This article by Martin Mosebach was published on February 10, 2022 in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. As far as I am aware, it was not translated into English at the time—but its message is more relevant than ever, with the elevation, as prefect of Doctrine of the Faith, of a bishop widely regarded as guilty of mishandling abuse cases.—PAK
The Church’s reform disaster: No one wants to see the causes of the abuse scandal. Yet they can be clearly identified
Martin Mosebach
Neue Zürcher Zeitung
February 10, 2022
(source)
No stone was left unturned: the Second Vatican Council also redefined the priests’ understanding of their ministry.
In the course of the dragging on abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, questions are being asked anew about the causes: Pope Francis wishes to have a fatal “clericalism” identified as the trigger; some bishops are convinced that the abuse of children and young people by priests is favoured by the “system” of the Church; others want to hold celibacy in particular responsible.
The Church as a whole must be completely renewed, “no stone should be left unturned,” they say, which seems somewhat exaggerated in view of the fact that the delinquents of the last sixty years are no more than three percent of the priests active during this period. It is apparently forgotten that the Church of the present day is by no means the encrusted and fossilised monster that it appears to be in these statements. Rather, it has undergone a revolution that is unparalleled in the entire history of the Church.
The Second Vatican Council, which ended sixty years ago, confirmed the outward form of the hierarchy, the leadership of the Church by the Pope and the bishops, as well as the traditional faith of the Church, but at the same time it set in motion a development that really “left no stone unturned”—the face of the Church has changed beyond recognition in these sixty years. And these changes have not come to an end—the truth is that this process has long since become uncontrollable, since the obedience structures of the post-conciliar Church have largely collapsed.
The years after the “new Pentecost”
Rome can still publish a catechism of Catholic doctrine that is very much in line with the tradition of two millennia, but it can no longer cause this catechism to even be considered in official academic theology, let alone in seminaries and religious education. Sixty years is a very short period of time in the history of the Church. During this time, the Church, which had survived the most severe upheavals up to that point, has crumbled in many places with unstoppable steadiness.
If the data are not mistaken, however, a high proportion of the cases of abuse can be recorded precisely in the decades following the Council. Anyone who seriously asks about the causes of this then swelling catastrophe will also have to take into account its “when”: the years that followed the “new Pentecost” of the Second Vatican Council.
One cannot expect such a questioning from the hierarchy—the Council itself has only just been canonised by the canonisation of the two Council Popes, John XXIII and Paul VI. Benedict XVI, who spoke about the abuse scandals from his resting place, also did not dare to touch on the role that post-conciliar developments had contributed. He only recalled that this period had coincided with the ‘68 revolt—with what was called “sexual liberation”, when intellectuals who are still highly respected today debated whether paedophilia should continue to be considered a crime. What he did not mention was the state of disarray the clergy found itself in as a result of the phenomena of post-conciliar disintegration, when the influence of the political revolt began to work within it.
The priest becomes invisible
In retrospect, however, this was precisely the undoing. The undermining of all authority and the sexual revolution came up against a priesthood that had been stripped of all the elements required to maintain its discipline. Literally from one day to the next, the order that had hitherto characterised the daily life of a priest was overturned.
The cassock and priest’s collar disappeared—the priest became invisible in public. The obligation to celebrate daily Mass was dropped—only those familiar with Catholic tradition can appreciate the disciplinary support this daily practice, combined with the obligation to make frequent confessions, is capable of providing. In theology and in priestly training, the sacramental character of the priesthood was, if not downright denied, then at least questioned. The “Depositum Fidei”, the actual tradition of faith, was tattered anyway. Obligations were considered obsolete.
The Christian religion’s claim to truth was now suspected of being totalitarian, violent and intolerant—by theologians, mind you, who interpreted the ominous Council motto of “aggiornamento” as a demand to constantly subject church doctrine to the prevailing mood. The idea of the sacrality of the priesthood was particularly outlawed. According to the traditional Catholic view, the priest acts at the altar “in persona Christi”: he embodies Christ during the rite, so he is by no means the “chairman” of a “liturgical celebration,” as it is called today, as if it were a party meeting.
Discipline and temptation
Anyone who would advocate this Catholic and orthodox view of the priesthood in a seminary today could at best expect to be laughed at. The liturgy of the Roman Mass, which had been handed down from ancient Christianity for more than 1,500 years, was replaced by a Mass Ordo written in subversive haste, which pushed back the sacredness of the rite as far as possible and reduced it to such an extent that a Protestant could hardly take offence at it any more. To this day, one can hear in the seminaries that celibacy will soon be dropped. A theologian who supports the teaching of recent popes that the Church cannot ordain women has no chance of a theological chair today [in Europe].
None of the last popes has resisted this erosion of the Catholic priesthood, even if they proclaimed otherwise from their chair. Of course one must not claim that a priest in the classical tradition cannot become a perpetrator of a sexual offence—there have been such cases at all times, even under the strictest observance—but it is certainly the case that it is easier for a priest who is integrated into the traditional discipline to master his temptations.
In this respect, the Roman assumption that paedophile crimes are a consequence of “clericalism” is downright grotesque; the opposite is the case. It is an inner-church, post-conciliar anti-clerical mentality, one that denies the special sacramental position of the priesthood, that has taken away important supports for priests to remain faithful to their obligations.
The bishops’ handling of the post-conciliar abuse scandal is incomprehensible if one sees only an evil esprit de corps at work, which does not want to cast a shadow over the Church’s works. Good will is also involved in many disasters. In this case, the good will sprang from a change of mentality that had gripped the entire Western world—a very general unease with the word punishment.
The mercy trap
Modern society no longer feels legitimised to punish—with some justification, because nowadays a generally binding morality is at least punctuated with a question mark. In today’s view, punishment is diametrically opposed to mercy. And the Church is merciful… what else?
For centuries, however, mercy, this indisputable quality of the Church, was understood differently. Punishment and mercy were an inseparable pair. Punishment was an important instrument of mercy. It opened the way to repentance and atonement for the sinner—and only this opened the way to mercy, which culminated in the forgiveness of guilt—in heaven, mind you, not on earth.
In the post-conciliar period, the Church very quickly slipped out of such thinking. Canonical criminal law was toned down; the Church’s own jurisdiction, which had been its pride for centuries—there are even martyrs for this own jurisdiction, such as St. Thomas Beckett—fell asleep.
The bishops saw the lamentable culprit sitting weeping before them and wanted to be human—merciful—even though Christian mercy remains incomplete without the struggle for the endangered soul. Those who are outraged today about this certainly misguided practice complain that mercy was shown to the perpetrators but not to the victims. They forget that the victims do not need mercy. They can demand the opposite: justice.
What reform should mean
It is not surprising that in view of the increasing number of cases of abuse, there are calls for a reform of the Church. But we must not forget what the term “reform,” well anchored in the history of the Church, meant until Vatican II: a restoration of discipline, a tightening of the reins, an end to profligacy and a return to the traditional order.
The “reforms” of the Second Vatican Council are the first in the entire history of the Church to deviate from this view; they no longer trusted the tradition to reach the people of the present and therefore relied on a general softening of practice and doctrine, although without successfully keeping people in the Church as a result of this pastoral relativism.
It is not a Church that is ossified in its rites and fossilised in its doctrines that has been losing the faithful in a steadily increasing stream since Vatican II, but rather, a Church that has softened in doctrine and become liturgically formless. It is not priests who have broken under the yoke of a rule alien to life and thereby become abusers, but those who have been released from clear spiritual supervision for decades.
Now that the “reform” disaster of sixty post-conciliar years is before everyone’s eyes in all its shameful extent, the Pope and many bishops, especially the German bishops, can think of nothing else than that they have not yet gone far enough in the radical dismantling of all that is proper to Catholicism. This is reminiscent of the short-sighted tailor who looks at a pair of mismatched trousers, tilts his head, and still wonders: “I’ve cut them three times, and they’re still too short!”
The years after the “new Pentecost”
Rome can still publish a catechism of Catholic doctrine that is very much in line with the tradition of two millennia, but it can no longer cause this catechism to even be considered in official academic theology, let alone in seminaries and religious education. Sixty years is a very short period of time in the history of the Church. During this time, the Church, which had survived the most severe upheavals up to that point, has crumbled in many places with unstoppable steadiness.
If the data are not mistaken, however, a high proportion of the cases of abuse can be recorded precisely in the decades following the Council. Anyone who seriously asks about the causes of this then swelling catastrophe will also have to take into account its “when”: the years that followed the “new Pentecost” of the Second Vatican Council.
One cannot expect such a questioning from the hierarchy—the Council itself has only just been canonised by the canonisation of the two Council Popes, John XXIII and Paul VI. Benedict XVI, who spoke about the abuse scandals from his resting place, also did not dare to touch on the role that post-conciliar developments had contributed. He only recalled that this period had coincided with the ‘68 revolt—with what was called “sexual liberation”, when intellectuals who are still highly respected today debated whether paedophilia should continue to be considered a crime. What he did not mention was the state of disarray the clergy found itself in as a result of the phenomena of post-conciliar disintegration, when the influence of the political revolt began to work within it.
The priest becomes invisible
In retrospect, however, this was precisely the undoing. The undermining of all authority and the sexual revolution came up against a priesthood that had been stripped of all the elements required to maintain its discipline. Literally from one day to the next, the order that had hitherto characterised the daily life of a priest was overturned.
The cassock and priest’s collar disappeared—the priest became invisible in public. The obligation to celebrate daily Mass was dropped—only those familiar with Catholic tradition can appreciate the disciplinary support this daily practice, combined with the obligation to make frequent confessions, is capable of providing. In theology and in priestly training, the sacramental character of the priesthood was, if not downright denied, then at least questioned. The “Depositum Fidei”, the actual tradition of faith, was tattered anyway. Obligations were considered obsolete.
The Christian religion’s claim to truth was now suspected of being totalitarian, violent and intolerant—by theologians, mind you, who interpreted the ominous Council motto of “aggiornamento” as a demand to constantly subject church doctrine to the prevailing mood. The idea of the sacrality of the priesthood was particularly outlawed. According to the traditional Catholic view, the priest acts at the altar “in persona Christi”: he embodies Christ during the rite, so he is by no means the “chairman” of a “liturgical celebration,” as it is called today, as if it were a party meeting.
Discipline and temptation
Anyone who would advocate this Catholic and orthodox view of the priesthood in a seminary today could at best expect to be laughed at. The liturgy of the Roman Mass, which had been handed down from ancient Christianity for more than 1,500 years, was replaced by a Mass Ordo written in subversive haste, which pushed back the sacredness of the rite as far as possible and reduced it to such an extent that a Protestant could hardly take offence at it any more. To this day, one can hear in the seminaries that celibacy will soon be dropped. A theologian who supports the teaching of recent popes that the Church cannot ordain women has no chance of a theological chair today [in Europe].
None of the last popes has resisted this erosion of the Catholic priesthood, even if they proclaimed otherwise from their chair. Of course one must not claim that a priest in the classical tradition cannot become a perpetrator of a sexual offence—there have been such cases at all times, even under the strictest observance—but it is certainly the case that it is easier for a priest who is integrated into the traditional discipline to master his temptations.
In this respect, the Roman assumption that paedophile crimes are a consequence of “clericalism” is downright grotesque; the opposite is the case. It is an inner-church, post-conciliar anti-clerical mentality, one that denies the special sacramental position of the priesthood, that has taken away important supports for priests to remain faithful to their obligations.
The bishops’ handling of the post-conciliar abuse scandal is incomprehensible if one sees only an evil esprit de corps at work, which does not want to cast a shadow over the Church’s works. Good will is also involved in many disasters. In this case, the good will sprang from a change of mentality that had gripped the entire Western world—a very general unease with the word punishment.
The mercy trap
Modern society no longer feels legitimised to punish—with some justification, because nowadays a generally binding morality is at least punctuated with a question mark. In today’s view, punishment is diametrically opposed to mercy. And the Church is merciful… what else?
For centuries, however, mercy, this indisputable quality of the Church, was understood differently. Punishment and mercy were an inseparable pair. Punishment was an important instrument of mercy. It opened the way to repentance and atonement for the sinner—and only this opened the way to mercy, which culminated in the forgiveness of guilt—in heaven, mind you, not on earth.
In the post-conciliar period, the Church very quickly slipped out of such thinking. Canonical criminal law was toned down; the Church’s own jurisdiction, which had been its pride for centuries—there are even martyrs for this own jurisdiction, such as St. Thomas Beckett—fell asleep.
The bishops saw the lamentable culprit sitting weeping before them and wanted to be human—merciful—even though Christian mercy remains incomplete without the struggle for the endangered soul. Those who are outraged today about this certainly misguided practice complain that mercy was shown to the perpetrators but not to the victims. They forget that the victims do not need mercy. They can demand the opposite: justice.
What reform should mean
It is not surprising that in view of the increasing number of cases of abuse, there are calls for a reform of the Church. But we must not forget what the term “reform,” well anchored in the history of the Church, meant until Vatican II: a restoration of discipline, a tightening of the reins, an end to profligacy and a return to the traditional order.
The “reforms” of the Second Vatican Council are the first in the entire history of the Church to deviate from this view; they no longer trusted the tradition to reach the people of the present and therefore relied on a general softening of practice and doctrine, although without successfully keeping people in the Church as a result of this pastoral relativism.
It is not a Church that is ossified in its rites and fossilised in its doctrines that has been losing the faithful in a steadily increasing stream since Vatican II, but rather, a Church that has softened in doctrine and become liturgically formless. It is not priests who have broken under the yoke of a rule alien to life and thereby become abusers, but those who have been released from clear spiritual supervision for decades.
Now that the “reform” disaster of sixty post-conciliar years is before everyone’s eyes in all its shameful extent, the Pope and many bishops, especially the German bishops, can think of nothing else than that they have not yet gone far enough in the radical dismantling of all that is proper to Catholicism. This is reminiscent of the short-sighted tailor who looks at a pair of mismatched trousers, tilts his head, and still wonders: “I’ve cut them three times, and they’re still too short!”
