pathetic self justification?"

I read Jason Berry's article and seriously wondered how many of these Cardinals actually believe the pious rigid morality they espouse, or for that matter, if they even believe in God on any but the most superficial levels.

I wondered if the real rot and filth in our hierarchy is precisely the fact they don't really believe any of what they teach. Catholicism is no more than the excuse and front they have used to access wealth and power. Or at least that wealth and power is more real to some of them than Jesus.

Numrous folks are writing that Catholicism is at a cross roads. I don't necessarily agree with that because I don't believe the ruling institution will change at all. I think individual Catholics are at the crossroad. The choice is with individuals and many individuals are choosing to leave the institution to find spiritual sustenance within and elsewhere. They are choosing to follow the spiritual path rather than the religious path.

I think that's one of the problems Rode and company have with the LCWR. Too many LCWR congregations have followed the spiritual path rather than the institutional path. They have sought a deeper spiritual relationship for themselves, and that wasn't necessarily with in the Church.

It's getting harder and harder to find a meaningful spiritual relationship with in the Church unless one is content with ritual piety, confuses God with the Pope, and agrees to ignore or excuse all the contradictions. No wonder so many Catholic youth say they are seeking spiritual meaning rather than religion.

The kind of conversion that Tim Shriver writes about is different from the kind of conversion that Benedict spoke of in his letter to Irish Catholics. Benedict means conversion through traditional Catholic religious practices, while Shriver means conversion to the very real power of love. Catholic religious practices are no guarantee for this conversion to love. No pope can guarantee such a conversion. No set of pietistic practices can guarantee this kind of conversion. This kind of conversion is found in relationship with others and with Jesus. It isn't about discipline, or consistent religious practice, it's about meaningful relationship.

Abuse victims represent an opportunity for meaningful relationship for our hierarchy, but it takes being open to conversion to make use of that opportunity. I can remember an article from last year in which Archbishop Martin of Dublin stated that his reading of the preliminary report on clerical abuse in Dublin disgusted him to the point that he threw the report on the floor. That's a description of a conversion moment. He was engaged with and by the plight of the victims, and one can see the result of that in his subsequent actions. He too is at an individual cross road. He will have a choice to make. There are others in episcopal office who seem to be facing the same choice at the cross road. Will they follow the conversion path, or support the status quo?

Benedict seems to be trying to take a kind of middle path. One where he both supports the existing clerical structure while seriously trying to move around the roadblocks. Cardinal Sodano comes to mind.

The Maciel case is not the first case where Benedict had to move around Sodano. This was also true in the Fr. Buresssi case. Buressi was another sexual abuser who started his own order, generated quite a following, and was heavily supported by Sodano. It took the Vatican 17 years to finally act in this case, and action was the direct result of having the case moved to the jurisdiction of the CDF. By that time the Canonical statute of limitations had run out on the sexual offenses but once Pope, Benedict acted anyway.

I wonder about Cardinal Sodano's 'spontaneous' defense of Benedict during the Easter Sunday liturgy. Was Sodano sending some sort of message? In any event this truly is a time for choice for all of us as individuals. Do we choose the power of love as Jesus taught, or just fall in line with the power of the Church? It's a separating of the wheat from the chaff moment, and it's not an easy decision for a lot of good people.