How to solve the church crisis: ordinary catholics must act.

The year 2002 was a very bad year for the Catholic Church in the United States. This year could be much worse. California has temporarily lifted the statute of limitations on sexual-abuse cases. Some bishops are engaged in increasingly open efforts to limit the role of the National Review Board that has been appointed to investigate the abuse scandal. Vatican restorationists and their U.S. supporters seem determined to use the crisis to promote their agenda on matters of sex, authority, and ministry. In 1992, University of Notre Dame historian Jay Dolan wrote that the revelation of clerical sexual abuse and its cover-up by bishops was the most serious crisis in the history of American Catholicism. A decade later we have to say, sadly, it's not over.

One reason it's not over is the absence of leadership in the American Catholic community. The vacuum is obvious among the bishops; even the best of them have found it difficult to explain the situation, communicate regret, accept responsibility, and inspire confidence. Even more striking in some ways is the paralysis of priests, religious orders, leaders of Catholic institutions, scholars, artists, journalists, and lay people generally. Few Catholic leaders have found a national audience. Given the outrage of Catholics across the county, the membership and financial resources of the Boston-based reform group Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) remain surprisingly modest. Contributions to the church seem to be down, clearly so in the Northeast. Still, few people suggest applying financial pressure to bring about change, such as improved monetary accountability. When Catholic philanthropists urged the bishops to make public the costs of the abuse settlements and lawsuits, they were turned down. Few Catholics seemed to notice.

Even supporters of a stronger lay voice seem quick to criticize VOTF, worrying that its support for "structural change" and its democratic spirit might lead down a slippery slope to Unitarianism. That suspicion shows little confidence in the intelligence or commitment of ordinary Catholics. Most Catholics remain reluctant to criticize even the most transparently wrong-headed comments from Rome. Think of various curial officials' insistence that the crisis arises from chronic moral laxity and permissiveness. Or of the Vatican statement last November on the priesthood that was almost hysterical in its fear that priestly dignity will be destroyed by an overactive laity. Instead of challenging such statements, most involved Catholics who get quoted by the press repeat the same mantra: The crisis should not be used to promote an "agenda." That agenda apparently includes reforms like admitting married men, even women, to the priesthood and taking a critical look at current teaching and pastoral practice on human sexuality. Even the strongest lay voices stay carefully within the accepted boundaries of Catholic discussion. They almost always point out those boundaries by distancing themselves from Garry Wills, James Carroll, and, of course, Call to Action.

Self-defined moderates, standing between the so-called left and right, hardly notice that there is almost no organized support for the middle ground. The irony here, of course, is that moderate positions on sexuality, women, ministry, and social justice correspond to the views of most Catholics. Moderate views also, probably and properly, correspond to pastoral practice almost everywhere. Yet institutional and political support for this middle, or common, ground remains elusive. This is not surprising for an array of reasons.

* Parish priests are badly organized and what structural advocacy exists for them is devoted to the historic agenda known as priests' rights. Hardly heard from before the bishops' June meeting in Dallas, the National Federation of Priests' Councils rushed to uphold priests' canonical rights. The federation wanted to insure that, within the church, cases of abuse are processed in clerical courts. VOTF supports "priests of integrity," and in Boston some priests formed an independent forum. A few eventually demanded Cardinal Bernard Law's resignation. Still, around New England, diocesan priests for the most part stick to their parishes, speak well of the laity, and hope for the best.

* Aside from a similar defense of their canonical rights, male religious orders, which long carried the agenda of church reform, are quiet and seem detached from ecclesiastical politics. Female religious orders, of course, never gained entry to the arena of church politics and no one is rushing to let them in now. To be sure, religious orders are distracted by massive internal problems such as caring for aging members, maintaining historic institutional commitments in education, health care, and social services, and dealing with their own cases of sexual abuse. Moreover, many younger religious women, and some men, devote themselves to worthy vocations outside the church and take little notice of ecclesiastical policy. Although superiors of religious orders keep open lines of communication with the hierarchy, more than a few religious shrug their shoulders when people begin talking about "the institutional church." Every reform movement of recent years--charismatic renewal, divorced and separated Catholics, women's ordination, and the peace movement--drew leadership and support from nuns, brothers, and religious-order priests. They are badly needed now, but almost invisible.

* Most needed is the voice of the vast number of deacons, religious, and lay people who work in parishes and pastoral ministry. These are the people who might carry a pastoral agenda into organized church life when the bishops and priests fail to do so. Yet these altogether indispensable ministers are totally unorganized. Concerned about the abuse crisis, they help people deal with it locally, but they seem unable, even when willing, to help their church recover. There are some small national organizations, like the National Association for Lay Ministry. Large professional organizations in charities and education also exist. Yet although their ministries and professional integrity are at stake, lay ministers have little local organization and few opportunities to take a share of responsibility for the church's common life.

* Lay people mostly remain outsiders vis-a-vis the ecclesiastical system. Some restorationist groups have learned to operate very effectively from the outside. For years, self-styled "orthodox" Catholics almost always lost to reformers in disputes over liturgy, religious education, or pastoral practice. Eventually, however, conservatives learned how to influence the hierarchy and make an impact on policy. Now, when it comes to the politics of the church, they are almost the only lay people with any real voice. In the United States, moderate reform and apostolic groups and movements are either very small, uninterested in ecclesiastical affairs, or badly divided. Lay people of moderate views have played a major role in the crisis as victims, victim advocates, lawyers, prosecutors, judges, and as members of pastoral-care committees, but when major decisions are made within the church, they are irrelevant.

* Catholic institutions for which lay people are largely responsible, such as colleges and universities, have not yet fully engaged the scandal (Boston College is an exception). This is not surprising. For years trustees, administrators, and faculty have ignored church politics except when their interests were at stake. On campus they have affirmed the equality of women, invited lay people to peer and team ministry, accepted homosexuals and allowed them to have their own voice. Catholic colleges and universities have rightly insisted that differences can't be resolved by Vatican decrees but need to be dealt with in the open through the discipline of dialogue. As a consequence, conservative Catholics, and apparently Rome, place these quite successful institutions and their leaders near the supposed left-wing boundary of contemporary Catholic discourse. Faced with the distance between campus pastoral practice and current church policy, and forced by the long-drawn-out Ex corde ecclesiae controversy to defend their autonomy from hierarchical control, Catholic academics generally avoid challenging the institutional church. They distance themselves from ecclesiastical politics, adopt the same pose of irony about the church they use when discussing American foreign policy, and are largely passive as scandal sweeps over the Catholic community.

So, for all the talk about the "people of God," almost everyone is standing around, waiting for the Holy Spirit to straighten things out by sending new leaders for offices in the hierarchy. Meanwhile, without leadership, ordinary Catholics feel abandoned and powerless. Indeed, in my experience of parish life the most remarkable thing about the response to the crisis is the contrast between the sense of Catholic solidarity felt by middle-aged and older (not younger) priests, religious, and lay people, and the near total absence of structures to express that solidarity. Parish and diocesan pastoral councils, like presbyteral councils, are in place, but they do not seem to work very well. When Jim Post, president of VOTF, got a chance to meet Governor Frank Keating, the National Review Board chairman, he told him the single thing he wanted to communicate was that his members are solid parish Catholics who want nothing more than to help their church find solutions to the current crisis. VOTF members freely acknowledge they are amateurs, and would not dream of trying to define doctrine or decide controversial moral questions. Still, they know that straightening out the church will require "structural change." For that to happen, the Catholic people need to get to the table where decisions are made, especially decisions that affect their children, families, parishes, and, yes, their church. Among the most worrisome signs of the times is the fact that this request for participation seems to terrify everyone from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to Crisis magazine to the local chancery. It even makes lay advocates like Commonweal nervous. Indeed, proposals for structural change, however modest, seem beyond the pale for everyone to the right of Call to Action and the National Catholic Reporter.

Former Commonweal editor Margaret O'Brien Steinfels and Notre Dame historian Scott Appleby are among the clearest and calmest voices addressing the crisis. Each has contributed enormously by insisting that the truth of corruption must be faced. Both in a general way affirm the need for a greater role for the laity, but usually in the form of an appeal to the bishops to listen to their people. Both spoke candidly to the bishops in Dallas last June, and since then they have repeatedly demanded that the bishops follow through on their promises of truthfulness, accountability, and reform. They also have been very sensitive to the divisions in the church. Writing recently in Notre Dame Magazine (Winter 2002-2003), Appleby sketched the ideological basis of varied responses to the crisis, distanced himself from Wills and George Weigel, left and right, and urged Catholics to "stay, pray, and inveigh." Inveigh he defined as "assailing with words" and "demanding attentiveness," concluding that such an "overbearing presence" of the laity is badly needed. Perhaps fearful of adding to the divisions, Appleby characteristically avoided supporting any specific action by anyone other than the bishops. He ends with good questions: "Will the church pull itself out of this mess, restore credibility and deepen its historic commitment to the poor, the marginalized, the abused and lonely and forgotten? Will the laity and clergy, bishops and religious join in a renewed effort to evangelize U.S. society?" But, how does the church "pull itself out" unless somebody other than the bishops does something?

In the December 20, 2002, issue of Commonweal, Margaret Steinfels ("The Church Still in Crisis") ably summed up the state of the scandal question and properly insisted that truthfulness remains the central challenge. She digs into this hard place, citing Vaclav Havel on how easily we, all of us, live with lies. To insure that the truth is faced, she emphasizes the importance of the Keating Commission. What she does not note is that the commission's success depends nationally on the willingness of the bishops to utilize similar commissions, especially in those dioceses with many purported cases. The late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin made use of an appointed but credible and empowered commission a decade ago in Chicago. Unfortunately, his example was not followed nationally. In Boston, the victims, lawyers, and courts forced truths into the open. In Ireland, the church now faces a public commission with access to all its records. It is hard to imagine that trust can be restored and the mission of the church energetically pursued in the absence of independent commissions empowered to examine the records and explore the causes of these terrible betrayals.

For all its rigor and precision, Steinfels's excellent essay ends with characteristic modesty. Bishops are once again asked to value the truth, hold each other accountable, and support reform. Yet, although she asks, "What can we do?" no one is asked to do very much. We should "not press our usual agendas," scapegoat homosexuals, believe everything we get from the media, or forget "the great good that may come from this." The only thing recommended resembling organized action is the suggestion that we pay more attention to the "ordinary mechanisms on the books for church governance" such as pastoral councils. Even there Steinfels warns us to be careful to work for "the good of the church and not our own hobby horses."

Why doesn't Steinfels issue a challenging call to action? Because no one knows what to do. Joining Appleby in distancing herself from the supposed extremes, she writes: "George Weigel doesn't have the answers; neither does James Carroll or Garry Wills.... Each may be correct in portions of his analysis, but none has the answers. I don't have the answers. We don't know the answers because we don't yet have the truth, or at least we have not yet fully told the truth."

That sounds properly humble. People of conscience--overwhelmed by the magnitude of the suffering, the widespread corruption, and the "don't get it" attitude of people who should know better--necessarily pause before offering prescriptions. After all, we middle-aged Catholics were around and some of us were active in the church while all this was going on. Yet to take responsibility now requires analysis of causes, assessment of options, and decisions about action. Roman congregations and their American supporters know that. People like Weigel and Richard John Neuhaus have been vigorous in suggesting needed actions, including Vatican control of the judicial process involving priests, supervision of seminaries to insure fidelity to orthodox teaching and practice, consideration of banning gays from the priesthood, new appointments of reliable men to key posts. At their November meeting, several bishops called for a national plenary council to make it clear that current teaching on birth control, homosexuality, clerical celibacy, and the ordination of women can never change.

In contrast, Wills, Carroll, and Call to Action, although sharp in their criticism of the bishops, have been quite modest in their proposals. True, Wills and Carroll, at the end of broad surveys of a whole range of problems in the church--in Carroll's case anti-Semitism and in Wills's deception--suggest broad changes in attitude and direction, changes that sound suspiciously Protestant. These naturally raise questions for moderates, most of whom seem to have internalized recent Vatican definitions of what is "responsible" in Catholic discussions. Even the reforms championed by Call to Action and defended in the pages of the National Catholic Reporter--women's ordination, married priests, lay participation in church decision making--seem like symptoms of dissent and thus sources of further discord. Of course moderates find equally problematic some of the proposals made by the restorationists. Still, their moderation is almost defined by the "on the one hand, on the other hand" dismissal of the alleged extremism of right and left. This assumes that the agendas of the left and right are equally unacceptable. More seriously it leaves unanswered the question of what is to be done and who, in the end, is supposed to take responsibility for the integrity of our church.

Yet something must be done, and leaving it to the Holy Spirit, working through the hierarchy or somehow through the ether, simply will not do. If people are responsible for their church, they must take responsibility for suggesting policy, even if doing so sounds like "an agenda." I suggest five things that seem obvious, at least to me:

* Truthfulness: Needed in many diocese are independent commissions, empowered to examine all the records, to issue public reports on cases, dispositions, and costs, and to explore the causes of the scandal and suggest reforms. They should work closely with the National Review Board, which is hoping to gather reliable data and study the causes of the scandal. Opposition to the national commission is gathering strength, and none of this truth-telling will happen without organized pressure from outside the church bureaucracy. That means somebody has to gather and distribute reliable information, organize petitions, demonstrations, and open letters, lobby the chancery and constituencies who might be able to wield some power. Somebody must stand up and make proposals for truth-telling in those ordinary mechanisms of church governance that already exist.

* Shared Responsibility: Immediate steps should be taken to more effectively organize "the people of God" and "the Body of Christ" in the local church by evaluating and strengthening (or reviving) diocesan and parish pastoral councils, finance committees, presbyteral councils, and senates of religious, along with their related committees. All Catholics, and especially those who work for the church, should immediately demand, in public, that this review and renewal take place, and they should offer to help. For priests and deacons, ministry is corporate and constitutive: they are a presbyterate united with one another and their bishop. If the organization does not work well, they must fix it and stop whining that "the bishop won't let us." While in many places people have become cynical about pastoral councils, there are places where they work better. There is also a body of knowledge about how to make them work (most of what is needed is common sense in other voluntary organizations). Retrieval of embryonic reforms inviting wide consultation in the selection of bishops, introduced during the 1970s tenure of Apostolic Delegate Jean Jadot, would also help. Boston would be a good place to start, and VOTF has invited local Catholics to speak up. Until such instruments of shared responsibility are up and running, anxiety about lay power or creeping Unitarianism is simply silly. Yet, once again, even the modest project of evaluating and reforming existing structures of shared responsibility is unlikely to be initiated from the top; interested parties who care about the church must do something or it won't happen.

* Organization: Strong organizations for priests, deacons, pastoral ministers, and other groups, including lay groups, are indispensable. Independent organizations always make sense if people are to have a voice, but they are especially crucial as long as shared responsibility structures like pastoral councils are entirely subject to the bishop, who can, if he wishes, set the agenda, call or not call meetings, and decide whether to seek or accept advice. It is important for priests and bishops to trust their people, but it is also vital that people have the capacity to speak up, strongly and independently, to their bishops and priests. So, to steal a phrase from the labor movement: Don't mourn, organize!

For priests and religious, that means getting involved with their existing national organizations and organizing their own local associations to set forth the pastoral needs of the local church, put pressure on institutional structures, and encourage hesitant lay people to join in. For lay people, it means joining national VOTF, sending it a check, organizing local chapters, supporting the National Review Board, finding out what needs to be done in each diocese, and making sure it gets done. If VOTF is too scary, lay people must find a comparable vehicle, and not complain unless they have joined or formed an organization designed to take on the responsibility that rests on all of us.

* Common Ground: Cardinal Bernardin's proposal for a common-ground strategy of disciplined dialogue among differing Catholic groups was intended to bridge dangerous ideological divisions by drawing attention to shared faith and mission. It enjoyed only limited success because important cardinals decided it was not needed; the Catechism and the guidance of Rome provided all the "common ground" the church required. The project evoked limited support, even from those with a stake in Catholic intellectual life. Of course, dialogue among contending groups is not an ideological weapon but a practice indispensable to the vitality and unity of the church in a free and pluralistic society. Theologians, educators, and pastors all know this, but most sat on the sidelines while a few cardinals and self-defined orthodox factions made the Common Ground project so controversial (read "liberal") that even independent but skittish colleges and universities would not touch it. Some sort of common-ground effort to establish structures for civil conversation about the church, its mission, ministries, and organizational policy and practice is not a "hobby horse." Rather, it is a vehicle for action for anyone who claims to speak from the center and for "the good of the church." Such a dialogue should be undertaken by every Catholic college and university, even by independent Catholic high schools. Let's face it: In the United States the existence of a Catholic Church with integrity and intelligence, where differences can be discussed in the open, cannot be taken for granted. People who think that a church like that is a good idea will have to do something to make it happen. Simple as that!

* Pastoral Ministry: The perpetrators of sexual abuse in almost all cases were pastoral ministers. They worked in parishes, or in pastoral offices in schools and hospitals. The scandal has damaged, badly damaged, the fabric of trust that helps define a parish or pastoral community. As its effect is felt, the damage spreads, to church-sponsored educational, charitable, and medical institutions, to the credibility of Catholic word and witness on problems like abortion, war, and economic justice. It poisons the very integrity of the Catholic identity shared by all members of the community of faith. What sustains the church, as one looks around the smoldering ruins of Catholic life, say in Boston or Worcester, where I live? Good pastoral care: dedicated priests and pastoral staffs in parishes that people regard as their own; dedicated Christians serving the needs of people in neighborhoods, classrooms, hospitals; small groups of believers experiencing in prayer and service the solidarity of the Body of Christ now less visible in the larger church. From now on, let it be clear that the heart and soul of American Catholicism lies in its always-forming, always-renewing face-to-face communities. Ministry is and will remain mainly a matter of what used to be called "the cure of souls," people helping one another find their way to God and in that process finding their way to God's people, all of them. From now on, for Catholics of the center, parish renewal, energetic movements, and reforms to support them should constitute, yes, an agenda. So a last action item: Let every organization that claims the word Catholic take the time to do a pastoral self-assessment and develop a new pastoral plan. In shorthand, that was what Vatican II invited all Catholic communities to do.

This is, I think, an agenda that answers the question, What are we to do? The Catholic right, at its best, is very interested in important questions of authority and orthodoxy, and it will risk losing many people to achieve what its advocates believe is essential to the integrity of their church. What most moderates call the Catholic left is more ready to engage the Catholic people, but it too would wave good-bye to many members if that were the price of particular reforms. Each group is tempted to straighten Catholics out, sometimes by appeals to hierarchical authority, sometimes by the more gentle means of education. Because it is very hard to persuade people you distrust or dislike, both factions lack broad popular support (though I judge the left far more open than the right to dialogue and working with structures of shared responsibility). Neither faction should be trivialized, nor should the passionate convictions of Pope John Paul II's self-appointed interpreters or the stunning critical work of James Carroll and Garry Wills.

But what of the center? Who really speaks up, and acts, on behalf of the great body of ordinary Catholics? Who speaks on behalf of that still vast number of Catholics of every age who fall in love with the gospel and the church and volunteer to serve in ministry? Who speaks on behalf of the great and inclusive Catholic intellectual and cultural tradition? Catholicism, with its rich cultural diversity and marvelous educational and charitable institutions and its enormous potential to enrich American life, is available to American Catholics today because over the course of two centuries ordinary people from many nations made great sacrifices to renew the faith, build the church, and pass on their heritage. In the midst of this crisis it is not overly dramatic to ask whether we care enough to do the same.

Every one of us--left, right, and center--has to be challenged to care for the church as it is, not as we would like it to be. We need to face the hard human truth that the church's future is in our hands, which means we have to act, together. In the end, if American Catholicism is to survive and prosper, it--meaning we--must find our way through the current crisis. We know we have to listen to victims, punish lawbreakers, ban criminals from ministry, and open up the decision-making process. We know now how important it is to insure that everyone be accountable. We also know that, in the particular question of shaping policy and practice as it relates to the sexual abuse of children, lay people and parents must play a central role. We have taken some big steps toward greater justice, greater mercy, greater safety and trust. Still, we need to do much more to find the truth, to share responsibility, to renew and reform the church. We must never again say, as so many of us did for too long, that we can be good Catholics by working hard at our individual ministry and attending to our family and our parish, if we can find one. The larger church matters. It has power and responsibility, and we ignore it at our moral peril. Much as it bothers us in our often politics-averse culture, there is a politics of the church, and it starts, like all politics, with each of us.

David O'Brien is Loyola Professor of Roman Catholic Studies at the College of the Holy Cross. He specializes in the history of American Catholicism. Among his books are Public Catholicism: American Catholics in Public Life and Isaac Hecker: An American Catholic.