Civility and life in the Catholic Church

Thursday, September 28th, 2017

As I write these words I’m looking at an untitled cartoon from the National Catholic Reporter in the Wojtyla-era 1980s.

It’s an image of an elaborate canopy with praying angels draped over a Chair of Peter—in this case, a toilet with the papal insignia.

It’s tied to a column that argues, among other things, that the “Catholic church is uncomfortable with two things. Sex and bowel movements.”

The humor is childish. It’s lightweight snarkiness compared to much of the Reporter’s caustic fare for the past few decades.

It pales next to the savage anti-Roman woodcuts of early Lutheran polemics. But the cartoon’s message is nonetheless—how to say it?—not one of filial esteem. Or even Christian civility.

I remembered the cartoon, and its source, while reading Massimo Faggioli’s recent (Sept. 18) thoughts in La Croix’s online international edition.

In “Catholic Cyber-Militias and the New Censorship,” Faggioli rightly worries about the river of vitriol now “profoundly changing the communion of the Catholic Church.”

He also generously mentions my own public repudiation of the tactics of groups like the Lepanto Institute and Church Militant during our 2015 ramp-up for the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia and the visit of Pope Francis.

But Dr. Faggioli’s main focus is Fr. James Martin, S.J. And for good reason. Some of the recent attacks on Martin, sparked by his book Building a Bridge, have been inexcusably ugly.

Fr. Martin is a man of intellect and skill whose work I often admire. Like all of us as fellow Christians, he deserves to be treated with fraternal good will.

It’s one thing to criticize respectfully an author’s ideas and their implications. It’s quite another to engage in ad hominem trashing.

In Dr. Faggioli’s view, Fr. Martin is yet another victim brought low by a mob of conservative cyber-militias.

And these militias have allegedly been fostered by a generation of John Paul II and Benedict XVI bishops, who reshaped “the U.S. episcopate in the image of the ‘culture warrior.’”

That last line is worth a pause. As someone appointed as a bishop by the late John Paul, I’ll offer just two brief thoughts. Continue reading