George W#igel personifies all that is wrong with the institutional Catholic Church. In a word: Hubris! Overweening pride.
The lack of concern about the exodus of Catholics from the religion of their birth. Hubris!
The sexual exploitation by the clergy of the young, weak, and naive. Hubris!
The investigation (inquisition?) of the American women religious by the Vatican. Hubris!
The deification of the papacy. (This is just another form of idolatry, found in all ancient religions where the Hight Priest claimed a monopoly on Divine Wisdom. I am sure that St. Paul would have writeen a treasure trove of epistles, excoriating St. Peter, if he had declared his infallibility in the first century of commont time, instead of in 1870 by the First Vatican Council.) Hubris!
The misogynist doctrines, denying women full participation in all sacramental gifts. Hubris!
The homophobia of the institutional church. Hubris!
The anti-democratic organization of the insititutional church. (The institutional church has evolved into a (benevolent?) dictatorship, with the Vatican centralizing into itself more and more authority and control. This is a top-down organization , with no bottom-up input and decisional leadership. This is similar in organizational framework to the control of the Community Party in the old Soviet Union. In a multi-cultural environment, this organization model is inherently unstable.) Hubris!
The ancient Greeks had it right. In their tragedies, the protagonist's fatal flaw was always hubris, and the gods always brought him/her down. We are now at the end of the second act of our church's morality play, and the conflect as reached a crescendo. And what will be the resolution in the third act?
While I am hopeful, I am not optimistic. I fear that all of the problems of the institutional church will not be resolved with a deus ex machina ending, heralding a new spiritual direction and a renewed commitment to the teachings of Jesus Christ. Rather, given the retreat from the reforms of Vatican II, I suspect, given the hubris of those who speak for the institutional church such as George Weigel, more and more Catholics will simply drift away, after concluding that the Catholic Church is no longer a relevant moral institution in their lives.
My only hope is that demographic trends are working against the male exclusive, European centric, Caucasian oriented hierarchy. Not only are Catholics exiting the institutional church en mass in Europe and America, the total number of people in most European countries is declining, with births far below the number of deaths each year, and the little bit of in-migration causing severe social disruptions. In America, the life blood of the Church will be in the future as it has in the past, its Catholic immigrants, only now primarily Hispanic, but also Filipino and African.
In the near future, perhaps in the next one hundred years, the leadership of the institutional church will shift away from Europe, probably towards Africa, possibly to South America, where the greatest number of practicing Catholics will be concentrated. And then, perhaps, a cardinal whose father was born in Kenya will accomplish the most improbable; he will be elected pope, and will finally brng change we can believe in to the institutional church.
In the mean time, I have one piece of advice to George Weigel: Remove the plank from your own eye, before complaining about the splinter in Cardinal Bernadin's eye.
Bravo! Mr. Steinfels.
Thank you so much for publishing this. It makes me feel less alone in my confusion and concern about certain currents in the Church today. Mr. Steinfels, thank you for writing such an articulate, forthright article.
I've not read any of Weigel's books, since nothing in his columns has ever persuaded me to do so. But this article brought back to me memories of acting as faculty advisor a student who, years ago, was about to write his senior history thesis. Before we got started, I asked him how he proposed to go about his work. Oh, he said, first I'll decide what argument I want to make, and then I'll look for evidence to support it.
I tried to explain to him (gently, I hope) that that is not the way good historians go about their business. It sounds now as if Weigel has never quite got beyond the point reached by that young man at the start of his senior year: first, decide on the argument, and then look for evidence to back it up, dismissing all other evidence as irrelevant.
It's a way common to politicians, of course, but not to grown-ups.
Excellent articles.
For further reading, see Eamon Duffy's review, in Commonweal, of Weigel's book on John Paul II. http://commonwealmagazine.org/witness-hope-0
Thank you Peter Steinfels for giving George Weigel his comeuppance. Mr. Weigel has tried long and hard to gain and secure his place as darling of right-wing Catholiciam in America and nothing is more disingenuous that his haigiography about John Paul II. Perhpas someone out there will have the courage to pen a complete picture of the newest 'beatus'.
The courage to speak truth to power is one of the reasons my wife and I read Commonweal. It's hard enough in the secular realm; when one addresses the hierarchy it is a mark of true witness. Amen, Peter Steinfels. And anyone who doubts the politicization of the US bishops need only compare the response to the health care legislation with that which accompanied the Ryan budget. The unborn are deserving of defense, the born in the person of the poor apparently less so.
Thank you for this most excellent article.
Thanks to Mr. Steinfels for a cogent analysis of Weigel's article. At one point he notes that "prolife activism [has been made] unfortunately a franchise nearly wholly owned and operated by the GOP..." Certainly true, but whose fault is that? If Catholics as a bloc were more proactive in Democratic politics, could they not influence the party's stand on that issue? During the runup to the last Presidential election, the acting ordinary of the archdiocese of Saint Louis virtually bound the conscience of the faithful by repeatedly stating in his column in the archdiocesan newspaper that Catholics risked their mortal soul if they voted for the Democratic candidate (I don't think he actually named the party but it was clear what he meant). My personal response to that admonition was to vote for a write-in candidate. But is this really the only option we have - to turn our backs on the Democratic party?
Excellent article! Mr. Steinfels your arguments are very solid and convincing. I really liked what you state "Weigel is not merely touching up history but performing plastic surgery on it".
George W#igel personifies all that is wrong with the institutional Catholic Church. In a word: Hubris! Overweening pride.
The lack of concern about the exodus of Catholics from the religion of their birth. Hubris!
The sexual exploitation by the clergy of the young, weak, and naive. Hubris!
The investigation (inquisition?) of the American women religious by the Vatican. Hubris!
The deification of the papacy. (This is just another form of idolatry, found in all ancient religions where the Hight Priest claimed a monopoly on Divine Wisdom. I am sure that St. Paul would have writeen a treasure trove of epistles, excoriating St. Peter, if he had declared his infallibility in the first century of commont time, instead of in 1870 by the First Vatican Council.) Hubris!
The misogynist doctrines, denying women full participation in all sacramental gifts. Hubris!
The homophobia of the institutional church. Hubris!
The anti-democratic organization of the insititutional church. (The institutional church has evolved into a (benevolent?) dictatorship, with the Vatican centralizing into itself more and more authority and control. This is a top-down organization , with no bottom-up input and decisional leadership. This is similar in organizational framework to the control of the Community Party in the old Soviet Union. In a multi-cultural environment, this organization model is inherently unstable.) Hubris!
The ancient Greeks had it right. In their tragedies, the protagonist's fatal flaw was always hubris, and the gods always brought him/her down. We are now at the end of the second act of our church's morality play, and the conflect as reached a crescendo. And what will be the resolution in the third act?
While I am hopeful, I am not optimistic. I fear that all of the problems of the institutional church will not be resolved with a deus ex machina ending, heralding a new spiritual direction and a renewed commitment to the teachings of Jesus Christ. Rather, given the retreat from the reforms of Vatican II, I suspect, given the hubris of those who speak for the institutional church such as George Weigel, more and more Catholics will simply drift away, after concluding that the Catholic Church is no longer a relevant moral institution in their lives.
My only hope is that demographic trends are working against the male exclusive, European centric, Caucasian oriented hierarchy. Not only are Catholics exiting the institutional church en mass in Europe and America, the total number of people in most European countries is declining, with births far below the number of deaths each year, and the little bit of in-migration causing severe social disruptions. In America, the life blood of the Church will be in the future as it has in the past, its Catholic immigrants, only now primarily Hispanic, but also Filipino and African.
In the near future, perhaps in the next one hundred years, the leadership of the institutional church will shift away from Europe, probably towards Africa, possibly to South America, where the greatest number of practicing Catholics will be concentrated. And then, perhaps, a cardinal whose father was born in Kenya will accomplish the most improbable; he will be elected pope, and will finally brng change we can believe in to the institutional church.
In the mean time, I have one piece of advice to George Weigel: Remove the plank from your own eye, before complaining about the splinter in Cardinal Bernadin's eye.