POPE FRANCIS HAS the most extraordinary ability to say and write things that his supporters and staff then have to explain away, justify, obfuscate, or even downright deny. In a new book, The Strength of a Vocation, based on an extended interview with Spanish priest Fr. Fernando Prado, he has said that homosexuality in the priesthood is “something that worries me” and a “very serious” question. He also insists that gay priests who cannot maintain their vows of celibacy should leave the priesthood rather than live “double lives,” and recommends that gay men not be allowed to enter seminaries if their homosexuality is “deep seated.” He goes on to describe homosexuality as being “fashionable,” and that this notion has now entered the Roman Catholic culture.
It is genuinely difficult to know where to begin. The most obvious point is that all Roman Catholic priests are supposed to be celibate, whatever their sexuality, and at first glance it’s bewildering that the pontiff would single out only gay men. The reality, however, is that while the Church states in its catechism that “homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity” are “contrary to natural law,” and that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered,” most credible studies of the subject have concluded that between a quarter and half of all Roman Catholic clergy are gay. In the 2000 book The Changing Face of the Priesthood, for example, Father Donald Cozzens estimates that as many as fifty-eight percent of priests are gay, and that percentages are even higher for younger priests. It’s impossible to be certain of course, but the caring professions have long attracted gay men, and the priesthood also enables them to avoid questions about why they are not married. Many of them are celibate, many not. How ironic that the most homophobic organization in the world should be the greatest employer of gay men!
This has all been a fairly open secret for a long time, but with the hideous revelations in the last few years about the depth and nature of the sexual abuse crisis, the Church has looked for scapegoats. In August, Bishop Robert Morlino wrote to Catholics in the Diocese of Madison, Wisconsin that, “It is time to admit that there is a homosexual subculture within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church that is wreaking great devastation in the vineyard of the Lord,” and spoke of “deviant sexual — almost exclusively homosexual — acts by clerics.” He received criticism but also enormous support in the Church.
In fact, the 2011 John Jay College of Criminal Justice study, commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, investigated church abuse and concluded that there was no connection between homosexuality and pedophilia, which is precisely what every other credible study has found. Francis himself has vacillated on the subject, as he has on several others. Sometimes he appears to be progressive, on other occasions, reactionary. Under this Pope, for example, it’s been more difficult for a celibate gay man to enter a seminary than it was under his more conservative predecessors. The reason is that he has reissued and re-emphasized an earlier document, one that was often ignored, demanding that potential seminarians declare their sexuality, and admit if they’d had any form of same-sex attraction in recent years.
Now come these statements. The idea that homosexuality is “fashionable” is in some ways flippant, in others positively grotesque. Brazil has just elected as president a man with violently homophobic views, gay men and women are beaten and even murdered in parts of Africa, the Caribbean, and Russia and Eastern Europe. In 2016, forty-nine people were killed and fifty-three wounded in a terrorist attack inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and anti-gay hatred is still alive and well in North America and Europe.
Yet the leader of more than a billion Catholics thinks otherwise, and that men with “deep seated” homosexuality, even if they are sworn to celibacy, should be banned from Catholic seminaries. What Francis means by “deep seated” is unclear and one can only assume that he thinks that people can pick and choose their orientation, or be gay or straight on a part-time basis. Either way, it’s shockingly banal. I was a Roman Catholic for many years, and wrote three internationally best-selling books about the Church — I can assure His Holiness that there are numerous men with “deep seated” homosexuality closer to him than he might think.
Nearer to home, I know a young gay man in Canada who sacrificed a great deal by leaving his partner and embracing celibacy. He feels called to the Roman Catholic priesthood, but has already been rejected by one seminary because they asked him several times if he was gay, and whether he had experienced same-sex attraction within the last few years. He couldn’t lie. He’s now looking around the world for seminaries that will simply not ask such questions, even though Rome has told them to do so. He thinks he has found one. Thus is the absurd cat-and-mouse game that is being played.
It’s also a crass, gross misunderstanding of sexuality and a colossal double standard. Our sexuality is not defined and confined by our genitalia and what we do or do not do physically. It’s all so much more complex and profound than that. Many husband and wife couples have an extremely limited and even non-existent sex life as they age, but they’re still straight. And here’s the point: potential seminarians who are heterosexual and who admit, quite naturally, to sexual or romantic temptation are never turned away for such a reason.
So the nonsense continues, but this time with a more sinister and discriminatory edge. If Francis seriously wants to address abuse, he needs to ordain women, remove the need for compulsory celibacy, dismantle clericalism, and democratize the Church, not single out some very fine men for disapproval. That’s an incredibly tall order, and if it does happen, will take time, prayer, and enormous effort — but then Rome wasn’t built in a day, and Roman Catholicism won’t be rebuilt in one either.
POPE FRANCIS IS a conundrum. From a pontiff of glorious colours of liberation and freshness, he suddenly turns into a complacent grey and a very Latin American conservative. He promises much but, it must be said, delivers little.
The world shook just a little when, during a 2013 interview, the leader of more than a billion people said that we shouldn’t judge when it came to homosexuality. Could it be, would it be, was it possible? The answer was no. It appears that he wasn’t actually speaking of openly gay people but those “struggling” with their sexuality, and under his regime the Vatican has made it even more difficult, if not impossible, for even celibate gay men to be admitted into the clergy.
Catholic liberals and progressives have certainly felt empowered under Francis, but when they ask themselves what this has actually meant in the parishes, churches, and pews, many admit that it’s mostly holy smoke and Roman mirrors. It is true that some conservative cardinals and church leaders have been effectively exiled or dismissed, but this may be more of a sign of Francis’s authoritarianism than of genuine reform. Observers on the left as well as the right have commented that reactionary Benedict was far more tolerant of dissent than liberal Francis.
Conservative Catholics may often be difficult and bewildering — I for one have felt their abuse when I left the Roman Church and publicly supported equal marriage — but without them in the past fifty years, the Roman Catholic Church would have been in enormous trouble. After the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, the Church’s numbers hemorrhaged, seminaries emptied, and teaching was eccentric. It was usually conservatives who held the line, and Francis has been telling them for almost four years that they’ve got it wrong, that they are superstitious and foolish and that the people they revere are Pharisees.
Indeed he dismisses those with whom he disagrees as being Pharisaic quite often, demonstrating not only a misunderstanding of who the Pharisees actually were, but the same severely judgmental strain of which he accuses his critics. (The Pharisees were, in fact, some of the most faithful and egalitarian of Jewish activists at the time of Christ; it is because they were in direct competition with the new Christian movement they are so harshly treated in the New Testament.) Just recently, when speaking of irresponsible reporting, Francis said that people “have a tendency towards the sickness of coprophagia.” For those who don’t own dogs, that’s eating excrement. Nice.
One of the few areas where the Catholic Church has at least opened the door to allow change to come in for a chat is whether to allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion.
Yet many leading clergy, including a number of cardinals and some of them close to home, have expressed concern not only at the move, but also at how it was carried out. They argue that they were not consulted, and even that canon law is being broken.
The result has been a campaign against them that is sometimes quite shocking in its cruelty and its sinister nature. Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan, who had experienced the Soviet persecution of organized Christianity, told an audience that the reaction to dissenting bishops, “is a proof of the climate in which we actually live in the Church right now. We live in a climate of threats and of denial of dialogue towards a specific group.” He was doubtless referring to the whispering campaign concerning their character and motives, and some of them being demoted.
It is not hyperbole to say that the Roman Catholic Church is at its most divided in fifty years. Highly influential Catholic commentators question whether the Pope is speaking for Catholicism or something entirely different. Reading between the lines — and this is something none of them would say publicly — one wonders if they genuinely accept that Francis is actually a valid pontiff.
Francis is certainly acutely political and has brought harsh Argentinian ways into church debate. But while jettisoning some of the awful pomp of previous incumbents, Francis has reintroduced certain atavistic papal attitudes about power. He is also eighty years old and not in good health. When it’s time to elect a new pontiff, be prepared for a fight the like of which we haven’t seen in Rome in centuries. Not a hungry lion in sight, but lots of teeth and claws.
THE ROMAN CATHOLIC Church is in a state of transition. Pope Francis is erratic and not as progressive as some people think, but he has at least opened up room for discussion about previously no-go areas. Right-wing priests felt empowered under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Not so under the current pontiff.
Which makes it all the more surprising that Father Jerome Lavigne, the pastor at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Calgary — and, more significant, the vicar of Catholic education for the entire diocese — is so extraordinarily outspoken and conservative. One of his jobs is to teach the Catholic faith, in particular, to work with schools, and to prepare grade five students for confirmation. Thus we could expect a certain degree of sensitivity from the man, especially regarding sexuality, which affects young people so profoundly.
Yet he’s made the most incendiary comments about the LGBT+ community in homilies and writings, some of which have only recently been exposed. In the past few days, for example, a deeply homophobic essay and homily has come to light, in which Lavigne condemns “fornication, homosexual acts, prostitution, pedophilia, sodomy.” He also says it’s untrue that people are born gay, then attacks the rainbow flag, the symbol of the gay community. He says it was “selected to represent lawlessness, promiscuous lifestyles that are a direct break from the established order of the natural law,” and that it “stands before us as a sacrilege of unfathomable proportions. This is nothing short of spitting and laughing in God’s face.”
Speaking of the origins of the rainbow flag, Lavigne says: “And who’s the master behind all of this? It’s not flesh and blood. It’s way too ingenious … There is only one who twists truth to this level. Who unleashes unfathomable proportions by means of taking that which exists as a covenant that God established, and completely turning it on its head so that it represents, once again, the very evil from which God’s reprimanding hand was unleashed upon creation in the very first place? … His name is Satan.”
Satan was unavailable for comment, but when a complaint was made to the Roman Catholic diocese of Calgary, they removed the homily from Facebook and church websites, and responded: “The review of Fr. Lavigne’s homily recognizes that the reading from the Book of Genesis expanded to include some reflections on homosexuality. However, these reflections did not fully capture that we are all called to live a life of chastity according to our state in life. We are all created by God and He loves us all so that each person receives from God their inherent dignity. The Catholic Church advocates for the common good of society, so that we live together in an atmosphere of peace, safety and respect for the dignity of one another regardless of age, ancestry, body image, culture, sexual orientation and religion.”
Yet if this is the case, why is Lavigne still vicar for Catholic education? These are not isolated comments. He has also said: “What our Lord is making quite clear for us is that the actions we commit to doing in this life are voluntary and deliberated … There’s no such thing as ‘God made me this way,’ and so I can take part in ‘Depraved, Intrinsically and Gravely Disordered Actions.’ That’s a ‘self-taught lie’ that serves to masquerade Evil as a great good to be experienced!”
And there is more. In 2016, he had the notorious alt-right activist Faith Goldy speak at his church on “Unmasking the Architects and Evils of Sexual Education,” in which she told the audience that Ontario was in crisis and discussed former Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne’s sexuality at length, claiming that Wynne had used her sexuality to “muzzle” any criticism of Ontario’s sex education curriculum. “In case you guys don’t know,” said Goldy, “she is a lesbian.”
All this has become public after a series of damning revelations regarding Alberta’s Catholic church and the gay community in the province. First, high-profile Calgary Catholic lawyer John Carpay was exposed for having compared the rainbow flag to the Nazi swastika. Next, a two-decade-old speech by Alberta’s United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney was revealed, in which he boasts of working during the height of the AIDS crisis in San Francisco on a campaign to prevent gay men in hospital from being allowed to see their partners. Then, just a few days ago, the scandal broke that Alberta Catholic school boards were allegedly not employing people in same-sex relationships, and were asking teachers to “out” their colleagues.
Removing videos and making anodyne statements simply won’t do. Father Jerome Lavigne and the Roman Catholic diocese of Calgary have some explaining to do. Sin, as they surely must know, may be forgiven, but only after the culprit admits, acknowledges, and promises to change.
POPE FRANCIS HAS the most extraordinary ability to say the wrong things, often at the most sensitive times. Last Friday, he accepted the resignation of the archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl — a controversial figure accused of doing too little to prevent, and perhaps even deliberately covering up, hideous sexual abuse cases.
Beyond simply accepting his resignation, Francis took the highly unusual step of releasing a public letter where he praised his friend, arguing that he had been used as a scapegoat. While he admitted that Wuerl had made some “mistakes,” he said that he had acted with “nobility” and remarked that he was “proud” of him. He also asked the cardinal to continue to act as the archdiocese’s apostolic administrator — in effect to remain in his position — until a successor could be named.
It’s about as enthusiastic and supportive as is possible in the circumstances, concerning a man whose predecessor as archbishop, Theodore McCarrick, had to resign when he was accused of sexually abusing seminarians and minors.
Many informed commentators find it difficult to believe that Wuerl knew nothing about this before it was made public. He was also bishop of Pittsburgh from 1988 to 2006, and a recent grand jury report chronicled an entire litany of the most grotesque and widespread sexual abuse throughout Pennsylvania. Either Wuerl was spectacularly myopic and incompetent in dealing with this or, as many have suggested, he sometimes protected abusers.
What we do know, according to that grand jury report, is that in 1998 he allowed Father William O’Malley to return to a parish after numerous reports were made against him, and after his own admission that he was sexually attracted to young people. He went on to abuse again. Seven years later, Wuerl also reinstated Father George Zirwas, after several credible abuse accusations.
Wuerl did sometimes expose and expel abusers, but his record is inconsistent at best, and since the Pennsylvania report his reputation has suffered enormously. Yet his ability to evince enthusiasm for conservatives such as Benedict and relative liberals such as Francis has served him well, and he has supporters in all sorts of high places. In many ways, however, Wuerl is largely irrelevant in all this — a mere symptom of a far more systemic crisis. It was Francis himself who, until obliged to apologize, scolded abuse survivors in Chile, and accused Irish survivor and activist Marie Collins as being “fixated.” As with many issues, he is erratic and changeable, but has certainly disappointed victims of Catholic clergy abuse with his inaction, and now with this public endorsement of Cardinal Wuerl.
There are currently investigations into Catholic clergy abuse in several U.S. states, including New York and Michigan, and the consensus within the Catholic media is that the findings will be similar to those in Pennsylvania. It’s not certain how Pope Francis will react, but it’s highly unlikely that very much will change. Church leaders are certainly more careful now, but the fundamentals and causes remain firmly in place.
There are four major problems. Enforced celibacy can lead to lies and obfuscation, and while men who are denied sex do not automatically become abusers, there’s no doubt that abusers certainly look for places where they can disguise their sexual perversions and their crimes.
Second is the patriarchy that dominates within the Church. Women are not only refused ordination, but are excluded from all positions of power. Abusers in any area are overwhelmingly men, and the sheer presence of women would create a more normal and balanced culture.
Then there is authority, which is as firmly guarded by priests on the left as well as by those on the right. The Roman Catholic Church is based on hierarchy, with the Pope considered the direct successor to St. Peter, given the keys of the kingdom by Jesus Himself. Those he makes bishops, and those the bishops then make priests, are not to be contradicted. This clericalism may not be as severe as it once was, but in essence it hasn’t changed.
Last is the climate of secrecy that exists, and is a direct consequence of the first three aspects of all this. The upper echelons of the Roman Catholic Church are still a closed shop, with the laity given occasional, but largely cosmetic views through the stained glass windows. So much is kept secret that abusers, who of course represent a small minority of clergy, find it relatively easy to hide.
None of this can or will be addressed until a genuinely revolutionary and courageous pope is elected, and one who is willing to turn the Church upside down and shake it into modernity and accountability. Miracles do happen I suppose, but they’re very few and far between these days.
POPE FRANCIS IS adored by liberal Catholics and by many in the secular world — who, frankly, know little of what he actually believes — he is regarded by church conservatives, including some clergy, as irresponsible and even heretical. The truth is that while he is progressive on issues of ecology, immigration, and economics, he has been extremely slow to react to abuse issues, and just last week was accused of being aware that a close friend, Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta, was known to have taken naked selfies and indulged in obscene behaviour. He accepted the man’s resignation in August 2017, but it is claimed that he knew of his fellow Argentinian’s actions two years earlier, and rather than punish the man, appointed him to a senior Vatican position.
When charges such as this are made public, the Pope and his people tend to try to digress and distract. Which may have something to do with his new announcement of an app to encourage the world’s billion Roman Catholics to pray. Called rather glibly “Click to Pray,” the app tells users what Francis is praying for, and they can then click the thing and join the person regarded by Catholics as the direct descendant of St. Peter, in holy and devout prayer. At the app’s launch in Rome, Francis was apparently praying about disaster. “Today, I have two pains in my heart. Colombia and the Mediterranean.” The first referred to a car bombing, the second to the drowning of 170 migrants. Both events being deeply disturbing and serious. Francis emphasized the app is so he can “stay in touch with others, to share values and projects and to express the desire to form a community.” Well, that’s okay then.
It’s a little difficult not to be cynical about this apparent embrace of the modern and the ostensibly relevant when Francis rules over a church that still forbids contraception, women’s choice, and female ordination, is mired in patriarchy and wealth, and under his pontificate — contrary to what people believe — gay men, even if they are celibate, have been told that they are not wanted in the priesthood and that they live in a state of “objective disorder.”
And what is the man saying about the nature of prayer? It’s not the stuff of gimmicks, and one of my main concerns as a Christian is that prayer is abused and exploited both as a word and a concept. Politicians obsessively tell us that they are praying when a tragedy occurs, and public figures who have never prayed in their lives send their “thoughts and prayers.” Prayer is not an emotional spasm, not an empty gesture, not a substitute for action. For the Christian, and for most people of faith, it’s a dialogue with God, an expression of a relationship, a conversation and a conduit. Søren Kierkegaard put it like this: “Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can, as it were, creep into God.”
I pray silently, pray formally during set offices, pray even in stressful public situations when I feel slightly awkward doing so. I could no more not pray than not eat, and rather like food, prayer often delights me, sometimes leaves me disappointed, but always nourishes me. But prayer should not be watered down until it seems meaningless and banal, rather like a handshake or a casual “How are you?” Prayer is about letting go, allowing, accepting. In a way, it’s a profound acquiescence, a sometimes reluctant acceptance that we may not know what is best and that there is someone above and beyond us. That’s why prayer is so important. It helps us find the prism of faith and filter of intellect through which we can understand the meaning of texts written so long ago.
Which is why the notion of a prayer app is so jarring, especially when it comes from the Pope! It’s almost reminiscent of the selling of indulgences by the Roman Catholic Church in the early sixteenth century, one of the events that led to the Reformation. It all seems so robotic, formal, artificial and — forgive me — irreligious. At a time when hardly a week goes by without another disgusting revelation concerning priests sexually abusing children and the Church doing nothing about it and often disguising or denying the crimes, this surely cannot be the most appropriate and ethical use of the Pope’s time and influence. Beware fiddling while Rome burns, whether you’re a Caesar or a Pope. I will pray for Francis over all this; but not by using his app.
POPES HAVE BECOME rather good at apologizing in recent years. Actually, they’ve had no option. The clergy abuse crisis, the historic persecution and slaughter of heretics, the Vatican’s ambivalence towards Nazi anti-Semitism during the Second World War, and so many other horrific events all have demanded public contrition. Pope Francis has a mixed record on the subject: he can be progressive and enlightened in some areas, tribal and reactionary in others. Recently in Chile, for example he initially caused outrage by not only refusing to apologize for clerical abuse, but for lambasting some of its victims. He later reversed his position, largely due to public fury.
Now we come to Canada, and the ghastly case of residential schools, and the treatment of Indigenous people. No particular denomination or institution — secular or religious — is solely to blame, and government is as guilty as church, but most have made seemingly heartfelt apologies. Stephen Harper, Justin Trudeau, the Anglican Church, the Presbyterian Church. The same was asked of Pope Francis, speaking for Canada’s Roman Catholics, especially as they are the largest Christian group in the country. The response, alas, was in the negative.
Now, Parliament intends to formally ask the Pope to reconsider his refusal to apologize, and for the Church to fulfil its financial obligations under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. This was initiated by NDP MP Charlie Angus, and backed, with edits, by Carolyn Bennett, the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations. It asks the Church to raise twenty-five million dollars for Indigenous healing, as demanded in the residential schools settlement of 2007, and to supply relevant documents that could help reconciliation.
A papal apology was one of the ninety-four recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and to emphasize the importance of the gesture, when he visited the Vatican last year, Justin Trudeau personally asked the Pope to consider the apology. Such a direct request is considered extremely significant in Rome.
Even so, the official response was that while the Pope takes all this “seriously” (well, that’s nice to know), “after carefully considering the request and extensive dialogue with the bishops of Canada, he felt that he could not personally respond.”
As that statement makes clear, the Pope didn’t make this decision alone, and for that matter it’s not even clear that he made the decision at all. His representatives in Canada, including senior bishops and cardinals, and likely lawyers, would have made suggestions, and it’s uncommon for Rome to contradict such advice.
If change is going to happen, it will require pressure and exposure. It took many years for Rome to admit, acknowledge, and then apologize for generations of sexual abuse of countless children, and it only did so after denial, obfuscation, and even emotional and legal attacks on those who had been so appallingly treated by its clergy. The Church has learned how to play the long game, and to cover itself in case of litigation.
In 1991, for example, the Canadian Catholic Bishops issued a statement that “We are sorry and deeply regret the pain, suffering and alienation that so many experienced” at the residential schools, and two years later said that, “various types of abuse experienced at some residential schools have moved us to a profound examination of conscience as a Church.” But these are couched and careful words, obviously written through the filter of lawyers rather than the heart of conscience.
When asked his opinion, Andrew Scheer, a devout Roman Catholic who knows Catholic leaders well, responded that “all religions” involved in the residential school system should admit what happened. Presumably he was trying to draw equivalents, and protect Catholicism from being singled out. Problem is, the only thing that distinguishes the Roman Catholic Church is that it’s about the only faith not to have issued an absolute apology from its highest point of leadership!
In 1986, the United Church made an official statement that spoke volumes: “We imposed our civilization as a condition of accepting the gospel. We tried to make you be like us and in so doing we helped to destroy the vision that made you what you were. As a result, you, and we, are poorer and the image of the Creator in us is twisted, blurred, and we are not what we are meant by God to be. We ask you to forgive us and to walk together with us in the Spirit of Christ so that our peoples may be blessed and God’s creation healed.”
The Roman Catholic Church may argue that it’s sufficient for a local diocese or organization to apologize, and that a papal statement is unnecessary. That just won’t do. Indigenous people, the victims, have asked for this apology, explaining how much it will heal their wounds. Good Lord, the truth cries out to be heard. The Gospel of Matthew says, “So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.” In other words, no Christian can go forward unless they apologize for the wrong and the crime that they’ve committed. That applies to all Christians, even to Popes.
ANYBODY WHO KEEPS an eye on Roman Catholic politics would not have been at all surprised by a recent article in La Civilta Cattolica, a Jesuit journal published in Rome which carries the Holy See’s stamp of approval. What appears in its pages, in other words, is supported by Pope Francis. The most recent issue carried a scathing attack on Catholic conservatives in the United States, condemning them for forming an axis of “hate” with evangelical Christians to elect and support President Donald Trump. The piece names Steve Bannon, Trump’s former advisor, as a “supporter of apocalyptic geopolitics” and speaks of the Catholic right’s denial of climate change and opposition to immigration. The article pulls no clerical punches, even going so far as to juxtapose the theology of the U.S. Catholic right with jihadism.
The article doesn’t reference Canada directly, but there’s plenty of evidence that right-wing Catholics are helping harden Canada’s conservative party and exerting more political influence than Canadians would like to think. To grasp why this is happening begins with understanding the Catholic Church’s current state in North America. The institution is divided in three distinct ways. First are the Catholic hierarchies. They tend to be relatively thoughtful and moderate. Second comes the laity. Most are indifferent, and even those who are regular Communicants generally embrace the culture around them rather than the teaching of their church. On issues of contraception and equal marriage, for example, they are as progressive as non-Catholics.
Third, however, are Roman Catholic activists. They collect around the abortion issue, seen as the great litmus test for orthodoxy and taking up most of the time and energy of the Catholic right. Added to this is a resistance to LGBT+ equality, assisted dying, anything seen as permissive or pornographic, and hence any form of liberalism. That invariably slides into greater conservatism, on economic as well as social and religious issues. These activists are a minority, but they are well financed and dedicated. In 2010, for example, the Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty felt obliged to withdraw a long-overdue reform of the sex education curriculum after various parental and activist groups — with a strong Catholic conservative base — mobilized in opposition. They took out ads, held demonstrations, threatened to unseat Liberal politicians, and promised the mass withdrawal of children from schools. The campaign worked.
What applies to the U.S. also applies to Canada. Remember that the two most prominent conservatives in Canada — Jason Kenney and Andrew Scheer — are right-wing Catholics. Kenney has attended meetings of the conservative group Opus Dei, an ultra-Catholic organization that tries to recruit people prominent in business and finance. Scheer is a committed believer and the son of a deacon — an ordained position for men considered only slightly junior to that of priest. While the new leader of the opposition may smile a great deal and claim that he will not reopen debates about abortion and gay rights, his personal views on these issues are absolute. It’s interesting that Stephen Harper was long considered a social conservative and a right-wing Christian, given that he was often hostile to Christian activists in his caucus who wanted to resurrect social and moral issues. The same cannot be said for Andrew Scheer, who has already spoken of removing funding from universities where “free speech” is not protected; this is a euphemism for the protection of anti-abortion groups who now routinely demand the right on campus to present graphic images of aborted fetuses.
The leadership is one thing but what also sent shockwaves through the Conservative Party was the success of the other, even more obvious and hardline Catholic candidate Pierre Lemieux in the recent leadership contest. As the Toronto Star reported back in May, “In six Scarborough ridings, either of two social conservative candidates, Brad Trost or Pierre Lemieux, was the first choice of between twenty and fifty-five percent of Conservative members.” This sort of thing doesn’t go unnoticed inside the party, and while it frightens social liberals it delights their opponents and makes pragmatists — those who simply want to win at any cost — begin to wonder about future policy.
This in turn flows over to the think tanks. Cardus is probably the most senior, describing its mission as being “the renewal of North American social architecture” — very much conservative shorthand. It brings together religious activists, mainly from the Catholic and evangelical right. It produces various publications, including Convivium, and its annual lecture series funded by the Hill Companies has featured Rex Murphy, Barbara Kay, and Conrad Black.
Far more intense is the virulently anti-abortion and anti-LGBT+ outfit Campaign Life Coalition and the website Lifesite News. This online media entity is overwhelmingly Catholic and undeniably influential. When Ontario’s youngest and arguably most conservative MPP Sam Oosterhoff won the Tory nomination for Niagara West, party organizers from Toronto complained that “those Campaign Life people were bloody everywhere.” His victory stunned the party establishment.
Lifesite recently ran an article describing Donald Trump as the new Constantine, the Roman emperor who gave Christianity his official blessing. It has claimed that, “The entire world owes a debt of gratitude to the president” and has described Trump’s opponents as “satanic.” The site has endless references to sinister cabals, the influence of various behind-the-scenes controllers, and the usual dark conspiracy theories. In February, for example, it argued that the opposition to Trump was orchestrated and funded by “the several decades-old movement for an aggressively secular, borderless, de-populationist New World Order and world government.”
Thing is, Lifesite is not a blog that’s read only by its writers. It’s a massively well-financed platform consumed by hundreds of thousands of people, many if not most of them in Canada. Much of the money is given by devoted followers, with special appeals whenever money is short or a particular campaign is being planned.
Even more blatant than Lifesite are blogs such as the Ontario-based Vox Cantoris and Toronto Catholic Witness, with less significance but still making a heavy mark. The latter wrote this, shortly after the terrible massacre at the Ariana Grande concert in which twenty-two people were killed and more than one hundred injured, many of them children:
“A few minutes on the internet this morning identified her as a promoter of sexual libertinism, pornography, obscenity, profanity, feminism, and the LGBTQ agenda. Yet for all of this, it seems that parents have no qualms about sending their pre-teen and teen girls to listen and watch this loathsome individual … I cannot but be puzzled how parents who seemingly are so distressed about the killing of their children, but remained utterly unconcerned that their children were slowly being spiritually poisoned.”
Anybody who has been on the receiving end of right-wing Canadian Catholic zealots knows, alas, that such a tone is by no means unique. When I left the Roman Catholic Church and began to champion progressive causes, I was accused of being an adulterer, a thief, and even a pedophile. My wife was told to leave me, my children’s Facebook pages were trolled, and there were successful campaigns to have me fired from speeches and columns.
That tone is also starting to shape the public discourse around issues. At this precise time, for instance, there is a struggle taking place at St. Michael’s, the Catholic college at the University of Toronto. On the one side are conservative Catholics who want to restore the Catholicity of the college, on the other a more liberal group who are influenced by the Pope Francis approach and look to influence others by witness rather than muscular certainty. The story has already made the national media — highly unusual for religious news.
In many ways, it’s a battle for the soul and future of the Catholic Church in Canada. Who controls this major Catholic college at the most important university in Canada — the bishops and cardinal or liberal clergy and lay academics? It’s not irrelevant that immediately after this story became public, the blog Toronto Catholic Witness ran a long entry defending the right-wing at St. Michael’s and accusing the college of being home to lewd sexual behaviour.
St. Michael’s educates many of the most prominent politicians and social and economic leaders who are nominally Catholic. If the orthodox voices win this noisy and increasingly acrimonious argument, we may see a much more rigid and religious formation of the future Catholic elite. It’s ironic that as the Vatican moves to embrace more liberal positions, the Canadian church looks in the opposite direction. Are we witnessing a historic and momentous Canadian moment? Perhaps. But don’t expect a CBC montage.
THEY CAME, THEY spoke, they left — and nothing changed. Pope Francis and 190 prelates gathered last Thursday for an unprecedented 4 day summit in Rome to discuss the Church’s sexual abuse crisis, and the result is very much business as usual. Nothing had been guaranteed, but the sheer optics of the event implied that something, at long last, might be done to respond to a circus of horrors that unwraps by the week.
Instead, the Pope refused to enact the anticipated “zero tolerance” when dealing with pedophile priests, delivering instead a platitude that the Church would “spare no effort” — sound that signified nothing.
To make matters worse, he then devoted a large part of his concluding speech to the subject of sexual abuse in general society, arguing that it’s not confined to the Roman Catholic Church and that most offenders were family members, “husbands of child brides and teachers.”
“Our work has made us realize once again that the gravity of the scourge of the sexual abuse of minors is, and historically has been, a widespread phenomenon in all cultures and societies,” he continued. “I am reminded of the cruel religious practice, once widespread in certain cultures, of sacrificing human beings — frequently children — in pagan rites.”
The degree of digression here is incredible. Nobody has ever claimed that the Church is the only offender, but that it has denied and obfuscated, protected its own, and even attacked victims who spoke out for justice. The phenomenon of child marriage is something entirely different; that human sacrifice was even mentioned is bewildering. This is what is known as “Rome speak,” where much is said and little admitted.
Abuse, tragically, exists everywhere there is a power dynamic, and that includes families, schools, sports clubs and other religious institutions. But the Church continues to refuse to examine why it is especially vulnerable, and even under the allegedly progressive Pope Francis, it still cannot acknowledge the depth and extent of the problem. In spite of papal protests, the Roman Catholic Church remains a magnet for this kind of crime, and nothing will change without reckoning with and resolving five basic aspects that in some ways are built into the religion’s bones: Enforced celibacy, patriarchy, clericalism, secrecy, and sexual dishonesty.
Celibacy does not lead to abuse, and if it’s voluntary, it can be deeply spiritual. But when it’s demanded, it can attract the sexually immature and broken, and can enforce a dark stigma around sexuality. Patriarchy within Roman Catholicism is staggeringly obvious — the image of almost 200 middle-aged and elderly men discussing sexual abuse surely says it all. Women perpetrate abuse too, of course, but a culture so lacking in gender balance and female influence can never function healthily.
Clericalism and secrecy run together, with the priest — he who stands for Jesus Christ during the Mass — still considered part of the elite. Father can do no wrong, the child claiming abuse has to be lying, and the Church must guard its internal life from those who would criticize and question.
Sexual dishonesty? The number of Catholic priests who are gay is high, with estimates ranging between thirty to seventy percent. Gay men are no more likely to abuse than straight men, but they are forced to live a lie within a Church that is still deeply homophobic. That cloud of dishonesty is exploited by abusers.
Yes, the meeting did produce an eight-point pledge promising more transparency, less defensiveness and an insistence on clergy purity — but this is mere rhetoric. The inescapable fact is that myriad complaints concerning child rape have been made for decades, and the Church has consistently refused to help the victim, deal with the abuser and look at the root causes. It only began to deal with these obscenities when it was forced to do so by media and legal exposure.
So in that context, the gathered flock’s failure to enact real change is particularly damning. They could have vowed to ordain women and openly gay men, encourage the equality of all believers, and open up the doors and the books. But it was never going to happen, and likely never will happen in our lifetimes. Further monstrosities will come to light, and more empty gestures will be offered. I wish I could be more optimistic, but I know the Church too well — and how reluctant it has long been to accepting radical change and in trying to genuinely transform the comfortable status quo.
BACK IN 1999, British author John Cornwell published a controversial and widely publicized book called Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII. The title was misleading on two levels: first, in that it implied and depicted Pius as a faithful Nazi; second, in that it assumed the man’s story long had been kept a secret. Six years later came a counter-blast in the shape of The Myth of Hitler’s Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis by David G. Dalin, who is not only Jewish, but also a rabbi.
So there we had it. A liberal Catholic accusing a pope of Nazism; a Jewish academic and ordained cleric praising the wartime pontiff as a friend of anti-Nazism and the Jewish people. The twenty-first-century Pius wars had begun. And now, another front has opened, with the making by Catholic director and writer Liana Marabini of a movie called Shades of Truth, which will be shown at this month’s Cannes Film Festival. It’s extremely supportive of Pope Pius, presenting a man who utters progressive aphorisms as he strides along Vatican hallways shaming his contemporaries as they fail to properly empathize with Europe’s poor Jews. It also makes the outlandish claim that Pius saved 800,000 Jewish lives, a boast that even his most aggressive academic supporters would never make.
In one scene, which naturally is used in marketing materials for the film, Pius is shown wearing a yellow star pinned to his papal cassock. It never happened in real life, of course; and even in Shades of Truth, the scene is confined to a dream sequence. So it’s misleading at best, if not noisily dishonest.
But imagine if the leader of world Catholicism really had worn such a symbol of degradation and genocide? Urban legend long has had it that the King of Denmark wore such a star as he rode the streets of Copenhagen in his carriage; it’s not true, but the point is that those who knew him always accepted the anecdote because it was authentic to his character and attitude toward his Jewish subjects. The King of Morocco actually did request yellow stars for himself and his family when told that Moroccan Jews would have to wear them. And this from an Arab Muslim monarch living under occupation. But with Pius, the story simply doesn’t fit. Even in dream.
The story of Eugenio Pacelli, elected to the papacy in March 1939 as Pius XII, is complex. Anyone searching for absolute purity of motive and some sort of anachronistic philo-semitism and embrace of modern pluralism will be disappointed. He was a man of his time and his faith: obsessively frightened of Communism and its campaign against the Church; obviously unaware of who would triumph in the Second World War. His official actions consistently reflected these fears and uncertainties.
Pius XII almost certainly had no personal animus against Jewish people, always rejected the eugenics and intolerance of National Socialism, and on a personal level did what he could to save the lives of Jews around him. Before he became Pope, Cardinal Pacelli drafted the papal encyclical condemning Nazi racism and had it read from every pulpit. As Pope, he had the Vatican use its assets to ransom Jews from the Nazis, ran an elaborate escape route, and hid Jewish families in the papal palace of Castel Gondolfo. In 1945, Rabbi Herzog of Jerusalem, for example, thanked Pius, “for his lifesaving efforts on behalf of the Jews during the occupation of Italy.” When the pontiff died in 1958, Golda Meir, then Israeli foreign minister, delivered a eulogy at the United Nations praising the man for his work on behalf of her people.
For almost a generation, in fact, it was considered a political absolute that the Church was a member of a coalition of victims during the Second World War, and Pius was mentioned alongside Churchill and Roosevelt as part of the team of morally correct wartime leaders. It was only in the 1960s that the conversation around this issue began to change, partly because of the work of a German playwright named Rolf Hochhuth, who alleged in his 1963 play The Deputy that the Vatican not only had ignored the suffering of the Jews, but tacitly and sometimes explicitly had supported the Nazis. The truth, however, is more of a via media than a via dolorosa.
While the Pope did not issue an outright attack on the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews, his supporters argue that this was because the leaders of the Catholic Church in Holland had made just such a public statement condemning the Nazi deportation of the Jewish people. In response the Germans had arrested and murdered every Dutch Jewish convert to Catholicism they could find. (Tragically, those arrests and deportations were only a matter of time anyway.)
Pius was such a friend of the Jews, the argument continues, that when the Chief Rabbi of Rome, Israel Zolli, converted to Roman Catholicism after the war, he took Pius’s name, Eugenio, in his christening as a tribute to the Pope’s work on behalf of the Jews. That’s also true but doesn’t really change much. On a personal level, as noted above, Pius certainly did what he could to save lives; but on a public level — where multitudes could be saved — he did far less.
Pius was not “Hitler’s Pope,” and the Nazis always considered him a threat. His failure was that he never made that threat a reality by speaking out resolutely against the Holocaust, invariably terrified of what would happen to the world’s Catholics if he did and advised by some around him that the alternative to the Germans was the Soviets. It’s an understandable dilemma, but a defiant Pope could have influenced hundreds of millions of Catholics, many of them serving in armies allied to the Germans. The risk would have been enormous, but Christianity isn’t supposed to be about safety and complacency.
Thus there are indeed numerous shades of truth around Pope Pius. Unfortunately, this movie only deepens the polarization and so makes it more difficult for a reasonable analysis to take place. The late Sir Martin Gilbert, one of the finest historians of the Holocaust and the Second World War and a man I was fortunate enough to call a friend, once put it like this: “This was a pre-Vatican II Catholic Church in the middle of a war that, for the most part, was not between Germans and the west, but Nazis and Stalinists. If, say, John Paul II had been Pope, the story may have been different. Throw in subsequent rifts between the Catholic right and left, and the regrettable politicization of the Shoah and truth is extremely difficult to find.”
The entire political and religious landscape has changed today, and some of these old battles obscure contemporary truths. Pius didn’t act particularly badly for a man of his era but, I suppose, he did act particularly normally. For someone thought to be the direct successor to St. Peter, given the keys of the kingdom by Jesus Christ, that’s just not good enough, no matter how well that truth is shaded.
EARLIER THIS YEAR I had the misfortune of going to see the controversial anti-abortion movie Unplanned. In full disclosure, I didn’t go for a night’s entertainment but as a journalistic exercise.
The movie is appalling. The acting is so wooden as to be amusing, the plot is cliché upon caricature, the depiction of abortion-providers is cartoonish, and it’s all wrapped up in gory and ghoulish scenes of the blood-soaked hands of evil liberals and snarling feminists.
It’s partly financed by a pillow-manufacturer named Mike Lindell, who once said that Donald Trump was “the greatest president in history … chosen by God.” A pillow would have helped me when I watched, but not those around me. People were engaged! They cried, screamed, and prayed. There was palpable anger, and a cheering and clapping when the movie ended.
That reaction is pertinent, because abortion medics have been attacked and killed, and anti-abortion extremists are considered a domestic terrorist threat in the U.S. And there is no doubt that while it’s raw, clumsy, and didactic, the ranting of Unplanned does succeed in creating an atmosphere of fear and anger, and that can have terrible consequences.
The story concerns anti-abortion activist Abby Johnson, on whose memoir the movie is based. Many medical experts question the book and the film, but testimony from doctors has never been an obstacle for the anti-abortion movement.
In this story, Abby glides from being a supporter of choice and a clinic worker to a fierce opponent of abortion. It’s all about profit and money, the movie insists, and even if it wasn’t, a fetus can feel pain. Let’s just hope then that no unborn child has to sit through this agonizing nonsense.
MY FIRST JOB in journalism was at the New Statesman magazine in Britain in the early 1980s. I was new and shiny and one of the first people I met was a man who was not new and shone in an entirely different way. Christopher Hitchens — he didn’t like “Chris” — was as generous as he was gifted. But he didn’t suffer fools or frauds.
One of the most famous of the latter was, in his opinion, a woman who is about to be acknowledged as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. Mother Teresa, born in Skopje, now Macedonia, to Albanian parents, as Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, and someone whom to many embodies the best in Christianity. Hitchens disagreed, wrote a book about her called The Missionary Position and insisted that she was a force for evil rather than good.
I would not be as bold, and could not be as brilliant, as the exquisite Hitch but Good God — and I do believe Him to be good and great — he had a point. Hitchens’ argument, among others, was that Mother Teresa provided substandard medical care, took money from dictators and criminals and often cozied up to them, pushed her faith on the vulnerable and sick, and encouraged western Catholic journalists to paint her as divine.
There are indeed many unanswered questions about the level of aid the poor of Calcutta actually received and it’s beyond dispute that Teresa was heavily funded by brutes such as Jean-Claude Duvalier of Haiti, who stole a fortune from his own people while they lived in poverty. Not only did she take the man’s cash, she lionized him as a great leader. She also praised the repugnant Albanian despot Enver Hoxha and laid flowers at his grave and welcomed donations from British publisher and criminal Robert Maxwell.
The case of the anti-pornography zealot and businessman Charles Keating is particularly disturbing. He gave millions of dollars to Teresa and the use of his private jet when she visited the United States. Although he was sent to prison for more than four years for fraud, and thousands of people were hurt by what he did, Teresa refused to refund any of the money he had donated.
There are also ideological and systemic problems. She campaigned against contraceptive use in a country ravaged by over-population and it almost goes without saying that she vehemently opposed abortion rights. Her motivation was conservative Catholic rather than progressively human. “I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ,” she said. “I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.” That is not how the poor feel as they watch their babies die in their arms.
It’s important to emphasize that there are countless Catholic and other Christian groups performing outstanding work in India and elsewhere who do not adopt Teresa’s reactionary views and dubious ways, and do not have or want the public relations machine that she enjoyed. Some of the most successful social programs in India are funded internationally by western governments who also urge family planning, LGBT+ equality and divorce rights, all opposed not only by the new saint, but by her church. More than this, the bulk of the good and selfless work being performed in India is by Indian Hindus and Muslims, not white Christians.
The ceremony announcing to the world that Mother Teresa can be prayed to and revered will take place in a Vatican in possession of wealth through paintings, manuscripts, statues and investments that is beyond comprehension, and in spite of a few utterly cosmetic changes by Pope Francis there is no indication that this will ever change. The glaring juxtaposition between what the tiny Albanian woman was at least supposed to represent and the Roman reality is, frankly, scandalous.
It was another Catholic, the Brazilian archbishop Dom Helder Camara, who said, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.” But he and his liberation theology were not popular with a Papacy that embraced a woman who refused to ask the right questions, apologized for the culprits and ignored the causes.
IN ARGUABLY THE most dramatic move of his five-year pontificate, Pope Francis has declared that the death penalty is wrong in all circumstances, arguing that capital punishment is “an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,” and that the Church will campaign “with determination” for the universal abolition of executions. Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI had made their opposition clear, but this represents an evolution of the official teaching — that it was acceptable if it was “the only practicable way” to save lives — which gave plenty of wiggle room for interpretation. Now, however, Francis hasn’t just solidified the teaching, but he has placed it in the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church, the doctrinal guide to the faith that is central to international Catholicism. It has, as it were, biblical prestige.
But there will, of course, be opponents to this bold shift. Indeed, when Francis deployed the phrase “dignity of the person,” it was loaded: it was also used by the Church in its opposition to abortion and assisted dying, and indeed the chapter in the catechism that deals with capital punishment also outlines Catholic teaching regarding these two issues. The proximity will escape neither supporters nor opponents.
Indeed, it’s largely because of powerful opposition that Francis’s predecessors were reluctant to go any further than their personal opposition, partly because they knew how many lay members of their church disagreed with them — particularly Catholic politicians in the United States, where capital punishment is legal in thirty-one American states and also at the federal level. Governors Greg Abbott of Texas and Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, for example, are Catholics who proclaim their faith politically as well as personally; both have presided over executions. The late Justice Antonin Scalia, the doyen of Catholic lawyers, wrote that, “I do not find the death penalty immoral.” President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh is a Catholic, as are Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Sonia Soto-mayor. They will likely respond just as Paul Martin and Justin Trudeau do over issues such as abortion and equal marriage: We are Catholics, but we govern for all of the country, and must separate church and state. It may be a messy separation to make.
But this all goes much deeper than the formalization of a view long held in the Vatican, and is more part of the continuum of a reforming Pope who, at eighty-one and in questionable health, wants to leave a mark than cannot be erased. Francis is beloved by media, juxtaposed as he sometimes is with Trump’s crass, right-wing populism, and he has made laudable statements about climate change, economic equality, and social reform. But in truth, very little has changed in Rome. And while capital punishment is controversial, it is realistically an issue that isn’t so divisive as to cause an obvious rift. There remain plenty of no-go areas, where reform would be considered beyond papal jurisdiction, as they contradict historic teachings: the ordination of women, the acceptance of abortion, the recognition of same-sex partnerships as valid and pleasing to God.
Still, Francis has thrust the Church further to the left. But as the Trump administration has proven, a disruptive conservative force has the ability to succeed a progressive legacy and dismantle it. Could this Pope’s leftward moves be expunged by a more right-wing successor?
Here is where the inherent contradictions in Catholic teaching occur. The Pope is considered infallible, unable to speak in error, “when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church.” The doctrine was confirmed in 1870 at the First Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, but had been proposed for centuries. Problem is, it was also rejected for centuries by many senior Catholics, and there was a sizeable opposition to it in 1870. It’s no coincidence that this was a time when the Church was under vehement attack in Germany and France, and liberalism was taking hold throughout the western world. It was, in effect, Rome reminding people who was boss.
But it also has limitations, in that it cannot be applied to what are considered new doctrines, but only to affirm what has been taught in the past. But what constitutes “new?” One could convincingly argue that Christ himself had women around him who were ordained, that he fully accepted gay people, and never spoke of abortion. Novelty, it seems, is in the eye of the beholder, and especially the beholder who enjoys ecclesiastical power. It’s also unclear when papal infallibility is even being used, and there’s disagreement about the number of times Popes have spoken thus — some say twice, others seven or even eight.
So the next best thing to an infallible statement is a line or two in the catechism, and that’s what Francis has done. Further editing the catechism around this issue would be almost impossible for the next Pope; such a conservative, backward step would be devastating for the Church’s international reputation. Short of an infallible statement, this is about as absolute as it gets.
In the past, Francis has spoken of the possibility of women deacons, of allowing divorced Catholics to re-marry in the Church, and made some positive noises about LGBT+ equality. But little has been achieved, and indeed on the last subject he’s often dialled back the conversation; it is, for example, more difficult for a gay man to enter a Catholic seminary now than it was under the previous two Popes. On capital punishment, however, the leader of more than a billion Catholics has made an indelible impression on the world’s stage, aligning his institution with the left of the political spectrum, and with the forces of progress and change. He’s opened the door, knowing that within a few years when he is replaced, his successor as pontiff might not walk through it, but nor can he close it again. In a body as rigid, hierarchical, and torn as the Roman Catholic Church, that’s an extraordinary achievement, and a holy legacy.
THERE REALLY IS no business like saint business. Once you make it, people pray to you, put statues of you in their rooms, and thank you when they recover from an illness — or just find a parking spot.
But the making of and praying to saints — and the entire hagiographical industry, for that matter — can be vulgar and achingly banal. It’s not supposed to be that way, of course. At its best, it should represent a genuine desire to single out those who have sacrificed heroically, or have contributed magnificently to the betterment of humanity, for special praise. Alas, that purity was lost a long time ago.
It can also be political and acutely divisive, and that’s certainly the case at the moment, as two prominent Roman Catholics of the early twentieth century move towards saint status: British author G.K. Chesterton, and Polish Cardinal August Hlond. Both men, especially the former, were accomplished and impressive, but they share a dark commonality too: they both made appallingly anti-Semitic comments in the 1930s, when the Jewish people were about to become victims of an attempted genocide. And the politics threaten to overshadow the whole process — not to mention the Church’s well-intentioned and largely successful efforts to shake off its centuries-old reputation as an anti-Semitic institution.
Hlond, who died in 1948, was Primate of Poland and Archbishop of Warsaw, and is admired because he spoke out against both the Nazi and Soviet occupation of his country. He was also the only member of the College of Cardinals to have been taken into custody by the Gestapo. His canonization process began in 1992, and this May he was named as “Venerable” by Pope Francis. That’s pretty advanced, and if a few miracles can be attributed to his intercession, he will be declared a saint.
Chesterton has further to go. His cause actually has its origins in Canada: Back in 1986, in a sermon at the end of a Chesterton conference at the University of Toronto, Cardinal Emmet Carter, the Archbishop of Toronto, argued with a wink that more laypeople should be canonized. I spoke at that conference and was present at the sermon, having written a biography of Chesterton, and it took until 2013 for the author’s cause to be formally introduced; now his writings are being investigated with sainthood in mind.
The making of saints is complex, and on some levels absurd. It wasn’t always that way, and in medieval Europe things were much simpler: A saint was proclaimed by popular demand. If enough people were sufficiently loud in the streets of Rome, you were in. Today, however, the panoply of the approved is distinctly odd, with violent, intolerant, and sexually neurotic types joined by authentically good and remarkable people.
In the cases of Chesterton and Hlond, both men had undeniable virtues as well as brutal flaws. Hlond was brave and defiant in standing up to the Nazis, but he also helped to empower their grotesque racism. In 1936, he wrote: “So long as Jews remain Jews, a Jewish problem exists and will continue to exist … It is a fact that Jews are waging war against the Catholic church, that they are steeped in free-thinking, and constitute the vanguard of atheism, the Bolshevik movement, and revolutionary activity. It is a fact that Jews have a corruptive influence on morals and that their publishing houses are spreading pornography. It is true that Jews are perpetrating fraud, practicing usury, and dealing in prostitution. It is true that, from a religious and ethical point of view, Jewish youth are having a negative influence on the Catholic youth in our schools.”
While he rejected violent attacks on Jewish people and property, he called for boycotts of Jewish stores. And while he condemned the Nazi treatment of the Jews, he refused to acknowledge the racist nature of Poland’s post-war pogrom in Kielce in 1946, instead blaming it on what he claimed to be the Jewish support of communism.
Chesterton’s issues are more nuanced. He died in 1936, before the Holocaust was fully operative or exposed, but had condemned Nazi anti-Semitism as early as 1934. But in alliance with his brother Cecil, a convinced hater of Jewish people, and the constantly angry author Hilaire Belloc, he was repeatedly and profoundly hurtful and harmful when it came to Jewish issues. This Roman Catholic triumvirate was renowned for an obsession with Jews, even at a time when casual anti-Semitism was far from uncommon.
The Brit wrote of a “Jewish problem,” commented approvingly of the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290, called on Jews in public office to be obliged to wear an identifying form of costume, and refused to believe that any Jew could be a true patriot. This led him to support Zionism and the establishment of a Jewish state in the Middle East. Then there were his ostensibly humorous poems that traded in troubling caricatures of Jewish people.
The consideration of the pair of candidates threatens to mask the modern reality that the Roman Catholic Church deserves enormous praise for its reformation of its relationship with the Jewish people. While long overdue, it should be acknowledged that since 1945, and in particular since the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s, Rome has changed its language and approach, and demanded the same of its followers. Pope Francis is a loving friend of the Jewish people, John Paul II had an empathetic and intimate understanding of the Jewish experience, and the detritus of anti-Semitism is confined to the right-wing fringe of the Catholic world.
But that’s why these two candidacies are so poorly timed. The Catholic right has re-emerged as a legitimate force in the Church in response to the more liberal Pope Francis, and Poland has just introduced extremely provocative legislation criminalizing discussion of any Polish involvement in the Holocaust. The timing could not be worse — and it’s simply not worth hurting people or inflaming political situations for a political, curiously banal process.
Chesterton was a brilliant yet flawed author, and Cardinal Hlond a person of deeply questionable achievements. There are saints who have similar dark skeletons. But there is no need to open wounds or push these men toward something that is contrived and unnecessary. Better a sinner who clearly tried than a saint who clearly failed. Let’s pray — to anyone we like — that it ends here.
ONE OF THE great myths about the Roman Catholic Church is that it is a single body, unified in faith and happily devout under direct guidance of the Holy Father — but that’s hardly the reality.
While Catholic theology considers the Pope to be the direct successor of St. Peter, given the keys of the kingdom by Jesus Himself, the Church has always contained dissidents. And since the early 1960s, it has been acutely divided between conservatives and liberals — a rift that’s grown deeper ever since the 2013 election of Pope Francis, the most reform-driven Pope in living memory and, after, the reigns of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who were both adored by the Catholic right, the most polarizing.
With a decision on a particularly divisive papal text looming, there is a chance that 2018 causes the Catholic Church to come apart along those simmering seams. It won’t be a formal separation — but it will certainly feel like one.
Critics of the Argentinian pontiff offer a litany of complaints: he is far too negative about Donald Trump; he embraces an abundance of progressive causes; during recent celebrations of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, he’s praised Martin Luther, who the right blame for splitting the Church in the past; and he promotes what they see as “pro-homosexual” priests in the Vatican. They argue that his desire to “make a mess,” as he himself put it, means that he’s indifferent to liturgy, and his commitment to climate change and his relative silence over issues of abortion and traditional marriage means he has betrayed his position. The more extreme even claim that he’s lost legitimacy. The throne, they say, is empty.
The last holy straw could be coming in the form of a document entitled “Amoris Laetitia,” or “The Joy of Love,” issued in April 2016 by the Vatican. This booklet seems to many outside of the Church to be absurdly esoteric, overwhelmingly obvious and even irrelevant. Within Catholicism, however, it is explosive. As with most Papal texts, it’s long, dense, and open to various interpretations, but its most controversial element is that it allows Holy Communion to be given to couples who are divorced and have been remarried in a civil union.
Its meaning is layered in context, it is not rigid in its demands, and it calls for gentleness and for cases to be considered individually. But even so, it has sent countless traditional Catholics into paroxysms of rage. One group of scholars and priests sent an official appeal to petition the Pope to “repudiate” these “erroneous positions,” and thousands of clergy have asked for “clarification” — the most severe criticism they can muster. That clarification is expected in 2018.
“Many faithful Catholics believe that with ‘Amoris Laetitia,’ Pope Francis has encouraged beliefs and practices that are incompatible with the prior teachings of the Church,” wrote Phil Lawler, the founder of Catholic World News — a conservative, but by no means the angriest of the righteous. “If that complaint is accurate, [Pope Francis] has violated the sacred trust that is given to him.”
It’s unlikely that Francis, now eighty-one and admitting to bouts with poor health, will retreat on “Amoris Laetitia,” and it may well be that he will open up even more discussion about the ordination of women as deacons — a position below that of priest, but exclusively male at the moment — and call for more dialogue with the LGBT+ community. We don’t know all of the details but he has, for example, indicated that the all-important debate over married clergy may well be reopened. That will further provoke his critics, and many observers believe that to be one of the main reasons he will proceed. He may be the Pope, but he’s a fighter and someone who doesn’t suffer reactionaries lightly. He will want to open as many doors and windows as he can, before it’s too late.
Some of Francis’s critics have left the Church for Eastern Orthodoxy, and more still for one of the far-right Catholic splinter groups. One of his most high-profile opponents, American Cardinal Raymond Burke, has become more powerful and popular as the criticism builds.
But most are waiting to see what happens in 2018, especially those Catholic neocons in the United States and Canada who have spent decades in comfortable power in various journals, universities, and seminaries. The divide is ugly, and terribly lacking in Christian charity. Whatever happens, 2018 will be a year for Catholics living dangerously.
THE CONCEPT OF apology is at the heart of Christianity. It’s right there in the Bible: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins,” says St. John. In other words, Christians may get things wrong — and may even commit terrible crimes — but acknowledgement of those errors, and genuine contrition, leads to forgiveness and a clean record.
Which makes it all the more galling that Pope Francis has continued to decline to formally apologize for his church’s involvement in the grotesque treatment of Indigenous children in the residential school system. Such an apology was one of the ninety-four recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the ask was repeated and requested by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau when he met with Pope Francis in March. He refused, and now Parliament has voted by a margin of 269-10 to formally invite the Pope to rethink his position. That’s a polite way of insisting — and such an insistence from Ottawa is virtually unprecedented.
The decision has limited legal and constitutional weight, of course, but enormous emotional and political value. If Rome continues to withhold its apology, the optics will be severe. And even if it produces no results, it still exposes a church in crisis.
Up until now, Francis has said he takes the issue “seriously,” but that “after carefully considering the request and extensive dialogue with the bishops of Canada, he felt that he could not personally respond.” That’s a pretty weak, and even dismissive response, but it’s in keeping with the Catholic Church’s approach; in 1991, the Canadian Bishops said, “We are sorry and deeply regret the pain, suffering and alienation that so many experienced” at the residential schools, and in 1993, they added that “various types of abuse experienced at some residential schools have moved us to a profound examination of conscience as a Church.” It’s all soaked in euphemism and clearly the product of legal vetting.
The essence of the Roman Catholic argument is that an individual diocese may apologize, but not the Vatican. The problem is that Roman Catholicism is centred on a supreme authority, and an apology from that authority is considered by Indigenous people to be essential. The Church, however, is terrified of the financial and legal repercussions.
Indeed, the Roman Catholic Church has also been asked to fulfil its financial obligations under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, and to raise twenty-five million dollars for Indigenous healing, as demanded in the residential schools settlement of 2007. It has not come through.
The Church’s Canadian champions are not helping. Sherwood Park‐Fort Saskatchewan MP Garnett Genuis, for instance, said on Twitter that “Catholic entities involved in residential schools have apologized. The Holy See is responsible for next steps, & people are welcome to make their own judgments. It is not for Parliament to call out or dictate to one faith community.” But this misses the point by a holy mile: None of the churches involved in the residential school catastrophe acted autonomously, and all of them were in partnership or in cooperation with the state. Parliament is not asking for the Catholic Church to apologize for what it did as a religious body, but what it did as a church acting partly as an organ of the state.
The government has already apologized, as have other churches. “We imposed our civilization as a condition of accepting the gospel. We tried to make you be like us and in so doing we helped to destroy the vision that made you what you were,” said the Right Rev. Bob Smith in a United Church General Council statement in 1986. “We ask you to forgive us and to walk together with us in the Spirit of Christ so that our peoples may be blessed and God’s creation healed.”
And seven years later, Archbishop Michael Peers, Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, issued a profoundly moving document: “I accept and I confess before God and you, our failures in the residential schools. We failed you. We failed ourselves. We failed God … I am sorry, more than I can say, that we tried to remake you in our image, taking from you your language and the signs of your identity.”
Now it’s up to Pope Francis, for whom this represents another moment of truth as he swings once more between exuberant liberalism and strange stubbornness. Earlier this year in Chile, for example, he refused to apologize for the Church’s history of abuse, and even criticized some of those who complained about what had happened to them. He later offered an apology, but only after an agonizing hiatus for the victims and a fierce reaction from the Chilean public. And while he has sometimes appeared as a compassionate reformer on LGBT+ issues, he’s also given his blessing to a document that makes it impossible for even a celibate gay man to enter a seminary.
It’s time for Pope Francis to make himself clear, once and for all, or risk the Church appearing to retreat back into the closed and frightened place it once occupied. There is much that is enlightened and compassionate about Catholic teaching, and it is those things — rather than its tendency toward being defensive and litigious — that need to be emphasized at this crucial juncture.
The Roman Catholic Church acted far too slowly, and sometimes callously, when the sexual abuse crisis was exposed. On residential schools, it has a clear choice, and it’s one that it has to get right — for the Indigenous people of this country, but also for itself.
ALBERTA IS A divided province right now. The government is reforming its sex-education curriculum, and the province’s Roman Catholic organizations are not happy. The Council of Catholic School Superintendents of Alberta delivered an alternative to the government’s proposals, which it claims do not pay sufficient attention to religious sensibilities. Contrary to the government, the council states that same-sex relationships are “not part of God’s natural order” and that gender identity is confirmed at birth. The province’s Catholic school board is also demanding that it be allowed to apply Church teaching to questions around contraception, premarital sex, and homosexuality.
Premier Rachel Notley has rejected the proposal, standing by the status quo that the province’s schools all teach the same curriculum. Newly minted United Conservative Party leader Jason Kenney, himself a conservative Roman Catholic — and quite possibly the victor of the next provincial election, in 2019 — supports the Catholic opposition.
None of this should come as any surprise. Back in 2010, then Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty backtracked on his own government’s new sex-ed curriculum — the planned lessons were long overdue, and they emphasized that sex was pleasurable, that it consisted of more than intercourse, that spoke briefly of oral and anal sex, and that introduced the topics of homosexuality and gender fluidity. It was the sort of thing taught for almost twenty years in most of Europe and was supported by Ontario’s public schools. Conservative Christians, backed by orthodox Muslims, however, thought somewhat differently. They didn’t want homosexuality accepted, dismissed any concept of gender identification, were appalled at references to masturbation and non-penetrative sex, and — at heart — rejected the notion of anybody other than parents teaching children about sex. These parents, and various faith-based parent groups, exerted pressure on the government through media and protests. And it worked. It all just seemed too controversial for an already beleaguered government to handle.
It was an incredibly rare example of a reversal of policy, demonstrating the militancy and determination of those who oppose children being educated in a modern forum about sex and sexuality. Mind you, it must be said that after winning a Liberal majority in 2013, Premier Kathleen Wynne simply refused to bend to the hysteria and she reintroduced the curriculum. It’s a decision, however, that has continued to dog her. The groups doing the dogging have money behind them and their puritanical bark is loud. On the evangelical side are people such as Charles McVety, president of Canada Christian College and someone who is also involved in a number of lobby groups. McVety is a frequent media guest, is well financed, and is linked to senior conservative figures in the United States. Another group is Parents as First Educators (PAFE), which has right-wing Catholic leadership, as does the anti-abortion Campaign Life Coalition, which is increasingly active on sex-ed issues.
The concerns of the critics of sex-ed in Alberta, Ontario, and elsewhere are many, but what drives their opposition is the certainty that knowledge will lead to activity. Opponents assume that if a child learns about sex in a classroom, they will be transformed into miniature fornicators and perfectly groomed victims for assorted predators and pedophiles. Only parents, they believe, can stop it from happening. Tory MP Brad Trost even compared sex-ed to the horrors of residential school. “We in Canada, when we have taken away those rights from parents, we have had a disaster each and every time. The most tragic incident in our history was the residential schools, and that was the underlying problem — parental rights were not respected.”
In reality, sex-ed lessons are fairly clinical and even numbingly cold. As one sex-ed teacher told me, “Sexy this is not. Many of the kids are embarrassed, and a lot of them think it’s funny or, the word I hear most, gross.” If anything, these curricula are designed to reduce promiscuity and to teach young girls in particular that they have control over what they do and to whom they say yes. The idea of self-worth that permeates sex-ed. Dignity is a crucial element in sexual health and is what allows for mature relationships founded on consent. The same dignity applies to lessons about contraceptives — particularly if we are genuinely concerned with unwanted pregnancies and STIs.
The other growing fallacy is that the direct alternative to sex education in school is parental instruction. Tanya Granic Allen, president of PAFE, stated that Premier Wynne “does not get to tell us parents what our children will learn, we tell her what they will learn. Most parents don’t want their kids indoctrinated by the state and whatever new fad is taking hold of society these days.” In fact, the internet, rather than the home, is generally where young people find information about sex. Christian parents are hardly renowned for their willingness to broach these issues with their children, much less provide the straight talk needed. By sparing their kids an updated sexual education, and maybe even encouraging them to think sex is too lurid to be spoken about, parents risk shaming their kids into thinking the act is wrong.
Sex education is designed to remove that stigma and shame. Vancouver-based nurse Meg Hickling, who has worked in sex-ed for more than twenty-five years, told Global News “there are thousands of studies all over the world that show that the earlier you start, the healthier the children are going to be and the easier it is for them to make good, informed decisions for themselves.” If children have the vocabulary, self-confidence, and educational tools, they are also more likely to understand what adult behaviour is acceptable and what is not — and feel more empowered to speak out about it.
It’s hard to escape the irony that many of the loudest critics of sex-ed are conservative Roman Catholics, such as the members of Campaign Life and the Catholic Civil Rights League, whose Church was responsible for one of the most widespread abuse crises in modern history. This was not just about a minority of sexually corrupt priests violating children, but an entire system that denied and enabled and even took legal action against some victims. The very sex education that many conservative Catholics vehemently oppose is one of our best bets when it comes to reducing such systemic abuse — a curriculum that exposes abusive tactics can equip children to spot warning signs and navigate the euphemism and obfuscation on which abusers rely.
But the opposition doesn’t even stop there. When I covered the two largest anti-sex-ed demonstrations at Ontario’s Queen’s Park in recent years, I noticed a monomania around the issue of homosexuality, or “sodomy,” as opponents of sex-ed frequently describe it. There were numerous posters condemning LGBT+ teaching, frequent references to the Liberal premier’s sexuality (she is openly gay), and plenty of talk of “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” Risible as this may sound, conservative Christians seem certain that sex-ed is all part of a greater plot to make everybody gay. Lifesite, an extremely influential conservative Christian news website, stated that “[w]ithout regard for the religious/moral beliefs of families, the curriculum will normalize homosexual family structures and homosexual ‘marriage’ in the minds of 8-year-olds” and that “the Kathleen Wynne government will certainly take an activist approach to these lessons and show no respect nor tolerance for traditionally-principled families.” It’s not true, of course, but it’s significant that the very thought of “normalization” of what is generally considered normal is regarded as abhorrent.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a satirical tweet about sex education: “I sympathize with those who fear that sex-ed will sexualize kids. Our youngest studied WWI on a Monday; by Friday he’d invaded Belgium.” There were an extraordinary 230,000 “likes,” but of the angry responses, I’d estimate that at least 20 percent alleged that sex-ed classes were grooming children to enjoy anal sex. That charge — now wide-spread in the anti-sex-ed industry — is based on a colossal lie. Protestors simply cherry-picked parts of curricula that mention anal sex. The truth is that the Ontario teaching program mentions anal sex only twice, in grade seven. The first reference stresses communication between partners and urges an informed choice about whether to delay sexual activity, including anal intercourse. The second is in the context of the risk of sexually transmitted illnesses. Nobody is instructed in the act; children are merely told that it occurs, that there are risks, and that young women in particular have the right to say no and to control their own bodies.
If anything can be learned from the Ontario example, it’s that the protests are best ignored. In parts of Toronto, thousands of children — generally from Muslim families — were briefly withdrawn from school by concerned parents, but while this tactic seemed challenging at the time, it was soon abandoned and forgotten. There were also some cases of Christian families moving their children to private schools or turning to home-schooling, but the numbers were relatively insignificant.
Not all sex-ed critics are malicious. Sometimes, it’s just generational naïveté and a form of overprotection. Such foot soldiers usually accept the changes in the curriculum when they realize that their children are just as they were, but perhaps a little happier and less intimidated. Good Lord, kids won’t even do their math homework, let alone their sex-ed studies! Yet as one tweet to me had it, “We’re not going anywhere and we won’t give up. They come for the children first and we won’t let it happen. Go to hell you perv.” I did not retweet.
AFTER TWO YEARS of research, a grand jury report based on what is likely the most comprehensive investigation in U.S. history into Roman Catholic Church child abuse has been released. Internal documents from six Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania reveal that morethan “300 predator priests have been credibly accused” of sexually abusing more than 1,000 children. One victim was a girl of eighteen months, one underage girl was raped by a priest, who then arranged her abortion. A boy was made to stand naked in a crucifix position and the priest who photographed him then shared the images with other clergy on church property. One abuser, who left the Church after numerous abuse complaints, was given a reference by the diocese to work at Disney World.
In one case, a priest groomed children by telling them that the Virgin Mary had to “bite off the cord” and “lick” Jesus clean; another abused five young sisters from the same family and collected their urine, pubic hair and menstrual blood; one priest raped a girl who was in hospital after minor surgery.
The grand jury stated, “We believe that the real number of children whose records were lost or who were afraid ever to come forward is in the thousands. Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades. Monsignors, auxiliary bishops, bishops, archbishops, cardinals have mostly been protected; many, including some named in this report, have been promoted. Until that changes, we think it is too early to close the book on the Catholic Church sex scandal.”
This comes after two weeks of international scandal involving the Church and abuse. Former Australian archbishop Philip Wilson was convicted of concealing child sex abuse and given a one-year sentence, to be served at home because of ill health. He is the most senior Catholic cleric to be convicted. Then Britain’s Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse found that two of Britain’s most prestigious private Catholic schools “prioritized monks and their own reputations over the protection of children” when over several decades children as young as seven were sexually abused.
Frankly, it will not be the last we discover of such horrors. The Church has reacted of course, but always slowly, usually reluctantly and often incorrectly. It still treats offenders leniently, still covers up when it thinks it can and still refuses to address the major causes of abuse. One horribly regrettable response, for example, has been to try to link sexual abuse with homosexuality. It’s probably more difficult for a celibate gay man to enter a seminary under the allegedly progressive Pope Francis than it was under his more conservative predecessors. It’s not only an odious fallacy, but also a painful digression.
In fact, there are three genuine issues. First is enforced celibacy. Men denied sex do not become abusers, but abusers do look for places where they can disguise their crimes. There are a large number of gay priests — estimates are between twenty-five percent and fifty percent — and these men, some in relationships and some not, have to live a lie. Abusers exploit this culture of obfuscation to hide their crimes. A solution would be to ordain married men and to allow gay clergy to be open and honest.
Second is the extraordinary patriarchy that exists within the Church. Women are not ordained, have very little influence and are excluded from decisions. While the presence of women doesn’t make abuse impossible, it certainly reduces the likelihood. The vast majority of abusers in any situation are men; women are more often survivors and have greater empathy and sensitivity to the issue, and they inject a gender balance that makes an abusive context more difficult to maintain.
Third is the rigid sense of authority that permeates the Church, even under more liberal-minded pontiffs. This is still a clerical church, and until it is democratized, closed circles of secrecy will be formed whenever leadership is challenged.
The reality, however, is that the Church will almost certainly continue to regard loving same-sex relationships as sinful, will never ordain women, and as Roman Catholicism is based on absolute central authority, will not genuinely empower the laity.
Abuse exists everywhere there is a power imbalance, and the Church is not unique. But unless we admit that child sexual abuse within Roman Catholicism is due to systemic problems rather than human failing, the obscenity will not stop. Prayers simply aren’t enough.
WHEN POPE FRANCIS became the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in 2013, he said he was going to “shake things up.” Judging by what happened just a few days ago, he is a man of his word.
Speaking to Juan Carlos Cruz, a victim of clergy sexual abuse in Chile, the pontiff supposedly told him that God had made him gay, and that his sexuality “does not matter.” Cruz spent three days with the Pope in the Vatican, and reported that Pope Francis explained of the man’s homosexuality this way: “You know Juan Carlos, that does not matter. God made you like this. God loves you like this. The Pope loves you like this and you should love yourself and not worry about what people say.”
If this is true, it is arguably the most revolutionary statement made by any senior Catholic priest, let alone a Pope, about this subject in modern history. Up to now the Vatican has only said that it doesn’t comment on the Pope’s private conversations, but has issued no clarifications or denials. That may still happen of course, and in the past various apologists have come forward to argue — often outrageously — that Pope Francis’s comments have been mistranslated or misinterpreted. We will see.
While the self-evident belief that LGBT+ people are “born that way” may be standard thought among most people, it runs directly contrary to Catholic teaching. The Catholic Church spends an inordinate amount of time in its catechism discussing an issue that Jesus never even mentions, explaining that it sees, “homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,” that are “contrary to natural law,” and that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.”
It attempts to differentiate between people being gay and having gay relationships, but this is grotesque, rather like comparing homosexuality to criminality — we love the sin, hate the sinner. What the Church has never done is to say that same-sex relationships are allowed, or that God made people gay. If He did, it means it was His plan, and thus has to be ordained and accepted.
Conservatives within the Catholic Church are apoplectic of course. Lifesite, a major supporter of Canadian conservative politicians, stated: “Pope Francis’ alleged infelicitous counsel to a gay man, if not retracted, risks slowly killing the same-sex attracted by affirming them to death … The souls of roughly two percent of the world’s population are now precariously balanced on the tip of the cupola atop St. Peter’s Basilica, waiting to see if the Church will save them through the telling of hard truths, or condemn them through affirmation. “
So where does this put Canada’s two most prominent conservative politicians — federal Tory leader Andrew Scheer and Alberta United Conservative Party leader Jason Kenney — who are both devout Roman Catholics? Kenney is running his campaign strongly on parental choice, which is shorthand for supporting Catholic parents and schools opposed to GSAs (Gay Straight Alliances). It’s going to be increasingly difficult to form a cogent position if GSA supporters can quote the Pope as their comrade!
Scheer has been less outspoken on the issue, although he only managed to become party leader with the votes of zealous social conservatives Brad Trost and Pierre Lemieux. It was Trost’s campaign spokesman Mike Patton who said in a public video, “In case you haven’t noticed, Brad’s not entirely comfortable with the whole gay thing.”
In Toronto, PC Party leadership candidate Tanya Granic Allen also enabled the new leadership, with most of her vote going to Doug Ford. He later dismissed her as a candidate for her intense social conservatism, but then invited right-wing Christian leader Charles McVety to be his personal guest at the first public leadership debate. McVety has been exposed repeatedly for his anti-gay remarks.
Ford probably doesn’t care, or even know, about Papal opinion, but Kenney and Scheer certainly do, and so do various bishops and cardinals throughout Canada who routinely fight battles against sex-ed partly due to its references to homosexuality, and who support Catholic school boards that still make it almost impossible for teachers to mention if they’re in same-sex relationships.
I doubt we will see very much progress and action on this issue for some time, but the door has been pushed open wider, and it looks as though it’s impossible to shut it again. Canada is more than forty percent Roman Catholic, many of our political leaders are part of that church, and even progressive Catholics such as Justin Trudeau are accused of being inconsistent by some of their co-religionists. Perhaps, just perhaps, they will soon be able to ignore all of that nonsense. And that will be a good thing not only for Canada, but also for the Roman Catholic Church.
CANADIAN POLITICS IS proving to be fertile ground for the Roman Catholic right these days. There have always been leading Catholic politicians, but whether they were Conservative or Liberal, Trudeaus or Mulroneys, they were more on the progressive wing of the Church, and emphasized the separation of Catholic teaching from their own policies.
Not today. Andrew Scheer and Jason Kenney are committed, orthodox Catholics, and Ontario Progressive Conservative Party leadership candidate Tanya Granic Allen is the new heroine of traditionalist Catholicism. So it’s an intriguing time for Cardinal Robert Sarah to be coming to town.
For conservative Catholics, Cardinal Sarah is an icon, seen as holding the line against what is seen in some circles as the liberalism of Pope Francis. In March, he will be delivering a public lecture at St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto, and leading a two-day retreat for the priests of the archdiocese.
The invitation is causing a great deal of dissent within St. Michael’s, a college already divided due to alleged attempts made by president David Mulroney to restore St. Michael’s Catholicity and move it to the right.
Beyond Cardinal Sarah’s general theological and political conservatism, he’s made several controversial comments about moral and social issues. Originally from Guinea, he was appointed Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in 2014. In October 2015, he said that the “idolatry of Western freedom and Islamic fundamentalism are almost like two apocalyptic beasts,” and similar to Nazism and Communism. He wrote that, “we find ourselves between gender ideology and ISIS” — in Catholic parlance “gender ideology” is the movement to give full acceptance to the LGBT+ community.
He continued with the theme of juxtaposing western liberalism and gay rights, with Islamic fundamentalist violence and fascism. Islamic massacres and liberal demands, he wrote, “regularly contend for the front pages of the newspapers,” referring to the terrorist attacks that had taken place in 2015, and juxtaposing these monstrosities with the U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing same-sex marriage. “From these two radicalizations arise the two major threats to the family: its subjectivist disintegration in the secularized West through quick and easy divorce, abortion, homosexual unions, euthanasia et cetera.”
He also claimed that there were “several clues” revealing the “demonic origin” of the two movements, and that they were “violently intolerant, destroyers of families, society and the Church, and are openly Christianophobic.” He continued, “We are not contending against creatures of flesh and blood … We need to be inclusive and welcoming to all that is human; but what comes from the Enemy cannot and must not be assimilated,” and “What Nazi-Fascism and Communism were in the 20th century, Western homosexual and abortion Ideologies and Islamic Fanaticism are today.”
In recent months, he has modified his language a little. Of gay Catholics, he wrote patronizingly, “I came to learn how these poor souls suffered, sometimes because of circumstances beyond their control, and sometimes because of their own choices. I sensed the loneliness, pain, and unhappiness they endured as a result of pursuing a life contrary to the true identity of God’s children.”
Well, at least he didn’t directly compare them to Nazis and the Prince of Darkness.
In his partial defence, to an extent he’s only echoing the official teaching of the Catholic Church, which argues that homosexuality is an “objective disorder” and “ordered towards an intrinsic moral evil.”
As jarring as this is, however, it is rare for Catholic leaders to use such ugly language. It also comes at a time when Catholic clergy and politicians are more sympathetic to the gay community.
In 2017, for example, prominent Jesuit Father James Martin published a book entitled Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity. It doesn’t address Catholic hypocrisy around the issue, the number of gay clergy — perhaps as high as a third, many but certainly not all of them celibate — or the archaic, even unbiblical nature of Catholic teaching on sex and sexuality, but it’s a book that could not have been written under earlier Popes.
Last year Cardinal Müller, another conservative hero, came to Canada, where among others things he described Canada’s moves towards a tightly controlled policy of assisted dying as “tragic.” It’s all rather embarrassing to many Canadian Catholics, but conservative Catholic politicians are uttering not a word of protest. It would be … well … a miracle if that ever changed.