"for the Loyal"

By Jennifer Haselberger
Canonical Consultation
May 15, 2015

http://canonicalconsultation.com/blog.html

Over the past few weeks, I have been interacting with the cast and crew of the Illusion Theater's production of Lee Blessing's 'For the Loyal'. The script is loosely based on the Jerry Sandusky scandal at Penn State, with the chief protagonist being Mia, the wife of an assistant football coach who thinks he has seen his boss engage in sexual abuse of a minor. The story attempts to present the different options and moral choices that Mia faces as she grapples with an appropriate response to what her husband has seen. The title of the play comes from a line in the college's fight song, the implication being that 'loyalty' to the football program is the value that will be most richly rewarded.

While the theater contacted me because of obvious similarities between the script and recent events in my life, I should say at the outset that Mia's choices are not my choices. I don't find Mia particularly sympathetic. But, the concept of loyalty that is offered within the script did resonate with me, perhaps because the concept of loyalty, especially in the context of institutional loyalty and whistleblowing, is one that is so often debated.

You may or may not be surprised to learn that it was the concept of loyalty that the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis attempted to invoke to ensure my silence after my resignation in April of 2013. Although Chancery officials, including the Archbishop, like to say that they were completely taken aback when MPR started to run its series in September of 2013, in fact they were aware of the extreme likelihood of such disclosures occurring even prior to my resignation. Consequently, as early as May 3, 2013- a mere three days after I resigned- I was receiving letters from Archdiocesan attorneys reminding me of my 'canonical duty of loyalty to the Archbishop'.

In English, 'loyalty' is often equated with adherence, as in the faithful adherence to a leader or a cause. In Latin, loyalty is synonymous with 'fidelis', in the sense of fidelity. You will not find the term 'loyalty' in the English version of the Code of Canon Law, nor will you find 'fidelis' used to describe the posture of an individual towards a bishop. Clergy are bound to obedience to their bishop, and curial officials, as I was, are to fulfill their office faithfully (emittere de munere fideliter adimplendo), but fidelity as a concept is directed not towards individuals, but towards the ethos of the Church- doctrine, bearing witness to Christ, and the people of God. Even our Profession of Faith does not require a statement of loyalty to a particular bishop, but rather to magisterial teachings of the Roman Pontiff and College of Bishops.

The villains of Blessing's play get hung up on the same simplistic understanding of loyalty that I saw articulated by the Archbishop's attorneys. In this understanding 'loyalty' to an individual or institution is considered equivalent to 'protecting' that individual or institution from forces outside the institution. Thus by attempting to impose on me a 'canonical duty of loyalty' to Archbishop Nienstedt, his attorneys were arguing that I had an obligation to protect him from external criticism by keeping quiet about the failures in his handling of the sexual abuse crisis. In this paradigm there is no room to question whether my loyalty ought not also encompass the broader Catholic community, and especially the young and vulnerable within that community who were being adversely affected and put in danger by the very practices that the Archbishop did not want exposed.

Many scholars who study whistleblowing see an inherent tension between loyalty to an organization (e.g. an employer) and loyalty to consumers or the community in general. Some writers have suggested that the question becomes one where the virtue of loyalty can become a vice if the object of loyalty is evil rather than good. Others have attempted to resolve the question in terms of an absolute, with the good of the community always having a higher claim on an individual's loyalty than that of an individual organization.

When it came to my decision-making, my concern for the community certainly triumphed over any concern I had about sparing the Archbishop embarrassment (and please note at the time I did feel some concern along those lines). Yet, I saw these factors are concerns, not questions of loyalty. I always understood loyalty in a manner akin to what scholars identify as 'rational loyalty'. In other words, the object of loyalty is never an individual or physical location or entity, but instead is directed towards 'the corpus of explicit mission statement, goals, value statements, and code of conduct'. I knew what the Church asked us to do, and for me in particular to do, and what the bishops had sworn to accomplish when they promised to protect and heal. My obligation was to remain faithful to the teaching and instruction of the Church, and not to an individual or organization that had become committed to violating it.

A story about a football program is probably not the right vehicle to engage in a discussion of 'rational loyalty', and so perhaps it is best that the play focuses on Mia and the limits of her individual moral choices. However, it seems essential to me that we the Church have a broader conversation about these issues. At some point all the investigations will come to a close, and the interviews with various priests, employees, lay faithful, and others will become available through public information requests. I think many of us will find ourselves extremely disappointed when we see how the concept of 'loyalty' (to the presbyterate, to the Archbishop, or to the Archdiocese) stymied the efforts of investigators and those who are seeking to make our community a safer place. This impetus kept the Archdiocese safe from scrutiny for many years, but we should question the place that it has in the life of the Church going forward.