The Pros and Cons of Rolling a Boulder Up the Hill
Three weeks or so ago, author James Carroll lobbed a grenade into the collective lobby of the Roman Catholic Church with a piece in the Atlantic. It's title, "Abolish the Priesthood," while not an inaccurate description of Carroll's argument, fails to capture the totality and nuance of what he is saying (and it's worth noting that authors generally don't write the headlines or titles of their pieces, and so to the extent your beef is with the title, it's a beef with the Atlantic and not Carroll). But Carroll is no stranger to chucking incendiaries into Catholic spaces--this is the author of Constantine's Sword, which, among other claims, challenged the narrative that Pope Pius XII was a protector of Jews during the Holocaust. And he was clearly trying to similarly stir things up with his wide-ranging critique of the Roman Catholic priesthood.
And stir things up he did. Reaction to the piece was wide-ranging and loud. And it is in this reaction that I think we see a clear picture of the state of things, a state which divides into four pretty clearly delineated boxes.
Box #1 are the conservatives. Not surprisingly, they had nothing positive at all to say about Carroll or his program. Cutting to the heart of the matter perhaps most succinctly was this tweet from a priest of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C.:
Far more interesting was the reaction from Box #2, the "center left" or "Team Francis." The reaction from them was every bit as scornful and dismissive of Carroll as you got from the conservatives. All of the leading lights of Team Francis--James Martin, Michael Sean Winters, Thomas Reese (though, to be fair, Reese was a bit more nuanced), etc.--jumped at the chance to throw stones at Carroll, utilizing many of the same sorts of arguments that one hears from the conservatives. Even newer, younger voices of the center left were singing the same tune:
Now, contra Carroll's implication and the explicit positions of the some of the similarly situated folks, I think Martin is right insofar as he argues that it is conceptually possible to structure the institution of the priesthood that is not oppressive and abusive. But the key (if often unspoken) commitment of the Team Francis folks is that this can be done without making any meaningful changes to the conceptual framework of what the priesthood is. Basically, Team Francis is committed to the view that the Roman Catholic Church can thrive with an all-male, celibate, completely hierarchical governing caste, so long as we get the caste to be less asshole-ish. The problem is systemic, but it is not structural, on this view.
The other lesson, one relevant for the next group of folks I'm going to speak about, is that, at the end of the day, Team Francis has much more in common with the conservatives than they do with folks like Carroll. Team Francis has a very different vision of what the Roman Catholic Church should be doing than the conservatives do, but they have the same vision of what the Roman Catholic Church is. As a result, it is clear to me that if those core structural elements were actually threatened with structural change, Team Francis would line up behind the conservatives in resisting those changes. Team Francis is entirely about ends, not means, and they are every bit as bought-in to the pageantry and theater of Roman Catholicism, and especially of the Vatican, as the conservatives are. Threaten that and you threaten the whole thing, at least from their perspective.
Which brings us to Box #3, Carroll and his fellow "resistance in place" advocates. Carroll's program is essentially to create a kind of parallel "church within a church," organized along more egalitarian lines, existing within, and its members maintaining their formal connection to, the hierarchial Roman Catholic body. Others have noted the similarities between what Carroll is sketching out and the "base community" movement that flourished during the halycon days of Latin American liberation theology. The key difference, though, is that base communities were, at least officially, done with the support of the church hierarchy, while Carroll's base communities are self-consciously in opposition to the church hierarchy.
And what is the purpose or goal of these churches-within-the-church? That's a little bit ambiguous from Carroll's presentation. In part, it seems like the idea is that this would be a support/affinity group for individuals who are not getting their spiritual needs met by the broader institutional church. Fair enough. It also seems like the idea is to model the kind of church that the Box #3 folks want/believe reflects Gospels values. Again, fair enough. But there is a sense in the Carroll piece that the existence of this parallel structure would function as a counter to the current structure. This would happen, as best as I can tell, either by bringing the existing structure toward the values espoused by the Box #3 folks, or by creating an alternative that will be in place when and if the existing structure collapses or for some reason decides to ditch its current paradigm.
And it is here that the Box #3 folks lose me. I don't see any realistic way that this resistance-in-place can effect substantial change in the operation of the Roman Catholic Church. The Box #1 folks will literally burn everything down before allowing folks with Carroll's views to have any meaningful input into the operation of the Roman Catholic Church. And the folks who on paper would be allies, the Box #2 group, have proven that they are equally uninterested in what Carroll has to say. Moreover, there is no mechanism for the Box #3 folks to force the other two groups to listen to them. I keep saying this, but there are no mechanisms or levers by which the laity can force clergy to address or engage with their concerns. Even withholding money, which is often offered as a lever, is of limited impact on the level of ordinary folks who would be giving ordinary amounts of money. Carroll's resistance-in-place can be ignored, and because it can be ignored, it is likely that it will be ignored. It's a symbolic protest, nothing more.
Which, in turn, brings us back to the question of why. Because it seems to me that the Box #3 folks share at least one commitment with the Box #1 and #2 folks, and that is that all of them believe that the Roman Catholic Church is the One True Church, and all others are not worth serious consideration. Because, if what you really want is a Christian religious community that rejects the idea of a priesthood set apart, has a flat organizational structure, and is committed to social justice concerns, then you can go get that right now. All you have to do is Google the nearest Mennonite church or Quaker meetinghouse in your neighborhood. If instead your beef is not with priesthood per se, but with the lack of lay governance and the exclusion of women/open LGBT folks from leadership roles, then the Episcopal Church welcomes you. Or, if you don't like any of the above options, you can go, right now, and start a body that does church the right way according to whatever lights you believe are correct, especially as you are not so committed to a priesthood with apostolic succession anyway. The model of church that Carroll is calling for already exists. Are those church bodies perfect? No, but neither will the churches-within-the-church that Carroll calls for--that is the nature of institutions of whatever sort.
The fact that the Box #3 folks call for reinventing the wheel within the Roman Catholic Church as opposed to relocating to the already existing instantiations of those models shows that this is not exclusively about doing church right. This is also about winning a battle against the other members of the church--the Box #1 folks primarily, but also the Box #2 folks. The only objection I could find to the logic I've sketched out in the preceding paragraph from the Box #3 folks online was some variation of "if I leave, the Bad Guys will win." It's not enough to have a religious community that operates according to the principles set forth by Carroll; that religious community must be called the Roman Catholic Church and the conservatives must be displaced or disenfranchised. Sticking it to the Cardinal Burkes and Raymond Arroyos and Bill Donohues of the world is a big part of the motivation here. At the end of the day, Carroll and the Box #3 folks are just as committed to controlling the Iron Throne that is the Vatican as the Box #1 and #2 folks, notwithstanding that if they got control they would impose term limits on the king and a constitutional monarchy or whatever.
Which leads us to Box #4, the forgotten and invisible segment in all of this--the people that have left. Many have left for non-practice, but others have left for other religious communities and traditions. And, as mentioned above, some of those other religious communities look a lot like the sketch provided by Carroll and advocated for by his supporters. You can say that they don't count, but to do so once again takes us head-long into the claim that the only religious institution that is relevant is the Roman Catholic Church, no matter the merits of the other bodies. Instead of warring for the Iron Throne, they've packed their bags and moved along. This tweet below from Jen Hatmaker, while directed primarily at conservative evangelicals, equally could be the message from the Box #4 people to the Box #3 crowd:
Plus, there is a sliver of truth to what Fr. Fish said about this being a Boomer thing. In my experience, the resistance-in-place crowd consists primarily folks of that generation, not because their perspective is some sort of unique delusion as Fish frames it, but because the younger folks who share that sentiment just walk. This is not surprising or necessarily an indictment--older folks are generally going to be less willing to upend their established situation. But it speaks to the long-term future of the resistance-in-place project. The real challenge for the Box #3 folks is not convincing the Box #1 and #2 people of the rightness of their cause (again, a quixotic goal at best), but convincing people that agree with them on the merits of the utility of sticking around and fighting. The prospect of "owning" Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for once and for all is unlikely to move the needle all that much. I don't think this has much of a future.
I can't pretend to be unbiased on this--I am a Box #4 person. I left. And I left because I didn't think that the kinds of changes that I thought were necessary (more modest, it should be said, than some of what Carroll and his supporters are advocating for) were really going to happen. But, more to the point, I left because I realized I didn't care anymore whether the "bad guys won." I would rather Pope Francis be the Pope than Ray Burke, but if Francis passed and Burke is elected, that doesn't affect me anymore. Misguided, deeply misguided as I think the Box #1 people are, they get to practice their faith how they want, and the dispute over who is right is not going to be settled on this side of eternity. I stared down the barrel of spending the rest of my life engaged in the trench warfare that Carroll calls for and realized I wasn't up for it, especially in light of the alternatives.
I admire the Box #3 folks. They love the Roman Catholic Church, in many ways more than the Box #1 or #2 folks. They love it even though they think it is structurally and systematically broken, love it enough to stick around and fight in what I think is almost certainly the ecclesial equivalent of Leonidas at Thermopylae. And I will never tell someone who they can and cannot love. All I can say is that I never loved the Roman Catholic Church as much as they do, or at least not enough to be willing to do what they say they are prepared to do. And while I firmly believe it is not my place to try to convince someone to leave their faith tradition, I can't help but wonder if they wouldn't be happier if they, too, stopped trying to roll that boulder up the hill.
And stir things up he did. Reaction to the piece was wide-ranging and loud. And it is in this reaction that I think we see a clear picture of the state of things, a state which divides into four pretty clearly delineated boxes.
Box #1 are the conservatives. Not surprisingly, they had nothing positive at all to say about Carroll or his program. Cutting to the heart of the matter perhaps most succinctly was this tweet from a priest of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C.:
I will note here that the idea that only Boomers have a beef with the structure of the Roman Catholic Church reflects a critical blind-spot in this discussion, but more on that in a bit. I will highlight my favorite response from this end of the spectrum, from a priest of the Allentown Diocese (in Pennsylvania, which is relevant I think):What can we say about such a poor excuse for exposition, other than James Carroll epitomizes the worst traits of his generation, and soon they'll all be gone, while we rebuild the Church they tried to destroy according to the very model they tried to erase https://t.co/wX2PgtPCZ0— Fr. Matt Fish (@frmattfish) May 17, 2019
In other words, Carroll is destined for Hell, knows it, and is rehearsing his "non serviam" speech to God in the pages of the Atlantic. But, here's the thing--we know all of this. No serious person who has lived through the JPII and beyond period should have any illusions about where the conservatives are coming from. They have made it very clear that they are not interested in even the discussion of any sort of substantive change in the structure or operation of the Roman Catholic Church, and indeed that is the touchstone of what it means to be a conservative Catholic (at least in theological terms). None of what has transpired in terms of the sex abuse crisis makes any difference at all, or is even relevant, to these core commitments.My theory is that James Carroll feels a growing compulsion to write pieces like this the older he gets. Because if the priesthood is what the Church says it is, he has been indelibly marked with a vocation he betrayed and must one day stand bare in this fact before the Throne. pic.twitter.com/aVHIwu5ljQ— Fr. Brendon Laroche (@padrebrendon) May 17, 2019
Far more interesting was the reaction from Box #2, the "center left" or "Team Francis." The reaction from them was every bit as scornful and dismissive of Carroll as you got from the conservatives. All of the leading lights of Team Francis--James Martin, Michael Sean Winters, Thomas Reese (though, to be fair, Reese was a bit more nuanced), etc.--jumped at the chance to throw stones at Carroll, utilizing many of the same sorts of arguments that one hears from the conservatives. Even newer, younger voices of the center left were singing the same tune:
These responses are enlightening in that they show clearly what the Team Francis program is in 2019. Unlike the conservatives, who tend to view the sex abuse crisis as either a reflection of the utterly perverted broader culture infiltrating the otherwise pristine halls of the church (best expressed in former (kinda) Pope Benedict's unprompted intervention a few weeks ago), or as a wholly individual question of sin, the Team Francis folks generally acknowledge that the sex abuse crisis is a systemic phenomenon. But, like good center-left technocrats, they think the problem can be fixed through operational interventions that stay entirely within the current framework of the Church. The problem has a buzz-wordy name, "clericalism," and so the project is to root out the problem from within the otherwise solid foundations of the Church. This is Martin's thesis--you don't need to get rid of the priesthood, you just need to get rid of clericalism and all of the problems you see will go away.Most Catholics have never heard of James Carroll. Of those who have, most shrugged off "Abolish the Priesthood" as an unserious proposal and promptly moved on. The dominant voices carrying the conversation into this week are priests writing rejoinders. Which is interesting.— Michael Bayer (@mbayer1248) May 22, 2019
Now, contra Carroll's implication and the explicit positions of the some of the similarly situated folks, I think Martin is right insofar as he argues that it is conceptually possible to structure the institution of the priesthood that is not oppressive and abusive. But the key (if often unspoken) commitment of the Team Francis folks is that this can be done without making any meaningful changes to the conceptual framework of what the priesthood is. Basically, Team Francis is committed to the view that the Roman Catholic Church can thrive with an all-male, celibate, completely hierarchical governing caste, so long as we get the caste to be less asshole-ish. The problem is systemic, but it is not structural, on this view.
The other lesson, one relevant for the next group of folks I'm going to speak about, is that, at the end of the day, Team Francis has much more in common with the conservatives than they do with folks like Carroll. Team Francis has a very different vision of what the Roman Catholic Church should be doing than the conservatives do, but they have the same vision of what the Roman Catholic Church is. As a result, it is clear to me that if those core structural elements were actually threatened with structural change, Team Francis would line up behind the conservatives in resisting those changes. Team Francis is entirely about ends, not means, and they are every bit as bought-in to the pageantry and theater of Roman Catholicism, and especially of the Vatican, as the conservatives are. Threaten that and you threaten the whole thing, at least from their perspective.
Which brings us to Box #3, Carroll and his fellow "resistance in place" advocates. Carroll's program is essentially to create a kind of parallel "church within a church," organized along more egalitarian lines, existing within, and its members maintaining their formal connection to, the hierarchial Roman Catholic body. Others have noted the similarities between what Carroll is sketching out and the "base community" movement that flourished during the halycon days of Latin American liberation theology. The key difference, though, is that base communities were, at least officially, done with the support of the church hierarchy, while Carroll's base communities are self-consciously in opposition to the church hierarchy.
And what is the purpose or goal of these churches-within-the-church? That's a little bit ambiguous from Carroll's presentation. In part, it seems like the idea is that this would be a support/affinity group for individuals who are not getting their spiritual needs met by the broader institutional church. Fair enough. It also seems like the idea is to model the kind of church that the Box #3 folks want/believe reflects Gospels values. Again, fair enough. But there is a sense in the Carroll piece that the existence of this parallel structure would function as a counter to the current structure. This would happen, as best as I can tell, either by bringing the existing structure toward the values espoused by the Box #3 folks, or by creating an alternative that will be in place when and if the existing structure collapses or for some reason decides to ditch its current paradigm.
And it is here that the Box #3 folks lose me. I don't see any realistic way that this resistance-in-place can effect substantial change in the operation of the Roman Catholic Church. The Box #1 folks will literally burn everything down before allowing folks with Carroll's views to have any meaningful input into the operation of the Roman Catholic Church. And the folks who on paper would be allies, the Box #2 group, have proven that they are equally uninterested in what Carroll has to say. Moreover, there is no mechanism for the Box #3 folks to force the other two groups to listen to them. I keep saying this, but there are no mechanisms or levers by which the laity can force clergy to address or engage with their concerns. Even withholding money, which is often offered as a lever, is of limited impact on the level of ordinary folks who would be giving ordinary amounts of money. Carroll's resistance-in-place can be ignored, and because it can be ignored, it is likely that it will be ignored. It's a symbolic protest, nothing more.
Which, in turn, brings us back to the question of why. Because it seems to me that the Box #3 folks share at least one commitment with the Box #1 and #2 folks, and that is that all of them believe that the Roman Catholic Church is the One True Church, and all others are not worth serious consideration. Because, if what you really want is a Christian religious community that rejects the idea of a priesthood set apart, has a flat organizational structure, and is committed to social justice concerns, then you can go get that right now. All you have to do is Google the nearest Mennonite church or Quaker meetinghouse in your neighborhood. If instead your beef is not with priesthood per se, but with the lack of lay governance and the exclusion of women/open LGBT folks from leadership roles, then the Episcopal Church welcomes you. Or, if you don't like any of the above options, you can go, right now, and start a body that does church the right way according to whatever lights you believe are correct, especially as you are not so committed to a priesthood with apostolic succession anyway. The model of church that Carroll is calling for already exists. Are those church bodies perfect? No, but neither will the churches-within-the-church that Carroll calls for--that is the nature of institutions of whatever sort.
The fact that the Box #3 folks call for reinventing the wheel within the Roman Catholic Church as opposed to relocating to the already existing instantiations of those models shows that this is not exclusively about doing church right. This is also about winning a battle against the other members of the church--the Box #1 folks primarily, but also the Box #2 folks. The only objection I could find to the logic I've sketched out in the preceding paragraph from the Box #3 folks online was some variation of "if I leave, the Bad Guys will win." It's not enough to have a religious community that operates according to the principles set forth by Carroll; that religious community must be called the Roman Catholic Church and the conservatives must be displaced or disenfranchised. Sticking it to the Cardinal Burkes and Raymond Arroyos and Bill Donohues of the world is a big part of the motivation here. At the end of the day, Carroll and the Box #3 folks are just as committed to controlling the Iron Throne that is the Vatican as the Box #1 and #2 folks, notwithstanding that if they got control they would impose term limits on the king and a constitutional monarchy or whatever.
Which leads us to Box #4, the forgotten and invisible segment in all of this--the people that have left. Many have left for non-practice, but others have left for other religious communities and traditions. And, as mentioned above, some of those other religious communities look a lot like the sketch provided by Carroll and advocated for by his supporters. You can say that they don't count, but to do so once again takes us head-long into the claim that the only religious institution that is relevant is the Roman Catholic Church, no matter the merits of the other bodies. Instead of warring for the Iron Throne, they've packed their bags and moved along. This tweet below from Jen Hatmaker, while directed primarily at conservative evangelicals, equally could be the message from the Box #4 people to the Box #3 crowd:
...that create panels of all white men to tell the rest of us how unbiblical social justice is, that peddle shame and guilt and sorrow...WE GET TO LEAVE. There are endless faith communities that operate out of equality and honor and grace. There is no actual door to the prison.— JenHatmaker (@JenHatmaker) May 24, 2019
In other words, before taking on the Sisyphean task of pushing this rock up the hill, it's always useful to ask whether there's any real need for that rock to get up there in the first place. Why dig in for endless trench warfare with the #1s and the #2s that you are almost surely not going to win? Why is it that you need to fight so that the Fr. Fishes and Fr. Laroches, or even the Fr. Martins of the world, don't "win"? Let them have their unchanging, (or, rather, "unchanging") institutional structure. Let them have the name. Yes, it is painful to give up those markers of identity. But it can be done, and then you can be free of all of this.You will be so welcome. Jesus is worth his salt; he set us free for freedom's sake. You can choose bondage or choose to "keep trying to talk them into equality" or keep fighting for a seat at the kids' table. Or you can just walk outside in the fresh air. Come on out.— JenHatmaker (@JenHatmaker) May 24, 2019
Plus, there is a sliver of truth to what Fr. Fish said about this being a Boomer thing. In my experience, the resistance-in-place crowd consists primarily folks of that generation, not because their perspective is some sort of unique delusion as Fish frames it, but because the younger folks who share that sentiment just walk. This is not surprising or necessarily an indictment--older folks are generally going to be less willing to upend their established situation. But it speaks to the long-term future of the resistance-in-place project. The real challenge for the Box #3 folks is not convincing the Box #1 and #2 people of the rightness of their cause (again, a quixotic goal at best), but convincing people that agree with them on the merits of the utility of sticking around and fighting. The prospect of "owning" Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for once and for all is unlikely to move the needle all that much. I don't think this has much of a future.
I can't pretend to be unbiased on this--I am a Box #4 person. I left. And I left because I didn't think that the kinds of changes that I thought were necessary (more modest, it should be said, than some of what Carroll and his supporters are advocating for) were really going to happen. But, more to the point, I left because I realized I didn't care anymore whether the "bad guys won." I would rather Pope Francis be the Pope than Ray Burke, but if Francis passed and Burke is elected, that doesn't affect me anymore. Misguided, deeply misguided as I think the Box #1 people are, they get to practice their faith how they want, and the dispute over who is right is not going to be settled on this side of eternity. I stared down the barrel of spending the rest of my life engaged in the trench warfare that Carroll calls for and realized I wasn't up for it, especially in light of the alternatives.
I admire the Box #3 folks. They love the Roman Catholic Church, in many ways more than the Box #1 or #2 folks. They love it even though they think it is structurally and systematically broken, love it enough to stick around and fight in what I think is almost certainly the ecclesial equivalent of Leonidas at Thermopylae. And I will never tell someone who they can and cannot love. All I can say is that I never loved the Roman Catholic Church as much as they do, or at least not enough to be willing to do what they say they are prepared to do. And while I firmly believe it is not my place to try to convince someone to leave their faith tradition, I can't help but wonder if they wouldn't be happier if they, too, stopped trying to roll that boulder up the hill.
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