Broken Vows, Clerical and Lay

Ego Non Te Absolvo…

It is Saturday afternoon in the average Parish Church in America.  The Priest, perhaps after doing a wedding or a Quinceañera, goes to his Confessional before his Vigil Mass.  Hopefully many penitents come and go, having experienced the consolation of having their sins forgiven, and being reconciled to God.

One man enters, and when the Priest hears his knees hit the prie-dieu, the penitent exhales furtively.  He makes his confession with obvious distress.  “Father, I slept with a woman who was not my wife. I have done this not just once, but multiple times.  I am sorry for these and all my sins.”

The Priest excoriates him. “How could you do that?  What is wrong with you? Don’t you know that’s adultery?  That is disgusting!  You are disgusting! You should be castrated.  You should be debarred from the presence of women for the rest of your life.  You are a dangerous person, odious to God and man.  You are not even worthy to see your children.  Get out, and don’t come back until you tell your wife in full detail all your adulteries.”

The penitent leaves, and probably does one of two things.  He either is quietly driven to despair on account of his sinfulness, and continues his path to destruction, or he does what every parish Priest fears worse than death itself: he calls the chancery.  The chancery number appears on the caller ID, causing a cardiac infarction as the Priest sees it.  The Priest is stripped of his faculties to hear Confessions, and perhaps forcibly sent to a clinic for psychological evaluation.  For the rest of his days, this event will remain in his file in the local diocese, forever staining his reputation.

Copious mercy

Obviously this story is (I hope) fictitious.  I doubt any sane and loving Priest would ever do anything like that to a penitent who expresses sorrow for his or her sins.  But let’s consider the next circumstance:

“Bless me Father, for I have sinned.  I am a Priest.  I confess an affair with a married woman, which I have kept up for some time.  I have broken off the relationship and I am deeply sorry for what I have done.  I ask penance and absolution from you, Father.”

Let’s make this thought experiment even more suggestive.  Let’s say the married layman in the first story confessed having a homosexual affair.  Let’s say that the Priest in the second story confessed also having a homosexual affair.  What would a Priest Confessor be urged to do in each case?

In the first case, the Priest would have been taught in the Seminary and by Christian morals that to the penitent sinner, God bestows mercy.  He therefore is to put no obstacle in the way to absolution, granted the penitent has confessed and shown repentance.  Very many Confessors, additionally, would not consider it morally obligatory for the man to reveal his sin to either his wife or any other soul.  He would impose a penance on the penitent, which the penitent would accept as satisfaction (at least in part) for his sin.  A new day dawns, and with it, the hope for renewal and reform.  Many Priests would even go so far as to suggest that an adulterer not ever reveal what he did to his wife, so that the relationship may be healed, and go on without incident.

Let us say, parenthetically, that this happens every day all over the world, and that the sins include not just adultery, but also: pornography, masturbation, homosexual acts, lustful thoughts, bestiality, and so on ad nauseam. The usual response to most of these is simply Ego te absolvo (I absolve you), without any further qualifications.  In no case is the penitent sinner urged to divorce, or to the abandonment of one’s familial role.  Perhaps a penitent may be urged to get professional help for a compulsive sexuality or other problem, but generally speaking, even that is done quietly and for the maximal benefit of the penitent’s spiritual, moral and mental health.  The baseline treatment for the penitent is mercy and rehabilitation, in the fullest sense of the words.

Copious justice

In the second case, that of the Priest penitent, is there anything materially different in regard to his status as a penitent?  Since he is repentant, is there any other appropriate action than for the Confessor to bestow absolution?  Is he to urge the Priest penitent to seek laicization because he has betrayed his Ordination promises?  Is the Priest supposed to reveal his sin to his parishioners?  Should he report himself to his Bishop?

I have received a lot of correspondence from lay people and from Priests in the past few days, and I have to say, I have to take note of the mental disconnect between lay people and their expectations for mercy for themselves and demands for justice for clergy. Oftentimes they expect something just short of a public execution for Priests who commit sexual sins.  I am speaking here merely of sins, not crimes, which are another matter.

In the midst of all the popular rage regarding clergy misconduct, an element of irrationality is also entering in.  On the one hand, there are those who assert that their Priests are en masse living immoral and lascivious lives.*  On the other hand, there are those who assert that those Priests who are living immoral lives should be removed from ministry and laicized.  Dare I ask such a person, if most Priests are immoral and most immoral Priests should be returned to the lay state, who will run the parishes?  Who will absolve?  Who will anoint the dying?  Who will celebrate Mass?

Biblical and Historical Precedents, by Saints and Scholars

King David in his own lifetime dared not lay a finger upon the anointed of the Lord, King Saul, out of reverence for God’s election.  He knew to do so would be a gross impiety which would invite divine retribution.  That is not to say Saul was immune from censure, which he certainly was not.  Yet King David had the virtue of piety and of faith, and these taught him that justice and mercy above all are in the hands of God.  In the same vein, even though Christ called the Pharisees a “brood of vipers” among other titles, he also acknowledged their own religious legitimacy, that they sat in “the seat of Moses”, and commanded that people “Do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do…” (Matthew 23:3)  So even Christ, being God, when he severely censured the Pharisees, nevertheless admitted that they had legitimate authority.  Although one may mention examples such as the Prophet Eli as evidence that God invites retribution upon fallen ministers, we must note that in these instances, these are instances of direct divine intervention.  Of course, God is free to do as he wishes.

The Traditional Catholic blogosphere the past few years eagerly welcomed the semi-recent translation into English of the 11th century work Liber Gomorrhianus (The Book of Gomorrah) by the great St. Peter Damian**.  In this book, the Saint decries the vices of the clergy of his day, principally simony and homosexual acts. This book created a great deal of controversy in his day.  Although his words helped to precipitate in part the moral impetus for the future Gregorian reform, Pope Leo IX, the Pope at the time of the book’s publishing, believed that the Book was largely exaggerated, and did not advocate some of the punitive remedies suggested by St. Peter Damian.  This is particularly telling granted the Pope’s zeal on other issues.  For instance, he decreed at his synod in April 1049 that Priests who were known to keep concubines were not only not supposed to celebrate the Sacraments, but the faithful who knew this were to refrain receiving the Sacraments from them.  Later Popes had to rescind the latter part of his reform, since it implied the heresy of Donatism.  Moreover, Leo IX in his personal response to St. Peter Damian considered a complete laicization of the Catholic clergy guilty of sexual immorality to be unproductive.  His famous response: Nos humanius agentes, “Let us act even more humanly”, that is, in response to the ‘inhumanity’ of sexual acts contra naturam, and thus, according to Catholic morality, beneath humanity as a rational creature.  Even more tellingly, Leo IX explicitly would not depose a cleric simply for being guilty of sexual sin, concluding: “And if anyone should dare to criticize or carp at this decree of ours, let him know that he is in danger of his orders.”*** That is to say, if anyone disagreed with this “middle course”, that he was in danger of losing the clerical state himself.  Although some people may rightly celebrate St. Peter Damian’s zeal in his desire to reform clerical morals, his position has largely considered to be extreme, his sanctity and learning notwithstanding.  Leo IX believed that the repentance of the sinner was clearly the most desirable course of action, unless the cleric proved contumacious in his sinful practices.

Historically speaking, the Church has often oscillated between the need to reform the morals of her members, and also the reality that human frailty is a constant phenomenon, and thus requires the medicine of mercy.  Most Priests who have frequent contact with penitents are precisely in a good place to point out this necessary discrepancy, upon which all people rely, Priests and lay faithful alike.

I do not claim to have a hard and fast rule to solve the tension between the demands of justice and the human need for mercy, but I would like to say one thing in support of fallen Priest brothers.  These men are ontologically conformed to Christ, the High Priest.  They bear in their very depths the Sacramental Character of Holy Order.  I can understand perhaps barring them from ministry, or removing their faculties, but I do not understand the avalanche of calls by lay people that they be made to return to the lay state.  If they have sinned as Priests, should they not also have the opportunity to return to Christ precisely as Priests?  Returning to the stories at the beginning of this post, is not the Priesthood more essential (literally) to the Priest, than marriage is to a married person?  Furthermore, when we consider how Christ himself treated not only his first Priests, but his first Pope who apostasized, St. Peter, how can we be lacking in compassion for Priests who commit less serious offenses?  If we generally absolve the lay adulterer who repents, having violated his vows, can we not bestow like mercy to Priests, especially if they are not obstinate or recidivist?

We all, Priests and lay faithful alike, rightfully should expect and seek holiness in our lives.  Priests especially ought to possess a preeminent degree of holiness, as befits their sacramental identity.  However, all of us should be very careful when we crave “complete justice” in regard to the fallen: because one day, we will stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ, and even though others’ sins are not our own, we have been reminded: “The measure you give will be the measure you get.” (Matthew 7:2, RSV)

Finally, as only poetry and art can do, I wish to repeat the impassioned plea of the heroine Portia in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice (Act 4, Scene 1):

“But mercy is above this sceptred sway;

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,

It is an attribute of God himself…

Though justice be thy plea, consider this,

That, in the course of justice, none of us

Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

The deeds of mercy.”

So while we seek justice in the world and in the Church, we must also seek and render mercy in the same.

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*Of course, quod gratis asseritur gratis negatur.  What one asserts without proof, may be dismissed without need for proof.  There is no evidence for a massive breakdown in clerical sexual mores.

**It is ironic to note that St. Peter Damian himself was the beneficiary of clerical concubinage, in that his mother refused to nurse him because she could not afford another child, and so he was nursed by the concubine of the local Priest.

***McNeil, John J. The Church and the Homosexual. 4th ed. Boston: Beacon Books Press, 1993. 82. Author’s Note: I do not endorse this author’s conclusions on the morality of homosexual acts, merely his observation on the historical situation here discussed, which is repeated elsewhere.

Full text of Leo IX’s comment to St. Peter Damian: Sed nos humanius agentes, eos, qui vel propriis manibus, vel invicem inter se egerunt semen, vel etiam qui inter femora profunderunt, et non longo usu, nec eum pluribus, si voluptatem refraenaverint, et digna poenitudine probrosa comissa luerint, admitti ad eosdem gradus, in quibus, – fuerant – volumus atque etiam jubemus.  

Translated, “and we, acting even more humanely, will and also command that those be admitted to the same grades [of orders], who whether with their own hands, or with each other emit semen, or also procure it between their thighs, provided it is not a practice of long use, nor with many people, if they have refrained from [this] pleasure, and have cleansed themselves by worthy penance from these shameful acts having been committed.”