The Dangers of Kayfabe Catholicism

 As the twitter handle implies, I love professional wrestling.  Its not a "guilty pleasure" so much as entertainment I unironically love.  "Kevin, how can you watch something that is fake?" This is a question I am asked at least 4 or 5 times a year as I bury my head in the TV on Wednesday nights.  My answer is always the same:  wrestling is not "fake", anymore than a fight scene in a movie is "fake."  It is a series of choreographed maneuvers done that tell a story.  The really good ones aren't just great exhibitions of athleticism, but stories about the nature of the human spirit itself.

"Kevin, what on earth does a bunch of jacked dudes doing punches and flips have to do with being Catholic online?"  WAY MORE THAN YOU WOULD EVER HAVE GUESSED!  You see, professional wrestling isn't just about two people choreographing combat in a ring.  It is a world where everyone involved does their part to promote a match and the company, and they do so through what is known as kayfabe.

But simply, kayfabe is the "fake" world created in professional wrestling, and is used to help build an authentic experience.  In kayfabe, everyone has a character to play.  Some are the brash and arrogant bad guys, the "heels."  Others are the scrappy underdogs standing for truth and justice, the "babyface."  Sometimes you are somewhere in between, and sometimes, you think you are one thing, but the crowd has decided you are another.  In the end, the crowd is who you are performing for, and you use kayfabe to try and manipulate the crowd into reacting a certain way.  Sometimes you even try to get them to act against their intuition  You know that babyface that has "come from behind" to win in every match for the past decade?  Kayfabe builds an environment, outside of that match, where you think he is always the underdog, despite the scorecard telling a clearly different story.

A downside of kayfabe is that if you aren't careful, you can forget the fact its all a charade.  Some of your biggest names in wrestling historically have been utter narcissists who long ago lost the ability to distinguish between the character they play in the world of professional wrestling, and everyday life.  (This understanding briefly reached the mainstream when Hulk Hogan gave testimony in court and he had clearly lost the ability to tell the difference between Hulk Hogan the character and Terry Bolea, the man who played him.)  In the case of wrestling companies, they become so obsessed with the alternative reality they have created, they begin to think that they can control everything in wrestling, including how the crowd will react, something which has been the death of many promotions when taken too far

I think this has a lot to do with the way a lot of Catholic individuals and communities are online.  We've created a kayfabe where not only is every Catholic a theologian who sits around and reads your favorite philosopher, we've become convinced that these are the marks for being a Catholic.  People develop parts of their persona that stand out, whether it being the insufferable nag, the connected journalist, the sophisticated professional theologian, the pugilist who relishes in combat, whatever the heck a "retrograde" is that we develop rules for, etc.  I hate to be the one to tell you this, but its not real.  Its a Fugazi, a world created for the entertainment of the consumer, who is often asked to donate to those individuals putting on the show.  That patreon or substack ain't gonna fund itself with boring prose!

The purpose of this alternative reality is to promote combat.  Nobody is giving a damn about Massimo Faggioli if he's a boring professor writing about boring church movements unless you are a credentialed academic.  Yet people will pay him good money to tell you about the danger of traditionalists, and how at every step of the way, they must be combated.  By him, preferably.  Give him money, buy his book, put him on your show, and everyone can watch him take it to the trads.  If you can't afford someone who knows what they are talking about and have a more low-brow audience, you book Mark Shea.

The problem is a lot of these individuals have lost perspective of the fact that the online experience is one primarily of entertainment, not of substance or growth in holiness.  In the world we live in, settling things like they do in pro wrestling is absolutely bizarre, where brawls happen throughout stadiums because someone looks the wrong way, or says they are better.  (Think of the Trump era in politics on steroids.)  Most of the stuff that happens online isn't about deepening prayer life, increasing mass attendance, increasing what you get out of mass, or of giving Catholics a sense of ownership in being part of the body of Christ.

If one wants to get really jaded, you could say we've created this kayfabe because for the most part we have no ownership in our role as part of the body of Christ.  Whatever your partisan leanings, it is a popular refrain that the Church doesn't serve us.  Likewise, pro wrestling is at its best when it taps into the spirit of disillusionment and abandonment.  Hence, Hulk Hogan was the American fighting increasingly bigger and nastier foreign foes during a time when Americans wanted to feel patriotic.  Stone Cold Steve Austin beat up his boss on TV (making said boss a billionaire) during an age where middle class america collectively hated their office jobs.  Daniel Bryan's "YES!" chant entered the pop cultural consciousness in the era where people were tired of hearing they didn't fit the corproprate conception of what success was, and they saw a 5'8 scrawny kid in a world full of giants and identified with him.  Only a Church that has failed its members so completely and abysmally is a world where you see truthtellers, radicals, retrogrades, and grifters (sometimes all of these things!) flourish.  They use that kayfabe to help promote their bottom line.

So how does one stop it?  To do that would probably require a structural shift in the Church that is beyond the scope of this article, or our abilities.  Yet to combat it?

- Remember that what happens online is a very small sample of the wider Church
- Remember that what happens online is often deliberately turned up in intensity with the purpose of selling something.
- Understand that everyone is marketing themselves as something
- When it comes to anything that happens in social media, one of the biggest aims is conflict.
- If someone is soliciting funds, be discerning before you click the donate button.  How are they soliciting funds?  How much of it is original work, something of substance, and how much of it is about seeing them feud with others?

There's nothing wrong with enjoying a good clash!  You can learn a lot through them.  Just remember that clash can only tell a glimpse of reality, it should never be your reality.

Beware "The Narrative"

 Cardinal Cupich had a meeting with the Pope recently.  Everyone wants you to believe it was in relation to the USCCB.  Which maybe it was. If so, allies of Cardinal Cupich would want you to believe he and the Pope were bashing the USCCB, and angling a preparation for Cardinal Cupich to bring them in line with the "progressive vision" of Pope Francis.  Critics of Cardinal Cupich (but friendly to the USCCB) want you to believe this was the Pope reeling Cardinal Cupich in line, telling him to knock off the publicity stunts.  Traditionalists, as is our way, use this as an opportunity to tell you how terrible both Cardinal Cupich and Pope Francis are.  You might even get someone who uses this as an opportunity to knock both of them, and dismiss the USCCB as pointless.  (Okay, that someone is me.)

One of these opinions may be correct.  Yet there's also a simpler explanation:  either the Bishop of Rome or the Cardinal requested the audience to talk about the matter, they talked, and nobody decided anything, because a decision wasn't the point.  There's an overwhelming urge to tie someone into an overarching narrative, that because of this or that issue, this means that they think x or y on every other issue.

The problem is that people don't actually work that way.  Traditionalists, at least in practice, favor some of the most radical decentralization of anyone in the Church.  Despite being progressives who the narrative says aren't in favor of rigid ideology, Cupich and his allies have a deeply authoritarian and centralized vision:  everyone must do what the pope is doing, and we will be the ones who tell you what the pope is really doing.  The Pope, despite owing his papacy to powerful German prelates, has resisted those same prelates in their attempts to form a vision of a radically decentralized Church where everyone else does their thing, and Germany does theirs.  Yet this pope has also talked of the need to decentralize the Church and embrace synodality.

There is a belief, particularly online, that everyone's ideology is rigid, and that this ideology is predictive on everything else.  It makes a certain intuitive sense... if the Church was limited to a manual of theology or a bunch of nerds who read whoever your favorite philosopher is.  This isn't Catholicism.  People are products of their environments.  We are (or at least should be) united in a set of doctrines, but the things we have to conform on are shockingly small and mostly irrelevant to the day to day experience of most Catholics.  There's a certain learned experience, even among those who practice a certain ideology, but are careful on what to emphasize based on what they've learned attracts, and what repels.  There's also a realization that concepts like "populism" or "decentralization" can serve traditional and progressive ends, just as centralization and a preference for elites can serve both ends, and have throughout history.  Conservatives can be radicals or pragmatists in how/what they aim to conserve.

Then there's the reality that people are just flat out inconsistent in their beliefs, and we should probably be grateful they are.  It is why Pope Francis can be an individual who is clearly progressive, but not only act against type, but routinely violate his own standards.  We can complain about that, and sometimes rightly, but any ideology that doesn't account for this reality will find itself unable to comprehend how the Church works.

Be comfortable in your general ideology, but don't look at things through that prism. Instead, focus on the particulars of certain questions, and then think about how that question can be understood through a variety of different experiences.  I'm a traditionalist.  That means that I, as a general rule, look to the timeless, and treat with great skepticism and prejudice the idea that our present age is more enlightened than previous ages (as a general rule), or that certain leaders today, because they live in this age, are able to solve what centuries have not.  Yet this preference has its limits: sometimes a schism really can be solved now when it couldn't before (such as with the SSPX), among other things.

So yes, think about how things fit into a larger ideological outlook.  But also think about how they don't, and how sometimes an audience is really just that, an audience.

On Praying for the President

 "I pray for the President.  May God Bless Joe Biden."

You have probably heard this.  You have probably said this.  If not, you probably should say it.  Yet what does it actually mean?  

In the annals of American civic religion, it goes something like the following:  we pray that Joe Biden unite this country, bring about an era of friendship, and see America "succeed."  If anyone notices that this is awfully non-descript, well, it is.  The entire point of civic religion in America has been to be as minimalist as possible, so that everyone can ascribe to it.  Praying means whatever you want it to mean, just as the office of the Presidency is a vehicle for your own hopes and ambitions.

Catholics should reject this.  I'd even say we can't "pray" for the President in this manner.  Its an empty prayer that places far too much of a prominence on secular matters.  It also prays for something that in some cases should not even be desired.  There is an obsession with "unity" that implies that everyone should submit to a basic set of principles that the administration outlines.  We see this often in the Catholic Church as well, where Catholics are expected to change how they practice their Catholicism because of who occupies the papal throne.  So we have to act one way when one individual is president, another way with his successor, and so on.

That's not how politics works.  On a certain level one has to agree that the sovereign is, well.... sovereign.  In the United States, sovereignty (for better or worse) flows through a rather complicated patchwork of the President, Congress, and the courts.  That patchwork is further amplified by state vs federal matters.  So when we agree with unity, we agree that those invested with authority should use that authority.  Which begs the question:  how?  In those discussions, there will be debates, often bitter ones.  Far from being bad for a government, this can be healthy.  What is needed to make it work (and what is sorely lacking) is an understanding of fraternity (that those involved are all working from good intentions), and legitimacy.  (That government is serving the ends of the governed.)  Perhaps those are two things worth praying for.

Most importantly, when one prays for the President, one prays for His soul.  I pray that he makes it to heaven.  Most importantly, I pray that he renounces his errors.  The way to heaven is narrow, even for those who do not support evil.  We know of no way outside of God's mercy for those who support evil to obtain heaven, and God has made clear time and time again we should not presume His mercy will save you from those errors.  This is more than just issue such as abortion or gay marriage, though they are two prominent issues.  Often Americans don't want to confront just how united both parties have been in neglecting large swaths of their populace, to often disastrous results.  In many nations, when Republicans and Democrats are united, it means a wedding in their backyard is about to get a drone strike.  

In these instances, one should pray that the President, as well as Congress, is resisted.  Not for some partisan end, but because what they are advocating will be injurious to souls.  We shouldn't expect perfection from our elected leaders, but it has been some time since we have had an executive, from either party, focused on the common good of all citizens, much less on creating an environment that allows them to serve God unhindered.  That's what a Catholic should pray for, and it is a prayer that almost certainly cannot be fulfilled by a political party.

Shiny Happy Traditionalism

 If you're a trad, you've heard this before.  "If you look at the lives of the saints, they radiate with joy.  Meanwhile trads just want to be be bitter.  Traditionalists just need to be more joyful!"  You still see this from time and time.  Indeed, I know I've given that talk myself over the now 2 decades I've been involved with this trad business.  I don't talk like that anymore, and I haven't for some time.  I think it gets just about everything wrong.  It gets the saints wrong. It gets joy wrong.  It misunderstands why there is occasionally a lack of joy among trads.

- It Gets the Saints Wrong

Somewhere, and I'm not sure where, we began viewing the saints less as human beings, and more as avatars of a certain disposition.  Ergo saints were never angry, they were just quiet people who smiled and prayed without ceasing.  That's not what a saint is.  Saints have personalities.  In the Bible, sometimes those saints were angry with God.  Sometimes they argued with God.  Sometimes they argued with each other.  While that was occasionally a problem, God never seemed to be bothered by Habakkuk's questioning him, Paul's rebuke of Peter probably helped Peter (eventually) see the light on the Gentiles.

The reverse is also true. Just as anger can pass, so can feelings of joy and euphoria.  This is why the Charismatic movement ultimately fails:  it places as the height of Catholicism moments of emotion in time, intense euphoria that eventually passes.  The answer isn't to keep seeking out greater moments of euphoria.  That's not Catholicism:  that's spiritual cocaine.  What makes a saint is to not let these moments tell the whole story.  Our existence is not euphoria or crankiness, although both emotions are part of the human experience, and can be healthy!  The Bible doesn't say "don't be angry" it says "be angry but do not sin."

- It Gets Joy Wrong

Joy is not something you can just will into being.  You can't say "I'm going to be more joyful" like you would when you say "I'm going to set my alarm to wake up earlier every day."  Joy comes not from thinking joyful thoughts, but in doing things that give a cause for joy.  Mary is the cause of our joy not because she thought about being joyful, but because she said yes to God, and partook in His plan with a complete and total commitment.

If we want to promote joy, we need to promote a more active traditionalism.  We need more parishes celebrating more masses and more events.  We need more traditional devotions, a better family life, etc etc.  None of that involves thinking happy thoughts, and its often frustrating and annoying.  Yet it provides joy.

- It Gets Traditionalism Wrong

Traditionalism can be a lot of things to many people, but fundamentally, it is about being a means to an end.  This is opposed to a certain train of thought (big among converts and media companies promoting traditionalism) that treat traditionalism as the be all end all of the faith.  It is our exodus from the awfulness that is contemporary Catholicism.  Let's give them a point:  contemporary Catholicism is awful.  If you've already found traditionalism, which is the be all end all, why are you still so angry?  We've got it made!

That's not Catholicism, and its not traditionalism.  The Latin Mass and our rich heritage is a gift given to us from God, for the purpose of honoring Him, and in doing that, we find our own purpose.  Compared to contemporary Catholicism, it provides a better framework.  Yet in honoring God, we're going to become aware of injustice, of wrongdoing, of the effects of sin.  That is going to anger us.  It is going to cause us to occasionally become cranky.  We should not look down on this for one very big reason

- People will just be cranky somewhere else, somewhere darker

There was once a pretty well known priest blogger who said that traditionalists need to throw the cranks out, to show to the wider Church that "this is not who we are."  Heeding this priests advice, several parishoners went to their parish priest and asked him to expel a certain bitter Catholic who espoused a lot of things.  Things which, while not heretical, were still a bit ridiculous.  They told the priest he was a crank, and everyone knew he attended Mass there, and it was damaging their reputation.

The parish priest, a man who spoke with a deep firmness in his voice (a firmness that would occasionally unnerve people) responded  "cranks need the sacraments as well, though not as much as you clearly do."  He understood something fundamentally true about human nature:  humans will always be cranky.  You can't eliminate cranky anymore than you can eliminate gravity.  What you can do is provide an environment that channels those feelings into something better.

We don't do a very good of that.  As a result, Catholics turn to your Taylor Marshalls.  They get deep into American politics.  They surround themselves with people who understand its okay to be cranky, because there's plenty to be cranky about.  Yet they are often caught in a circle of crankiness, and they become increasingly bitter and cranky.  There's no channeling that crankiness into something more productive, because in many ways they are isolated from that which is more productive.  Most cranky traditionalists don't have a nearby parish they can go to.  The local parish might offer a diocesan Latin Mass, which is great.  Yet they don't view that person as part of the community, as part of the family.  At best, they are an honored guest.  At worst, a nuisance to be tolerated.  It is incumbent upon the Church to give them something to do, or they will find something to do.  When I say the Church, I mean all of us.  

Want to reduce the influence of Taylor Marshall, or of those for whom they feast on urine and vinegar?  In addition to making the Latin Mass more widely available, just grab a bottle of scotch, sit them down, and talk about how we live our faith.  Have a barbecue.  Go visit another parish and have drinks/food with people there.  Come up with ideas for service.  See if you can talk with leaders at other parishes about why the Latin Mass is great.  Ask other Catholics if they'd like to pray a rosary together.   Go help an overburdened parent with their kids.  None of these things are going to get rid of people being cranky.  But they will help them manage that better, and give them something to do beyond imbibing nonsense that just makes them even angrier.

But first, give me all the shiny trads, and the happy trads, and let me know who to avoid, because that isn't real.  Its kayfabe, and not very good kayfabe.

EWTN's King of Ashes

 As Christopher White details, there is a storm going on at EWTN, a civil war brewing.  Or maybe not.  I think that is something people should at least consider.  For all the talk of what this entails for the purposes of the narrative, there's little actual journalism detailing what is going on within the company.  Even for those who work in the various parts of the EWTN empire, there's a lot of speculation of what these moves could mean, but very little speculation on what it does mean.

This should be a big red flag for anyone involved that you might be getting a narrative, and a narrative that benefits certain individuals who, much to ones surprise, are those talking about what these various moves could mean.  The first thing you should always remember when dealing with Catholic organizations, especially those that involve donations, is that they are a business.  The first thing to remember when dealing with Catholic writers is that they are showmen, and everything they are doing should be viewed through the lens of self-promotion.  Even the praiseworthy stuff has an angle.  So when you hear that Gloria Purvis was sidelined for this or that reason, always be aware of the levers of benefit and influence that would flow from this or that narrative, and that involves not just Purvis but her critics.

As interesting as this might be to some people (and they will try to convince you its even more interesting), its worth understanding just how very online this is, and how little it matters about the overall state of the Catholic Church.  The state of the EWTN empire matters greatly to everyone involved, because by influencing that empire, they influence themselves.  Yet how much does that matter in the overall grand scheme of things?

The race to see who claims the EWTN empire I do think is instructive in another way: the perils of what happens when Catholicism and self-promotion mix.  This is nothing new to EWTN.  Mother Angelica started EWTN to give people a venue for Catholic spirituality, but from the very beginning she was crafting a brand for EWTN:  that of a fearless advocate of Catholicism when so many otherwise Catholic institutions (universities, bishops, etc) were quite fearful advocates of Catholicism, to the point of timidity or worse.  There is always going to be a tension between promotion of yourself as a witness for Christ and the Gospel you are meant to be a witness to.  St. Paul struggled with precisely this in 2 Corinthians and Galatians.

I'm not sure where, but I think EWTN over time lost that balance. Slowly over time, they became less about fostering Catholic spirituality, and instead fostering a specific type of spirituality.  No, this isn't the culture war battle you think it is.  In a time of unparalleled collapse for global Catholicism (its retreat from Europe, its auto-demolition in Latin America in a single generation, the era of the abuse scandal in the US), EWTN was selling a narrative that not only were things not bad.....   things were GREAT.   It really was a New Springtime.  To sell this new springtime, EWTN brought in a lot of new Catholic personalities, many of them converts, to sell their own conversion story, and to give others the hope they had that not only were we in a New Springtime, but that they were the vanguard of renewal.  Whether it was John Corapi, Mark Shea, Robert Sungenis, Greg Popcak, Dawn Eden, for a span of roughly 20 years (from the mid 90's to around 2015 or so), people from all across the ideological spectrum all had one thing in common:  they were EWTN celebrities or heavily touted being featured on EWTN.

Very few questions were ever asked about if this was a sustainable model of Catholicism, or of the inherent dangers of having a "model" of Catholicism to follow.  Outside of one or two exceptions, nobody is looking at the various media personalities on EWTN over the years and thinking "these are the people I want to model my life after."  Deep down, that includes their biggest fans.  Devotion to kayfabe is the only reason they say otherwise.

Finally, and I cannot stress this enough, a lot of this crap simply doesn't matter.  When Dawn Eden and Mark Shea demanded that their previous shows be removed from EWTN's library, everyone's reaction was "oh yeah, 10 years ago they did something of value" that was otherwise forgotten.  Most people watching EWTN aren't watching because they are or aren't promoting racial identity politics:  they are watching to view Daily Mass or get a chaplet in.  Sure, The World Over is lucrative business, but most people outside the online bubble still know EWTN as that station that was ran by a nun or that had religious stuff on it.  

This discussion is useful mostly as a reflection of the US Church, a Church that is becoming increasingly insular, polarized, and very online.  It is a race between various factions to wear the crown of ashes, to shape a once glorious Church and company now a shell of its former self.  They just hope they are the ones getting paid as it implodes.

Have nothing to do with it.

Bishops Crossing the Line

 In a recent statement, Five Bishops (most notably conservative luminaries such as Joseph Strickland and Athanasius Schneider) wrote an open letter to the Church calling upon the faithful to reject any COVID-19 vaccine that had any relationship, however implicit, with cells from aborted fetuses.  In doing so, these Bishops have crossed a line that should not be crossed:  they are openly siding against the Magisterium, and telling the faithful that the Magisterium is not to be trusted as a safe or reliable guide for Catholics.

First things first, let's give a brief understanding of what's going on here.  It is sometimes assumed that vaccines are reliant upon a steady stream of aborted children for testing and experimentation purposes.  This is not what's really going on.  Fr. Arnaud Selegny, FSSPX offers a pretty good explanation.  Now for those of you raising an eyebrow at citing the SSPX in regards to Church authority, the irony is noted for the record, yet the arguments presented are unassailable. If one is looking for a guide that explains to the lay Catholic what the controversy is, and what moral principles guide this controversy, there is none better.

Human Embryonic Lines
Among the latter, there are currently at least three lines that originated from an abortion: the HEK-293 line, from a fetus aborted in 1972 in the Netherlands; the MRC-5 line, from a fetus aborted in 1966 in England, and the line Per.C6, from an aborted fetus in the Netherlands in 1985.

 

The use of cells from aborted fetuses to produce vaccines has therefore been going on since the 1960s, and has already led to the development of various vaccines, such as those that prevent rubella, chickenpox, hepatitis A and shingles.

This has led to a difficulty for Catholics.  Abortion is an evil in society so grave it has no other comparison.  Catholics should oppose abortion as much as humanly possible.  Does that mean we must then reject these vaccines because they had a tangential link to an abortion several decades ago?

The Magisterium has waded in on this issue twice.  While "The Magisterium" is often misused, The Pontifical Academy for Life and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, both responding to official inquiries on this question, these statements clearly have more authority than your average press release or homily.  I'm just going to give brief quotes from both documents.  Both are serious attempts to grapple with a real problem, and their position is by no means unqualified.  There are conditions under which these vaccines can be administered, but those conditions are real.  The Pontifical Academy for Life said the following

As regards the diseases against which there are no alternative vaccines which are available and ethically acceptable, it is right to abstain from using these vaccines if it can be done without causing children, and indirectly the population as a whole, to undergo significant risks to their health. However, if the latter are exposed to considerable dangers to their health, vaccines with moral problems pertaining to them may also be used on a temporary basis.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was even more explicit:

Of course, within this general picture there exist differing degrees of responsibility. Grave reasons may be morally proportionate to justify the use of such “biological material”. Thus, for example, danger to the health of children could permit parents to use a vaccine which was developed using cell lines of illicit origin, while keeping in mind that everyone has the duty to make known their disagreement and to ask that their healthcare system make other types of vaccines available. Moreover, in organizations where cell lines of illicit origin are being utilized, the responsibility of those who make the decision to use them is not the same as that of those who have no voice in such a decision.

The Bishops Open Letter makes note of these sources, but does not quote them.  If they quoted them, they would not be able to state the following:

However, this principle can hardly be applied to the case of vaccines made from foetal cell lines, because those who knowingly and voluntarily receive such vaccines enter into a kind of concatenation, albeit very remote, with the process of the abortion industry.

The Vatican has indeed said that this principle can be applied to vaccines.  They did not say it must be applied to vaccines, only that it can by the faithful, who are called to discern the issue properly.  Now I am not a moral theologian, so I will not wade too deeply into discussions about material cooperation with evil.  The SSPX document and the two documents above discuss the issue.  

Fortunately, you do not need a degree in moral theology to grasp this issue.  The Church has said these vaccines may be used.  That usage is not unconditional, we must do what we can to use vaccines that are not derived from the cells of aborted fetuses.  As there are 24 different vaccines (and growing!) at various stages of development, the development of these vaccines without these moral quandaries will be easier over time.  Given the nature of the pandemic currently, this seems like a pretty open and shut case of "temporary" usage described.  Following these principles of moral theology and guidelines from Rome, various conferences have approved these vaccines.

What do these Bishops have to say in their open letter of Rome's approval, and the bishops adopting in good faith Rome's approval?

Some churchmen in our day reassure the faithful by affirming that receiving a Covid-19 vaccine derived from the cell lines of an aborted child is morally licit if an alternative is not available. They justify their assertion on the basis of “material and remote cooperation” with evil. Such affirmations are extremely anti-pastoral and counterproductive, especially when one considers the increasingly apocalyptic character of the abortion industry, and the inhuman nature of some biomedical research and embryonic technology.

Some have said this is akin to what liberals did with contraception, casting aside the Magisterium for "pastoral" reasons.  I think that takes it too far.  Contraception is something for which there is always a moral evil involved when one intends to disrupt fertility and prevent a pregnancy through artificial means.  One can never use contraception for such a purpose.  Whereas the Church does not say one must be vaccinated with vaccines developed from embryonic lines stemming from abortion.  However it is wrong in the sense that these Bishops are stating that the pronouncements of the Church are not sufficiently pastoral.  In this they are setting up "pastoral" and "theological" on differing poles.

We have seen this line of argumentation do grave damage to the Church over the past few decades, especially during the pontificate of Francis.  It is bad enough when lay faithful adopt this mentality.  It is even worse when Bishops adopt it.  When speaking in their role as a bishop, bishops should be mindful that Joseph Strickland does not speak as himself.  He speaks as a successor to the Apostles, and shepherd of souls in union with the Roman Pontiff.  You certainly aren't required to like him or even think very highly of him, but he is the head of the Church, as were his predecessors whose memory God has charged him to uphold.  Bishops have an even greater duty to make sure everything they do upholds that which the Magisterium has presented.

These Bishops should immediately be asked if one sins by taking a vaccine that came from these circumstances, and if so, how that squares with the judgement of the Magisterium.  Given the choice, always choose the Magisterium, even if these bishops do praiseworthy things elsewhere.

The Sword of Damocles over the Vatican Clears the Mind

In wake of the PA Grand Jury report detailing extensive sexual abuse and coverup by Church authorities, Catholics everywhere asked what the bishops would do about it.  Crux's Charles Collins had what I think was the best take on the matter:  it doesn't matter what the Bishops are going to do.  We've reached a point where the bishops no longer have the power or legitimacy to enact reform, and now the state will do it for them.  

We're likely to learn the extent of those reforms in 2021/2022 when a lot of those investigations conclude.  Yet its a smart point.  The Old Testament is full of instances where God, frustrated by Israel's refusal to listen and repent, forces the change he desires through other means, namely the armies of Assyria and then Babylon and finally Rome.  Church state relations throughout history have been invariably complex, but there's several situations like that Otto the Great found himself in, to where he felt the need to carry out much needed Church reforms Rome was either unwilling or incapable of carrying out on their own.

I'm reminded of this today in light of the latest round of reforms Pope Francis has launched to try and clean up the financial filth that has existed for some time in Rome, and which has basically had a field day the entirety of his pontificate.  In addition to these reforms, he has unveiled sweeping transparency reforms, as well as effectively abandoning the reform of the Roman Curia that gave the Secretariat of State unrivaled power in the modern Church, after said office had defended and protected a lot of corrupt individuals.  Almost all of these reforms were reforms he rejected earlier, sometimes forcefully, and almost always accusing those advocating precisely these reforms as acting in bad faith.  What changed?

Maybe the Pope has had a change of heart, and has seen the error of his ways.  Or, more likely, he has taken the threats of the global financial community seriously.  Numerous international institutions have threatened to effectively blacklist the Vatican from engaging in international banking because of their practices.  Being cutoff from that banking also means being cut off from the various mechanisms of servicing debt, paying off loans, and being able to get money where its needed throughout the world with ease.  As the article points out, Moneyval has made clear the time for voluntary change has passed.  Rome can change.... or else.

Arguing over the soundness of this approach is besides the point.  Yes, there is a lot of inherent potential for abuse in a system where the Church and Pope is bullied, often against their will, into making reforms.  The time for avoiding that situation was in 2013 when Francis first ascended to the throne, and had a chance at being a real reformer.  He was instead focused on being a media darling and igniting a civil war at the Synod on the Family.  The media charm offensive of tickling the ears of secular people everywhere that 'this pope is different' hasn't really produced anything of long term value, and the two synods on the family were abysmal catastrophes with regard to Church unity and papal authority.  Meanwhile, we lost a crucial chance to carry out much needed reforms.

These reforms will now be carried out under force.  It will be a great irony if Francis ends up doing down as a reforming pope who set the Church on sound footing, doing the right thing after exhausting every single opportunity to do otherwise.  Yet its an irony we should hope for nonetheless.

The USCCB: What's the Point?

So the USCCB is having their annual meeting, conducted online this year because of the pandemic.  As I watch some of the highlights and read the commentary, I'm left asking a question:  Why are we doing this?  I don't mean doing it virtually because of the pandemic.  I mean:  why does the USCCB exist?

This sounds like a flippant question, but it isn't.  What is the point of the USCCB?  Why do they exist?  What are they hoping to accomplish?  To drive home the point further:  if the USCCB disbanded today, at this very moment, what would we find lacking?

So far as I can tell, the USCCB, as currently setup, exists to do three things.  They are to be pundits, to promote factional warfare, and to form committees.  This came out with the greatest clarity during the discussion around The McCarrick report.  If all you knew about the report was what you heard at the USCCB, you would think the report was a debate between the legacies of the three Popes McCarrick served under.  So a report that detailed a decades long institutional coverup of criminal sexual assault was reduced to the rather pathetic dueling arguments over some bishops thinking Francis should resign, or if the media is unfair to the legacy of John Paul II.  There is a lot of talk about "seeing through the eyes of victims", but nothing about various policies they could put in place to make this a reality.  Cardinal Gregory talks about the importance of showing victims we get it, but he sits on all the information that details the American Churches own institutional knowledge of McCarricks predations, and refuses to do anything to release it.  The bishops never once discussed how it was possible for such a monster to become so powerful and walk among their ranks, and no discussion about what steps they were taking as a body to prevent a future McCarrick from doing this kind of damage again.  Instead it was an argument over which pope deserves more blame.  That's an argument you should read on the internet, if you should read it at all.

Likewise, on the coronavirus pandemic, there was a lot of talk about the importance of getting people back to Church, yet nothing about why people are so reluctant to return.  Is it a question of safety?  Then what extra precautions are we taking?  Is it because people felt abandoned during the pandemic?  How are we fixing that?  Is it because of the corruption in the Church?  What are we doing to fix that?  Has the faith stopped becoming relevant for so many who before were going to Mass?  Instead, we're talking about holding special "bring your friend to Mass" days

This is not an ideological talking point, ie the bishops aren't trad enough, aren't progressive enough, whatever.  Nor is this a belief that things like a Committee on Racism are pointless.  There's a lot to discuss about the history of how the Church has navigated racial tensions across the world and in our own backyard, and yes, how that navigation has been poor or imperfect.  We should have nothing to fear from that.  Yet what exactly is done by the USCCB that makes it serve a singular and unique purpose?  If it's really just "its a high profile chance to discuss these issues" then maybe we really should rethink the entire premise upon which these episcopal conferences exist and function.

To the Tiber With All of Them

Note:  The following contains very angry language, because anger about this issue is important.

Yesterday, Rome finally released their "McCarrick Report", or, if you prefer a "Report on the Holy See's Institutional Knowledge and Decision Making Process Related to Former Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick."  I already said what I thought the report would outline, and I was mostly right.  If Rome thought the report would answer these questions, they were mistaken.  Fr. Ryan Hilderbrand listed almost 30 questions he had about the report that Rome doesn't answer.  

There is a lot to the report, but I think we can focus on a few overall points

Benign Neglect or Active Indifference?

The first is that there was a narrative that McCarrick, ever the cunning schemer, was able to hide everything from Rome.  This has turned out to be 100% false.  Rome was well aware of allegations regarding McCarrick, having received up to 4 different allegations of abuse, violation of boundaries, or inappropriate behavior on behalf of the Cardinal by the time action was finally taken against him.  How did he then rise up the ranks despite all this being known?  

I think the best explanation is that nobody wanted to look really closely what was going on, because if they looked they knew they were going to find something.  Its like the person who knows their spouse is being unfaithful, or they know their spouse has a drinking problem.  They go out of their way to avoid seeing all the warning signs that would force them to take action.  Theodore McCarrick was charismatic, a smart politician, and a prodigious fundraiser.  Just like Marcel Maicel, he wasn't particularly subtle with hiding his abuse.  There was just overwhelming incentives to not look too closely.  If you aren't looking closely, you don't have to look the other way at wrongdoing.

This was combined with an active weaponization of the Church against opposition to McCarrick.  For example, when McCarrick was promoted to the Archdiocese of Washington, an investigation was conducted regarding abuse, but it was an investigation to be conducted "without urgency."  Yet this investigation was completed, and alongside numerous other pieces of evidence, it was suggested that McCarrick not be transferred to another see.  One can take the at face reasons listed, but another way of looking at it was it was believed promoting McCarrick to a higher position would bring about greater visibility.  This suggestion was ignored by the Pope who then bypassed the normal process of consulting the Congregation of Bishops and the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  (Then Josef Ratzinger, the future Benedict XVI who punished McCarrick.)  You engage in this type of bypass because you don't want anyone looking too closely at the situation.

The Bureaucratization of Abuse

One of the striking features of the report, as well as the evidence contained therein, is how bureaucratic it is.  At no point does one detect a sense of anger or outrage at McCarrick, either over his crimes, or over having been deceived.  One could even be forgiven individuals believe a crime was committed here.  There are jokes and light hearted banter mentioned, a warm comity and rapport with everyone involved.  Even McCarrick's enemies (and they do make appearances in this report) seem more troubled by the extra paperwork this unfortunate set of events generates.  It suggests that, far from this being an isolated incident, these kind of abuse investigation and rumors regarding senior prelates seem strikingly common, to the point where its impact seems fairly trivial in the proceedings.  Maybe this just the soulless boardroom mentality seeping into the Church.  Or maybe it points to a striking frequency of these allegations.  Either way, it is something deeply troubling.  As always here, the protection of the institution matters above all else.  A primacy of attention is given to if McCarrick's indiscretions and allegations would impact a papal trip, rather than terrify and scandalize the flock he governed.

The Complication of Papal Legacies

Make no mistake, this report is a haymaker to the face of Pope John Paul II's legacy.  If he were not already canonized, there would not be a snowballs chance in hell he would be canonized.  From a doctrinal standpoint, this does not invalidate his canonization.  Saints can have serious blindspots, they can be gullible, be deceived, and they can make catastrophic mistakes.  Sometimes you could even say understanding those mistakes is essential to understanding the saint in question.  Yet let us not kid ourselves: this is going to impact the legacy of John Paul II negatively for centuries, and it should.  Benedict is less Der Panzerkardinal and more a weak and ineffectual man, who takes half measures because taking full measures would torch the legacy of his yet uncanonized predecessor he owed his career to and damage the institution's reputation he spent decades trying to uphold.  It is the dark side of institutionalism.

Axing the Final Chapter

One could ask how this reflects upon Pope Francis, but he is largely absent in this story.  For all intents and purposes, the McCarrick saga ends in 2009, with a brief epilogue in 2017 where WHOOPS TURNS OUT MCCARICK IS A PEDOPHILE HOLY CRAP GUYS WHAT DO WE DO?  At this point everyone puts on their shocked face and expresses disbelief that the guy they had under "prescript" (where he is forced to only live in certain areas, restricted from doing almost everything but don't you dare call it a "punishment" or "sentence") for borderline consensual/nonconsensual sexual activity engaged in nonconsensual sexual activity, and oops, turns out those rumors we've heard for decades about abusing minors were true, who woulda guessed?  Though they admit McCarrick gave advice that various individuals be appointed bishops and to other Vatican organizations, and that he gave people a lot of monetary gifts impossible to trace since it was cash, we swear this activity had no influence on anything.  They aren't trying to convince us of that fact, they're practicing their defense when they appear before Christ at the Judgement Seat.  He will be as impressed by it as we are.

A Very Online Report

The report seems written less to explain McCarrick's rise than it is to take sides in various factional disputes within the Church.  Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano is a frequent antagonist in the report.  Vigano was the man whose whistle blowing testimony forced McCarrick to be laicized and forced the eventual publishing of this report.   One should readily grant whistleblowers are not ideal figures.  They are normally vain corrupt individuals who have been double crossed by someone more vain and corrupt.  That's what happened here.  In an attempt to mollify his base being angry over a papal trip to America, Francis pinned everything that went poorly on Vigano, and told everyone he fired him to try and generate good PR with his biggest fans.  (In truth, he resigned as was customary, without prompting from the Holy Father.)  Vigano, always a man to treat the slightest provocation as a declaration of holy war, waited until the perfect moment to exact his revenge, and the McCarrick scandal was that perfect moment.  So the report looks to portray him in as bad a light as possible, such as faulting him for not examining how much legal liability they would have from McCarrick's indiscretions after he was forcibly restricted from ministry.  (Note not whether or not the charges were true, Rome had a pretty good idea they were.  Just how much legal liability this threatened to ensnare everyone in.)

Now if this seems very inside basbeall:  no kidding.  The average Catholic does not give a damn about any of this, much less people outside the Church.  Yet the report is filled with these little anectdotes of factional bloodfeuds.  This wasn't written to shed light on a situation. This was written to provide a narrative for one side of a bitter factional struggle in the Church to present as a way to justify everything that has happened up until now.  The various debates about various personalities might rage on twitter, but all anyone else will see is "sure looks like the past three popes knew one of their senior advisors was a sexual abuser and moved heaven and earth to avoid doing anything about it."

Will He Find Faith?

Christ asks "When the Son of Man returns, will He find faith?"  I thought about that a lot lately.  We spend a lot of time in today's Church about who is more faithful to her traditions, to her doctrine.  Critics of traditionalism complain of a Catholicism that is "More Catholic than the Pope."  I think this is the wrong way of looking at it.  There's something for everyone in this report.  We see some very casual misogyny.  We see liberals acting bad.  Conservatives acting bad.  Everyone of every ideological persuasion uniting to make sure nobody has to look too hard at what McCarrick is doing.  All of these people are baptized Catholics.  Yet we have to ask:  do any of them have faith in God?  Do any of these people have a relationship with Christ?  Or is the Catholic Church just a book of the month club, where the doctrinal debates are over which list of books gets promoted by the group?  While the Pope has criticized this mentality in the past, it's clear that its accelerated under his watch.  For all the talk of the importance of Jesus, one has to ask where Jesus fits into their understanding of how McCarrick was treated in the Church.  How often did they think about pleasing and serving Jesus when they deliberated over what to do?  The McCarrick saga is a case of the Vatican under the past three popes losing the plot.

Barring penance and confession, anyone involved in this sordid affair, from the bottom to the top, should be denied a Catholic burial.  That's the charitable solution.  Otherwise, let God cast them down from their roles, and after a lifetime of penance, let them be cast into the Tiber.

The Isolation of Pope Francis

 While Americans have been paying attention to the political election season, events in the Catholic Church have moved very fast, and are moving faster still.  In the last two months we have seen:

- The Pope drove his former Number 2 (Cardinal Angelo Becciu) out of respectable Church life

- Several criminal investigations are revealed or started involving senior Vatican officials and financial officials regarding financial transactions Becciu had control over.  If you believe Becciu, these deals were done with the knowledge and blessing of the Pope.  (whatever that may or may not entail.)

- The Pope released an instruction regarding who can start religious communities, in yet another shot across the bow at the German Church that he is getting a little fed up with their years of rebellion.

- The Pope took punitive steps against an elderly Polish Bishop credibly accused of abuse, in what is almost certainly not going to be the last in that country.

- In a dramatic reversal of fortune, the Pope kinda blew up his curial reform this week, by defanging a lot of the power in his own Secretariat of State.  Its immense financial control (that was meant to go with other sweeping powers) was greatly reduced, as the Pope largely adopted the same reforms that Cardinal Pell proposed (and he rejected) in 2013, a process that began Pell's ouster in the game of court intrigue in the Vatican. The Secretariat of State was long seen as Becciu's primary protector, and rumors swirl that Becciu acted in concert with him on many of those arrangements now under question.

- The Vatican has announced it will finally be releasing the long awaited "McCarrick" report, or, if you prefer the soulless bureaucratic legalese typical of the Vatican, the  "Report on the Holy See’s institutional knowledge and decision-making process related to former Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick."

There will be a lot of discussion about what each of these individuals moves do and don't mean.  What I'd like to propose is that they point to an increasingly isolated Pope, a man who, after years, is being forced to take actions he has stubbornly refused to do, because he now has no choice.  The first myth to dispel is that this is business as usual.  Something is clearly on the horizon, something the Pope is desperately trying to get out in front of and manage.

The various financial scandals are almost entirely his own fault.  It must be noted, Cardinal Pell outlined a series of reforms to prevent precisely the situation the Pope currently finds himself in.  Pell examined a financial system that was ripe for corruption and abuse.  He proposed a series of reforms that would greatly reduce that risk.  The Pope rejected those reforms, and then sidelined Pell.  This was before Pell's accusation, conviction, and then reversal regarding sexual abuse.  The Vatican's ability to participate in international finance with ease is now at risk, requiring these reforms which feel less like part of an overall plan, and more a panicked emergency response.

The situation with Germany is again mostly of his own doing.  While Rome and Germany have been in tension the last several decades, they believed Francis was going to be the pope who helped them accomplish a revolution.  The Pope, at best playing politics, took no steps to discourage that thinking, and encouraged quite a bit of it.  He now finds himself unable to put that genie back in the bottle.  The Germans feel, not without merit, that Francis owes them his pontificate.  Francis feels, not without merit, that he is the Bishop of Rome, and nobody's puppet.  The Pope could have put a stop to this earlier with decisive action.  Now that window for action has passed, and he's mostly engaging in a desperate series of interventions and emergency instructions, trying to keep the situation from Germany erupting into a full blown schism.

Finally, the issues of sexual abuse, and Theodore McCarrick in particular, are again his own fault.  McCarrick was quietly forced out of public ministry by Pope Benedict, and placed under what amounted to a permanent interdict as punishment for his canonical crimes.  A punishment Francis unmistakably lifted, even if it is believed for a good reason.  The Pope honestly probably reasoned McCarrick was an old man whose ability to harm the Church was passed, and besides, he could use McCarrick to craft the greatest legacy of any pope in centuries:  a deal with China.  That, like everything else, blew up in his face.  While the case of McCarrick casts a rather poor light on the last two pontificates, it is no doubt a black eye on Francis, especially since he denied any knowledge of the abuse (a claim nobody believes and something he will almost certainly have to walk back, at least implicitly, this week), and allowed it to be perpetuated by his courtiers (chief among them the head of the Congregation of Bishops) that McCarrick wasn't even actually suspended for abuse, something he knew was a lie.

The revelation of McCarrick's abuse was always going to be a scandal.  Yet they could have pointed to McCarrick's suspension from ministry, his forced exile from public life, and the Pope's desire to continue to enforce those decrees, except for the fact Pope Francis himself intervened to end that.  Nobody believes McCarrick would travel around the world after all those years of exile without Rome's knowledge, blessing, and invitation.  It is almost certain that the report released this week will avoid answering the hard questions about the Pope's knowledge complicity in this whole affair.  To the extent he is forced to accept blame, he will no doubt deflect it upon others as much as possible, as any leader would do in a crisis.  Yet this report is again being released because Francis has no choice.  It would have to be released eventually, and dioceses in America are rapidly going bankrupt.  Withholding accountability on McCarrick, even a half-hearted accountability, is not sustainable for the long run.

All of this points to the isolation the Pope currently finds himself in.  He is isolated on potential moves he can make.  He has been attempting to manage each of these crises the past several years, and has failed to manage all three.  Leadership that would have been welcomed at first is now almost certainly viewed as desperation.  The allies he has have also been substantially reduced.  Due to the fact he is still Pope, he will not have many open critics in the clergy.  Yet he has fewer and fewer defenders, and that list shrinks by the day.

I write this not with a sense of glee, but of sadness, and a bit of sympathy for the Pope.  I firmly believe that, in healthier times, he would certainly not be a great pope, but he would not be a terrible one either.  Yet we do not live in healthier times.  We also have a pandemic raging through the Church, one in which he has managed quite well so far, all things expected.  Its going to be increasingly hard to effectively stand up for the pastoral care of souls during this pandemic, a cause Francis has made dear to his heart.  It will be difficult mostly because he himself has made it difficult.

This is why prayer for the Holy Father is necessary, even more so this coming week.  His role in his own ensnarement is true enough, but we can all think of a time where we caused a bad situation to rapidly deteriorate, and the weight it put on us.  Now multiply that weight by the spiritual care of a billion souls.  Maybe now, at this late hour, the Pope will make the turn he should have made at the beginning:  to the Lord in prayer, that He give him the courage to carry out, even at this late hour, what is necessary.