Drane: Vatican Culture Helps Explain Reprimand of American Nuns

By James F. Drane
GoErie
May 1, 2012

http://www.goerie.com/article/20120501/OPINION08/305019991/Drane%3A-Vatican-culture-helps-explain-reprimand-of-American-nuns

How does one explain the public reprimand of American sisters, from a group of bishops and Vatican officials who failed so tragically to handle the mentally ill pedophile priests and the damage they did to innocent children and to the Church?

The American sisters targeted belong to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which includes a majority of American nuns. They were reprimanded for questioning Church teaching on homosexuality, male only priesthood and for promoting "radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith." They were also reprimanded for public statements that disagree with and challenge the American bishops, "who are the authentic teachers of faith and morals."

All the above accusations and reprimands were associated with a discussion of President Barack Obama's health-care plan.

One explanation of what is happening comes from an enduring culture inside the Vatican. Inside the Vatican, there is a particular culture, just as there is a culture inside every large industrial organization, big bank, leadership group of a Protestant Church or government agency responsible for protecting the president. Without an understanding of an inside culture, one can never explain particular unusual behaviors.

We get an insight into the culture inside the Vatican by looking at what happened to that good, kind, smiling and saintly Italian Pope John XXIII. He spent his life outside the Vatican. He was assigned to positions at places of little importance and almost totally removed from everyday church affairs: for example, Bulgaria and Turkey. He was elected as an interim Pope in 1958 to replace Pius XII. Immediately, he shocked the Vatican and the world by announcing that he would convoke an ecumenical council; a meeting of all bishops from the whole church.

His objective was to update the Church and bring it more into openness with the world. Pope John XXIII announced his decision at an event attended by Vatican bishops, cardinals and bureaucrats. He asked them for their opinions. What he got were looks of horror and disbelief.

The history of the Church is a history of stress and strain between popes and councils. Councils claim the power and authority for change in the Church. Vatican bureaucrats want nothing of the kind. They stand on the side of Popes, papal authority and papal power. Outside authority, coming from a meeting of bishops, for Vatican personnel, is the worst thing imaginable. The very idea of an ecumenical council means that things are not perfect and that change is called for. This is the thinking that generated the looks of amazement and horror on the faces of Vatican staff members when the blessed Pope John made his announcement.

Vatican officials work inside the Vatican and are formed in their ways of thinking by the Vatican culture. In this culture, the Vatican is in charge of the Church and everything is just fine. The last thing Vatican officials want is to receive orders from the outside. They make all the changes that they believe are necessary and what orders they issue are influenced by or are products of a drip-down Vatican culture of papal infallibility.

Despite shock, amazement, and resistance from inside the Vatican, the Second Vatican Council took place and all kinds of changes were made in the Church. That was 50 years ago, just enough time for the next generation of male clerics, formed in the same Vatican culture, to start reversing some of those conciliar changes.

The Mass liturgy was changed into English and other vernacular languages and now the liturgy is being returned either to Latin or to some literal translation of the older Latin texts. And the Catholic Sisters who before the Council wore habits and obediently carried out the Church's work in education, health care and many other forms of social service, are now differently dressed and are expressing ideas generated by their faith and by their lived experiences. This explains the latest Vatican document criticizing the sisters and insisting upon getting back to things as they used to be.

The late 19th century claim of papal infallibility confirmed and deepened the inside Vatican culture that holds that "we alone are in charge and we know what is right." This drip-down infallibility culture extends even to issues like sexuality and contraception. The experience of married Catholic women is as ignored as is the experience of Catholic sisters who work to bring about social justice in today's societies.

If all this shocks a Catholic reader, don't run away. Don't be a sissy or a wimp. Come back if you have been away and get ready to take part in a period of Church history that will go down, centuries from now, possibly as revolutionary, but at least as interesting.

What happens in the Catholic Church depends upon more than what some Vatican bureaucrats do. It depends upon the involvement of all Catholics.

JAMES F. DRANE is the retired Russell B. Roth professor of Bioethics at the Drane Bioethics Institute at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania.