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Who Will Watch the Watchdogs?
By John Horvat II
When the sexual abuse scandals broke upon
the American scene early last year, many reacted with shock
and dismay.
The horrific discoveries of scandals and
cover-ups were inconceivable. Even now, the crisis is clearly
not over.
Spreading from Boston, wildfires are raging
in New York, New Jersey, Arizona, and California. Statutes
are lifting statutes of limitations, unearthing ancient
cases and provoking yet more court cases. The ensuing public
debate is both painful and shocking. The laity feels both
betrayal and anger.
Looking for accountability
Many now look beyond the pain and
want to find solutions to the crisis. They welcome the fact
that once exposed, some abuser-priests are finally out of
the ministry. Those who abuse their office now face embarrassing
scrutiny and even removal.
The spotlight on the crisis forces even
the most complacent Catholics to awaken to the fact that
there are serious problems in the Church that need to be
urgently resolved.
Solutions are proposed on all sides. Amid
the cries for action, there are those who call for “openness,”
“transparency,” “accountability,”
and “lay involvement.”
There are demands for review boards, structural
changes, and watchdog committees to put mechanisms in place
to avoid yet more scandals and limit the power of those
in authority.
Choosing a response
The question is not whether but how
to respond to the present crisis.
Precisely this problem prompted the American
Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property
(TFP) to write I Have Weathered Other Storms: A Response
to the Scandals and Democratic Reforms that Threaten the
Catholic Church.
The 180-page work is not only a hard-hitting
analysis of the scandals but a reply to the knee-jerk reactions
and false solutions now appearing on the horizon.
It questions the agendas of self-appointed
watchdog groups and individuals who claim to speak in the
name of the faithful. It casts doubts on the mandate of
those who would implement reforms that run contrary to the
Divinely-established governing structures inside the Church.
Amid a climate of intense emotion, the
TFP book asks: Who is watching the new watchdogs? Who is
monitoring the self-styled new guardians of the Faith?
Changing the system
Many who cry out for change focus
only on structures and not abuses. In fact, a consistent
refrain surrounding the current sexual abuse scandals is
that of systemic change.
While expressing real sympathy for abuse
victims, many take advantage of the issue to call into question
fundamental teachings, morals, and governing structures
held by the Church over the ages.
The faithful who want to rid the Church
of the sexual abuse problem are now being told they must
“change the Church.”
Framing the debate
The result is a sexual abuse debate
framed by a Catholic left intent on implementing an agenda.
They are forthright in how they view the crisis: the problem
is Church authority. The voice of the laity must be heard
and the structures of power must be overthrown. The Church
must be “declericalized.”
That is the message, for example of the
group Call to Action (CTA). With all the ardor of a sixties
protester, theologian James Carroll recently energized CTA
faithful by demanding that clerical leaders “dismantle
an autocratic structure that enabled priestly child abuse.”
He called “the clerical caste a vestige of the medieval
court,” that should be eliminated. “The structures
of oppression” must be dismantled once and for all.1
Targeting authority
A similar message is echoed by Voice
of the Faithful (VOTF), a so-called mainstream Catholic
lay group formed in Boston amid the scandals. Founder Dr.
James Muller, who avowedly works for democratic structural
change, says: “Pedophilia is only a symptom of a disease.
The disease is absolute power.”2
At the VOTF convention in July 2002, speaker
Fr. Thomas Doyle proclaimed that the sexual abuse scandals
were the symptom of a much more pervasive malady: clericalism.
To much applause, the cleric decried the notion that the
clergy have a special mission to sanctify the laity and
thus deserve privileges.3
Radical feminist nun Sr. Joan Chittister
praised VOTF, claiming that targeting authority and aspiring
“to give lay people a ‘voice’ in the ongoing
development and direction of the church stands for the biggest
issue of them all: It stands for declericalization. And
declericalization is the foundation for the renewal of the
church.”4
Following new prophets
From amid the scandals, the bewildered
faithful are also asked to listen to the voices of new “prophets.”
Susan Troy, national chair of VOTF’s
Prayerful Voice, made the incredible affirmation that Boston’s
new bishop must see the victim survivors as “the new
prophets and martyrs of our Faith.”5 She fails to
mention that many outspoken victims are avowedly homosexual
and thus disagree with Church teachings on the matter. Others
admit to being agnostics. Yet these individuals are equated
to the Catholic martyrs and prophets of the Faith!
The TFP book points out that such use of
these victims is but a mere application of tenets of liberation
theology. According to this misguided ideology, the victim
does not participate in the vices of the oppressive clerical
system, so he is thus qualified to be the “redeemer.”
When he “liberates himself, he liberates his oppressors
by destroying the structures of oppression, the Church’s
hierarchical structure.”6
All must be questioned
A.W. Richard Sipe, a former Benedictine
monk-commentator, goes one step further by claiming that
the sexual abuse scandals set the stage for a new reformation.
The situation represents a structural problem of the Church
which is so destabilizing “because it goes to the
fundamentals of the doctrine.”
Presuming to interpret the desires of the
faithful, Mr. Sipe claims the “laity wants all these
questions re-examined and rediscussed—from contraception,
homosexuality, masturbation, sex before marriage to sex
after divorce, even abortion.”7
Revolution, not reform
The sexual abuse scandals have introduced
new watchdogs and “prophets” who arrogate to
themselves the task of interpreting the voice of the Holy
Spirit and changing Church structures. No one may question
their competence.
As if conceived without Original Sin, these
new voices seek to set themselves up to redesign Church
administration. The empowered laity now sit on review boards
to oversee Church governance. Members need not be Catholic
or even against abortion. Leon Panetta, for example, is
a pro-abortion member of the National Review Board.
Thrice victims
The TFP book points out that the crisis
requires neither structural nor systemic change. The scandals
were born from a crisis of the Faith and a consequent moral
crisis. They are the sad products of the self-destruction
of the Church mentioned by Paul VI.
True victims are worthy of compassion,
but they are not victims of a system, as claimed by the
new watchdogs.
Indeed, they were victims of priests who
betrayed their vocations, not victims of the priesthood
itself. They were victims of bishops who abused their office,
not victims of the office of bishop itself.
Many now are the unwitting victims of a
movement that is using their sad plight to effect change
in the Church.
The Church cannot change
Throughout the Church’s history
movements have arisen that questioned Her governing structures.
The Church has always responded by affirming Her unchangeable
authority.
“Not even the Pope has any right
to change or alter what Christ, the Son of God, has incorporated
as a necessary part of His Church,” writes Dr. George
Agius about Church authority. “It exists by Divine
charter. The form of government He gave it is its life.
It is a fruit of the Redemption. To introduce another form
is to change the Church itself.”8
What most Catholics want is not structural
change. Rather they long for bishops who will assume their
role as strong and caring pastors and for priests who will
strive to be true and holy priests.
Filial protest
Pressure groups, intent on changing
the Church, disparage the present laity as being dispossessed,
voiceless, and spineless followers. They insult lay Catholics
by saying they follow an “ask-no-questions”
tradition where they must “pay, pray, and obey.”
The TFP book points out that the history
of the laity is one of dynamic and fruitful apostolate.
The Church has always respected and fostered true freedom.
Nothing truly good is off-limits to the laity provided the
nature of the Church and Her sacramental character and powers
of jurisdiction are respected.
In face of the scandals, the faithful laity must not only
respectfully denounce evils but work to revitalize the Church.
They must also watch the new watchdogs,
lest the flock be waylaid by wolves in sheep’s clothing.
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