Trans-Partisanship as Mark of the Spirit: On Viganò and the Crisis of Episcopal and Papal Power

Reading the tea leaves of clerical power politics is a fool’s game. And here we are, having to play it.

In the years before the collapse of my marriage and the betrayal of my children by professional Catholics, including hierarchs of most callous soul, the Viganò “testimony” would have been something like catnip to me (except for the attack on the Pope). The former apostolic nuncio to America hits all the conservative notes. It seems so obvious, so clear.

So pat.

(For one thing, I don’t see how someone who didn’t come up in American Catholic conservative circles could have written certain portions of it. It’s too on the nose.)

The Fallacy of a Human Master Narrative

Which is not in any way to doubt the likelihood that many of the facts he points to are true, and actionable. It’s to say that even in trying to understand secular politics, if our reading of world history leads us to think our partisan story makes sense of everything, I promise you, we’ve done our sums wrong.

So much more must it be so with matters ecclesiastic. Beyond the turbidities one would expect to be generated by a secretive hierarchy, we know there are motive forces active in the Church strictly beyond our ken. A Catholic professes that Holy Mother Church is “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic” (and somehow is so not despite but through her temporal Petrine constitution). The Holy Spirit of the Crucified is the Master of this Body.

And that Spirit plays conservatives and progressives off of each other to achieve ends beyond those intended by either.

A Political Campaign Cannot Yield True Reform in the Church

There are conservatives who bristle at the way this Pope exercises the Church’s magisterium, and for that reason have engaged in an all-too-human campaign to get rid of him. Viganò’s testimony would seem to fit into this strategy. And that should make an honest conservative pause.

The Church is not ours. She belongs to the Holy Spirit. Thank God. If any person, with his fallible mind and compromised heart, has his way, this world, and this Church, would be even more broken than it is. Thank God for the balance of finite forces, and for the infinite force that plays in them. A conservative ought to recognize this truth.

Viganò’s testimony should not be used to advance human and fallible political ends within the supernatural institution of the Church. But it can be useful in helping us understand where our loyalty to the Pope must be tempered, given the current crisis of episcopal power.

Since my reception into the Church twenty years ago, I have always loved the Popes. I loved John Paul. I loved Benedict. I have loved Francis. This is how it stands with the vast majority of the world’s Catholics, the commentariat notwithstanding. One essential quality of Catholicism is to have a filial love for the Holy Father.

I still believe that. To have loved the previous Popes, and to hate this one, betrays a crypto-episcopalian or crypto-presbyterian or crypto-individualist ecclesiology. (The same goes for those who love Francis, and disdain the others.)

The Episcopal Order’s Incompetence to Govern

The hierarchical constitution of the Church exists to make Jesus present in Word and Eucharist (and other sacraments) through all the ages. Clerics are given sacred power for one end only: to be the instrument of instruments, to be the means of sanctification of the elect, who are in turn called to sanctify the world. There must be no derogation from the sanctifying and teaching offices of the episcopal order. But after McCarrick, after the Pennsylvania grand jury report—the third office, that of governing, must be derogated from.

And that’s the distinction we must make. Continued docility to the bishops in communion with the Bishop of Rome as teachers and sanctifiers must continue to distinguish the fullness of the true religion—else we’ve got some flavor of Protestantism. But to continue to repose confidence in any bishop, including the Bishop of Rome, when it comes to governance is to display an imbecility of epochal proportions.

As a teacher, Pope Francis has been the blessing that the Popes are. We needed a corrective for conservative, and pharisaical, contractions of the immense doctrinal wealth provided through John Paul and Benedict. We needed, say, Amoris laetitia, to balance a perversely rigorist misrepresentation of Veritatis splendor, to show a humane way to live out moral realism. There are conservatives who have kicked against the goads here, but it is the Holy Spirit Who drives the plow.

Perhaps Viganò has given us an authentic glimpse of the jockeying of progressives and conservatives in the hierarchy. But to be Catholic is to know that the Holy Spirit works through all parties to transcend the intentionalities of all parties.

The Enemy is Unchecked Power

If any of us conservatives are moved to superbia by Viganò’s testimony, we’ve done the sums wrong. And we’ve missed the whole point of the Catholic limit placed on private judgment: the Kingdom of God cannot arise from human calculations and strategies. We do not, this side the beatific vision, have the requisite infinity of soul.

To the extent that we conservatives “win,” and our fallible intentions prevail, we necessarily diminish the supernatural scope of the Church.

The crisis in the Church must not conveniently be attached to the crimes, vices, or ideology of the other guys. The crisis has its roots in something deeper than the crimes or vices or ideologies of either side, in a corruption of the hierarchical constitution of the Church by unchecked power and its games.

Replace every corrupt bishop and cardinal (and, yes, whoever in fact knew of, and did nothing about, McCarrick’s predations should resign), root out the “lavender mafia” (problem that it is), and still you’ve done nothing, nothing, if you leave in place the clericalist structures that invite grotesque abuse of power. Have all your favorite conservative, or progressive, bishops take over. What would come of it?

As long as priests can tyrannize parish staff with their whims and evasions of responsibility, as long as bishops can strongarm religious orders seeking to do right by their lay employees, as long as bishops can silence, on a whim, orthodox laypersons from speaking in parishes, as long as bishops treat women religious like maids, as long as seminaries involve a totalitarian regimentation of interiority and the corruptions of favoritism, there will be shepherds who are in fact wolves feeding off the lives of the flock.

We are not talking about one party or another. Tyrannical clerics can be conservative, progressive, or what-have-you. Conservatives, in particular, should notice how “orthodoxy” has become a role to inhabit, a way to immunize oneself from scrutiny.

A New Bethany

The existence of a hierarchy of ambition makes it very difficult for the many, many good priests out there to carry out their heart’s desire: to expend themselves in pastoral charity.

The whole system, as it is presently constituted, has to come down. Clerics should be given no opportunity to lord it over the flock, to feast on our flesh and souls.

From all tribes, the Holy Spirit has been forming one peaceable and limitless Kingdom of love, too magnificent, too wonderful, too incalculable for us to construct from our constrained view of reality. We need each other, all parties need to sharpen each other, make room for each other in existential hospitality, if we are to rise into the magnanimity of supernatural society.

A Facebook friend pointed to how, in the primordial Church, Jesus and the “Twelve” lived among the laity, prominently including the women disciples. The domestic sphere provided the atmosphere for the hierarchical. We must return to Bethany.