Why a New Wave of Sexual Abuse Revelations Has Deepened Preexisting Divisions.
The Catholic Church is facing its most serious crisis in 500 years. In these last few months, a new wave of clerical sexual abuse revelations left the world in shock. From Australia to Chile to Germany to the United States, horrifying reports revealed thousands of cases of child molestation by members of the clergy. One U.S. grand jury report documented 1,000 children abused by 300 priests in the state of Pennsylvania alone over seven decades.
The new wave of revelations in 2018 was disturbing not only because it exposed the persistence of abuse but also because it implicated high level church officials in the abuse and its cover-up. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, resigned from the College of Cardinals in July when credible accusations came to light that he had sexually abused a minor and harassed seminarians he supervised. The McCarrick revelations were particularly troubling because the former archbishop had played a leadership role in the Catholic Church’s response to the last U.S. clerical sexual abuse scandal in 2002. In late August, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a former papal diplomat, published a letter accusing Pope Francis of knowing about McCarrick’s sexual abuses for years and helping to cover them up. Viganò concluded by calling on the pope to resign.
The Viganò letter, and the scandal itself, have sent shockwaves through a foundation that was already cracked. The church is bitterly divided between progressive and conservative wings. This split is particularly pronounced in the United States, where highly mobilized, neo-traditionalist Catholics took up Vigano’s call for Francis’ resignation. This branch of the church already feared that Francis presented a progressive threat to church teachings on marriage and sexuality. The letter seemed to vindicate such distrust by accusing the current papacy and its supporters in the church of complacency towards what Viganò called a “pro-gay ideology” and “homosexual networks” among the clergy. In Viganò’s opinion, this was the cause of the abuse crisis. Church progressives, meanwhile, have defended Francis against the allegations, but without the resolve of those who are demanding his resignation—in part because they too view his general record on the sexual abuse crisis as weak.
In desperate need of institutional reform and facing growing political, theological, and geopolitical rifts, the church has not experienced so great a crisis since the Protestant Reformation. Unlike that of the sixteenth century, the current situation probably won’t result in a schism or the establishment of new churches. But to understand the magnitude and complexity of what is now taking place, we have to look that far back, and to so significant a rupture.
A CHURCH DIVIDED
Like the Reformation, the current crisis unfolds against a backdrop of pervasive institutional corruption. Then and now, the institutional church, specifically the papacy, had pushed back against key reform proposals in the decades before the crisis broke.
In the early fifteenth century, following a period of schism, a series of councils convened to unify the Catholic Church. They proposed a system whereby a council of representatives of the local churches would provide a check on papal power and corruption. But the papacy was swift to declare this doctrine, known as conciliarism, incompatible with Catholicism. This reversal was one factor that made possible the corruption in church leadership that Martin Luther saw while visiting Rome in 1510. The popes of the Renaissance encouraged reform, but never reform that extended to the papacy.
In the years after the end of the Second Vatican Council in 1962-1965, the papacy once again pushed back against reforms. Vatican II had an enormous impact on the culture and theology of the church, including changing the language of the mass from Latin to the vernacular and including laypeople and young people more in the life of the church. Yet it had very little success in reforming the institutional structure of the church and papacy. Although the proposals coming from the bishops at Vatican II for radical changes in the Roman Curia (the central government of the church) were carefully listened to by Paul VI (himself a creature of the Roman Curia), he ultimately decided to withdraw the agenda from Vatican II.
The sex abuse crisis today stems in large part from 50 years of a papal office rejecting any proposal for decentralizing or modernizing a Roman Curia whose structure has changed little since its foundation in 1588, in the period immediately following the Council of Trent. It remains a career system without real accountability, not only when it comes to the abuse crisis, but also in terms of the governance and pastoral leadership of local churches entrusted to bishops. The Curia is also seriously underfunded and understaffed for the duties it is supposed to carry out, including the selection, vetting, appointment, and supervision of an episcopate that today consists of more than 5,000 Catholic bishops around the world.
Through measures such as the decentralization of the marriage annulment process and a new set of procedures for Bishops’ Synods—all part of this pontificate’s push towards a more “synodal,” less clerical and Rome-dependent church—Pope Francis has visibly tried to change course and allow for more decentralization of the church: it remains to be seen if it is too late. So far, the world episcopate has been unwilling to take up the pope’s offer. The most visible change has been Francis’ decision to create more cardinals (compared to the past) from the so-called global South. But this is not a change that can or will affect the central government of the church in Rome in the short term.
Given these divides, is a new rupture on the horizon for the Vatican? A formal schism in the Catholic Church is, although not impossible, unlikely in the short term. The potential members of a schismatic Catholic sect are located in areas of the world such as the United States, where the church has significant financial resources and assets, plus a wide array of independent Catholic institutions that operate largely outside the hierarchy of the church. A schism would set off a cascade of contentious claims as to who owns what—and who owes what, as the church pays damages to victims of sexual abuse.
A more likely possibility is that the Roman Catholic Church ends up with a structure similar to the Eastern Orthodox Churches. Some individual Orthodox churches have very strong national identities. Nationalism often influences the theology of these churches and the system of global allegiances between them and the Patriarch of Constantinople, who is “first among equals” and center of Orthodox unity. This could be a long-term solution for an overstretched papacy, especially one headed by a Latin American pope with a tenuous grip on the Catholic churches that built the world of Christendom in Europe and North America. The Vatican cannot and should not abandon the globalization of Catholicism, but the process could come at a steep cost to its internal unity.
For now, what’s most likely to happen is a deepening of the church’s preexisting, unofficial divide. Catholics will remain formally obedient to one pope and one episcopal hierarchy. At the same time, neo-traditionalist Catholic groups—with their own parishes and seminaries—will continue on a different course from the rest of the church. Theirs will be a “long march”: an attempt to return Roman Catholicism and Catholic theology to a model that predates Vatican II, and even predates the twentieth century. It would be a great irony of church history if, once the Vatican heals the wound in China, a new and deeper wound opens up in the West.
This article was published by Foreign Affairs on the 11th of October 2018.
MASSIMO FAGGIOLI is a Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University and the author of Catholicism and Citizenship: Political Cultures of the Church in the Twenty-First Century.
Massimo Faggioli is professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University.
Comments
4 responses to “MASSIMO FAGGIOLI. The Catholic Church’s Biggest Crisis Since the Reformation.”
Leah Dobrejcer, I looked at your suggested website and was amazed by the many photos of Catholic bishops doing the Nazi salute. It is a shock to discover that many popes in the history of the Church were not holy men, however they were great administrators of a Catholic culture that is at odds with the teachings of Christ in Scriptures. Jesus never taught that salvation was a commodity that could be packaged and negotiated at the whim of Church governors.
The potential schism mentioned is no longer potential. It has happened. The fact is that the significant percentage which has abandoned the catholic church has no single identity or representative institution. Rather is the result of individual conscience decisions and despair that the institution has abandoned Jesus. Unfortunately many such people who could have helped reform are no longer there to assist. The terrified conservatism of those who remain means the status quo is as safe as ever. Unsurprisingly they continue to focus on sex as the last bastion which obscures matters of justice, fairness, equality, inclusion, spirituality and the abuse of power. Unfortunately they know precious little of theology, history or non-fundamentalist scripture.
Michael, I would suggest you reconsider your final observation when you suggest neo conservative catholics “know precious little of theology, history or non-fundamentalist scripture.”
The bald fact is the neo conservatives have always had some very able theologians serving their cause. And, perhaps more startlingly, some of their most effective exponents were once well known progressive theologians who changed camps – for example : Joseph Ratzinger and Avery Dulles.
It could be argued that the paucity of theological acumen is now a pronounced problem for progressive catholics. The theologians who were integral to the achievments mirrored in Vatican II documents have gone to their reward. Hans Kung and Charles Curran survive with their integrity intact – but so many of their contemporaries sold out – opting for tenure and advancement during the era of John Paul II and the panzer cardinal.
Meanwhile I would suggest that everyone read The Criminal History of the Papacy by Tony Bushby, and do a search on the topics the vatican and world politics, and catholic war crimes in Croatia.
Also http://www.nobeliefs.com/nazis.htm