Their Voice Goes Out To All The World
(Editorial Note: Due to a publishing error, some of you especially who receive e-mail updates may have missed the latest article, Extortion, Lies, and Intimidation. Click to the link in the last sentence to read.)
Dear Readers:
While I am in the middle of preparing this week’s essay/article, I would like to extend a heartfelt word of appreciation to all of you who have been so supportive of this blog and especially of the most well received essay, The Ongoing Clerical Abuse Crisis. We have reached thousands of readers, including some in Rome. Please continue to share, for the sake of the message, which obviously has resonated with so many of you.
Although this blog was not made with the attention of writing exclusively on the subjects of Priesthood and the Church, those writings have been by far the most popular ones. Unfortunately, as many writers know, when one writes on a subject or group of subjects over a period of time, one does have a tendency to repeat oneself. So I want to provide a summary of some of my views and other essays going forward, not for the sake of self-promotion, but for clarity.
The first essay I wrote which made the ‘mainstream’ is my The Emergent Clerical #MeToo Movement. Written in the aftermath of the downfall of Cardinal McCarrick in July 2018, I sought to capture what I perceived to be the growing resentment among rank-and-file clergy of a sort of ‘two-tier’ system of justice and due process within the Church, which was, and is, creating a great amount of anger and resentment.
My next ‘big’ essay was mostly a cri de couer called The Voices of Misery, which sought to capture in a more synthetic way the state of the morale of the Catholic Clergy, especially those who feel persecuted or harassed by the Institutional Church. I was honored by the correspondence I received from Opus Bono Sacerdotii, which promoted the article among their clients.
The sad state of the Church at present, with the widespread neglect or abuse of theological and legal norms, prompted me to write The Church has a right to be herself, which forms part, along with the essay The Second Conciliarist Crisis, of a key belief of mine: that when the Church fails to govern herself, she will always find herself governed by hostile powers. Some commentators have said the Church is very much like she was at the time of the Reformation. I disagree: the Ecclesiastical Analog year is not 1517, but 1417. Especially after the sex abuse scandal and the problems in ecclesiastical governance, I find more parallels between state intrusion into our affairs much like at that time.
At the same time, I am not a person, like some politicians or humanitarians, who claim they love ‘humanity’ but hate individual people. I love the Priesthood as a theological reality, and individual Priests. It was because of this that I have tried to listen to their stories and experiences, and try to defend them. In the wake of the problems in the Church, I have found there is an unfortunate tendency among the lay faithful to turn on Priests who, to differing degrees, fall short of their sometimes over-idealized mental image of them. It is hard for Priests today to be surrounded by a disinterested (in the bad sense) hierarchy, a hostile world, and a certain contingent of lay faithful that thrives on scandal. In that vein I began to do interviews with Priests, such as Living Chastity amid Uncharity: An Interview with a Priest with SSA. I was tired of voices who simply wanted to lump all our problems as a Church into “it’s all homosexual Priests” or “it’s all clericalism” or “it’s all old liberals who just need to die”. A fair analysis will show that our current problems transcend traditional liberal-conservative categories. It may be clear from writing already that I am very much on the orthodox and conservative end of things. I am a man of the Church. I do not believe any reform will ever be effective that does not involve fidelity to the saving truth of Jesus Christ and the Gospel. I am interested in clergy and lay faithful working together to achieve this goal. I am against de facto schisms of every type, especially as internal strife is sapping our ability to address external threats. In that vein, I wrote articles like The Coming Clerical Cold War, which explains my thoughts on why the internecine warfare within and between Priest-generations will hamper our ability to work effectively with one another.
I mentioned before that I especially want to hear from Priest readers willing to be interviewed on their experiences regarding several of the issues raised above. Please e-mail aquaeregiae@scutumetlorica.com, for those of you who are interested. Your confidentiality will be scrupulously guarded.
Thank you again, and may Jesus Christ be praised!
AR
