Do we need a Church Bill of Rights?

In September 2019, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) released the results of a survey conducted in the spring of the same year. The subject was sexual abuse in seminaries, and there were 15 questions which quite comprehensively covered the topic. The answers to the survey were quite encouraging, with the vast majority of seminarians in the United States reporting no or few problems with sexual misconduct.

However, what has also come to light are some of the responses to Question 15, which allowed open-ended answers. The question was: “In your view, what are the most important steps, policies, or reforms [sic] that Catholic seminaries and houses of formation should take or implement to make seminary training safe and free from sexual harassment, abuse, and misconduct?” The survey received 1,176 responses, which was 76% of those surveyed. One particular response has received special attention, I believe, because it address the heart of the problem, which transcends the current fixation on sexual misconduct and behavior of that nature. It is the problem, to quote the seminarian, of “the relationship between authority, control, and obedience.” I believe the experience of the seminarian is directly related to the disfunction reported by presbyterates worldwide; indeed, I think it is clear on further reflection that a certain type of seminary formation directly or indirectly grooms a man to acquire the same sort of clerical pathologies which have humiliated the Church in recent years.

The Seminarian rightly begins by addressing the theoretical and the doctrinal, and notes over time the shift in priority from Spiritual Formation (once always viewed as primary) to merely Human Formation. In previous years, as he notes from Pope Pius XII’s Sedis Sapientiae, spiritual development was held as superior to merely human development, because we believe from our moral theology that supernatural virtues perfect merely human ones, and the excellence of moral character expected of a Priest requires that he be outstanding, above all, in faith, hope, and charity. We are not looking for “nice guys” or store managers, but apostles and evangelists.

At the same time I would like to say that I am not, by highlighting what I believe is the neglected importance of the spiritual, depreciating the importance of human formation. After all, grace perfects nature, and the Church cannot help but be affected by the human milieu which effects even her future and present ministers. Seminarians today are reflective of the wider culture as they always have been. Today, they are the unfortunate victims of large scale familial and societal collapse. Seminary Formation will always have to address these challenges, and do its best to seek and bring healing to the wounded, imperfect humanity of these men. This task, I think everyone would agree, is perennial.

But something changed around the time of the Council, and I would argue, even before the Council. The rise of psychology in the early 20th century as a truly scientific field which analyses human behavior led to its use by the Church in order to evaluate her candidates for Priesthood. Like many emergent fields in science, they tend to be grandiose in their claims at the start: one can readily point to fads in our own lifetimes like evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, or epigenetics. They tend to present themselves as accounting for aspects of human behavior which previously were either insufficiently understood or not understood at all. Usually their claims overshoot the reality of what their particular scientific specialization can say authoritatively.

The use of the new prestige of psychology as a scientific tool was very quickly ascertained by those with both good and wicked ends. The good used it to heal and to understand the human condition. The bad used it to delegitimize and abuse their enemies. Totalitarian Regimes were infamous for the latter: much literature has been produced in the 20th century about Secret Police and torture which used psychology to devastating effect. It should not surprise us that Pius XII, mentioned earlier, also had poignant words to say about the abuse of the psychological science, which unfortunately were, and are, routinely ignored. Pope Pius and the Church have always said that our use of psychology must always be moderated by our anthropological and moral commitments to the “psychosomatic unity of man” and his intrinsic dignity.

Typical of any pop science, it is easy for bad actors of mediocre intelligence to incorrectly apply elements of psychology to individuals: the consequences these facile and irresponsible pseudo-diagnoses have been devastating to seminarians and priests especially. In this vein, the seminarian notes that a certain mold of formator is very fond of using adjectives like “rigid” to describe seminarians they don’t like, which, in my experience, nearly always means seminarians that they can’t control. That is not to say the seminarian in question lacks discipline or dedication; on the contrary, such a seminarian often demonstrates creativity and independence, courage and initiative. If such a man is put with an insecure or narcissistic formator or pastor, the outcome can be very detrimental to the seminarian. If the seminarian attempts to defend himself, this can be easily cast as intransigence or worse, disobedience. It does not matter whether the seminarian has merit to his arguments in his defense. Disobedience to the will of the committee must be punished. If one did not know that this is sometimes the practice of a Catholic Seminary, one would be forgiven for thinking that we are presently talking about a Bolshevik Police State.

The Seminarian perspicaciously notes that even if he decides to surrender in the name of ‘obedience’, he already has been effectively emasculated; oftentimes that seminarian will be forced into counseling or other punitive action disguised as care. This teaches the seminarian to value self-preservation above all else: above legitimate self-love, above their own dignity, above the truth. If these conditions are expected to last “until the stole hangs straight”, what emerges from the Mass of Ordination is a Priest filled with a toxic combination of sycophancy and resentment, and this resentment may yet be directed toward, consciously or unconsciously, other Priests or the Church at large. The seminarian has been trained to not challenge or question authority. Moreover, he has been conditioned to view legitimate dissent or original thought as something dangerous, even impious. Should it surprise us that virtually all the problems we currently experience as a Church began with the emergence of a clericalist mindset which suffers no challenge to its hegemony? Some have remarked in recent years that it seems “as if” there are hierarchs out there who want to destroy the Church from within. What if that actually is the case? That is to say, that the existence of bishops and priests who undermine the Church are not the result of a vast communist conspiracy or some other Malachi Martin or Dan Brown worthy plot, but instead are the psychological product of years of malformation, the diabolical marriage of unholy obedience and unacknowledged, unconscious, even repressed rage?

This brings me to a point which I recently discussed with a rather important lay leader who himself was an ex-seminarian abused by his seminary and his diocese by the malicious use of psychology. Is it time that the Church enshrine canonically the rights of seminarians? In the old code, a tonsured seminarian was a cleric, and so possessed at least some rights during his formation. In the current code, a seminarian is effectively a non-entity until he becomes a Deacon, and even then his advancement relies completely on the good will of his formators and Bishop. No one possesses a right to Holy Orders. I am not saying that formators should have no authority, or should not be able to speak freely and advise counseling and other things when truly necessary for the moral and human development of seminarians. What I object to are the mind games they play, or the ways they passive-aggressively try to eliminate seminarians they think are unsuitable for Priesthood. This is especially true when seminaries want to inflate their numbers and not draw the ire of their sending bishops and religious communities. Yet there are many stories about men being advanced even up to the Diaconate before they are told by formation that they are believed to be unsuitable. In such a case, a man may have dedicated four or more years to his training before that point. Is this done just to play pretend with the man that he will be recommended for Holy Orders? In the meantime, how has maintaining this unsuitable candidate all those years adversely influenced the other seminarians, and the atmosphere of the Seminary at large?

A Bill of Rights of sorts would be very helpful for seminarians, because it would give them a sort of outer limit of what is acceptable for seminaries and formators to ask of them before they violate their human and Christian dignity. For instance, if a seminarian is recommended for counseling, he should be allowed to choose his own therapist. If he is forcibly expelled, he must be informed in writing of a concrete reason for that decision. The seminarian should be allowed to read and comment on “his file” much like a Priest can. I am sure there are other ideas that we could examine.

The distance between approving of a Bill of Rights for seminarians and approving one for clergy is quite short. Many of the same problems reported by this seminarian and others are also experienced by Priests around the world. However, in the case of a Priest, he is completely under the thumb of his Bishop and his bureaucratic apparatus. He depends upon the income they provide. Most Priests, let alone those who serve as Pastors, do not know any law save the will of their Bishop and the policies and procedures promulgated by their Dioceses. Little thought typically is given to whether these policies and procedures are in keeping with Universal Canon Law, nor is there a review process by which Priests may object to a rule which is unjust. It is not in the interest of Bishops and Chanceries to instruct seminarians in the rights they will assume upon the reception of Holy Orders. Oftentimes the academic preparation in Canon Law is merely that which is needed to process annulments or prepare couples for marriage, with any necessary permissions or dispensations. Seminaries would do well to allow their canonist professors to explain to seminarians what the Law of the Church says in regard to clerics. Priests have rights: maybe it is time the Church makes them more explicit?

By empowering seminarians and clergy with necessary knowledge, we demonstrate as a Church our commitment to a ‘kingdom of conscience’. We show seminarians that no one, not even their superiors, are above Divine or Ecclesiastical Law, and so we encourage both respect for our institutions, of which Canon Law is a part, and legitimate criticisms. We also show these men that we take their intellect and dignity seriously. We even take their manhood seriously; that is, the best parts of a truly Christian masculinity, which includes the paternal instinct to defend what is beautiful, true, and good. Above all, it inspires the man, whose spouse the Church is or will be, to place her truest needs above that of the merely human institution which sometimes pretends it is indispensable. In short, we will be promoting shepherds, not wolves.