Quick break today from the “gay Mass” scandal at St. Cecilia in Boston for this excellent column by George Weigel about the appointment of Archbishop Charles Chaput as the new Archbishop of Philadelphia.
I was hoping we might have gotten Archbishop Chaput for Boston, to deal with the problem of “Catholic Lite” that Bryan Hehir and Cardinal Sean O’Malley have promulgated here in the past 7 years and continue promulgating. The scandal at St. Cecilia is a good example of that. Weigel refers to Boston’s problem with “Catholic Lite” near the end of his column. Let’s hope Chaput is in line for a red hat in the future!
Rise of the Evangelical Catholic Bishops
Gospel without compromise, joyfully lived, replaces Catholic Lite.
When Pope Benedict XVI appointed the archbishop of Denver, Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M.Cap., as the new archbishop of Philadelphia on July 19, the usual suspects were trotted out to say the usual things that the usual suspects say.
Thus David Clohessy of SNAP, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, continued his nine-year rant against the Catholic Church by pronouncing Chaput’s record on abuse (which virtually everyone else finds admirable) “dismal.” But then David Clohessy would likely have found St. John Chrysostom, St. Charles Borromeo, or Chaput’s 19th-century predecessor in Philadelphia, St. John Neumann, “dismal,” because if you’re the New York Times’s go-to guy for anti-Catholic-hierarchy sexual-abuse soundbites, that’s what you say. As for Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J., the former editor of America magazine made his own priorities rather clear in fretting to the Philadelphia Inquirer that Chaput would “be a real pain in the neck for the Democratic Party.” (Bob Casey the Less, you have been warned!)
Just about every story on the Chaput appointment identified the archbishop as a “conservative” (because he believes and teaches as true what the Catholic Church believes and teaches to be true); just about every story claimed that Chaput was a tough guy when it came to holding Catholic politicians accountable for their votes on abortion and the nature of marriage (while completely missing the fact that Chaput had consistently made genuinely public arguments, not uniquely Catholic theological claims, about the inalienable right to life and marriage rightly understood); and of course every story emphasized abuse, abuse, abuse (as if this were the only reality of Catholic life in America).
All of this is tiresome, if wholly predictable; both its tediousness and its predictability help explain why it’s the rare discerning reader who turns to the mainstream media for serious reportage about and analysis of the Catholic Church. In this case, however, the same-old-same-old also obscured what is truly important about the Chaput appointment — which is not the archbishop’s Potawatomi ancestry (interesting as that is) but his place as one of the most vigorous exponents of what might be called Evangelical Catholicism.
Archbishop Chaput put it best himself in an exclusive interview with Catholic News Agency: “The biggest challenge, not just in Philadelphia but everywhere, is to preach the Gospel. . . . We need to have confidence in the Gospel, we have to live it faithfully, and to live it without compromise and with great joy.”
That formulation — the Gospel without compromise, joyfully lived — captures the essence of the Evangelical Catholicism that is slowly but steadily replacing Counter-Reformation Catholicism in the United States. The usual suspects are living in an old Catholic paradigm: They’re stuck in the Counter-Reformation Church of institutional maintenance; they simply want an institution they can run with looser rules, closely aligned with the Democratic party on the political left — which is precisely why they’re of interest to their media megaphones. Archbishop Chaput, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, and other rising leaders of the Catholic Church in the United States are operating out of a very different paradigm — and in doing so, they’re the true heirs of both the Second Vatican Council and Pope John Paul II.
The Council put the Gospel and its proclamation at the center of Catholic life. John Paul II, in his apostolic letter published at the end of the Great Jubilee of 2000, challenged the entire Church to leave the stagnant shallows of institutional maintenance and put out into the deep waters of post-modernity, preaching Jesus Christ as the answer to the question that is every human life. In his 1991 encyclical Redemptoris Missio [The Mission of the Redeemer], John Paul insisted that the Church doesn’t have a mission, as if “mission” were one among a dozen things the Catholic Church does. No, John Paul taught, the Church is a mission, such that everything and everyone in the Church ought to be measured by what the management types would call mission-effectiveness.
The old warhorses of the post–Vatican II debates, on either end of the Catholic spectrum, don’t get this; they’re still mud-wrestling within the old paradigm. But Archbishop Charles Chaput gets it, big time. That, and the effective work of his predecessor, Cardinal James Francis Stafford, is what has made the archdiocese of Denver what is arguably the model Evangelical Catholic diocese in the country: a Church brimming with excitement over the adventure of the Gospel, a Church attracting some of the sharpest young Catholics in America to its services, a Church fully engaged in public life while making genuinely public arguments about the first principles of democracy.
This is the vision that Archbishop Chaput is bringing to Philadelphia, and it has virtually nothing to do with “agendas” as the usual suspects understand agendas. Of course that vision includes addressing serious problems of sexual abuse. The old clericalism that protected perpetrators in various dioceses created serious legal problems for the institutional Church; but it was also, and even more importantly from an evangelical point of view, a terrible impediment to preaching the Gospel and attracting people to friendship with Jesus Christ. It’s his palpable commitment to the latter — to the project of unapologetic evangelism — that will give Archbishop Chaput credibility in cleaning up what needs cleaning up and in healing what can be healed in Philadelphia.And this is something else the usual suspects miss. The usual suspects’ answer to clerical sexual abuse has been, is, and seems likely to remain the transformation of Catholicism into Catholic Lite. But in situation after situation — Phoenix and Denver being two prime examples — it’s been the Gospel without compromise, joyfully lived, that has turned abuse disaster areas into vibrant Catholic centers where public confidence in the Church’s credibility has been restored. Where Catholic Lite has been adopted as the solution to the problems Catholic Lite helped cause — as in Boston — the meltdown that began in 2002 continues.
With the appointment of Charles J. Chaput as archbishop of Philadelphia, the deep reform of the Catholic Church in the United States — the reform that is giving birth to Evangelical Catholicism even as it leaves the old post–Vatican II arguments fading into the rear-view mirror — has been accelerated.
— George Weigel is distinguished senior fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies. His weekly column, “The Catholic Difference,” is syndicated by the archdiocese of Denver.
There is no doubt the chair in Philadelphia is a ‘red hat’ chair and Abp. Chaput will wear one before long. Then the Holy Spirit can guide the College of Cardinals to elect the first American pope.
Hear! Hear! Turn loose the “dogs of war”.
I wish writers would be more vocal about the point that in most cases the Church did exactly what the psych community TOLD them to do. They did the exact same thing that the schools did and the other churches did. They sent them to therapy and put them back to work because at the time it was believed that pedophilia could be cured. They were horrendously wrong but that was common belief then.
Not just the psych community … how about saving some blame for the lawyers (who were once again looking out for best interests of their own wallets – as opposed to protecting their client’s best interests).
Who do you think came up with confidentiality agreements (gag clauses)? The lawyers. Then … ironically … more lawyers made more money representing the victims of … the other lawyers’ bad mistakes. What a system!
Did you ever wonder why it is that the confidential attorney client privilege may be waived when a client doesn’t pay his lawyer? Because lawyers have the entire system rigged. They write the rules and they write the exception to the rules.
Did you ever notice that lawyers who win a case are always the reason why … whereas lawyers who lose a case always have an excuse: There wasn’t enough evidence, the jury wasn’t smart enough, the judge made a mistake, the baliff snored too loudly, etc., etc., etc.
Thank you for printing George Weigel’s explanation as to why the parishioners of the Catholic Church who live in Philadelphia are graced to have Archbishop Charles Chaput be appointed as their spiritual leader. The comparison of the courage of Archbishop Chaput in his past work in Phoenix and Denver “to bring the Gospel without compromise,joyfully lived, that has turned abuse disaster areas into vibrant Catholic centers where public confidence in the Church’s credibility has been restored.” is compared by George Weigel to what is happening in the Boston Archdiocese ,” Where Catholic Lite has been adopted as the solution to the problems Catholic Lite helped cause”.
I only wish Archbishop Chaput and George Weigel could be invited to talk to some of the theologians at Boston College, such as Fr. James Keenan,S.J., Fr. David Hollenbach,S.J. and “Harry” John McDargh, all of whom support same-sex marriage claiming it is an unjust discrimination to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Through such a talk, they could demonstrate to Cardinal O’Malley how he,himself, can begin to clean up the mess these so-called “Catholic” theologians have created at a Catholic college. This false influence has given support and impetus to Fr. Unni and John Kelly as they promote the Rainbow Ministry.
The last time I heard George Weigel speak at Boston College was when he was invited to talk about Pope John Paul’s Theology of the Body. After he finished, Fr. David Hollenbach S.J.,who was in the audience, stood up and said that he didn’t believe a word of what Pope John Paul II had to say in The Theology of the Body. He didn’t give any reasons but rather he was just very angry in his protest. Since then, Fr. Hollenbach has been named the Director of the Center for Human Rights and International Justice at Boston College. His research interests are in Religious Ethics. He, Fr. Keenan and John McDargh are very influential in the Theology Department at Boston College.
I expect that Archbishop Chaput would act to remove their influence from a Catholic college especially since they should be teaching theology as it is supposed to be taught at a Catholic college but what they are teaching is fraudulent.
It’s tragic that our Catholic colleges and universities, which should have been such a wonderful instrument for the formation and equipping of the lay faithful for their role of “illuminat[ing] and order[ing] all temporal things with which they are closely associated that these may always be effected and grow according to Christ and may be to the glory of the Creator and Redeemer,” (CCC 898 quoting Lumen Gentium 31) have instead, in all too many instances, decided to distance themselves from the Magisterium and foster a culture of dissent and rebellion among the laity.
Here’s hoping that Cardinal-to-be Chaput invigorates the faith of the Church of Philadelphia.
George Weigel always beats the drum for Archbishop Dolan who is another proponent of “Catholic lite.” Weigel lived at the North American College when he wrote the book on Pope John Paul II and Dolan was the rector. I’m sure they shared a few too many cigars and beers together.
While Dolan was in Milwaukee, he did nothing to clean the diocese up after Archbishop Weakland. We still have the same people in place, except for those who have died or retired. He was more concerned about his popularity and getting to New York than doing the right thing.
Archbishop Dolan allowed one of his priests, Fr. Brian Massingale to write three articles in the diocesan paper against a state ammendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman. He was also permitted to lecture in the parishes. Now he teaches at Marquette.
Also, one of the priests, who attempted marriage to a woman, who was married and had three children, has been allowed to continue to work. This remains a great scandal to those who know of this situation.
I could go on and on, like the sad situation in Boston, but we have a long way to go and need better bishops appointed. Hopefully Archbishop Chaput is up to the task.