As someone who grew up amid two sprawling extended families with
battalions of cousins, many of whom lived in the same town and attended
the same Catholic schools, I know how unfair it can feel to be compared
with someone just because you're members of the same tribe.
That notation is a way of expressing some understanding should
Cardinal Sean O'Malley and Archbishop Charles Chaput grow weary of being
compared. The two are both Capuchin Franciscans, were once classmates,
and are currently, as colleague John L. Allen Jr. described them in a recent column,
"ecclesiastical heavyweights."
Each heads a historic U.S. see: Chaput
is archbishop of Philadelphia and O'Malley is the archbishop of Boston,
tapped by Pope Francis to be one of eight cardinals on a committee to
help him in reform of the Curia and governance of the universal church.
They also were both recently speakers at a gathering of Capuchins
outside of Pittsburgh, and what they had to say was as revealing as any
seminar one might attend on the different approaches to being a Catholic
pastor in the 21st century. It's not the first time the glaring
contrasts between the two were apparent.
A year or so ago, I was asked to do a chapter in SAGE Publications' Religious Leadership: A Reference Handbook.
I began with a comparison of Chaput and O'Malley, citing the by-now
familiar similarities before describing the dramatically different ways
they pastorally approached a similar circumstance in 2010.
The problem arose when children of homosexual couples showed up for
admission to a Catholic school. The first incident involved two girls,
ages 5 and 3, in Boulder, Colo., part of the Denver archdiocese, where
Chaput was archbishop at the time. The pastor involved said the girls
couldn't be accepted because of their parents' sexual orientation,
explaining at one point that "Jesus did turn people away." Chaput
supported the pastor, citing the need to uphold "the authentic faith of
the church." He later further approved the decision, noting in his blog,
"Archdiocesan policy was followed faithfully in this matter." The
situation, he said, illustrated the importance of Catholic teaching and
its preservation. The teachings were, in fact, "the teachings of Jesus
Christ," he said.
Two months later, a pastor denied an 8-year-old boy admittance to a
school in Boston for the same reason -- he had homosexual parents.
O'Malley quickly reversed the pastor's decision, and the school's
superintendent released a statement saying while the church's teachings
are important, no child would be sent away.
O'Malley on his blog explained his decision by telling a story of his
experience as a young bishop in the West Indies. A notorious madam who
ran a local brothel was murdered, and O'Malley said her funeral Mass.
"At the Mass I met the woman's daughter, a lovely little girl. I asked
her what grade she was in. She replied that she didn't go to school. I
sent a stern glance to her grandmother, who said: 'Her name is the same
as that of the brothel. The other children were so cruel to her, she
left the public school.' I told her grandmother, 'Take her to the
Catholic school tomorrow.' "
He further said Catholic schools "exist for the good of the children.
... We have never had categories of people who were excluded."
On the margins
Perhaps the comparison is unfair. But both prelates are big boys who
have either been thrust into the public limelight (O'Malley has several
times been parachuted into dioceses reeling from the sex abuse scandal)
or sought it (Chaput, who also was given an unenviable assignment in
Philadelphia, has taken on the role of spokesman for a certain
conservative wing of the church).
During the May 28 Pittsburgh gathering, O'Malley recalled the
enthusiasm Italians showed for Franciscans during the recent papal
conclave in Rome and said he had told other Franciscans, "We have to
make sure we deserve that affection."
In other words, position, office,
order don't automatically make one deserving of the affection and
goodwill of others.
His emphasis throughout his life has been on the poor and those on
the margins, and he recalled sheltering people in the wake of riots that
broke out in Washington, where he was then living, following the
assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. O'Malley followed that
by joining the Poor People's March, "sleeping in a tent city" and
watching protestors get tear-gassed.
He was a prison chaplain and ministered to immigrants and refugees
while staying at Washington's Centro Catolico Hispano during the 1970s
and '80s. He got to know, close-up and personally, the reality of
immigrants, their struggles and life with "no heat, no hot water, and
rats the size of cats." He organized a rent strike among poor tenants
until improvements were made to their property.
He spoke warmly of Pope Francis, his emphasis on Catholic social
teaching, his wish for "a poor church for the poor" and realistically
about the need for a mechanism to hold bishops accountable.
Chaput focused on, in Allen's construction, "the integrity of the faith in a very secular culture."
That's a polite company way of putting things. Chaput's is a rather
gloomy view of the church and the world. Inside the institution, he is
gloomy over the drop in numbers -- of Catholics, of those getting
married, of the number of Catholic schools closing.
"In much of the
once-Christian developed world, many self-described Christians are, in
fact, pagans," he said. His language is littered with phrases that are
derisive of everyone else. "Practical atheism" has replaced Orthodoxy
and the creed of American teenagers is one of "moralistic and
therapeutic deism."
Everything is "in worse shape now that I would ever have imagined
even 10 years ago, as a society and as a church." Evil is "real,"
"murderous," "all around us." We are in a cosmic "struggle for the soul
of the world."
When asked if he sees even a little hope, he replied, "I see some lights, but they're not many and they're small."
Above the fray
Everything, it seems, is someone else's fault, and Chaput appears to
hover above the fray, with both the accusatory analysis and all the
answers. Not once did he even hint that perhaps Catholics in places like
Philadelphia were leaving in droves because church leaders, especially
bishops, deeply and horribly betrayed them in ways that would put the
most relativistic, hedonistic secularist to shame.
Perhaps they were
leaving because they can't stand to be in an institution led by men who
had so little regard for their children that they would tolerate the
rape and molestation of those children for decades without saying
anything to anyone.
Chaput at one point said he'd "love to see some of these communities
[churches that are being closed] say we have to start over, setting up
shop in the storefronts rather than these huge churches we can't
maintain anymore. But nobody does that."
Did he stop for a moment to reflect on what has happened to Catholics
who dare try something experimental? Does he know what happened, for
instance, to a community in Cleveland that did what he is suggesting?
The Community of St. Peter set up shop with their pastor in an
industrial warehouse when the bishop closed the church. The bishop excommunicated the pastor
and told the community it wasn't in communion with the church. Perhaps
Chaput would tolerate such experiments, but he doesn't have a reputation
for embracing innovation.
He wants to see a revival of secular Franciscan communities. However,
of those who have remained in such communities, he had this to say: Too
often, they are composed of "old people or left-leaning social justice
folks from the 1960s."
Not even his own order escaped his critique for not joining in the
renewal effort of Fr. Benedict Groeschel, who broke with the Capuchins
in 1987 to found the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal.
Groeschel has
since retired from all of his posts following some rather bizarre comments
he made about the sex abuse scandal. But even when it comes to
Groeschel's renewal effort, Chaput remains above it all, excusing
himself from the fight (if not the critique) because he had just been
appointed a bishop in 1988 and was busy then with whatever new bishops
do.
The contrasts in the two prelates are apparent and have to do with
personality as well as ecclesiology and theology. Over the long haul of
history, the church perhaps needs all types of leaders, including the
exceedingly pessimistic.
But given the realities of the current era and
the fact that most bishops would line up behind one model or the other,
it is fair to ask: Who would you prefer to follow? What kind of church
would most people be inclined to enter? What kind of community would
most of us prefer to join?
Is it the one led by the cardinal whose principal texts seem to be
Scripture and his life? Or is it the one led by the archbishop who seems
to lean heavily on a neoconservative understanding of history,
memorized catechism answers, and an endlessly gloomy critique?
Are we more likely to be attracted to the invitation into a life, a
story if you will, of transformative love, rats and all, or one in which
the criticism of our lives, beliefs, efforts and culture is relentless
and without much hope?
One hopes it is not without consequence that during the same week
Chaput was delivering his sermon of doom and condemnation, the pope
spoke about "becoming slaves to our sorrows." Reflecting on the day's
readings, Francis said, according to a Vatican summary,
"It all speaks of joy, the joy that is celebration."
Yet, "we
Christians are not so accustomed to speak of joy, of happiness. I think
often we prefer to complain. ... Without joy, we Christians cannot
become free, we become slaves to our sorrows. The great Paul VI said
that you cannot advance the Gospel with sad, hopeless, discouraged
Christians. You cannot."
The critique, of course, is essential. It has always been an element
of Christian life. But at some point, the more difficult task of
leadership has to surface.
The community must be invited into the larger
story. It has to be inspired to live something more, to be
transformative, or it withers away.
It has to have reason to place its
faith and hope in something other than sarcasm and a bitter list of
complaints.