“Lead us not into temptation” is the sixth
petition of the Our Father. Πειρασμός (Peirasmòs), the Greek word used in this
passage for ‘temptation.’, means a trial or test. Disciples petition God to be
protected against the supreme test of ungodly powers. The trial is related to
Jesus’s cup in Gethsemane, the same cup which his disciples would also taste
(Mk 10: 35-45). The dark side of the interior of the cup is an abyss. It
reveals the awful consequences of God’s judgment upon sinful humanity. In
August, 1968, the weight of the evangelical Πειρασμός fell on many priests,
including myself.
It was
the year of the bad war, of complex innocence that sanctified the shedding of
blood. English historian Paul Johnson dubs 1968 as the year of “America’s
Suicide Attempt.” It included the Tet offensive in Vietnam with its
tsunami-like effects in American life and politics, the assassination of Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee; the tumult in American cities on
Palm Sunday weekend; and the June assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy in
southern California. It was also the year in which Pope Paul VI issued his
encyclical letter on transmitting human life, Humanae Vitae (HV).
He met immediate, premeditated, and unprecedented opposition from some American
theologians and pastors. By any measure 1968 was a bitter cup.
On the
fortieth anniversary of Humanae Vitae, I have been asked to reflect
on one event of that year, the doctrinal dissent among some priests and
theologians in an American Archdiocese on the occasion of its publication. It
is not an easy or welcome task. But since it may help some followers of Jesus
to live what Pope Paul VI called a more “disciplined” life (HV 21),
I will explore that event.
The
summer of 1968 is a record of God’s hottest hour. The memories are not
forgotten; they are painful. They remain vivid like a tornado in the plains of
Colorado. They inhabit the whirlwind where God’s wrath dwells. In 1968
something terrible happened in the Church. Within the ministerial priesthood
ruptures developed everywhere among friends which never healed. And the wounds
continue to affect the whole Church. The dissent, together with the leaders’
manipulation of the anger they fomented, became a supreme test. It changed
fundamental relationships within the Church. It was a Πειρασμός for many.
Some
background material is necessary. Cardinal Lawrence J. Shehan, the sixth
Archbishop of Baltimore, was my ecclesiastical superior at the time. Pope Paul
VI had appointed him along with others as additional members to the Papal
Commission for the Study of Problems of the Family, Population, and Birth
Rates, first established by Blessed Pope John XXIII in 1963 during the II
Vatican Council. There had been discussions and delays and unauthorized interim
reports from Rome prior to 1968. The enlarged Commission was asked to make
recommendations on these issues to the Pope.
In
preparation for its deliberations, the Cardinal sent confidential letters to
various persons of the Church of Baltimore seeking their advice. I received
such a letter.
My
response drew upon experience, both personal and pastoral. Family and education
had given me a Christian understanding of sex. The profoundly Catholic
imagination of my family, friends and teachers had caused me to be open to this
reality; I was filled with wonder before its mystery. Theological arguments
weren’t necessary to convince me of the binding connection between sexual acts
and new life. That truth was an accepted part of life at the elementary school
connected with St. Joseph’s Passionist Monastery Parish in Baltimore. In my
early teens my father had first introduced me to the full meaning of human
sexuality and the need for discipline. His intervention opened a path through
the labyrinth of adolescence.
Through
my family, schools, and parishes I became friends with many young women. Some
of them I dated on a regular basis. I marveled at their beauty. The courage of
St. Maria Goretti, canonized in 1950, struck my generation like an intense
mountain storm. Growing into my later teens I understood better how complex
friendship with young women could be. They entered the spring-time of my life
like the composite rhythm of a poem. To my surprise, the joy of being their
friend was enriched by prayer, modesty, and the Sacraments of Penance and the
Eucharist.
Later
education and formation in seminaries built upon those experiences. In a 1955
letter to a friend, Flannery O’Connor describes the significance of the virtue
of purity for many Catholics at that time. “To see Christ as God and man is
probably no more difficult today than it has been. ... For you it may be a
matter of not being able to accept what you call a suspension of the law of the
flesh and the physical, but for my part I think that when I know what the laws
of the flesh and physical reality really are, then I will know what God is. We
know them as we see them, not as God sees them. For me it is the virgin birth,
the Incarnation, the resurrection which are the true laws of the flesh and the
physical. Death, decay, destruction are the suspension of these laws. I am
always astonished at the emphasis the Church places on the body. It is not the
soul she says that will rise but the body, glorified. I have always thought
that purity was the most mysterious of the virtues, but it occurs to me that it
would never have entered human consciousness if we were not to look forward to
a resurrection of the body, which will be flesh and spirit united in peace, in
the way they were in Christ. The resurrection of Christ seems the high point in
the law of nature.” O’Connor’s theology with its remarkably eschatological mark
anticipates the teaching of the II Vatican Council, “The truth is that only in
the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light” (Gaudium
et Spes 22). In those years, I could not have used her explicit words
to explain where I stood on sexuality and its use. Once I discovered them she
became a spiritual sister.
Eight
years of priestly ministry from 1958 to 1966 in Washington and Baltimore
broadened my experience. It didn’t take long to discover changes in Americans’
attitudes towards the virtue of purity. Both cities were undergoing sharp
increases in out-of-wedlock pregnancies. The rate in Baltimore’s inner-city was
about 18% in 1966 and had been climbing for several years. In 1965-1966 the
Baltimore Metropolitan Health and Welfare Council undertook a study to advise
the city government in how to address the issue. At that time, the Board
members of the Council, including myself, had uncritical faith in experts and
social research. Even the II Vatican Council had expressed unfettered
confidence in the role of benevolent experts (Gaudium et Spes 57).
Not one of my professional acquaintances anticipated the crisis of trust which
was just around the corner in the relations between men and women. Our vision
was incapable of establishing conditions of justice and of purity of heart in
which wonder and appreciation can find play. We were already anachronistic and
without hope. We ignored the texture of life.
There
were signs even then of the disasters facing children, both born and unborn. As
a caseworker and priest throughout the 1960's, part of my ministry involved
counseling inner-city families and single parents. My first awareness of a
parishioner using hard drugs was in 1961. A sixteen-year old had been jailed in
Anne Arundel County, Maryland. At the time of my late afternoon visit to him,
he was experiencing drug withdrawal unattended and alone in a tiny cell. His
screams filled the corridors and adjoining cells. Through the iron bars
dividing us, I was horror-stricken watching him in his torment. The abyss he
was looking into was unimaginably terrifying. In this drugged youth writhing in
agony on the floor next to an open toilet I saw the bitter fruits of the
estrangement of men and women. His mother, separated from her husband, lived
with her younger children in a sweltering third floor flat on Light St. in old
South Baltimore. The father was non-existent for them. The failure of men in their
paternal and spousal roles was unfolding before my eyes and ears. Since then
more and more American men have refused to accept responsibility for their
sexuality.
In a
confidential letter responding to his request, I shared in a general fashion
these concerns. My counsel to Cardinal Shehan was very real and specific. I had
taken a hard, cold look at what I was experiencing and what the Church and
society were doing. I came across an idea which was elliptical: the gift of
love should be allowed to be fruitful. These two fixed points are constant.
This simple idea lit up everything like lightning in a storm. I wrote about it
more formally to the Cardinal: the unitive and procreative meanings of marriage
cannot be separated. Consequently, to deprive a conjugal act deliberately of
its fertility is intrinsically wrong. To encourage or approve such an abuse
would lead to the eclipse of fatherhood and to disrespect for women. Since
then, Pope John Paul II has given us the complementary and superlative insight
into the nuptial meaning of the human body. Decades afterwards, I came across
an analogous reading from Meister Eckhart: “Gratitude for the gift is shown
only by allowing it to make one fruitful.”
Some time
later, the Papal Commission sent its recommendations to the Pope. The majority
advised that the Church’s teaching on contraception be changed in light of new
circumstances. Cardinal Shehan was part of that majority. Even before the
encyclical had been signed and issued, his vote had been made public although
not on his initiative.
As we
know, the Pope decided otherwise. This sets the scene for the tragic drama
following the actual date of the publication of the encyclical letter on July
29, 1968.
In his
memoirs, Cardinal Shehan describes the immediate reaction of some priests in
Washington to the encyclical. “[A]fter receiving the first news of the
publication of the encyclical, the Rev. Charles E. Curran, instructor of moral
theology of The Catholic University of America, flew back to Washington from
the West where he had been staying. Late [on the afternoon of July 29], he and
nine other professors of theology of the Catholic University met, by evident
prearrangement, in Caldwell Hall to receive, again by prearrangement with
the Washington Post, the encyclical, part by part, as it came from
the press. The story further indicated that by nine o’clock that night, they
had received the whole encyclical, had read it, had analyzed it, criticized it,
and had composed their six-hundred word ‘Statement of Dissent.’ Then they began
that long series of telephone calls to ‘theologians’ throughout the East, which
went on, according to the Post, until 3:30 A.M., seeking authorization, to
attach their names as endorsers (signers was the term used) of the statement,
although those to whom they had telephoned could not have had an opportunity to
see either the encyclical or their statement. Meanwhile, they had arranged
through one of the local television stations to have the statement broadcast
that night.”
The
Cardinal’s judgment was scornful. In 1982 he wrote, “The first thing that we
have to note about the whole performance is this: so far as I have been able to
discern, never in the recorded history of the Church has a solemn proclamation
of a Pope been received by any group of Catholic people with so much disrespect
and contempt.”
The
personal Πειρασμός, the test, began. In Baltimore in early August, 1968, a few
days after the encyclical’s issuance, I received an invitation by telephone
from a recently ordained assistant pastor to attend a gathering of some
Baltimore priests at the rectory of St. William of York parish in southwest
Baltimore to discuss the encyclical. The meeting was set for Sunday evening,
August 4. I agreed to come. Eventually a large number of priests were gathered
in the rectory’s basement. I knew them all.
The dusk
was clear, hot, and humid. The quarters were cramped. We were seated on rows of
benches and chairs and were led by a diocesan inner-city pastor well known for
his work in liturgy and race-relations. There were also several Sulpician
priests present from St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore to assist him in
directing the meeting. I don’t recall their actual number.
My
expectations of the meeting proved unrealistic. I had hoped that we had been
called together to receive copies of the encyclical and to discuss it. I was
mistaken. Neither happened.
After
welcoming us and introducing the leadership, the inner-city pastor came to the
point. He expected each of us to subscribe to the Washington “Statement of
Dissent.” Mixing passion with humor, he explained the reasons. They ranged from
the maintenance of the credibility of the Church among the laity to the need to
allow ‘flexibility’ for married couples in forming their consciences on the use
of artificial contraceptives. Before our arrival, the conveners had decided
that the Baltimore priests’ rejection of the papal encyclical would be
published the following morning in The Baltimore Sun, one of the daily
newspapers.
The
Washington statement was read aloud. Then the leader asked each of us to agree
to have our names attached to it. No time was allowed for discussion,
reflection, or prayer. Each priest was required individually to give a verbal
“yes” or “no.”
I could
not sign it. My earlier letter to Cardinal Shehan came to mind. I remained
convinced of the truth of my judgement and conclusions. Noting that my seat was
last in the packed basement, I listened to each priest’s response, hoping for
support. It didn’t materialize. Everyone agreed to sign. There were no
abstentions. As the last called upon, I felt isolated. The basement became
suffocating.
By now it
was night. The room was charged with tension. Something epochal was taking
place. It became clear that the leaders’ strategy had been carefully mapped out
beforehand. It was moving along without a hitch. Their rhetorical skills were
having their anticipated effect. They had planned carefully how to exert what
amounted to emotional and intellectual coercion. Violence by overt manipulation
was new to the Baltimore presbyterate.
The
leader’s reaction to my refusal was predictable and awful. The whole process
now became a grueling struggle, a terrible test, a Πειρασμος. The
priest/leader, drawing upon some scatological language from his Marine Corp
past in the II World War responded contemptuously to my decision. He tried to
force me to change. He became visibly angry and verbally abusive. The
underlying, ‘fraternal’ violence became more evident. He questioned and then
derided my integrity. He taunted me to risk my ecclesiastical ‘future,’
although his reference was more anatomically specific. The abuse went on.
With
surprising coherence I was eventually able to respond that the Pope’s
encyclical deserved the courtesy of a reading. None of us had read it. I continued
that, as a matter of fact, I agreed with and accepted the Pope’s teaching as it
had been reported in the public media. That response elicited more ridicule.
Otherwise there was silence. Finally, seeing that I would remain firm, the
ex-Marine moved on to complete the business and adjourn the meeting. The
leaders then prepared a statement for the next morning’s daily paper.
The
meeting ended. I sped out of there, free but disoriented. Once outside the
darkness encompassed me. We all had been subjected to a new thing in the
Church, something unexpected. A pastor and several seminary professors had
abused rhetoric to undermine the truth within the evangelical community. When
opposed, they assumed the role of Job’s friends. Their contempt became a nightmare.
In the night it seemed that God’s blind hand was reaching out to touch my face.
The
dissent of a few Sulpician seminary professors compounded my disorientation. In
their ancient Baltimore Seminary I had first caught on to the connection
between freedom, interiority, and obedience. By every ecclesial measure they
should have been aware that the process they supported that evening exceeded
the “norms of licit dissent.” But they showed no concern for the gravity of
that theological and pastoral moment. They saw nothing unbecoming in the mix of
publicity and theology. They expressed no impatience then or later over the
coercive nature of the August meeting. Nor did any of the other priests
present. One diocesan priest did request privately later that night that his
name be removed before the statement’s publication in the morning paper.
For a
long time, I wondered about the meaning of the event. It was a cataclysm which
was difficult to survive intact. Things were sorted out slowly. Later, Henri de
Lubac captured some of its significance, “Nothing is more opposed to witness
than vulgarization. Nothing is more unlike the apostolate than propaganda.”
Hannah Arendt’s insights have been useful concerning the dangerous poise of
20th century western culture between unavoidable doom and reckless optimism.
“It should be possible to discover the hidden mechanics by which all
traditional elements of our political and spiritual world were dissolved into a
conglomeration of where everything seems to have lost specific value, and has
become unrecognizable for human comprehension, unusable for human purpose. To
yield to the mere process of disintegration has become an irresistible
temptation, not only because it has assumed the spurious grandeur of
‘historical necessity’, but also because everything outside it has begun to
appear lifeless, bloodless, meaningless and unreal”. The subterranean world
that has always accompanied Catholic communities, called Gnosticism by our
ancestors, had again surfaced and attempted to usurp the truth of the Catholic
tradition.
An
earlier memory from April 1968 helped to shed further light on what had
happened in August, 1968 along with de Lubac’s words about violence and
Arendt’s insights into the breaking point reached by Western civilization in
the 20th century. During the height of the 1968 Baltimore riots following the
assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I had made an emergency call to
that same inner-city pastor who would lead the later August meeting. It was one
of numerous telephone conversations I had with inner-city pastors during the
night preceding Palm Sunday. At the request of the city government, I was
asking whether the pastors or their people, both beleaguered, might need food,
medical assistance, or other help.
My
conversation with him that April night was by far the most dramatic. He
described the view from the rectory while speaking on the phone. A window
framed a dissolving neighborhood; his parish was becoming a raging inferno. He
said, “From here I see nothing but fire burning everywhere. Everything has been
set ablaze. The Church and rectory are untouched thus far.” He did not wish to
leave or be evacuated. His voice betrayed disillusionment and fear. Later we
learned that the parish buildings survived.
‘Sorting
out’ these two events of violence continued throughout the following months and
years. The trajectories of April and August 1968 unpredictably converged.
Memories of the physical violence in the city in April 1968 helped me to name
what had happened in August 1968. Ecclesial dissent can become a kind of
spiritual violence in its form and content. A new, unsettling insight emerged.
Violence and truth don’t mix. When expressive violence of whatever sort is
inflicted upon truth, the resulting irony is lethal.
What do I
mean? Look at the results of the two events. After the violent 1968 Palm Sunday
weekend, civil dialogue in metropolitan Baltimore broke down and came to a
stop. It took a back seat to open anger and recriminations between whites and
blacks. The violence of the priests’ August gathering gave rise to its own
ferocious acrimony. Conversations among the clergy, where they existed, became
contaminated with fear. Suspicions among priests were chronic. Fears abounded.
And they continue. The Archdiocesan priesthood lost something of the fraternal
whole which Baltimore priests had known for generations. 1968 marked the hiatus
of the generational communio of the Archdiocesan presbyterate, which had been
continually reinforced by the seminary and its Sulpician faculty. Priests’
fraternity had been wounded. Pastoral dissent had attacked the Eucharistic
foundation of the Church. Its nuptial significance had been denied. Some
priests saw bishops as nothing more than Roman mannequins.
Something
else happened among priests on that violent August night. Friendship in the
Church sustained a direct hit. Jesus, by calling those who were with him his
‘friends,’ had made friendship a privileged analogy of the Church. That analogy
became obscured after a large number of priests expressed shame over their
leaders and repudiated their teaching.
Cardinal
Shehan later reported that on Monday morning, August 5, he “was startled to
read in the Baltimore Sun that seventy-two priests of the Baltimore area had
signed theStatement of Dissent.” What he later called “the years of
crisis” began for him during that hot, violent August evening in 1968.
But that
night was not a total loss. The test was unexpected and unwelcome. Its
unhinging consequences continue. Abusive, coercive dissent has become a reality
in the Church and subjects her to violent, debilitating, unproductive, chronic
controversies. But I did discover something new. Others also did. When the
moment of Christian witness came, no Christian could be coerced who refused to
be. Despite the novelty of being treated as an object of shame and ridicule, I
did not become “ashamed of the Gospel” that night and found “sweet delight in
what is right.” It was not a bad lesson. Ecclesial obedience ran the distance.
My
discovery that Christ was the first to despise shame was gut-rending in its
existential and providential reality. “Let us run with perseverance the race
that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith,
who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the
shame.” Paradoxically, in the hot, August night a new sign shown unexpectedly
on the path to future life. It read, “Jesus learned obedience through what he
suffered.”
The
violence of the initial disobedience was only a prelude to further and more
pervasive violence. Priests wept at meetings over the manipulation of their
brothers. Contempt for the truth, whether aggressive or passive, has become
common in Church life. Dissenting priests, theologians and laypeople have
continued their coercive techniques. From the beginning the press has used them
to further its own serpentine agenda.
All of
this led to a later discovery. Discernment is an essential part of episcopal
ministry. With the grace of “the governing Spirit” the discerning skills of a
bishop should mature. Episcopal attention should focus on the break/rupture
initiated by Jesus and described by St. Paul in his response to Corinthian
dissenters. “You desire proof that Christ is speaking in me. He is not weak in
dealing with you, but is powerful in you. For he was crucified in weakness, but
lives by the power of God. For we are weak in him, but in dealing with you we
shall live with him by the power of God. Examine yourselves, to see whether you
are holding to your faith. Test yourselves” (2 Cor 13: 3-5).
The
rupture of the violent death of Jesus has changed our understanding of the
nature of God. His Trinitarian life is essentially self-surrender and love. By
Baptism, every disciple of Jesus is imprinted with that Trinitarian water-mark.
The Incarnate Word came to do the will of him who sent him. Contemporary
obedience of disciples to the Successor of Peter cannot be separated from the
poverty of spirit and purity of heart modeled and won by the Word on the Cross.
A brief
after word. In 1978 or thereabouts during an episcopal visitation to his
parish, I was having lunch with the Baltimore pastor, the ex-Marine, who led
the August 1968 meeting. I was a guest in his rectory. He was still formidable.
Our conversation was about his parish, the same parish he had been shepherding
during the 1968 riots. The atmosphere was amiable. During the simple meal in
the kitchen I came to an uneasy decision. Since we had never discussed the
August 1968 night, I decided to initiate a conversation about it. My recall was
brief, objective and, insofar as circumstances allowed, unthreatening. I had
hoped for some light from him on an event which had become central to the
experience of many priests including myself. While my mind and heart were
recalling the events of the night, he remained silent. His silence continued
afterwards. Even though he had not forgotten, he made no comment. He didn’t
lift his eyes. His heart’s fire was colder now.
Nothing
was forthcoming. I left the matter there. No dialogue was possible in 1968; it
remained impossible in 1978. There was no common ground. Both of us were
looking into an abyss - from opposite sides. Anguish and disquiet overwhelmed
the distant hope of reconciliation and friendship. We never returned to the
subject again. He has since died while serving a large suburban parish. The
only remaining option is to strike my breast and pray, “Lord, remember the
secret worth of all our human worthlessness”
Diocesan
presbyterates have not recovered from the July/August nights in 1968. Many in
consecrated life also failed the evangelical test. Since January 2002, the
abyss has opened up elsewhere. The whole people of God, including children and
adolescents, now must look into the abyss and see what dread beasts are at its bottom.
Each of us shudders before the wrath of God, each weeps in sorrow for our sins
and each begs for the Father’s merciful remembrance of Christ’s obedience.
J.
Francis Cardinal Stafford
Major Penitentiary of the Apostolic Penitentiary
Major Penitentiary of the Apostolic Penitentiary
No comments:
Post a Comment