"Infallibility" and All-Too-Human Clerical Leadership

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n a moment seemingly graced with both arrogance and a peoples’ cry for salvation security, Pope Pius IX declared himself and all popes to be infallible in matters of faith and morals. The declaration flaunted centuries of inquisition-caused murder, centuries of witch burning, centuries of wars and crusades, and centuries of papal self-indulgence. As we noted before, the declaration also established a new form of monarchy for the Pope just as the Papal States were being wrested from his control.

But, the declaration did even more than that. It also put a padlock on the episcopal cultural box. As time passed, the sense of infallibility crept beyond its original, somewhat limited, intent. It extended its tentacles far beyond relevance. It made itself felt at every level of the Church from the papal halls to the smallest remote parish. It eventually reached into every possible concern of the clerical estate. By intimation, bishops appropriated it in their most inane and mundane utterances, and priests too often assumed its mantle on their own shoulders, both in their speech and in their demands for deference and privilege.

We find the shadow of infallibility alive and well in the purple culture today. It works on both pope and bishops to incapacitate their ability to admit mistakes and errors. Teachings that were uttered by the “Fathers” of the Church in the early Christian centuries were often based on a limited understanding of the universe, a limited understanding of Sacred Scripture, a limited understanding of human biology, and a limited understanding of human psychology. Pope John Paul II blamed theologians for the condemnation of Galileo–four hundred years after the event and after the world knew that the earth orbits the sun, not the other way around.

We find shades of infallibility in their inability to show genuine remorse to victims of clerical sexual abuse, and in their ongoing attempts to prevent justice being done for the victims. They point fingers at irrelevant causes. Perhaps above all, we find it in their inability to give hearing and credence to the laity’s wisdom in matters of faith and morals. We find it in their removed and incestuous thinking that they alone have the authority to dictate values in moral matters, and that authority somehow equates with competence. 

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Catholic Church Hierarchy as Cult

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oday we take a look at a more serious implication of the monarchical structure of our Roman Catholic Church: the relation of monarchy to cult, and the consequent relation of cult to its members.

         Monarchy is easily understood as the prime paradigm of a cult. A cult is always centered around a living leader who requires absolute submission. Questioning and dissent are forbidden, and violations of either are quickly met with immediate consequences including marginalization and/or expulsion.

         An example of marginalization toward a member bishop is the case of Archbishop Hunthausen of Seattle, Washington. Cardinal Ratzinger (Now Pope Benedict XVI) of the Vatican Curia subjected Archbishop Hunthausen to a humiliating investigation, and for a time took away much of his authority with the appointment of a coadjutor archbishop. The investigation centered around progressive perspectives that Hunthausen held on moral issues: e.g., women’s role in the Church; use of married priests; ministry to lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transvestites; justice and peace; group confession, etc.  Hunthausen retired in 1991.

         A cult presents itself as special and elitist. We saw this when we presented the narcissism native to the culture of bishops. In a cult, behavior of members is controlled, sometimes to the minutest detail. By custom; insertion of fear by the Curia; controls at every level of behavior; and by their own timidity in the face of danger to their status, bishops have no stomach for straight talk or argumentation on moral or doctrinal issues with the Vatican power base. The thought of representing the wisdom of the laity on a host of issues is frightening to bishops and they cannot entertain the idea, even collegially.

         The cult structure of the episcopacy, and the cultural addiction of its members, imprisons both individuals and the group itself in a box, the equivalent of a steel trap. Escape becomes almost unthinkable, and rarely occurs. Once a priest candidate commits to membership in the episcopal cult, he already feels, thinks, and behaves as the cult leader prescribes. And then the puppeteers take over. Not all is golden in the purple culture.