Moral Paradigm Shift

When I was an undergraduate studying theology, I recall my moral theology lecturer (a relatively youthful religious sister, whom someone at her Roman alma mater had nicknamed Barbie) telling the class that one could extract no useful list of moral injunctions from either the Old or the New Testaments. At the time it seemed best not to challenge this extraordinary statement with some fairly obvious counter-examples... Similarly, my lecturer on the Epistle to the Romans, a well-known Melbourne Jesuit, bent over backwards (if you will excuse the pun) to explain away the apparently damning references St Paul makes in the first chapter thereof to unnatural practices as grave sins. In both cases – and these were classes at nominally Christian institutions – the modern secular Zeitgeist had entirely overcome traditional morality no less than the repeated assertions of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church down to the present day.

A priest friend was talking with me about hearing the confessions of young people, and relayed to me the case of a fellow priest, who, upon being told by his penitent that she had last been to confession ten years ago, and yet had no sins to confess, exclaimed that surely she was a saint – though the intended satire no doubt passed over her head. I have been struck more and more by the modern lack of any sense of sin, let alone of any angst about or craving for redemption, for a Saviour. It is as if whatever one does, it is of little consequence – even in the case of those brought up as what passes for Catholic these days, so inculcated is the hazy notion of a God ever-loving, never ever condemning, that the assumption is made that sin doesn't really exist, let alone matter, or perhaps require some contrition.

In the wide world around us, New Zealand now takes her place as the thirteenth nation to legalize a logical absurdity. And these days, in which legal positivism has triumphed, whatever is legal is perceived as ipso facto right and good and moral and just, and if some desideratum is not yet legal, then all effort will be expended soon enough to have our elected representatives declare it so: whereas the sinister pronouncements of those dreadful fun-killing Christians, let alone the vile monsters of the Church of Rome, are per se to be distrusted, dismissed, loathed, mocked and rejected.

Are we not now living in the aftermath of a paradigm shift along the lines of Nietzsche's seconding of Satan's cry "Evil, be thou my good"? I fear we are; and that the Christian message is not merely repellent to, nor unpersuasive for, but completely unimportant to many postmodern persons, whatsoever their psycho-sexual identity. They have no interest in any pretended God or world beyond this one and its idols. I fear that the compliment is being returned by Providence in the way of ineluctable demographic decline: "I looked for the wicked and he was not there". By living in a way manifestly opposed to rational nature, human kind dies out in the decadent West.

The Christians who lived at the time of the fall of Rome thought it a sign of the end of the world: it indeed marked an end of a world, but Christianity grew and flourished apace in the new world that succeeded it. In the West (whose Patriarch is the Bishop of Rome, whatever his immediate forerunner may have said about it), Christianity is dying in the midst of a dying civilization, the dregs of which are reverting to pagan ways, as a dog returns to its vomit – or rather, worse still, the former demonic lord of this world returns to again reside in his residence of old, with seven yet more terrible devils. O tempora, O mores.

The Royal Commission

A paragraph in today's Australian newspaper to my mind hit the nail on the head:

Giving evidence to the Victorian inquiry, Chamley said church abuse took place in a state of anarchy. "There is no compliance with the nation's laws, or their own canon laws, their own moral laws by these offenders," he says. "And others in the organisation don't force any compliance. That's anarchy."

Does not this phrase "a state of anarchy" exactly describe the sad state of affairs in the Catholic Church ever since all hell broke loose just after the convoking of the Second Vatican Council, when even the then Pope lamented that "the smoke of Satan has entered the Church"? Within a few years, there was outright rebellion against Church doctrine and discipline amongst both the clergy and laity: and the sixties and seventies being what they were, with sexual boundaries well and truly breached, it is sadly unsurprising that even the most vile crimes against children were both committed with impunity and, what is worse, not dealt with in the ways that both State and Church law separately prescribe.

There was a taboo against believing dark tales of pedophilia, certainly: but there was a very clear duty to report, to investigate, to convict and punish cases of such crimes. Instead, too often powers both secular and ecclesiastical preferred to look the other way, to deny such horrors could exist, and quietly to move suspected offenders into new hunting grounds, pretending that any problems would thereby evaporate, rather than multiply.  There was much ignorance of the problem of pedophilia, let alone of its rapacious, insatiable drive; and the psychological advice proferred at the time tended if anything to downplay its seriousness.  Too often, the naively trusting were simply unable to accept that persons in holy orders could ever do something so terrible.

Catholics in the know are quite familiar with the usual protestation of Church authorities when faced with complaints, whether about preaching, or the conduct of the liturgy, or the vilest crimes against the innocent: "Nothing is wrong, everything is fine," too many say, even now, about all these matters and more.  Would that the matters about which the faithful complain without being heeded were minor!

There is the strange refusal to actually believe in and try to enforce "moral laws" – hence, to say nothing of molestation, the decline in Mass attendance, and the vast increase in cohabitation and contraception, are matters not even worried over, despite the fact that by the standard of official Catholic moral beliefs, all these matters are serious mortal sins that drag souls down to Hell.

There is the like refusal to enforce canon law – to say nothing of the penalties contained in the Code of Canon Law that ought be enforced against priests who break most grievously the Sixth Commandment, the penalties provided for many offences against the canons (for instance, the withholding Holy Communion from notorious public sinners, such as politicians who vote to legalize abortion and speak in favour of abortion, despite claiming to be Catholics in good standing) are not enforced.

And as for secular law, surely anyone alerted to any person, let alone a priest, who might be committing serious crimes, whether sexual or otherwise, ought advise the relevant law enforcement agencies immediately – that's just common sense.  How can too many have mouthed platitudes and yet done nothing while the young were most cruelly raped?  Their pretense of religion is vain, their sin is manifest, their hypocrisy beneath contempt, their fate hellfire if they do not repent in dust and ashes: one fears that they but play at belief in Christ, else they would not so casually spit in His face.  "Inasmuch as ye have done unto the least of My brethren, ye have done so unto Me," says the Son of God.

Yes, truly "others in the organisation don't force any compliance. That's anarchy." Many a wit has observed that no one has obeyed authority in the Church since 1968: and worse still, no one has attempted to enforce authority for as long. Rather than do what might seem harsh, bishops have sat on their hands.  Paul VI notoriously acted as a very Hamlet rather than seriously attempt to reimpose stronger control on the Church in his day.  Did they fear the spectre of schism? Instead of a schism, they have engendered squalor, the filth of moral turpitude and outrageous crime.

On paper, the law of the land is clear, and always has been. On paper, canon law is likewise clear, and should likewise have been implemented. On paper, the moral teachings of the Church – not those of the parallel magisterium – are just as unchanging.  Recall, however, a sad corollary to Neuhaus' Law: A doctrine not preached (or a discipline not enforced) is not believed.

A priest who commits such vile crimes, even once, let alone over and again, upon being found out, should be tried and then subjected to every penalty of canon law, just as his crimes against the secular law should be tried and then punished by imprisonment. A priest (or anyone else) who comes to repent of such sins should, when confessing such, be most earnestly counselled to go and turn himself in (a priest whom I know and respect explained that this is what a confessor would be expected to do if he heard such a confession).

Any priest who, upon hearing such a confession, merely prescribed some light penance without requiring the penitent to turn himself in, has – I would argue strongly – himself abused the Sacrament, outraging Christ the Judge (Whose representative he is) by giving so wrongly lenient a verdict.  In any case, I rather suspect that pedo priests rarely darkened the door of the confessional – just as with the vast number of laity who haven't been to confession since 1968.  Those hardened in sin rarely repent.

Anarchy in the Church is also a result of – mock not – the radically decentralized structure of the Church. It amuses me greatly that so many seem to think Cardinal Pell ought resign, as if he has any control at all over all the dioceses of Australia, or as if he has any responsibility for matters in Sydney prior to his translation thereto in 2001, or in Melbourne before and after his tenure there (1996-2001).  Is the repetition of his name simply because his is the only bishop's name that most people know?

No bishop has any authority outside his own diocese; titles such as Archbishop or Cardinal, let alone President of the Bishops' Conference, are merely honorary.  What does one bishop know of the priests in another diocese? Only what he may be told by another diocese regarding a priest of that diocese if he be moved from that diocese into the diocese of the bishop in question. What does a bishop know of the priests of any religious order or congregation? Only what that body, a true imperio in imperium, may tell him.

And priests in their parishes are, in truth, quite independent of outside authority: there being a shortage of priests, they are rarely severely dealt with, since bishops have so few with which to man their churches. Very grave financial irregularities are one of the few reasons priests are suddenly removed from office; until recently, it is alleged, even sexual scandals were not acted on until matters were near to public exposure; as for any doctrinal or liturgical irregularities, they are tolerated always and everywhere, unless the Vatican itself becomes involved (as with the invalid baptisms conducted for decades in South Brisbane, or the nonsense foolishly declared publicly by the late bishop of Toowoomba, a man who in the Pope's own view lacked the theological acumen to be a bishop).

Until the state of law, that is, the state of justice and equity, is restored within the Church, by obedience to Divine law, ecclesiastical law and secular law, there is no hope for real change.  Too often sentiment, and much indulgent prating about "love" and "mercy" while practising neither, or worse, favouring the abuser over the victim, have been the poor substitutes for the tranquillity of order that has been sadly lacking for decades.

Should not priests be most angered and righteously indignant against those wolves in sheep's clothing, their errant fellow clerics? I would have more respect for bishops and priests if they called for the harshest penalties, and sought manfully to have them enforced, against predators, Judases, in their ranks. The silence of the many can appear to betoken consent in the eyes of the cynical world.

In respect of the most terrible crimes of clerical sexual abuse against children, the chickens have come home to roost: the Church's reputation is in tatters, priests are looked upon as potential molesters, and the body that Christ established to continue His saving work on earth is seen by too many as a vile nest of vipers spewing forth poison, a corrupting influence from which the young must be protected.

So great is the moral panic at the moment, that even the inviolability of confession is being attacked – rather naively, it must be said, since so few go to confess these days in any case, and the sort of priest who goes to confession regularly is hardly likely to be a child abuser, just as murderers and thieves can scarcely be expected to be habitués of the confessional!  As I once heard said, the worse the sin, the less likely it is to be confessed, and vice versa.

In any case, even if – which God avert – it were mandated that priests report all they hear in confession about sex crimes against children, how on earth would such be enforced? It is obviously ridiculous to attempt to impose such a law, given, for example, the words of the Bishop of Darwin to-day, that he would rather die than reveal the secrets of the confessional, and the words to me of a wise priest, who said that this issue perhaps alone unites all priests, left and right, liberal and conservative, in that to a man they would rather go to prison than break the seal.

Even if, as another put it, thousands of priests were imprisoned for refusing to break the seal, still it would effect nothing, the discipline of the Universal Church would never change. How could anyone be convicted of not divulging matters heard in confession anyway, since there would be no way to prove that they were hiding anything anyway (since, one suspects, ASIO wouldn't be up to the job of bugging every confessional).

Pray that the Royal Commission being established here in Australia to inquire into child abuse will truly uncover the truth, be it ever so uncomfortable: for great is the truth, and it shall prevail.

Laud's prayer for the Church is apposite:

GRACIOUS Father, we humbly beseech Thee to bless Thy holy Catholic Church, and fill it with truth and grace. Where it is corrupt, purge it; where it is in error, direct it; where anything is amiss, reform it; where it is right, strengthen and confirm it; where it is wanting, furnish it; where it is divided and rent asunder, heal the breaches thereof, O Thou Holy One of Israel, for Jesus Christ’s sake, who with Thee and the Holy Ghost now liveth and reigneth, world without end.  Amen.