FWhat do you suppose is the “job” of a priest? To say Mass, and dispense the sacraments? To provide a sympathetic ear in time of trouble? To act as a unifying figure in a local congregation? To teach the faith, especially to new converts? Or to act as prophetic witness, calling out injustice, including injustice in the Church itself?
Fr Owen O’Sullivan is an Irish priest who wrote about the importance of the prophetic role of the priest in the Irish theological journal “The Furrow” in 2oo3. Sadly, his own attempt at prophetic witness against the Catholic Church’s injustice towards gay and lesbian Cath0lics, which he wrote about in a later issue of “The Furrow”, brought him the response which so often befalls genuine prophets: a swift rebuke and attempted silencing by the ecclesiastical authorities. We need prophets, inside the church and outside it. Fr O’Sullivan quotes several examples of prophet priests who have played important roles in correcting injustice in their local circumstances: South African history could supply many more from the battle against apartheid: consider for instance Archbishop Denis Hurly, or Desmond Tutu.
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“Speak the truth in love”, we are commanded by Scripture, and the Church reminds us. We need prophets to speak the truth, not only to the secular powers, but also to those who hold power in the Church itself, where they are patently failing to do so themselves. Reading O’Sullivan’s original article on “Where are the Priest-Prophets?” and its repeated question “Where is the truth” on a range of questions on sexual ethics, I was immediately reminded of a short interchange at a meeting I attended this past weekend, on the dire state of education in sexuality for clergy (from all denominations, not just the Catholic Church). I hope to have more on this fascinating meeting later, but for now, I consider only one point that arose during the lively question session that followed the two formal presentations, by two people with extensive experience in leading workshops and courses in sexuality for clergy. One questioner observed that neither presenter had said anything at all about the place of fantasy and pornography – and the solo sex that so often accompanies it. Now, I would guess that a major part of the packed room (possibly the majority) were themselves clergy. It was obvious that all present accepted the answer that sexual fantasy is a normal, natural part of psychosexual development – and the solo sex that can accompany it. But how many clergy are willing to talk about these things openly? The response to the question covered many tangential issues, but the key observation is that there is no sound theological response to the question on fantasy – because there is no sound theology of sex, as is now becoming clear from the public statements by many prominent moral theologians (most notably, in the recent declaration by German theologians). Yet the formal presentation of “Catholic” teaching, in the Catechism and in so many public pronouncements, presents the old formulas as if they carried the weight of moral truth – while ordinary Catholics, and professional Catholic theologians know they do not.
The problem is that “speaking the truth” is more than simply an abstract moral virtue. Failure to do so can so easily contribute to real evil. As has been tragically displayed in the years since Fr O’Sullivan published his article, the silence and hypocrisy over many of these issues have contributed to the crisis of sexual abuse inside the church – and others to the continuing ravages of AIDS in Africa.
This is the passage from Fr O’Sullivan’s 2003 article that deals with this:
UNTRUTH IN THE CHURCH
There is much untruth in the Church. There is hypocrisy and humbug at all levels. There is pretended loyalty, outward profession of the official line accompanied by inner denial; there is the corrupting power of fear. Which is better: honest dissent or pretended assent? We need priests (and people) who are honest. Truth is the bedrock of credibility. Examples of those who tell the truth are Donal Dorr, in ‘Sexual Abuse and Spiritual Abuse’ (The Furrow, October 2000) and Carry Wills, in his Papal Sins: Structures of Deceit (London: DLT, 2000). Wills’s ‘papal’ sins are all our sins, those of intellectual dishonesty driven by fear.
‘If change is to come, it will come from the margins … it was the desert, not the temple, that gave us the prophets’ (Wendell Berry). That is a despairing comment on priests, the ministers of the temple. Can things really be that bad? Are we prophetic leaders of a faith-community or are we bureaucratic functionaries of an ecclesiastical corporation? Prophets of Christ Incarnate or bureaucrats of Christianity Incorporated? – to adapt the phrase of Aidan Matthews.
The prophet is one who is able to find meaning in a world of confusion which many find meaningless. A prophet is the one who tells – and does – the truth when all around are people who are telling, believing and doing what is not true.
A prophet is one who has vision, perceptiveness and awareness, who can see through lies, pretence and sham and we are surrounded by such in the Church and in the world. The prophet has imagination when others are dulled by routine or fixed patterns of thought. The prophet has honesty, especially intellectual honesty, to face difficult questions with an open (not an empty) mind, to be able to say, ‘I was wrong’ and make a fresh start, to be able to stand apart, if that is what the truth calls him to do. The prophet has the courage to look the truth in the face, recognize it for what it is and call it by name, acknowledging that all truth is God’s truth however it is mediated.
SPECIFICS
A basic question is this: are we priests of the Catholic Church speaking and doing the truth? Do we believe what we say?
The truth around birth control: has Humanae vitae been received by the Church? The available evidence suggests that this question must be faced. I believe that those who say otherwise are engaged in wishful thinking or are not being honest.
The truth about the ordination of women: official statements imply that the matter is closed. Are we excluding the possibility that the Holy Spirit might not have spoken the last word on the topic?
The truth about clerical celibacy: this question, and the previous one, touch the power-structures of the Church. The arguments for change on celibacy seem to have won the intellectual battle and are reinforced by the evidence on the ground. The insistence on maintaining the present law is imploding the present model of Church. Yet the issue is fudged, not faced. Why? Are we allowing the demands of the power-structures to have priority over those of the Gospel?
The truth about beatification: is it not true that the beatification of John XXIII and Pius IX was a political balancing act? Pio Nono was beatified so as to keep on board those who regarded Vatican II, Pope John’s council, as the fons et origo omnium malorum in the Church since Pius XII. They didn’t want to see John XXIII beatified, so Pius IX was beatified with him to keep them happy, even though some of his behaviour was unchristian. Did Pius IX really live a life of heroic virtue, a model of the Christian life for others to follow? Beatification says he did, and that is playing games of ecclesiastical politics with the truth.
The truth about the sex abuse scandals: have we heard the victims’ story? What does that story say to us about the relationships of power that exist(ed?) between priests and people? We no longer deny the fact of such scandals but we are still ignorant of their extent. Are we still in denial about the responsibility for them, and about their significance? How ironic that, while the Irish bishops met in Maynooth without the presence of the victims’ representatives, the first reading of the Mass of the fifth Sunday of Easter (28th April) should have been about the setting up by the apostles of a commission of seven people, all drawn from the victims’ community, to look into their particular grievance! Have we taken on board the lessons to be learned, or are we still in the mould of deny-delay-dissemble when we should have moved to admit-accept-adjust?
The truth about the population explosion: the world’s population is increasing at a rate of one and a half million a week, that is, by the population of Germany each year. If the world had followed Catholic teaching on family planning, it would be more, perhaps much more. Can humane living conditions be provided for such rapid growth? Can a planet of limited resources cope? Environmental writer Edward Abbey states, ‘Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.’ Pope Paul VI recognized the reality of the population explosion in his first encyclical, Ecclesiam suam (n. 15). The official voice of the Church today seems to respond with a call to ‘increase and multiply’.
The truth about Christian anti-Semitism: we effectively deny it by acknowledging that, yes, individual Catholics were guilty of it, but not the Church as such. Is the history of World War II being revised so as to exaggerate Catholic opposition to Hitler? Some in the Church cast it in the role of victim in that period, by, for example, canonizing Edith Stein, even though she was killed, not because she was Catholic by religion, but because she was Jewish by race.
The truth in the Church’s internal processes: for example, is it true to say, as a Church document does, that, ‘The laity plays an integral part in decision-making in the Catholic Church’? I believe that statement is untrue. Did the people who made it believe it to be true? If they know the Church as it is, it is hard to imagine that they did, so why did they make it? And what of our obsessive secrecy and exclusion of women?
The truth about the Church’s doctrine being unchanging: consider, for example, the following teaching on slavery: ‘Servitude itself, considered in itself and absolutely, is by no means repugnant to the natural and divine law, and there can be present very many just titles for servitude, as can be seen by consulting the approved theologians and intcrpreters of the canons …’ (fromInstruction no. 1293 of the Holy Office, (the predecessor to the CDF), in reply to questions from the Vicar Apostolic among the Galla (of Ethiopia), on 20 June 1866).
The truth about condoms: AIDS killed 90,000 people in Zambia in 1999, almost all in the 15-49 age group; one-fifth of the adult population there is HIV-positive. In Zimbabwe, 600 people die each week from AIDS. In South Africa, about 4 million people are infected, about 20% of the population. In Botswana it is 35%, Zimbabwe and Swaziland 25%, Lesotho 23%, Namibia 20%, while Malawi, Mozambique and Kenya vary from 10 to 16%. In Africa as a whole, on average, 5,500 funerals take place each day as a result of AIDS.
The best way of preventing this problem is by chastity before marriage and fidelity in it. Condoms do not provide what is called ‘safe sex’. At best they make it safer, or, in the context of an AIDS pandemic such as Southern Africa’s, less dangerous. Condoms could also make sex more dangerous, if they have the effect of giving a user the impression that, as long as he uses a condom, he has no danger to fear and can happily be promiscuous. But, weighing up the balance of argument in a situation such as the above where sex is freely sought and freely given, the use of condoms is at least the lesser of two evils. It may be, in some cases, the more responsible thing to do. But if one partner in a marriage is HIV positive and the other is not, then I believe it would be morally wrong of the couple not to use a condom. Are we losing the good for the sake of the better?
The official position is that the use of condoms is always immoral. I wonder what later generations will think of that when they read of the 5,500 people dying every day of AIDS in Africa alone. That’s the equivalent of eighteen fully-laden jumbo jets crashing daily with no survivors. It is almost the equivalent of two 11 Septembers daily. I think those generations will wonder, not only about our sense of responsibility, or our humanity, but even our sanity. They will wonder, too, about the silence of those who disagreed with official teaching but said nothing.
(Read the full article at the Womenpriests website)
For my series of commentary on Fr O’Sullivan’s important series on gay inclusion, see these posts (I hope to complete the overdue commentary on part 8 later this week).
- Fr Owen O’Sullivan on Gay Inclusion (Pt 1) : Is Homosexuality Unnatural?
- Fr Owen O’Sullivan on Gay Inclusion (Pt 2): Why Can’t They Just Keep Quiet About It?
- Fr Owen O’Sullivan on Gay Inclusion (Pt 3): Is It Wrong to Act Gay?
- Fr Owen O’Sullivan on Gay Inclusion (Pt 4): Homosexuality is fundamentally disordered
- Fr Owen O’Sullivan on Gay Inclusion (Pt 5): The Trouble With “Do Your Best”
- Fr Owen O’Sullivan on Gay Inclusion (Pt 6): Liberating our theology of sexual relationships from the Church
- Fr Owen O’Sullivan on Gay Inclusion (Pt 7): We Will be Judged on How We Have been Loved
- Fr Owen O’Sullivan on Gay Inclusion (Pt 8): ”Are homosexuals showing the church and society a way forward?”
For verbatim extracts, see the series of posts by an Australian Seventh Day adventist, at Boundless Slavation:
Inclusion – Is Sexuality the Final Frontier?
- Part 1: “Homosexuality is Unnatural
- Part 2: “Why can’t they just keep quiet?”
- Part 3: ”It’s not wrong to be gay, but it is wrong to act gay’
- Part 4: ”Homosexuality is fundamentally disordered”
- Part 5: ”What’s wrong with saying “Do your best?”
- Part 6: ”Our theology of sexual relationships”
- Part 7: “In the end we will be judged on how we have loved”
- Part 8: “Are homosexuals showing the church and society a way forward?”
Related articles
- The Myth of Clerical Celibacy, Revisited
- SNAP’s Peter Isely on Claims of Catholic Bishops’ President Timothy Dolan That False Charges Against Priests Increasing (bilgrimage.blogspot.com)
- A priest speaks out. (commonwealmagazine.org)
- Fr. Eric Hodgens on John Paul II Legacy: (bilgrimage.blogspot.com)
- Women’s Ordination and Abolition of Celibacy: Probing the Theological (and Gender) Issues (bilgrimage.blogspot.com)
- Fr Thomas Reese On All Things Hopeful (enlightenedcatholicism-colkoch.blogspot.com)
