The "money quote" from Philip Lawler's The Faithful Departed, which deals with the dissolution of Catholic influence in Boston between 1938 and 2002 (even though actually the influence was already nil by the late '70s), might be this:
Cardinal O'Connell took great pride in his ability as an administrator. Under his leadership, he insisted (with an implicit slap at his predecessor) that the Boston archdiocese be well managed. Decisions were made smoothly and policies were implemented promptly...I was reminded of this passage while reading a 1940s-era review of Catholic education in the Cincinnati diocese. It is filled with statistics and all those things that are "relatively easy to measure" in the words of Lawler. When I began reading it - before reading Lawler - I saw nothing untoward in this. As someone congenitally fond of systems and organization perhaps it's no wonder I didn't. But after reading Lawler...
Years later, the writer Paul Wilkes spent several months following the life of a Boston priest for his book Mysterious Ways. In the course of his research Wilkes visited St. John's seminary, where Boston's priests are trained. The rector, Fr. Thomas J. Daly, explained that young men hear talks about celibacy, about living alone, about how to find psychological help when they need it. "But above all," Fr. Daly said, "they must be professional. That's very important; we must have professional men."
Those are frightening words, which illustrate a serious misunderstanding about the nature of the priesthood. That they were spoken by the rectory of the seminary...makes them all the more shocking.
A priest is not a professional, like a doctor or lawyer, who can take off weekend and vacation time and look forward to eventual retirement. Once ordained, a priest is a priest forever; he may rest but he cannot stop being a priest. The priesthood is a vocation, not a profession, a calling from God, not just a line of work.
It is no simple matter to measure the strength of a priest's interior life: to quantify the power of his prayer. It is relatively easy, however, to know whether a pastor is implementing diocesan programs on schedule. The system cannot discern how many souls the priest is saving, but it can account for the size of weekly collections. So skillful administrators are rewarded and move up through the ranks, gaining more power and encouraging younger priests to imitate their efficiency.
The mystery of faith, the mystical personal encounter with God, is terribly difficult to explain to an unbeliever. But without it Christianity appears to the outsider - and worse, sometimes to the believer himself - as a series of propositions to be accepted and rules to be followed.
One telling line from the 1946 history book: "The archdiocesan educational program has grown and developed into a mature, modern, and healthily progressive system of Catholic education."
Mature. Modern. Progressive. Understandable perhaps, since Catholics were perceived for a long time as upstarts (with roots still back in the old country) and backward and traditional. But noticeably absent were goals like being Christ-centered or furthering piety or providing strong catechesis.
Efficiency was the word in vogue. In 1906, the first Cincinnati Superintendent of schools was appointed, and he went around to schools east. He was most impressed with the "high degree of efficiency of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia" despite that superintendent saying to him, "If you want to learn the best in Catholic education, go West; we have nothing much to show here in the East." The new Cincinnati superintendent perhaps shrugged it off as an excess of humility.
No comments:
Post a Comment