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The
Courage to be Catholic by George Weigel Rating: ••• (Recommended) |
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Fiddling with Fidelity George Weigel’s new book, The
Courage to be Catholic: Crisis, Reform and the Future of the Church, makes
everything sound simple. He takes on the current crisis in the American
Catholic Church and offers firm and clear advice, especially for bishops:
make priests tow the line. Ask hard questions about the fidelity of priests
to vows and to the teachings they should be passing on to others. On most
pages of this book, Weigel’s index is wagging rapidly. His challenge involves
a look back to move forward. Examine the call to holiness and to fidelity,
and follow it. Simple as that. He may be asking that Catholics return to a
fidelity they never had. Here’s a sample of what to expect (pp. 111-115): A FAILURE OF IMAGINATION There
were undoubtedly many factors involved in the episcopal misgovernance that
turned a serious problem of clerical sexual abuse into a full-blown Catholic
crisis. Fear was sure one: fear of confronting malfeasant clergy, fear of
publicity, fear of financial retribution from donors, fear of looking
out-of-step with other bishops, fear of inadvertendy doing something that
would frustrate one's ambitions. In some cases, it is possible that fear of
blackmail—either emotional blackmail or the real thing—was a factor in a
bishop's seeming inability to come to grips with clergy sexual abuse,
especially homosexual abuse. Misguided compassion was surely involved, as was
a misplaced faith in the expertise of therapists. Many bishops seem to have
had inadequate, and in some cases incompetent, legal counsel. Most bishops
had bad counsel from their com- munications staffs. Yet these latter two factors, read correctly, cast
the whole problem of episcopal malfeasance in the proper light. A bishop
whose lawyers advise him not to meet with a victim of sexual abuse or with
the victim's family because of possible legal implications needs different
lawyers—lawyers who understand what a bishop is, and who have the legal wit
and skill to make sure than when the bishop exercises genuine pastoral care
and responsibility, he does not end upcompromising his legal position or his
diocese's. When the bishop does not understand that this is what he needs, it
is the bishop who is primarily at fault. A bishop whose communications people
tell him to make the most anodyne statements about sexual abuse for fear that
any admission of responsibility would be turned communications advice from
people who understand that a bishop who forfeits his role as a teacher and
pastor forfeits his capacity to govern at the same time. When the bishop does
not understand that this is what he needs, it is the bishop on whom the
responsibility of failure primarily falls. In the final analysis, it really is a question of
imagination, or self-understanding. And that, for bishops, is an irreducibly theological
question. To repeat: A bishop who truly believes that he is what the Catholic
Church teaches he is—a successor of the apostles who makes present in the
Church today the living headship of Christ the Good Shepherd—does not behave
like a corporate executive managing a crisis in which he has little personal
involvement beyond the protection of his own position. He behaves like an
apostle. He teaches the fullness of Catholic truth about sexual ethics, no
matter how countercultural that may make him, and he does so in such a way
that his priests and people are seized by the high adventure of orthodoxy and
fidelity. He lifts up examples of fidelity and courage, so that others may be
inspired by them. He condemns, forthrightly, what must be condemned. He
embraces as a pastor the victims of abuse and he does what he can to help in
their healing. As a father, he calls his priests to live the vows he and they
have solemnly made before God and the Church. He shepherds the flock with a
special shepherd's care for the weakest of the lambs. The episcopal misgovernance that turned a serious
problem into a crisis was caused by a loss of imagination and a loss of
nerve. That loss of nerve had been evident in the previous three and a half
decades of Catholic life in America: in bishops who approved inadequate
catechetical materials, who tolerated liturgical abuses, who were frightened
into passivity by theologians who taught falsely yet demanded to be
considered authentically Catholic. Now, with the crisis of 2002, that loss of
nerve has been publicly exposed. It is by no means the only part of the story
of the Catholic bishops of the United States since Vatican II. But it is the
part if the story that must be dealt with now, if a crisis is to become an
opportunity for genuine reform. For the bishops as for any Catholic, recovering one's nerve means recovering a passion for fidelity to the fullness of Catholic truth. Fidelity requires courage. And courage, for the bishops as for any Catholic in the modern world, means the courage to be countercultural. I found myself smiling often while reading
this book, both when I agreed and when I disagreed with Weigel. He’s sincere,
and clear, a fine writer who never minces words. Not all are welcome under
the big tent in Weigel’s version of the future of the Catholic. Read The
Courage to be Catholic and find out why. Steve Hopkins, February 27, 2002 |
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ã 2003 Hopkins and Company, LLC The
recommendation rating for this book appeared in the March 2003
issue of Executive
Times URL
for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The
Courage to be Catholic.htm For
Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins
& Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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