Book review.

George Weigel, The Courage to be Catholic: Crisis, Reform, and the Future of the Church, Basic Books, (Cdn. Orders) Harper Collins, 1995 Markham Rd., Scarborough, ON, M1B 5M8, pp. 256, $32.95 Cdn.

In its two millennia of experience, the Roman Catholic Church has faced, and surmounted, crises beyond number. That is worth remembering. But no past crisis has been quite like the current scandal involving homosexual priests and accommodating bishops. This crisis has suggested to many that something is rotten at the core. It remains to be seen whether panicky conclaves of American bishops willing to chant the politically-correct mantra of "zero tolerance" and to dispense with principles of fundamental justice, or the more considered restraint imposed from Rome, will staunch what could be a widespread loss of confidence in Church leadership.

George Weigel, author of the definitive biography of Pope John Paul 11 (Witness to Hope), argues that, when all is said and done, this crisis is about fidelity. The thesis of his thought-provoking and elegantly written book is best summed up in this single paragraph:

"The trauma of the Catholic Church in the United States in 2002 will become an opportunity to deepen and extend the reforms of Vatican 11 if the Church becomes more Catholic, not less--if the Church rediscovers the courage to be Catholic. The answer to the present crisis will not be found in deconstructing Catholic faith or further loosening Catholic discipline. The answer to the present crisis will most certainly not involve the Catholic Church surrendering to the decadence of the sexual revolution, as so many other Christian communities have. Such surrenders, and the tremendous human suffering they cause, are one of the sources of the crisis, not a solution to it. The answer to the current crisis will not be found in Catholic Lite. It will be found only in a classic Catholicism - a Catholicism with the courage to be countercultural, a Catholicism that has reclaimed the wisdom of the past in order to face the corruptions of the present and create a renewed future, a Catholicism that risks the high adventure of fidelity."

Weigel contends that Catholicism can learn important lessons from its "elder brother in the faith" (Pope John Paul 11's term) - Judaism. Judaism survived its recurrent crises not by surrendering to new gods (idolatry), nor by incorporating the less demanding elements of new theologies (syncretism); rather Israel survived by being called back by her prophets (often in strident terms) to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. When Israel whored after false gods, the prophets warned of doom and destruction; they never worried about keeping their voices down, their message unthreatening, or their demeanour "nice". Similarly, Weigel contends that the survival of the Church in this crisis requires a "...more radical fidelity to the fullness of Catholic faith."

How did the Church fall into this parlous state?

Weigel analyses the successive steps following Vatican 11: infidelity in colleges and seminaries; infidelity in parishes; above all, infidelity--or at least a blind eye to it--among bishops.

But the very word "crisis", at least in its biblical meaning, denotes opportunity. In our Lord's parable of the Prodigal Son, the crisis was transformed into an opportunity when the wastrel Son came to his senses; it as then that he picked himself out of the mire and returned to his Father. Even this institutional crisis, Weigel contents, can be transformed into an opportunity for renewal and deepening of faith. Perhaps the sexual scandals in the Church will, in retrospect, prove to have been the moment for a rediscovery of the intensity of conversion and a renewed commitment to the apostolic commission.

Will the Church transform crisis into opportunity? It is too early to say. New allegations continue to and bishops have not yet inspired confidence by trading years of indifference for the unseemly zealotry of zero tolerance.

If good is yet to come out of evil, George Weigel's analysis should be read and pondered.

His last chapter, entitled "From Crisis to Reform," concludes: "Living the adventure of orthodoxy is the only answer to the crisis of fidelity that is the crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States.

Rediscovering the courage to be Catholic is the way in which all the people of the Church--bishops, priests, laity--will transform scandal into reform, and crisis into opportunity." (+)

Ian Hunter is Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Law at Western University of Western Ontario, London, ON.