2. AUTHORITARIANISM The church’s authoritarian structure and culture facilitate the hierarchy’s extensive abuse of power.   We can debate whether the defeat of communism, in which Pope John Paul II played a major role, is proof that democracy is the ultimate political system (the “end of history”  (Note 2.1)). What is less open to debate, at least for me as an American, is that authoritarianism is dead and should be buried—especially by the church. The church hierarchy—the pope, his secretive Byzantine staff bureaucracy called the Curia, and the bishops—is built on an authoritarian culture of deceit, denial, defensiveness, legalism, controlling power, secrecy, silence, and cover-up. This authoritarian culture is ineffective in dealing with problems in a world of CNN and Fox News, where instant response, openness, and transparency are valued, and where the rotten odor of deceit almost comes wafting through the TV set. Church authoritarianism is not only outdated, it is not biblically based. I do not call you servants any longer, because a servant does not know what his master is doing. I call you friends because I have told you everything I heard from my father (John 15.15). The Pope.  The pope, the most authoritative voice of religion in the world, is the man at the top in the church power game. As the successor of Peter and the Vicar of Christ, the pope has massive doctrinal and moral muscle.  In 1873, at Vatican I, the first council since Trent, declared—some say invented—the doctrine of papal infallibility. A friend recently said, “Invented infallibility institutionalizes idolatry.” Since then, the papacy has continued its imperial power grab, along the way waging war against what it has called modernism and what others have called progress and the modern world. The pope is accountable to no one but his conscience and God. Time magazine (Note 2.2) opened its article honoring John Paul II as Person of the Year in 1994 by declaring, “People who see him—and countless millions have—do not forget him. His appearances generate electricity unmatched by anyone else on earth.” The papal electricity powers a papal cult of personality and celebrity. Recently, the major image on the home page of the Website of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was an image of the cover of a new book of poetry by Pope John Paul II ($19.95—call 800-235-8722). Talk about sucking up! What an image! The pope writes poetry while clergy abuse minors, bishops cover up the abuse, and Rome burns!   Some argue that a strong papacy—and there is no doubt that John Paul II is a strong pope—is necessary in a world going to hell in a hand basket.  There is ample evidence for this: the “culture of death,” materialism, hedonism, terrorism, nuclear weapons, poverty, intolerance, post-modern nihilism. The list goes on. But we must remember that every age has seen the end times around the corner.   The pope has spoken out in a strong voice against abortion, communism, war, capital punishment, women priests, and the abolition of the mandatory celibacy requirement for ordination. Paradoxically and tellingly, this strong Pope’s voice has been very weak on worldwide clergy sex abuse of children. According to BishopsWatch (Note 2.3), “claims of ignorance by the Holy See and the pope himself are clearly disingenuous and the lack of action to protect children is patently obvious.” The pope speaks of effective care for offenders, who are criminals, but is silent about punishment. Doesn’t he know what rape does to kids? Doesn’t he know that rapists tend to rape again? He has said that sex abuse by priests is wrong, that there is no place in the priesthood for priests who abuse children. More important is what he hasn’t said. The pope has never said he was going to hold bishops accountable or make disciplinary responses transparent. You will know them by what they do. And don’t do. Has the cover-up been orchestrated from Rome? Could the massive cover-up over such an extended period— decades, probably centuries—and across continents—it’s not just an American problem —have happened without the complicity of the pope? Or has the sex abuse scandal/cover-up been viewed in the Vatican as just another American flap over sex? Does the upward chain of deceit really stop at the bishops? The Bishops.  Bishops have more power than company chief executive officers (CEOs), are more entrenched than tenured professors in American universities, and are less accountable than either group. Each diocese is its own medieval duchy. Bishops are de facto dictators, accountable only to the pope. A bishop defends his power like a lioness defends her cub: try to take it away and he’ll rip you apart. He won't use his teeth. He'll use the power of his office and the authority that the laity, through its indoctrinated passivity, has delegated to him. If he's good at his job, he'll exercise that power subtly.   A bishop as corporation sole under canon law owns the assets—churches, schools, stocks, bonds—of his diocese. Some priests might add “personnel” to this list. The bishop owns the church, notwithstanding both Vatican II's "we are the church" and Father Byron's wonderful market model of the church as a family-owned business. His ownership is not only de jure, it's also de facto, even though all funds comes from the laity. Do you remember "Taxation without representation?" The church runs on "Donation without representation." As we know from Lord Acton, power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Few know that Lord Acton’s often quoted phrase relates to Vatican I and the declaration of papal infallibility. The recent, sad headlines about the church confirm his warning. Episcopal authority that is unaccountable to anyone “below” and is neither evaluated by nor subject to judgment by episcopal peers—regionally or nationally—is authority that can all to readily be abused, and the abuses can all too easily remain uncorrected. Paul Dinter (Note 2.6) writes:
		Bishop after bishop...has been revealed as a soulless bureaucrat oblivious to the pain of young victims, reckless about the fate of future victims, intent on saving the reputations of priests and the institutional church…Catholics have been as stunned as the general population by the breath and depth of the accusations, the seeming truth of too many of them, and the lengths to which supposedly good men have gone to keep them a secret.
	One cannot help but ask:  What Would Jesus Do (WWJD)?  Both the head and the heart know the answer. You will know them by what they do. And don’t do. The Culture.  Church officials, like secular corporate officers, use denial, deceit, silence, and defensiveness as public relations tools to cover up shameful behavior and preserve existing organizational structures. And, these are men of God!  What is the character of the God these men worship? This culture is hostile to accountability to the faithful. The attitude is: screw the faithful or at least screw the sense of the faithful (sensus fidelium). The culture reeks with elitism, the arrogance of the chosen. A corollary is a priestly caste system, acted out in the sex scandals, that in effect says priests are more important than minors. “The Church is not a democracy” is proudly proclaimed from the pulpit. The attitude is: there can be no power sharing with the laity because power is a zero-sum game. Secrecy, silence, and cover-up reigned until major media, with help from the legal profession, exposed the situation in Boston. The reason we’ve heard about the scandals in the U.S. is the free press (some would say the liberal, anti-Catholic media). Uncritical thinking will confuse the message with the messenger. The Boston Globe or the New York Times didn't cover up the scandal; the institutional church did. Management 101 or maybe Management 303 tells you that the Boston Globe should not be your primary quality assurance organization. A prime example of the conspiracy of silence, of course, comes directly from the Vatican, which has put a ban on all discussion of celibacy as the cause of the vocation crisis. And the U.S. bishops, as good organization men, out of loyalty to the pope, have strictly enforced that ban, leaving their priests and their people unbelievably frustrated and wondering how any problem can be solved if one cannot investigate what causes it. There is no sense of partnership or teamwork in this culture. It's us (the hierarchy, the direct successors of the apostles) vs. them (the laity, the media, the suing lawyers, whomever). The attitude is the distorted golden rule: He who has the gold (power) gets to rule. The institution must be protected at all costs, and only we, the hierarchy, can do it, because we own the church and God entrusted it to us. Conclusion.  The church community needs to envision new structures of accountability; to pray for conversion to truth and transparency; and to conceive, plan for, and implement a new church open to the sense of the faithful.
	Previous                                                                                                                                               Next