Scutum et Lorica: At Three Years
It feels like just yesterday when, after taking my Canonical Retreat, I felt called to begin this blog. That year, I had fasted on only tea and water during the duration of the retreat, and had celebrated several Votive Masses of the Holy Spirit and of the Blessed Virgin. On February 19th, 2018, the blog was begun, and by and large, it has been a graced work. The essays I have written are the products of study and reflection throughout the course of the years. They are also the products of my human experience with Priests and lay faithful across the world. I do believe that great writers often have the knack for making clear that which is present in people’s minds, and of presenting it in such a way that one’s thoughts, so to speak, are made more clear to the ones that think them. Although I do not consider myself a great writer, I have often heard from readership that things I have written have helped someone understand something better, or that they gave form to something that was stirring in their hearts and minds. This is a great privilege, and I am blessed to be able to provide this small, imperfect service.
Today, as in the beginning, the most popular essays I have written are those about clergy and clerical affairs. Priests and the Priesthood have always occupied a special place in my heart, and I believe this is a work of Divine Providence, as rarely have we seen such an epochal crisis as that which the Church is experiencing now in her clergy. This is not only among the rank-and-file, but also among her leaders, the Bishops. Even Nunciatures across the world are reporting record rates of Priests declining calls to become Bishops. I see this trend as analogous to the number of Priests who also decline to become Pastors. In so many places, the burdens placed on Priests are becoming nearly unbearable. It is easy for some to dismiss these problems, to declare that Priests are not holy enough, or prayerful enough, or that they lack real pastoral zeal. In my opinion, this is actually victim blaming, which is an abusive and predatory tactic used to discredit the legitimate concerns of an aggrieved person. Before we assign blame, how important it is to understand contextually what is happening in a person’s life.
This is especially the case when one considers the lives of Saints. By that I do not mean their hagiographical caricatures, but their flesh-and-blood reality. So many Saints, we know, suffered as much from the Church as for her. Yes, spiritual consolations were part of their lives, but a not inconsiderable number suffered from conditions, both acute and chronic, which today would be considered severe psychological pathologies. We should take some comfort in that. All of us, if we were formed well, know that we are all Priests and Victims, much like Our Lord. However, even though we as Christians are obliged to know how to suffer well, we are forbidden to cause unnecessary suffering in others. In fact, we ought to do our best to heal the suffering of others. Many of us know spiritual joy in the midst of our current tribulation, but that does not mean we should not labor to remove the preventable causes of it.
We have spent over a decade allowing the world to dictate to the Church how she ought to manage and discipline her Priests. We have yet to regain our footing on this front, and that I believe is just one of the primary contemporary conflicts in the perennial battle for the Libertas Ecclesiae (Liberty of the Church). We have spent years in a necessary purification, and a corner has truly been turned in the problem of clerical sex abuse. However, that purification now is slowly spreading to the hierarchy. The Vos Estis investigation processes in some places are ongoing, yet I think Bishops are slowly discovering that the measure that they measured out to Priests, is being measured out to them. This fact is causing a bifurcation of justice within the Church. Bishops typically get some sort of due process. Many Priests are denied this, in favor of administrative ‘solutions’. This is an absolutely untenable state of affairs, and ought to worry anyone who practices Canon Law, or at least those whose concern is for even merely natural justice.
At the same time, I want to express my own sympathy for the difficult job that Bishops have. They usually only have a limited amount of clergy with widely different gifts, temperaments and histories. They have to manage, to a degree their predecessors never have, dioceses which have even more labyrinthine bureaucracies, with long memories, that often are resistant to change. Willingness to change is the necessary precondition for growth. Unfortunately, it seems to be a feature of fallen human nature that change comes to us as a result of pain and failure more than proactive engagement on our part. Still, no matter how much I think Bishops are at fault for our current malaise, I also want to express my support for them and their office, both because it is apostolically ordained, and also because as human beings, we ought to show them the same charity we would wish to receive for ourselves. May God help me, but I will not participate in the fault finding, negativity and detraction which characterizes so much of our online Catholic commentary. I want to balance at all times a clear-sightedness about the problems we face, but also never deprive anyone of the justice and human decency they deserve.
The work of this blog began just before the summer that began the ecclesial upheaval I described, with the New York Times’ first reporting on then-Cardinal McCarrick. Now, three years on, it’s been tempting to call every year an annus horribilis, but I don’t want to give way to hysteria or histrionics: every year has its challenges, and I think the wisest course of action for the ‘average person’ is to stick to what is in one’s close environment, in fidelity to one’s vocation. I urge an increasing number of penitents and spiritual directees to simply ignore the news. I fully support going ‘off the grid’ of social media. The less information we consume as product, the more we can view ourselves as shapers of the times, for we produce the product of the times.
Moving into year four of the blog, I would like to close with a few final considerations for all readers.
First, in tandem with consuming less social media, make it your practice to forswear casual detraction and rash judgment. This already human tendency has now been magnified to superhuman levels, and so many people’s lives can be effectively destroyed in an instant. Read more quality books, discipline your minds with study, and open your hearts to love through prayer.
Second, make friendships and relationships the most important part of your human life. As our social atomization increases across the board, we have a real opportunity to reintroduce people to community and communion by consenting to truly know and to love one another. This is the call of Christ, and is a salve for so much of what ails us as people and as society at large.
Third, do the most good you can while remaining relatively invisible. Our Lord said that when we give alms, our right hand ought not to do what our left hand is doing. The quiet good that we do upholds the order of the world. This ego-invisibility, which we also call humility, includes our desire to be forgotten by the world. It belongs to human nature to want to “make a name”, even if, statistically speaking, most names and their memory fade with the passage of time. Acknowledging that as a fact can bestow great peace of soul.
When a person dies in the Byzantine Liturgy, I love so much that blessing which the faithful utter: “Eternal Memory”. In other words, our memory fails, we fade away. But God knows, and always remembers. This is one reason why I regularly include on this blog spiritual reflection as well as social and church commentary. It is important to remember why we are here in the first place. As we journey as pilgrims in sojourners, how comforting it is to know that one day, if we do well, we will rest from our labors, and our good works, we pray, will accompany us. (Rev 14:13)
