Hierarchicalism -James F. Keenan, SJ

 

1research-arti0cle2022 70493TSJ0010.1177/00405639211070493Theological StudiesHierarchicalism

Notes on Theological Ethics

Hierarchicalism James F. Keenan, SJ

Boston College, USA

Abstract

For the past twenty years, clericalism has been a helpful concept to identify the problematic culture within the clergy that is sorely in need of reform. In fact, it has served to focus matters needing reform not only concerning the sexual abuse crisis but also a wide array of other matters. Still, though reformers insist that clericalism embraces the entire clergy, from priests to bishops, they inevitably singularly default to reform of the priesthood. This article insists that now, nearly forty years after the sexual abuse crisis first broke, we must redirect our focus primarily onto the father of clericalism, “hierarchicalism,” a much more distinctive, protected, and powerful culture that has generated many of the contemporary problems in the church that compromise her mission.

Keywords

church reform, clericalism, Pope Francis, hierarchicalism, impunity, Archbishop Charles Scicluna, sexual abuse

This year, in addition to my article that follows, we asked Emily Reimer Barry to reflect on Amoris Laetitia on the anniversary of its promulgation, in the year that Pope Francis has called the “Amoris Laetitia Family Year,” which concludes on June 26, 2022. We also asked Kenneth Himes, OFM, to reflect on the start of the Biden presidency.

This article proposes that the reformist focus on “clericalism” over the last twenty years needs now, in light of additional, multitudinous scandals, to shift to “hierarchi- calism.” During these past decades, we have seen the need to reflect and act on matters of reform regarding our clergy. That discourse, though it insisted that hierarchy was

Corresponding author:

James F. Keenan, SJ, Boston College, 140 Commonwealth Ave., Chestnut Hill, MA 02467-2901, USA. Email: james.keenan.2@bc.edu

Theological Studies 2022, Vol. 83(1) 84–108 © Theological Studies, Inc. 2022 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions httpDs:O//dIo: i1.o0r.g1/107.711/0707/400540653693291211007700493 journals.sagepub.com/home/tsj

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included with priests under the rubric of clericalism, woefully overlooked any critical focus on the episcopacy, and almost always defaulted to priestly matters as the area for most needed reform. Episcopal conduct rarely came under review. In that light, this article proposes singularly to shift the entire discussion on church reform to prioritize the problematic state of our episcopal culture, that I name as hierarchicalism. Moreover, I argue that, like clericalism, hierarchicalism is not an attempt to indict the ordained state, but rather to identify the vicious culture that problematizes its ranks. Finally, the article has but one focus: to shift the gaze from vicious priestly culture to vicious hier- archical culture. That summons to shift the gaze requires a compelling argument, which I hope this article provides, but because of space and time, the subsequent argu- ment of how to reform the hierarchy’s culture cannot be made here. Elsewhere I have begun pursuing how the language of vulnerability might help restore and redeem epis- copal leadership,1 but for now this article is singularly a call to recognize the need to reorder our reforming priorities.

An Invitation

Nearly three years ago, I was invited by Archbishop Charles Scicluna to his native Malta to speak on the causes of and solutions to the church’s sexual abuse crisis. Coming from this archbishop, the invitation was daunting. In January 2015, he was appointed to handle all the sex abuse cases submitted to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and in November 2018 Pope Francis appointed him Adjunct Secretary of the Congregation.

As Gerard O’Connell explains, Scicluna was given the lead role on sexual abuse in the church and in the protection of minors. His actual accomplishments are fairly remarkable: in 2005, he was sent by then Cardinal Ratzinger to investigate Fr. Maciel Degollado, founder of the Legionnaires of Christ; Scicluna’s report led to Degollado’s conviction and removal from public ministry. In 2014, Pope Francis sent him to fol- low-up on Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s 2013 resignation as Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh. That investigation led to Francis withdrawing O’Brien’s rights and duties as a cardinal. Then, in 2018, after his problematic visit to Chile, Pope Francis sent Scicluna in his wake to investigate the clamor over the case of Father Fernando Karadima. Subsequent to Scicluna’s investigation, Francis made a public apology for his defensive remarks on behalf of the Chilean bishops, met with some of the sexual abuse victims, summoned all the Chilean bishops to Rome, and accepted the resigna- tions of many of the Chilean bishops.2 That I was invited by him to speak on the causes

1. James F. Keenan, “Vulnerability, Hierarchicalism, and Recognition,” in Clericalism and Sexuality, ed. Philip McCosker, Luigi Gioia, and Travis LaCouter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022).

2. Gerard O’Connell, “Pope Francis Appoints Archbishop Scicluna to Top Role in Addressing Abuse Crisis,” America (November 11, 2018), https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/ 2018/11/13/pope-francis-appoints-archbishop-scicluna-top-role-addressing-abuse-crisis; “Charles Scicluna,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Scicluna.

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and solutions to the crisis was one matter; that I later learned he would be my respond- ent was another!

Living in Boston since 1991, as a priest and ethicist, I had multitudinous occasions to respond to the crisis.3 In time, the sexual abuse scandal prompted me to consider the overall question of ethics in the church and to propose a variety of structural changes, including, developing a set of rights for priests.4 My turn to structural issues was not unique: many of us, and in a particular way, Marie Keenan, argued that the story was hardly about a predatory priest and a child victim; rather the abuse was much more institutionally rooted and pervasive, and, as such, institutional reforms were needed.5

In preparation for the Maltese lecture, I began reflecting on what I called the three waves of sexual abuse: the groundbreaking stories in the National Catholic Reporter in 1985; the 2002 release of 10,000 pages of records by Cardinal Bernard Law to a local Boston judge that subsequently became the catalyst to investigate all the hierar- chy’s cover-ups from 1985 to 2002; and then, in 2018, when a variety of leadership scandals broke yet again.6 This more recent set of revelations focused not on priests but now mostly on the episcopacy.

In the United States, two notable investigations in 2018 prompted the third wave. First, on June 28, 2018, The New York Times reported that Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, had been removed from ministry after an investigation found credible allegations that he sexually abused a teenager 47

3. “The Purge of Boston,” The Tablet (March 30, 2002), 17–19; “Sex Abuse, Power Abuse,” The Tablet (May 11, 2002), 9–10; “Rebuilding in Boston,” The Tablet (January 4, 2003), 7–8; “Crises and Other Developments,” Theological Studies 69, no. 1 (February 2008): 125–43, https://doi.org/10.1177/004056390806900107; and “A Restive and Divided Church,” Boston Globe op-ed, April 13, 2005, http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/04/13/a_restive_and_divided_church/.

4. James F. Keenan and Joseph J. Kotva, Jr., eds., Practice What You Preach: Virtues, Ethics and Power in the Lives of Pastoral Ministers and Their Congregations (Franklin, WI: Sheed and Ward, 1999); “Practice What You Preach: The Need For Ethics in Church Leadership,” Annual Jesuit Lecture in Human Values, Center for Ethics Studies: Marquette University 2000; Jean Bartunek, Mary Ann Hinsdale, and James F. Keenan, eds., Church Ethics and Its Organizational Context: Learning from the Sex Abuse Scandal in the Catholic Church (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005); “Church Leadership, Ethics, and the Moral Rights of Priests,” in Moral Theology for the Twenty-First Century, ed. Bernard Hoose, Julie Clague, and Gerard Mannion (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 204–19; “The Ethical Rights of Priests,” Touchstone, National Federation of Priests Councils 20 (Fall 2004), 6, 19–20; “If We Want to Reform the Church, Let’s Make Women Cardinals,” September 8, 2018, National Catholic Reporter, https://www.ncronline.org/news/accountability/ if-we-want-reform-church-lets-make-women-cardinals.

5. Marie Keenan, Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church: Gender, Power, and Organizational Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

6. “Timeline of a Crisis,” National Catholic Reporter (July 6, 2015), https://www.ncronline. org/blogs/ncr-today/timeline-crisis.

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years ago while serving as a priest in New York.7 That allegation, together with others, put the spotlight on the cardinal as a predator. The Vatican’s decision to remove McCarrick from ministry furthered the significance of the focus. One month later, The New York Times reported on McCarrick’s predatory actions as a bishop, this time high- lighting his transgressions with seminarians. The title of the article gave investigations on sex abuse a new spotlight: “He Preyed on Men Who Wanted to Be Priests. Then He Became a Cardinal.”8 Later, on February 16, 2019, the Vatican removed McCarrick from the priesthood.9 On November 10, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State, issued a 445-page investigation into McCarrick’s affairs entitled Report on the Holy See’s Institutional Knowledge and Decision-Making Related to Former Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick (1930–2017).10 Pope Francis’s insistence that the report be published was a groundbreaking move. But the report itself, what jour- nalist Gerard O’Connell called a “deep dive,” provided an extensive look into what I call “hierarchicalism,” a problematic type of culture within the hierarchy that becomes evident when bishops are not primarily inclined to servant ministry.11

Not two months after the McCarrick story broke, on August 14, 2018, the Pennsylvania Grand Jury released its report having investigated the claims, conduct, and ecclesial (mis)management of sex abuse cases within the six dioceses of Pennsylvania.12 Even for a country now nearly twenty years familiar with predatory priests, the headlines in The New York Times were breathtaking: “Catholic Priests

7. Laurie Goodstein and Sharon Otterman, “American Cardinal Accused of Sexually Abusing Minor Is Removed from Ministry,” The New York Times (June 20, 2018), https://www. nytimes.com/2018/06/20/us/theodore-mccarrick-sex-abuse.html.

8. Laurie Goodstein and Sharon Otterman, “He Preyed on Men Who Wanted to Be Priests. Then He Became a Cardinal,” The New York Times (July 16, 2018), https://www.nytimes. com/2018/07/16/us/cardinal-mccarrick-abuse-priest.html.

9. Cindy Wooden, “McCarrick Removed from Priesthood after Being Found Guilty of Abuse, Solicitation,” National Catholic Reporter (February 16, 2019), https:// www.ncronline.org/news/accountability/mccarrick-removed-priesthood-after-being-found- guilty-abuse-solicitation.

10. Cardinal Piero Parolin, Report on the Holy See’s Institutional Knowledge and Decision- Making Related to Former Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick (1930–2017), Secretariat of State, Vatican City (November 10, 2020), https://www.vatican.va/resources/resources_ rapporto-card-mccarrick_20201110_en.pdf. See Parolin’s release of the document, “Cardinal Parolin on McCarrick Report: Moved by the Truth to Avoid Past Errors,” Vatican News (November 10, 2020), https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2020-11/ parolin-mccarrick-report-statement-secretariat-state-vatican.html.

11. Gerard O’Connell, “Deep Dive: The McCarrick Report and the Popes It Implicates,” America (November 10, 2020), https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2020/11/10/ vatican-report-tracks-mccarricks-rise-despite-allegations-abuse-and-misconduct.

12. 40th Statewide Investigating Grand Jury Report 1 Interim-Redacted (August 14, 2018). The report can be found here: http://media-downloads.pacourts.us/InterimRedacted ReportandResponses.pdf.

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Abused 1,000 Children in Pennsylvania, Report Says.”13 Though there were ten previ- ous grand jury and attorney general’s reports, they were of only singular dioceses or counties. This report comprised all six Pennsylvanian dioceses and, at 1,356 pages, it provided the broadest in-depth investigation into the sexual abuse scandal to date. In particular, it gave us a view of how some members of the episcopacy acted. Indeed, the spotlight shone on the bishops as well as the priests. Noteworthy are the concluding remarks of the executive summary:

Despite some institutional reform, individual leaders of the church have largely escaped public accountability. Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades. Monsignors, auxiliary bishops, bishops, archbishops, cardinals have mostly been protected; many, including some named in this report, have been promoted. Until that changes, we think it is too early to close the book on the Catholic Church sex scandal.14

Using 2018 as a marker for the third wave, this wave gave an unprecedented glimpse at a culture within the episcopacy that bred vices. Thus, still in 2018, one effect of the Pennsylvania Report was the sustained scrutiny of Cardinal Donald Wuerl’s oversight on sexual abuse that led to Pope Francis accepting Wuerl’s resigna- tion on October 12, 2018.15 Though we will see more on these cases in the pages ahead, it is important to see what a watershed moment 2018 was for revealing a culture within the hierarchy that was much deeper, more powerful, and more global in reach than any other form of clericalism, and, yet, was effectively hidden from view in a way that clericalism was not.

The awareness of hierarchicalism in the US in 2018 follows its emergence globally in the same year. In January 2018, the Chilean bishops case broke when the pope publicly defended the Chilean hierarchy.16 Though charged in 2017, Cardinal George Pell’s trial proceeded throughout 2018 until he was convicted in December 2018 of sexual abuse charges that would be later overturned.17 In Pell’s case, as in Chile’s, the issues were

13. Laurie Goodstein and Sharon Otterman, “Catholic Priests Abused 1,000 Children in Pennsylvania, Report Says,” The New York Times (August 14, 2018), https://www.nytimes. com/2018/08/14/us/catholic-church-sex-abuse-pennsylvania.html.

14. 40th Statewide Investigating Grand Jury Report.

15. Joshua McElwee, “Wuerl Resigns, Ending Influential Tenure in Wake of Abuse Report,”

    National Catholic Reporter (October 12, 2018), https://www.ncronline.org/news/

    accountability/wuerl-resigns-ending-influential-tenure-wake-abuse-report.

16. Pascale Bonnefoy and Austin Ramzy, “Pope’s Defense of Chilean Bishop in Sex Abuse

    Scandal Causes Outrage,” New York Times (January 16, 2018).

17. Catholic News Service, “Australia’s Cardinal Pell Found Guilty of Sex Abuse,

    Expected to Appeal,” Catholic Register (December 12, 2018), https://web.archive.org/ web/20181215230726/https://www.catholicregister.org/home/international/item/28607- australia-s-cardinal-pell-found-guilty-of-sex-abuse-expected-to-appeal; Gerard O’Connell, “Cardinal Pell, top advisor to Pope Francis, found guilty of ‘historical sexual offenses’,” America (December 12, 2018), https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2018/12/12/cardinal- pell-top-advisor-pope-francis-found-guilty-historical-sexual-offenses.

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doubly problematic: as Massimo Faggioli noted, the trial concerning Pell’s own conduct diverted the church of Australia from addressing the underlying issue of the lack of accountability of church governance that in turn led to such extraordinary accounts of abuse there.18 In France, Cardinal Phillippe Barbarin from Lyons was charged in 2017 with failing to report on the sexually abusive activities of a priest, then convicted in 2019, and then overturned on appeal in 2020. Still, his resignation was also accepted by Pope Francis in that same year.19 Finally, in India, in June 2018, Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Kerala was accused of raping a nun. The case continues to go on today.20

These criminal investigations highlighted the need to reflect on the office that the accused held, as for instance, the noteworthy case of Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law. Indeed, in his case the cardinal fled the United States and effectively enjoyed impu- nity. Though there was extensive litigation against the archdiocese and media indict- ment of the cardinal himself, Law protected himself with a hierarchical network such that no real criminal investigation nor judgment of his conduct occurred. But, by 2018, the social structures that protected and granted Law impunity were certainly no longer in evidence. In fact, in 2019, an American journalist with the Associated Press, Nicole Winfield, raised the entire issue of impunity in light of these cases in 2018. “After centuries of impunity, cardinals from Chile to Australia and points in between are fac- ing justice in both the Vatican and government courts for their own sexual misdeeds or for having shielded abusers under their watch.” Moreover, by focusing solely on car- dinals, she reached back to cases before 2018 where other cardinals with impunity were not subject to the procedures filed against McCarrick, Pell, and Barbarin. Specifically, she considered the matters of cardinals Bernard Law, Keith O’Brien (Scotland), Godfried Danneels (Belgium), Hans Hermann Groër (Austria), and Angelo Sodano (Vatican City).21 The issues of the cultures and the structures they created that provided hierarchy with impunity from the law, whether canonical or civil, were emerging and needed to be addressed as such. How could we respond to the harm they caused without addressing them?

The Culture of Clericalism

In preparing for the Malta lecture in 2019, I began to recognize the need to examine those vicious practices and the culture and institutional structures within the hierarchy that were being exposed. And the more I looked at both the culture and its structures,

18. Massimo Faggioli, “The Acquittal of Cardinal Pell: Remaining Unsettled,” Commonweal (April 21, 2020).

19. Claire Lesegretain, “Cardinal Barbarin Had Decided to Resign 15 days before Verdict,” LaCroix (March 11, 2019), https://international.la-croix.com/news/religion/ cardinal-barbarin-had-decided-to-resign-15-days-before-verdict/9636.

20. See the extensive reporting by the Global Sisters Report at the National Catholic Reporter, “Bishop Mulakkal Trial,” https://www.globalsistersreport.org/gsr-series/bishop- mulakkal-trial/stories.

21. Nicole Winfield, “Catholic Church Cardinals Implicated in Sex Abuse, Cover-ups,” Associated Press (March 7, 2019), https://apnews.com/article/7535b1cb60d74b58a62924 730d5e30d3.

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the more I found the much overused concept of “clericalism” inadequate for capturing what had hitherto been hidden from public view. Rather than looking at the institu- tional structures that protected and effectively promoted the culture, I became more interested in the culture itself.22 Indeed, just as “clericalism” emerged as a significant conceptual tool for reforming the church in light of the second wave of the scandal, a similar type of conceptual tool has been needed to address the specific nature of the culture of the hierarchy that emerged in the third wave as deeply problematic.

Clearly the concept of clericalism has had, in the past twenty years, an enormous purchase in allowing us to identify and treat the vicious culture of the ordained clergy and to posit its contrary. Inasmuch as the key to virtuous living is to harness vice and promote virtue, then the reform of clerical culture has been effectively identified in the past twenty years as the repudiation of clericalism and the promotion of servant priest- hood. Indeed, no less than Pope Francis has been famous for contrasting the two. In 2018, Aleteia published an article entitled, “5 of the many times Pope Francis has warned against clericalism.”23 In April 2021, he called priests to be servants,24 and in June at another talk he called clericalism “a perversion of the priesthood.”25

Clericalism is that culture which Catholic lay people encountered when they were routinely unable to be heard or understood as the second wave of the crisis unfolded in 2002. Then and there, the laity witnessed how through “clericalism” the self-preserv- ing entitlement and privileges of clerics were given sanction, even at the cost of the care of children. As quickly as it was identified, just as quickly was it dissected. Thus, in 2002, in a brilliant essay for America entitled, “Farewell to the Club: On the Demise of Clerical Culture,” Fr. Michael Papesh named, described, and exposed the pervading but hidden culture among the clergy.26

Yet, as Andrew Hamilton reminds us, “In the Catholic Church clericalism is now the whipping boy of choice. But what it embraces is less clear.”27 Besides its pervasive

22. Of the many definitions of culture, I find this one from the “Center for Advanced Research in Language Acquisition” particularly helpful: “culture is defined as the shared patterns of behaviors and interactions, cognitive constructs, and affective understanding that are learned through a process of socialization. These shared patterns identify the members of a culture group while also distinguishing those of another group”; https://carla.umn.edu/ culture/definitions.html.

23. Kathleen Hattrup, “5 of the Many Times Pope Francis Has Warned against Clericalism,” Aleteia (August 8, 2018), https://aleteia.org/2018/08/23/5-of-the-many-times-pope-francis- has-railed-against-clericalism/.

24. Cindy Wooden, “Pope Francis to New Priests: Be Servants, not Careerists,” America (April 26, 2021), https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2021/04/26/prayer-be-poor-new- priests-pope-francis-24054.

25. Hannah Brockhas, “Rigid Priests Are a Manifestation of Clericalism,” Catholic News Agency (June 10, 2021), https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/247958/pope-francis- rigid-priests-are-a-manifestation-of-clericalism.

26. Michael L. Papesh, “Farewell to the Club: On the Demise of Clerical Culture,” America (May 13, 2002), https://www.americamagazine.org/issue/372/article/farewell-club.

27. Andrew Hamilton, “Why Clericalism Matters,” Eureka Street (February 28, 2018), https:// www.eurekastreet.com.au/article/why-clericalism-matters.

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application, some, like Donald Cozzens, warn us with a corrective that we ought not confuse the culture of the clergy itself with its vicious embodiment, clericalism. The clergy themselves have a culture; it is only when that culture becomes transformed by clericalism that the culture becomes vicious.28 As we will see later, this same distinc- tion needs to be applied to the hierarchy: hierarchy has a culture; when and where it is vicious in its elitism, power, networking capability, and impunity is precisely what I mean by hierarchicalism.

Clericalism effectively helped us to see what the culture of the priesthood ought not to become. But, rediscovering priesthood from within a culture already corrupted requires a transformation of the underlying existing relationships. This indeed is the reason why we need to look for a transformation of the underlying culture if we truly want to reform the structures of the church. Transforming existing relationships was precisely the aim of George B. Wilson’s Clericalism: The Death of Priesthood, which reminds us that we are all made priests in baptism. Through ordination, the clergy are not called to privilege but to service, that is, to animate and support the priesthood of all the baptized. Wilson proposes that, along with a well-educated and virtuous laity, virtuous clergy are called “to re-priest a clericalized church.” Through a variety of nar- ratives and strategies, he proposes how church reform has to reprioritize the prece- dence of priesthood over clericalism. But this depends first on the transformation of the interior dispositions of the clergy themselves and that transformation depends on clergy looking to servant priesthood as their calling and not clericalism.29

Still, there is a lack of clarity about to whom clericalism applies. From the start, clericalism has had a broad reach, usually encompassing those ordained to priesthood and those later ordained to the episcopacy. For instance, Peter Daly begins his essay on the topic by invoking the Association of U.S. Catholic Priests and their significant white paper on clericalism, entitled, “Confronting the Systemic Dysfunction of Clericalism,” where they define clericalism as “an expectation, leading to abuses of power, that ordained ministers are better than and should be over everyone else among the People of God.”30 Daly writes, “clerics (bishops and priests) are often trained to think they are set apart from and set above everyone else in the church. Their word is not to be questioned. Their behavior is not to be questioned. Their lifestyle is not to be questioned.”31 This sense of superiority and lack of accountability are common threads, in both the cultures of priests and of hierarchy, but invariably these critiques lead to a

28. Donald Cozzens, “Don’t Put Priests on Pedestals,” U.S. Catholic (October 1, 2015), https:// uscatholic.org/articles/201510/dont-put-priests-on-a-pedestal/.

29. George B. Wilson, Clericalism: The Death of Priesthood (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2008).

30. Association of U.S. Catholic Priests, “Confronting the Systemic Dysfunction of Clericalism,” (June 2019), 5, https://www.futurechurch.org/sites/default/files/Model%20 4%20A%20-AUSCP%20White%20Paper-Systemic%20Dysfunction%20Clericalism.pdf.

31. Peter Daly, “Tackle Clericalism First When Attempting Priesthood Reform,” National Catholic Reporter (August 13, 2019), https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/priestly- diary/tackle-clericalism-first-when-attempting-priesthood-reform.

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repudiation of the vicious culture that preeminently compromises the priesthood. Rarely do authors address the hierarchy other than saying that clericalism applies to them too. And so, the reforms that they propose effectively impact seminary formation and priestly ministry only, and not the underlying culture of the hierarchy. In fact, as journalists showed us, it was not until 2018 that the hierarchy was finally exposed. No priest ever enjoyed the cover culture that the bishops have had since 2002.

“Clericalism” has been singularly concerned with priests. A prime example is the significant work of the psychologist Thomas G. Plante. He notes at the outset of his studies how applicable the concept of clericalism is. Not only does it apply to the ordained, but to the laity as well, to the extent that they prefer and support a culture of immunity to accountability for their clergy. But Plante sees this clericalism as in evi- dence in other religious contexts as well as secular: “Clericalism may be found in many organizations beyond religious or spiritual ones and is the tendency to allow a small group of highly regarded and special leaders to have the power and privilege to make all or most of the important and critical decisions for the organization and those within it.”32

When he begins to apply the term, however, he zeroes in on the culture of priests and how clericalism breeds behavior that is problematic not only for the whole church, but particularly for the priests, in a way alienating them from learning practices that could help them deal with matters of affect, relationality, self-possession, and respon- sible self-care. He sees that before we think of reforms, we need to identify the culture and then identify possible practices and structures that could lead to greater account- ability, transparency, relationality, and responsibility. But, again, like Daly and the others, Plante’s focus is singularly on priests.33

In a helpful essay, Richard Gaillardetz specifically talks about clericalism among priests and among bishops, treating them distinctly. Before he does, he notes that in the church’s canonical legal system, accountability is unilaterally upwardly mobile, a point to which I will return later.34 When Gaillardetz identifies signs of clericalism in the presbyterate, he thickens our understanding of this vicious culture, that, like all vice, harms the agents as well as others. He highlights a preferential option for a dis- tinct identity usually conveyed by clothing, a failure by priests to correlate ministerial priesthood with baptismal priesthood, a privileged sense of not having to be account- able, and a sense of rank that puts priests over the laity. For them he encourages a

32. Thomas G. Plante, “Clericalism Contributes to Religious, Spiritual, and Behavioral Struggles among Catholic Priests,” Religions 11, no. 5 (April 28, 2020), https://doi. org/10.3390/rel11050217.

33. See Plante, “How Clericalism Contributes to Sexual Problems among Priests,” Psychology Today (June 3, 2019), https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/do-the- right-thing/201906/how-clericalism-contributes-sexual-problems-among-priests.

34. Richard Gaillardetz, “A Church in Crisis: How Did We Get Here? How Do We Move Forward?” Worship 70, no. 4 (December, 2018): 204–24; “Addressing the Church’s Clerical Culture,” Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education (January 9, 2020), http://www.con- versationsmagazine.org/web-features/2020/1/9/addressing-the-churchs-clerical-culture.

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reform of seminary formation, as well as better screening, better ministerial formative experiences of engagement, and better placement. His reform of the presbyterate reso- nates with much of the literature of the past twenty years that has an extraordinary focus on seminaries and ongoing collaboration between priests and the laity.35 In fact, in many ways what he proposes echoes the document “To Serve the People of God: Renewing the Conversation on Priesthood and Ministry,” a work of the Boston College Seminar on Priesthood and Ministry for the Contemporary Church that was met with considerably warm reception.36 In sum, the term clericalism and its utility in investi- gating its culture, its attendant practices, and structures, and in proposing church reform to help make our clergy servant priests is, I think, indispensable for changing the interpersonal dispositions needed to effect significant change in the priesthood.

When Gaillardetz turns to the episcopate specifically, however, we see less density in his critique. Notably, he acknowledges the episcopacy’s tendency toward elitism, superiority, and lack of solidarity with the laity. He also acknowledges how 40% of the episcopacy does not have any ministerial assignment beyond a “titular” church, that is, that it is a title of office but not an exercise of pastoral ministry, per se. Rightly, Gaillardetz makes much of the need for the bishop to be connected with the local church. But here he only attends to structural issues like bishops without a local church and not to the underlying culture that so jealously defends the practice. Like others, he fails to point to the cultures of complicity, compromise, and power that scandalously emerged during the third wave.

By leaving the problematic culture of the episcopacy out of the picture, these authors lead us to think that the seeds of clericalism are sown in the seminary and that, therefore, we need to reform admissions processes as well as seminaries. They tend to think the roots of dominance, abuses of power, and general law of impunity for clergy derive from the seminaries. I believe that seminaries are, to some extent, sources of clericalism’s growth. But the real generativity of clericalism derives from its father, hierarchicalism. Bishops shape their clergy more than seminaries do. We can design any seminary we want, but the seminarians take their marching orders from those hierarchs who give them. Until we look at their culture, we are not going to accom- plish significant reform, because what anyone who looks at the state of the church today recognizes is that our episcopal leadership is the primary cause of its problems.

Hierarchicalism hides behind clericalism and scapegoats it as well. Until we iden- tify it as such, we are pawns of its own power games. And until we face this problem, we will not see the reform we need to pursue.

35. See Boston College Seminar on Priesthood and Ministry for the Contemporary Church, “To Serve the People of God: Renewing the Conversation on Priesthood and Ministry,” Origins 84.1 (December 27, 2018), https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/bc1/schools/stm/fac- ulty-research/Origins%20-%20To%20Serve%20the%20People%20of%20God%20-%20 27%20Dec%202018.pdf.

36. Stephen Bevans and Robin Ryan, “Why the Catholic Church Needs Two Different Kinds of Priesthood,” America (April 1 2019), https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2019/04/01/ why-catholic-church-needs-two-different-kinds-priesthood.

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Moreover, when we begin to appreciate the vicious generativity of hierarchicalism in how it reproduces clericalism in its seminaries, parishes, and dioceses, we ought to see also how it corrupts the cultures of both deacons and women in ministry as they ascend in favor among the ranks of the hierarchy. As anyone who studies corruption knows, vicious cultures emanate from the head.

Hierarchicalism

In 2019, I developed the distinction between clericalism and “hierarchicalism”37 after reading an essay by Mark Slatter who commented that “hierarchical culture is the gold carrot for those predisposed to its allurements.”38 Slatter was right to say that the hier- archy had a particularly problematic culture, one that was rarely recognized as such, in part because it had the capacity to hide itself so well and was not subject to any public accountability. Thinking of what he said of hierarchical culture, I labeled it “hierarchi- calism,” for just as clericalism is different from a culture that promotes servant priests, hierarchicalism is different from one that promotes servant bishops.39

What most priests and bishops know well is that the formative pathways for future bishops are generally speaking considerably different from those for average priests. Early on, future bishops do not do most of their theology studies in their local or regional seminaries. Rather, they are sent to Rome for theology, where they are exam- ined in a variety of ways; there in the national residential colleges, they are introduced to others in their generation already being considered for leadership. Friendships are created among an elite and talented network of priests who are constantly being vetted by their own ordinaries and by their metropolitans for whether or not they will advance in the hierarchy. There is a formation happening in Rome of a very different kind than what happens at the local seminary.

Years ago, Peter Daly authored a witty essay entitled, “Four Easy Steps to Take to Become a Bishop.” The steps were, as follows: “apprentice yourself out to a bishop as his personal secretary”; “get an advanced degree, preferably canon law”; “get a Roman connection; this step is essential”; and, “keep a sharp eye on the weather in Rome.

37. See Tom Roberts on my use of hierarchicalism, “A Mensch, a Church in Recovery, and Hierarchical Culture Examined,” National Catholic Reporter (March 26, 2019), https://www.ncronline.org/news/accountability/ncr-connections/mensch-church-recovery- and-hierarchical-culture-examined.

38. Mark Slatter, “Clerical Crisis: Flock and Pasture Can’t Tell Shepherd Who He Is,” National Catholic Reporter (March 11, 2019), https://www.ncronline.org/news/accountability/ clerical-identity-crisis-flock-and-pasture-cant-tell-shepherd-who-he.

39. I have since learned that the French ecclesiologist, Hervé Legrand, similarly named, iden- tified, and criticized an enduring “episcopalism” in his work; see his “Collégialité des Éveques et Communion des Églises dans la Reception de Vatican II,” Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques 75, no. 4 (October 1991): 545–68, https://www-jstor-org. proxyau.wrlc.org/stable/i40184976. Special thanks to Gaillardetz for drawing my attention to this.

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Knowing which way the wind is blowing in Rome helps adjust your own sails.”40 We have to look at how we place young men on different preparatory trajectories away from their own dioceses and into Rome where some men ambitious for episcopacies live. As Daly suggests, if one visits a national college in Rome, whether for the Americans, the Germans, the French, and so on, one will see a culture quite different from the local seminary. In the local seminary, there are not the opportunities for net- working or advancement that one finds in Rome. Indeed, Rome hosts very different clubs than the local seminary. In light of these early formational influences on future bishops, any reform of the hierarchical culture needs to consider the distinctive train- ing of those who are targeted as candidates for the episcopacy.

As clericalism emerged as a source for the scandals from 2002, hierarchicalism emerged in 2018. But it was not that hierarchicalism was simply the source of the third wave, though it was. The true revelation of the third wave was that it finally exposed the real source of this entire crisis: behind each of the three waves was a hierarchical- ism, capable of rising with impunity above any sense of accountability. In the third wave, we could now see how hierarchical culture exercised its power and networking capabilities in the cover-up of its own actions since 1991.

Moreover, we should not think that dismantling hierarchicalism will be like dis- mantling clericalism. Indeed, a key reason why clericalism still survives today is because the hierarchy has shown no interest in dismantling it. Rather, hierarchicalism supports the survival of clericalism, for the former is the father and promoter of the latter.

We need then to distinguish the two, not because clericalism is not vicious and problematic; it is. We have to better understand, however, the specific problems of the culture more isolated and protected than priests’ and certainly more complex, insidi- ous, and driven than we know or acknowledge.

In Malta, I presented for the first time this concept of hierarchicalism, arguing that the cause of the crisis came not primarily from the culture of secrecy and privilege of priests, but of the power of the episcopacy and its attendant networks, privileges, and power options that circumnavigated the investigations of civil leaders. I realized then it would be a mistake to label the actions of the episcopacy as stemming from the ubiquitous “clericalism”; rather, I identified the exclusive power culture of the episco- pacy as “hierarchicalism” and that this culture preceded, generated, sustained, and emboldened clericalism.41

It is true that clericalism is a dysfunctional mode of acting: effete, arrogant, deceptive. Yet within the presbyterate, these modes of acting derive more from van- ity than power. Priestly clericalism has very little power. Clericalism appeared to

40. Peter Daly, “Four Easy Steps to Take to Become a Bishop,” National Catholic Reporter (October 14, 2014), https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/parish-diary/four-easy-steps-take- become-bishop.

41. James F. Keenan, “Vulnerability and Hierarchicalism,” Melita Theologica 68, no. 2 (2018): 129–42, https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/58385; this was published in September 2019 though the issue was predated, 2018.

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enjoy power when priests were able to evade the inquiries of concerned laity, but that was only to the extent that the laity did not yet turn elsewhere for redress. Once they discovered solidarity, the law, and the media, the laity saw the illusions of cleri- cal power disappear.

Consider priests who have been removed from ministry. Any priest who knows another priest who has been accused or removed witnesses the minimal power that clericalism actually has. A priest under accusation, whether true or not, has minimal forms of redress, recognition, or even protections. The priest is effectively at the “mercy” of his bishop or religious superiors.42 The power that protects the hierarchy is far greater than that available to clerics.

Recall the power of the Chilean bishops who consolidated their ranks while under critique for nine years by their victims and other witnesses to the church’s scandal. The cultural network of these bishops was remarkably different from any of that enjoyed by a Chilean priest, with the exception of the legendary Fr. Fernando Karadima who was protected not by fellow priests but by bishops. The rift between clericalism and hierarchicalism could be seen on January 15, 2018, when immediately after the pope apologized for the “irreparable damage” caused by priests in Chile, he celebrated Mass in Santiago alongside Bishop Juan Barros Madrid of Osorno, the bishop who protected Karadima.43 The reaction of the people of Chile and throughout the Americas was strong as the pope acknowledged the wrongs of priests but stood with the bishop. The pope supported the bishop, a support that no priest would see: “The day someone brings me proof against Bishop Barros, then I will talk. But there is not one single piece of evidence. It is all slander. Is that clear?”44 It would not be until Archbishop Scicluna was sent to investigate the long-overlooked charges against the bishop and the entire Chilean hierarchy that finally that entity, the Chilean hierarchy, was subject to the type of review that priests are. The wall protecting bishops is very different from that protecting clergy. They are different cultures and the wall that protected the Chilean episcopacy was basically impenetrable until finally Scicluna had entry, nine years after Karadima’s demise.

The culture of hierarchicalism remains largely untouched today. Still, Pope Francis deserves a good deal of credit for forcing on occasion the accountability of those pro- tected by hierarchicalism. The resolution of the Chilean bishops’ scandal is a case in point. Previous papacies, however, greatly ignored the lament of the people of God in the face of the sexual abuse scandal. One relevant example is Pope John Paul II appointing Cardinal Bernard Law Archpriest of the Basilica of St. Mary Major in

42. James F. Keenan, “The Moral Rights of Priests,” in Priests for the Twenty-first Century, ed. Donald Dietrich and Michael J. Himes (Lanham, MD: Sheed and Ward, 2006), 77–90, and “Church Leadership, Ethics, and the Moral Rights of Priests,” in Hoose, Clague, and Mannion, eds., Moral Theology for the Twenty-First Century, 204–19.

43. Ernesto Londoño, “In Chile, Pope Francis Apologizes for ‘Irreparable Damage’ Caused by Sexual Abuse,” The New York Times (January 16, 2018), https://www.nytimes. com/2018/01/16/world/americas/pope-francis-chile-sexual-abuse.html.

44. Bonnefoy and Ramzy, “Pope’s Defense of Chilean Bishop.”

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Rome in 2004, two years after he resigned. This was a true indication of the face of hierarchicalism, an action that Pope Francis would never today sanction. Still, when the 2004 story broke of the pope’s appointment, Law was clearly, as The New York Times reported, “a powerful American figure in the Vatican. He has posts in as many as nine Vatican congregations, or departments, including the one that determines church leadership worldwide by nominating candidates for bishop. He is a member of the Congregation for Clergy, which has a role in handling sexual abuse cases that are sent to Rome.”45 Here was a man wanted in the investigations of the Boston abuse scandal who had, still at his disposal, a network of relationships that no priest would ever enjoy. That is hierarchicalism, well-sanctioned by the papacy.

In fact, from that hierarchical perch, Law was able to exercise his prerogatives in pursuing some of the 58 Boston-based priests who signed and publicly called for the cardinal’s resignation in 2002, an action credited with prompting his resignation. These priests had dared to hold accountable an unaccountable hierarchical figure; they tried to breach the wall. On behalf of his club, Law attempted to teach these priests a lesson.46 Of course, they had none of the networks of power that the cardinal did.47

After presenting my argument on hierarchicalism in Malta, Archbishop Scicluna, in response to my paper, furthered the argument by insisting that accountability keeps leaders vulnerable but impunity destroys that vulnerability. Scicluna saw accountabil- ity as redemptive for the hierarchy and impunity at the root of the comfortable space called “hierarchicalism.” Removing the structures of impunity and introducing norms for accountability could, from his vantage point, help structurally address the underly- ing culture. In a way, by granting the hierarchy no canonical or legal alternatives to escape transparency and accountability, he hoped that the bishops would eventually

45. Al Baker, “Cardinal Law Given Post in Rome,” New York Times (May 28, 2004), https:// www.nytimes.com/2004/05/28/us/cardinal-law-given-post-in-rome.html.

46. See Michael Paulson, “58 Priests Send a Letter Urging Cardinal to Resign,” The Boston Globe (December 10, 2002), http://archive.boston.com/globe/spotlight/abuse/stories3/121002_let- ter.htm; Paulson, “Priests Who Asked Law to Quit Attacked,” The Boston Globe (March 8, 2003), https://archive.boston.com/globe/spotlight/abuse/stories4/030803_priests.htm; Marie Szaniszlo, “Priest One of 20 Critics of Law,” Boston Herald (September 29, 2005), http:// www.bishop-accountability.org/abuse2005b-archives/2005_09.html; Kathleen Kautzer, The Underground Church: Nonviolent Resistance to the Vatican Empire, vol. 40.2, Studies in Critical Social Sciences/ Studies in Critical Research on Religion (New York: Brill, 2012), 153–54. Paulson later argued that there was no evidence of Archbishop O’Malley removing priests, but he never investigated whether Cardinal Law and his supporters were target- ing the signers; see Paulson, “Dislocation, Scrutiny of Priests Raise Fears,” Boston Globe (October 2, 2005), http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2005_07_12/2005_10_02_ Paulson_DislocationScrutiny.htm.

47. Céline Hoyeau, “Pedophilia: A Shadow over John Paul II’s Pontificate? Revelations in Recent Years Question How Much the Polish Pope Knew about Clergy Sex Abuse,” La Croix (May 18, 2020), https://international.la-croix.com/news/pedophilia-a-shadow- over-john-paul-iis-pontificate/12388?campaname=_May20.

98 Theological Studies 83(1)

realize they had to embrace these values and in doing so encounter the true vulnerabil- ity of their episcopal ministry.

Scicluna’s responses came just after he participated in the meeting that Pope Francis called from February 21–24, 2019, entitled “The Protection of Minors in the Church.”48 There, in his opening remarks, Pope Francis shared important criteria, among which was the need to “establish specific protocols for handling accusations against Bishops.”49

To appreciate the significance of that meeting, we need to appreciate the ambiguity of norms before the meeting and the clarity of those articulated afterwards. Rightly, Rachel Donadio noted, “Church norms on the issue are still difficult to understand, not just for outsiders, but for the clerics who must uphold them.”50 Indeed, in preparation for the meeting, Nicole Winfield helpfully explained the present situation that left bishops with considerably ambiguous discretion. First, she noted where countries require bishops and superiors “to notify police when someone alleges that a priest molested a child and they are supposed to cooperate with any investigations.” However, she added, “the policy is nonbinding.”51

Regarding cover-ups, she added that while “the Vatican under Pope Benedict XVI cracked down on abusive priests, the bishops who shielded them largely got a pass.” Later Pope Francis “outlined procedures to investigate bishops and punish them, mak- ing clear they could be removed from office if they were found to have been negligent in handling abuse cases of their clergy.” In addition, in interviewing Archbishop Scicluna about the appointment of new bishops, Winfield reported him commenting that the Congregation for Bishops, in soliciting comments about potential candidates, now includes an “explicit question on how the candidate has dealt with sexual abuse issues and whether he has been criticized for not doing the right thing.”52

Subsequent to the meeting, two documents were published. On May 9, 2019, the motu proprio, Vox Estis Lux Mundi was promulgated to establish universal norms for the reporting of various forms of sexual abuse to Vatican authorities. Moreover, though it does not explicitly require reporting to local, civil authorities, and it con- cludes that the norms “apply without prejudice to the rights and obligations estab- lished in each place by state laws, particularly those concerning any reporting obligations to the competent civil authorities,” it implicitly recognizes as normative

48. See https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2019/february/documents/papa- francesco_20190221_incontro-protezioneminori-apertura.html.

49. “Reflection Points” (February 21, 2019), https://www.vatican.va/resources/resources_ puntidiriflessione-protezioneminori_20190221_en.html.

50. Rachel Donadio, “The Catholic Church’s Battle between Rhetoric and Reality,” The Atlantic (February 21, 2019), https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/02/ pope-francis-calls-concrete-change-vatican-how/583297/.

51. Nicole Winfield, “Vatican’s Legal Procedures for Handling Sex Abuse, Explained,” Associated Press (February 21, 2019), https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/ vaticans-legal-procedures-handling-sex-abuse-explained-61205682.

52. Winfield.

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existing legal requirements.53 The reason for not making it explicit seems to be, according to Winfield, “that accused clergy could be unfairly persecuted in places where Catholics are a threatened minority.”54

Then on December 17, 2019, the Pope issued an instruction, “On the Confidentiality of Legal Proceedings,” lifting the pontifical secret.55 Scicluna called it “an epochal decision,” noting that:

It opens up, for example, avenues of communication with victims, of collaboration with the state. Certain jurisdiction would have easily quoted the pontifical secret because that was the state of the law, in order to say that they could not, and that they were not, authorized to share information with either state authorities or the victims. Now that impediment, we might call it that way, has been lifted, and the pontifical secret is no more an excuse. However, the law goes further: it actually says, as also doesVos estis lux mundi, that information is of the essence if we really want to work for justice. And so, the freedom of information to statutory authorities and to victims is something that is being facilitated by this new law.56

The canonical structures that assured the impunity of our episcopacy are slowly but surely being withdrawn. Indeed, the changes are already becoming evident in classic instances of accountability. Consider, for instance, the frequency with which episcopal malfeasance has since been reported. As I write this in the summer of 2021, on June 14, La Croix ran the story of how abusive the Archbishop of Avignon was for the past eighteen years;57 on July 3, The National Catholic Reporter announced the indictment of Cardinal Angelo Becciu for financial improprieties;58 and on August 21, The Associated Press reported the censorship of a Polish Archbishop for negligence in oversight regarding sexual abuse.59 Removing the structures that gave hierarchy impu- nity now exposes the underlying culture that also has to be engaged.

53. Francis, Vox Estis Lux Mundi (May 9, 2019), Article 19, https://press.vatican.va/content/ salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2019/05/09/0390/00804.html#EN.

54. Winfield, “Vatican’s Legal Procedures.”

55. Francis, “On the Confidentiality of Legal Proceedings” (December 17, 2017), https://press.

    vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2019/12/17/1011/02062.html.

56. Andrea Tornielli, “Interview with Archbishop Charles Scicluna” (December 17, 2019), https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2019/12/17/191217e.

    html.

57. Mélinée Le Priol, “French Archdiocese Freed from 18 Years of Abusive Leadership,” La

    Croix (June 14, 2021), https://international.la-croix.com/news/religion/french-archdiocese-

    freed-from-18-years-of-abusive-leadership/14466.

58. Nicole Winfield, “Vatican Indicts Cardinal Becciu, Nine Others in London Real Estate

    Deal,” National Catholic Reporter (July 3, 2021), https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/

    vatican-indicts-cardinal-becciu-nine-others-london-real-estate-deal.

59. Associated Press, “Vatican Punishes Polish Archbishop for Sex Abuse Negligence” (August 21, 2021), https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/vatican-punishes-

    polish-archbishop-sex-abuse-negligence-79579322.

100 Theological Studies 83(1) The Challenge of Reforming the Hierarchy

In 2002, once people began to see clericalism as deeply connected to the causes of sexual abuse and as an obstacle to the reform of the church, people saw instances of the embodied mentality of it everywhere else. From clerical aloofness and its predilec- tion for privilege to its evident narcissism and misogyny, the capacity of the laity to recognize clericalism grew; as with all vicious cultures, indications could be recog- nized fairly easily once the original manifestation was identified.

The same growing awareness comes with hierarchicalism. Once you finally see it, you recognize it again and again in all the exercises of church life. Like clericalism, hierarchicalism is a key that helps us to see how hierarchs think, judge, and act when they are not servant ministers. And because it is bred deep within that culture, it cannot be removed by replacing social structures. In conversations with Tom Roberts,60 we have seen again and again that the reform of such a culture only happens when a virtu- ous engagement of the true vocation of the episcopacy develops, one that finds funda- mentally new designs for new relationships.61 True social structures like the recent canonical reforms impede the culture of hierarchicalism in its easy access to impunity. But the underlying complacent cultural tendency to impunity is itself the issue, as are the complacent tendencies to authoritarianism, domination, transparency-avoidance, accountability-avoidance, and other narcissistic needs about belonging to a fraternity that exercises its prerogatives fairly freely.

Thus, Sr. Veronica Openibo, SHCJ, Superior General of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, made clear in her prophetic remarks at the 2019 Vatican meeting, “as an African woman religious” who “lived in Rome for fifteen years—as a nun—and stud- ied in America for three,” that the leadership’s cultural inclination to “negligence” and “silence,” whether about accountability, transparency, ministerial servant leadership, or any summons to healing and reconciliation, must come to an end.62 While social structures can thwart some of these tendencies, the tendencies themselves must be addressed. The challenge is converting the culture from vice to virtue.

The church, especially the episcopacy, needs to have a greater awareness of the dangers of heirarchicalism, and a recognition of the differences between cultural ways

60. Tom Roberts, “Hierarchy and the Need for a ‘Culture of Vulnerability’” (an interview with James F. Keenan), National Catholic Reporter (May 22, 2019), https://www.ncronline.org/ news/accountability/ncr-connections/hierarchy-and-need-culture-vulnerability.

61. See Tom Roberts, “Turning the Abuse Crisis Discussion to Deeper Themes,” National Catholic Reporter (March 6, 2020), https://www.ncronline.org/news/accountability/turning- abuse-crisis-discussion-deeper-themes. There he mines the claims of Archbishop Scicluna and St. Joseph Sr. Carol Zinn, executive director of Leadership Conference of Women Religious, who spoke at the 2020 Leadership Roundtable Catholic Partnership Summit on “From Crisis to Co-Responsibility: Creating a New Culture of Leadership” (February 28–29, 2020), https://leadershiproundtable.org/what-we-do/catholic-partnership-summit/.

62. See her text in “At Abuse Summit, Sr. Veronica Openibo Calls for Complete Transparency,” National Catholic Reporter (February 23, 2019), https://www.ncronline.org/news/ accountability/abuse-summit-sister-openibo-calls-complete-transparency.

Hierarchicalism 101

of thinking, judging, and acting that are rooted in the vice of participatory, collective self-aggrandizement and protectionism rather than in the virtue of the sacred call to servant ministry. And this recognition of the culture might lead to further structural changes.

For instance, the canonist John Beal notes that all ecclesial accountability is unilat- erally, upwardly mobile; no one is accountable to anyone below:

Since all lines of accountability point upward in canon law, only hierarchical superiors are competent to judge whether their subordinates have adequately fulfilled the obligations of their offices or abused their powers. Bishops, pastors, and other officeholders are accountable for their stewardship to those who appointed them, not to those they serve. The faithful may express disgruntlement about the shoddy performance, nonfeasance, and malfeasance of their pastors and even bishops to their hierarchical superiors, but superiors are free to give these complaints as much or as little weight as their discretion dictates when deciding whether to retain, remove, or discipline their subordinates.63

Clearly canon law has allowed hierarchicalism to breed well. Thus reforming the law to hold bishops to accountability and transparency is necessary in the reformation of the hierarchy. But the vicious tendencies cultivated in a culture for centuries are not going to be undone simply by a legal adjustment. As we work for the reform of such legal structures, we need to work for exposing the vice itself. And this means recogniz- ing its expression that can be found not just in the way bishops think, judge, and act on sexual abuse, but in every other way they exercise their authoritative ministry. That is, hierarchicalism is not solely at the root of the sexual abuse scandal, but of nearly every problematic exercise of episcopal ministry. Toward that end, by way of conclusion, let us consider a variety of manifestations of hierarchicalism that might bring us to this habit of awareness.

On August 12, 2018, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former Apostolic Nuncio, published an eleven-page letter accusing Pope Francis and numerous other senior church leaders of knowing of and concealing allegations of sexual misconduct regard- ing Cardinal McCarrick. With considerable publicity he called for the resignation of the pope and others,64 though after releasing his letter he effectively went into hiding.65

63. Gaillardetz, “A Church in Crisis,” 210, quoted from John P. Beal, “Something There Is that Doesn’t Love a Law: Canon Law and Its Discontents,” in The Crisis of Authority in Catholic Modernity, ed. Michael J. Lacey and Francis Oakley (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 150.

64. Michael J. O’Loughlin, “Viganò’s Accusations: What We Know and What Questions They Raise,” America (August 26, 2018), https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2018/08/26/ viganos-accusations-what-we-know-and-what-questions-they-raise; Jason Horowitz, “The Man Who Took on Pope Francis: The Story Behind the Viganò Letter,” The New York Times (August 28, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/28/world/europe/archbishop- carlo-maria-vigano-pope-francis.html.

65. Gerard O’Connell, “It is Time for Archbishop Viganò to Meet the Press,” America (September 18, 2018), https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2018/09/13/it-time-archbishop- vigano-meet-press.

102 Theological Studies 83(1)

Notably, the pope refused to comment on the letter and subsequently, the lack of cred- ibility of the letter’s claims as well as Viganò’s own character emerged.66 Still, the archbishop continued to post letters attacking the pope and more recently supporting President Donald Trump.67 Here was mischief, self-serving and mean-spirited, and yet welcomed by fellow hierarchs.68

The vicious culture within the hierarchy as evidenced by the Viganò affair helps us to see that the sex abuse crisis was not the only outgrowth of hierarchicalism. True, Viganò’s famous letter was ostensibly prompted so as to reveal the culture that gave McCarrick impunity. But, Viganò, while wanting to expose those who protected McCarrick, showed no interest in reforming the church, removing hierarchical impu- nity, or instilling transparency and accountability. Quite the contrary, he long operated in that culture as a sanctuary. The Viganò case helps us to see the vicious culture within the hierarchy as prior to and capable of a wide array of problematic issues, from finan- cial mismanagement to the destruction of personal reputations. We can see that though the vicious culture within the hierarchy was inevitably causative of the sexual abuse scandal, it also generated a multitude of other problematic practices.

In order to highlight further hierarchicalism’s pervasiveness, I propose we look first at the evident refusal of the US episcopacy to receive the papal Apostolic Letter, Amoris Laetitia,69 Pope Francis’s response to the extraordinary synod on the family in 2014. Notably, this letter is a summons to a new form of ministerial accompaniment with families, designed to invite everyone in ministry into a renewed understanding and relationship with those who are married. Earlier, on these pages, I noted the vari- ety and imaginative models of reception by the episcopacies of Argentina, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and South Africa. In contrast, I found that with the exception of Cardinals Blase Cupich, Joseph Tobin, Donald Wuerl, Kevin Farrell, the head of the Vatican Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, and Bishop Robert McElroy, that the US bishops were decidedly slow to recognize the letter. In fact, they had been

66. Crux Staff, “Italian Court Rules Viganò Must Repay $2 Million to His Brother,” Crux (November 15, 2018), https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2018/11/italian-court-rules- vigano-must-repay-2-million-to-his-brother/.

67. James Keane, “Archbishop Viganò Is Aligning with Trump to Stay in the Spotlight. Pay Him No Attention,” America (June 12, 2020), https://www.americamagazine.org/ faith/2020/06/12/archbishop-vigano-aligning-trump-stay-spotlight-pay-him-no-attention.

68. Andrea Tornielli and Gianni Valente, Il Giorno del Giudizio (Milan: Edizioni Piemme, 2018); Massimo Faggioli, “‘The Day of Judgment’: In Italy, a New Book Challenges Viganò’s Testimony,” Commonweal (November 29, 2018), https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/ day-judgment; Michael Sean Winters, “Viganò’s Third Screed Unintentionally Reveals His True Motives,” National Catholic Reporter (October 26, 2018), https://www.ncronline. org/news/accountability/distinctly-catholic/vigan-s-third-screed-unintentionally-reveals- his-true; Winters, “Who Still Stands with Viganò?,” National Catholic Reporter (July 27, 2020), https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/distinctly-catholic/who-still-stands-vigan.

69. Francis,Amoris Laetitia(March 19, 2016), 311 (hereafter cited in text asAL), https://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/apost_exhortations/documents/ papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20160319_amoris-laetitia_en.pdf.

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deliberately slow from the outset.70 For instance, in preparation for the extraordinary synod, the pope asked his brother bishops around the world to send a questionnaire to the laity throughout their dioceses. Whereas the questionnaire engendered great par- ticipation in Europe,71 only a third of the US bishops made the questionnaire available to their laity,72 with a number actually outrightly opposing the instrument.73 Passive resistance to reform is an evident trait of hierarchicalism. Concerted passive resist- ance, such as it is in the US, is even more of an indicator.

After the article’s publication, the offices of Cupich and Boston College worked together to host a two-day seminar at Boston College on the apostolic letter with theologi- cal experts and episcopal leaders participating. The seminar’s aim was to facilitate the reception of Amoris Laetitia by the US hierarchy. Fifteen of the latter attended, including Cupich, Farrell, and McElroy, as well as Archbishops Wilton Gregory and Charles Scicluna.74 The meeting was successful and Cupich and Farrell asked if we could host three more seminars across the country where, with fifteen bishops attending each of those meetings, we would do outreach to a total of sixty members of the USCCB.75

These initiatives, however, did not make a noticeable change in how the US epis- copacy, generally speaking, responded to the papal apostolic letter. For all the attempts at facilitation, the concerted passive resistance remained. While we read how the epis- copacies in India, Germany, Portugal, France, Brazil, Italy, and Nigeria responded,76

70. James F. Keenan, “Receiving Amoris Laetitia,” Theological Studies 78, no. 1 (2017): 193– 212, https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0040563916681995.

71. Jonathan Luxmoore, “Europe’s Fractious Catholics Set Out Their Views in Synod Questionnaire,”National Catholic Reporter (June 2, 2015),https://www.ncronline.org/ news/global/europes-fractious-catholics-set-out-their-views-synod-questionnaire.

72. Michael O’Loughlin, “Some US Dioceses Report Results of Questionnaire,” The National Catholic Reporter (March 11, 2014),https://www.ncronline.org/news/accountability/ some-us-dioceses-report-results-questionnaire.

73. Patrick Kenny, “Synod ‘Questionnaire’ Not Designed for Laity,”National Catholic Register (December 29, 2014),http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/synod-questionnaire- not-designed-for-laity.

74. James F. Keenan, “What I Learned from Organizing, Participating in Boston’s ‘Amoris Laetitia’ Event,” National Catholic Reporter (October 9, 2017), https://www.ncronline. org/news/opinion/what-i-learned-organizing-participating-bostons-amoris-laetitia-event.

75. James F. Keenan, “7 Takeaways from Hosting ‘Amoris Laetitia’ Theology Seminars for 47 US Bishops,” National Catholic Reporter (March 1, 2018), https://www.ncronline.org/ news/people/7-takeaways-hosting-amoris-laetitia-theology-seminars-47-us-bishops.

76. See for instance, Antonio Autiero, ed., Per una nuova Cultura Pastorale: Il Contributo di Amoris Laetitia (Milan: San Paolo 2019); Andrea Grillo, Meravigliosa comples- sità. Riconoscere l’“Amoris Laetitia” nella società aperta (Assisi: Cittadella Editrice, 2017); Stephan Goertz and Caroline Witting, eds., Amoris laetitia: Wendepunkt in der Moraltheologie? (Freiburg: Herder, 2016); Hélène Bricout and Alain Thomasset, eds., La Joie de L’Amour (Prais-Namur: Lessius, 2016); Miguel Almeida, ed., Alegria e Misericórdia—A teologia do Papa Francisco para as famílias (Lisbon: Frente e Verso, 2020); Shaji George Kochuthara, ed., Amoris Laetitia: Transforming Pastoral Theology

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the letter has only been well received in a few dioceses, even though, as Anna Floerke Scheid notes, those needs are compelling. She writes that there are 4.5 million Catholics in the United States completely alienated by church teachings over divorce and remarriage. She shares childhood experiences of her belonging to an “irregular” family, commenting on just how alienating present practices in the church are, pro- foundly impacting parents and children. The trauma of her parent’s divorce was pain- ful enough; the annulment was even more devastating. She writes, “Divorce was an excruciating experience. The ‘declaration of nullity’ stating that my parents’ marriage had never been valid was confusing, and distressing.”She adds, “My own family might have avoided added sorrow if annulments just weren’t necessary for my parents who wanted to receive communion.”

As she suggests, try explaining to a child that an annulment does not mean that the children of the annulled have suddenly become bastards. Moreover, the language of “irregular” is itself problematic. Floerke Scheid writes, “Calling so many families ‘irregular’ echoes (and perhaps generates?) the stigma that I experienced given my family’s history of divorce and remarriage. Being called ‘irregular’ makes me feel a bit like a leper. ‘Irregular’—even mitigated by quotation marks—makes me inferior and lesser than all those regular families. My ‘irregularity’ marks me.”77

The record shows the success of those dioceses like Chicago, San Diego, and Washington, which have received Amoris Laetitia. They have developed program- ming for families, parents, and couples that support them with accompaniment, the sacraments, and community-building instruction and action. Where the exhortation has been actively received, the church is being renewed.78 There, the people of God are being accompanied and renewed in their own living out of their marital vocation and the episcopacy is exercising its own servant ministerial leadership. Yet where the con- certed resistance remains, there can be found hierarchicalism and its inability to exer- cise servant ministry and, in particular, merciful accompaniment.

Earlier this year, I was invited by another journal to comment on the reception of Amoris Laetita in the United States on the occasion of the letter’s fifth anniversary. So as to give such an account, I visited each of the 32 US archdiocesan web pages to see how they receive the apostolic exhortation. In a number of instances, we can find a warm reception. About Amoris, there were over 260 entries on Cardinal Cupich’s

and Transforming the Church (Bangalore: Dharmaram Publications, 2021); Stan Chu Ilo, ed., Love, Joy, and Sex: African Conversations on Amoris Laetitia and Gospel of Family in a Divided World (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2019); “Aos 5 Anos da Amoris Laetitia,” Perspectiva Teológica 53, no. 1 (April 2021), http://www.faje.edu.br/periodicos/index. php/perspectiva/issue/view/589.

77. Anna Floerke Scheid, “Beyond ‘Irregular’ Families,” Political Theology Network (May 6, 2016), https://politicaltheology.com/beyond-irregular-families-anna-floerke-scheid/.

78. Grant Gallicho and James F. Keenan, eds., Amoris Laetitia: A New Momentum for Moral

    Formation and Pastoral Practice (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2018); Joshua McElwee, “Cupich Says ‘Amoris Laetitia’ Changes How Church Teaches Families, by Learning,” National Catholic Reporter (February 9, 2018), https://www.ncronline.org/news/theology/ cupich-says-amoris-laetitia-changes-how-church-teaches-families-learning.

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Chicago archdiocesan page (https://www.archchicago.org/); six full categories of pro- grammatic information at Cardinal Wilton Gregory’s Washington archdiocesan page (https://adw.org/); 45 references on Archbishop Charles Thompson’s Indianapolis archdiocesan page (https://www.archindy.org/); and six interesting events on Archbishop Gregory Aymond’s New Orleans page (https://www.arch-no.org/). While he is not an archbishop, Robert McElroy, bishop of the Diocese of San Diego, has cre- ated a web page (https://www.sdcatholic.org/) that posts an impressive eight full cat- egories of updated programs.

On smaller scales, the Archbishop of Louisville Joseph Kurtz reports hosting a theological dialogue on it (https://www.archlou.org/) and the Archbishop of Kansas City Joseph Naumann hosted a retreat for married couples on it (https://archkck.org/). Similarly, Cardinal Joseph Tobin’s Newark archdiocesan page posted a speech (https:// www.rcan.org/), and Archbishop William Lori’s Baltimore page reported remarks he delivered to his priests (https://www.archbalt.org/).

The remaining ones were Amoris-light. Of the 32 territorial archdioceses, twenty had nothing remarkable on them but perhaps two or three news references to Amoris: Anchorage, Atlanta, Boston, Cincinnati, Denver, Detroit, Dubuque, Hartford, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New York, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Portland, St. Louis, Saint Paul and Minneapolis, San Antonio, San Francisco, Seattle, and Santa Fe. Notably, two had no searchable reference whatsoever to the document: Mobile and Portland.79

It does seem reasonable to expect that a bishop would receive papal magisterial teaching. But the document is more than that; it is the fruit of a synodal process that sought to address the contemporary challenges of the family. Their non-reception alienates them not only from the teaching itself and their own relationship with the bishop of Rome, it also alienates them from the episcopacy itself that seeks today through synodality to exercise its collegiality and its call to servant leadership. As disenfranchised as they are, they become prisoners of their own vicious culture alien- ated from their very identity.

Noticeably, as in the sexual abuse scandal, their stance toward Amoris is remarka- bly like their stance toward the sexual abuse scandal, a sustained disinterest. This is not a coincidence. We cannot think that the studied refusal of one bishop to receive the teaching is unrelated to the studied refusal of the rest of our hierarchy. Hierarchicalism empowers these individual bishops to ignore the magisterial teaching of the church. It gives them permission to resist.

In his groundbreaking essay on clericalism, Papesh used the “wink” as a metaphor. A wink was the sign for a cleric to signal another that he understood the code of con- duct within the club. Among our bishops, there has been a good deal of that winking within their club, on sex abuse, on Amoris, and on Pope Francis, but also on Presidents Trump and Biden. A culture has its code of conduct.

79. See James F. Keenan, “Regarding Amoris Laetitia: Its Language, Its Reception, Some Challenges, and the Agnosticism of Some of the Hierarchy,” Perspectiva Teológica 53, no. 1 (April 2021): 41–60, http://www.faje.edu.br/periodicos/index.php/perspectiva/article/ view/4675/4605.

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In January 2020, the bishops, after four years of notable silence during the Trump administration, began a scrutiny campaign about the worthiness of the incoming Catholic president to receive Eucharist. As they began this scrutiny, a variety of voices from Rome and elsewhere expressed dismay at a certain lack of equity within the bishops’ own judgment. As one journalist summed up the observation of many, “In what moral universe does Biden require a Catholic task force when Trump got a free pass?”80 Tom Roberts saw it as “a tragic end to the US bishops’ long descent into par- tisan politics.”81 Moreover, two significant works, one by Massimo Faggioli and the other by Ruby Cramer at Politico, highlighted Biden’s evident devotion to the Eucharist in particular in light of the tragic losses of his wife and children.82 From these, the bishops’ stance seems not only unfair, but also pastorally obtuse, which only magnifies hierarchicalism’s incomparable style.83

These manifestations of hierarchicalism are becoming in the United States more and more evident. Recently, two theologians have written about bishops needing to be held accountable. Daniel P. Horan called out bishops whose statements on transgender people are dehumanizing and transphobic, arguing in effect that their abstractions led to harm rather than to ethical teaching.84 Two days before Horan’s essay, Bryan N. Massingale wrote that, while Catholics were deeply disappointed with episcopal lead- ership twenty years ago, today they are simply exasperated:

Something has changed since then. There is a different tone in the questions. Now, the deep disappointment expresses not deep love but exasperation. A kind of anger that is not a prelude to deeper engagement and resolve but rather the step before resignation. As I listen

80. Randall Balmer, “In What Moral Universe Does Biden Require a Catholic Task Force when Trump Got a Free Pass?,” Los Angeles Times (November 23, 2020), https:// www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-11-23/joe-biden-conference-of-catholic-bishops- jose-gomez-abortion-rights-holy-communion.

81. Tom Roberts, “A Tragic End to the US Bishops’ Long Descent into Partisan Politics,” National Catholic Reporter (January 12, 2020), https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/ tragic-end-us-bishops-long-descent-partisan-politics.

82. Massimo Faggioli, Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States (Worcester: Bayard Press, 2021); Ruby Cramer, “‘A Private Matter’: Joe Biden’s Very Public Clash with His Own Church,” Politico (September 5, 2021), https://www.politico.com/news/ magazine/2021/09/05/joe-biden-catholic-church-509396.

83. See Christopher White, “Who Are the Bishops Pushing Communion-denial Efforts?,” National Catholic Reporter (June 10, 2021), https://www.ncronline.org/news/people/ who-are-bishops-pushing-communion-denial-efforts.

84. Daniel P. Horan, “Recent Transphobic Statements from Bishops Make Truth Claims without Facts,” National Catholic Reporter (September 1, 2021), https:// www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/faith-seeking-understanding/recent-transpho- bic-statements-bishops-make-truth-claims. On similar grounds see Craig A. Ford, Jr., “US Bishops’ Theology Is the True Scandal in Philadelphia Foster Care Case,” National Catholic Reporter (June 2, 2021), https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/ us-bishops-theology-true-scandal-philadelphia-foster-care-case.

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to my audiences, there is a growing sense that church leaders, especially the bishops (and too many priests), are not only unwilling to hear their concerns but incapable of giving them a respectful hearing. Again and again, I hear of repeated attempts to engage in dialogue and to raise honest questions about complex issues concerning human sexuality, systemic racism, or political discernment—and of repeated dismissals, lack of response, or a questioning of their faith and loyalty to the church.85

The people of God are seeing hierarchicalism expressing itself without abate.
The reform of the episcopacy will be through the recognition and excision of the vice of hierarchicalism and the recognition and promotion of the virtue of servant leadership. Indeed, the pope continues to call the episcopacy to greater prophetic ser- vice, to a type of accompaniment that our hiearchy still rebuffs.86 Nonetheless, his continuous summons recently hit a raw nerve when no less than Cardinal Reinhard Marx offered his resignation for his own failure in negotiating the sexual abuse scan- dal. The pope saw in the resignation a new pivot and so he charged Marx to stay and work for the reform of the church by advancing a more synodal, dialogical form of leadership known for its transparency and clearly at odds with hierarchicalism.87 The pope reiterated the need for change just recently when he admonished the bishops of Hungary “to resist the temptation of retreating into a defense of the institutions and structures,” reminding them that they are “not called to be primarily bureaucrats and managers, or to seek privileges and benefits, but to demonstrate a burning passion for

the Gospel.”88
If we really want reform of the church with regard to lasting change, we need to

look beyond clericalism to hierarchicalism. We need to focus on the hierarchy, on the structural protections that give them impunity. Indeed, the attention of Scicluna and others has been precisely on those episcopal structures that privilege not priests, but rather bishops. That has been the work of these reformers. But they recognize too the underlying culture that prompts these men to insist on their prerogatives, entitlements, and impunity. Indeed, the space and sustenance that these old structures and culture provide our bishops are just being seen for the first time, these last several years.

It is important for us not to be diverted. We should not miss what we have been seeing, a deeply problematic culture that needs to be radically reformed. Certainly, as

85. Bryan N. Massingale, “Catholics Aren’t Disappointed, They’re Exasperated,” US Catholic (August 30, 2021), https://uscatholic.org/articles/202108/catholics-arent-disappointed- theyre-exasperated/.

86. Diego Fares, “The Figure of the Bishop according to Pope Francis,” Civiltà Cattolica (April 2017), https://www.laciviltacattolica.com/the-figure-of-the-bishop-according- to-pope-francis/.

87. Robert Mickens, “Pope Francis Endorses Cardinal Marx and His ‘Manifesto’ for Church Reform,”LaCroix(June11,2021),https://international.la-croix.com/news/letter-from-rome/ pope-francis-endorses-cardinal-marx-and-his-manifesto-for-church-reform/14463.

88. Linda Bordoni, “Pope to Hungary’s Bishops: ‘Be Close to God, Each Other, Priests and Your Flock’,” Vatican News (September 12, 2021), https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/ news/2021-09/pope-hungary-discourse-bishops-full-text.html.

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they have done before, say in Chile, but here in the US as well, those hierarchs who have the most to lose, like Viganò, will not hesitate to deflect our attention from them by giving us a call to reform some other body, like the priesthood or the papacy, or even the presidency, for instance. But if we love the church, we must witness and wrestle with the specific vice that infects our leadership, hierarchicalism.

As resistance to clericalism has given us public footing to reform our seminaries and parishes these past twenty years, it is time for us to realize, as Scicluna did, that hierarchicalism brings into focus those vices that preempt the vulnerable grace of epis- copal ordination,89 a grace that we and they need to see much more evidently in the corporate culture of our bishops.90

ORCID iD

James F. Keenan https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6909-1770

Author Biography

James F. Keenan, SJ (STD, Pontifical Gregorian University) is the Vice Provost of Global Engagement, the Director of the Jesuit Institute, and the Canisius Professor at Boston College.

89. See, for instance, Robert Mickens’s concerns about the Roman Colleges in “Not Fit for Purpose: The Current Seminary System Cannot Prepare Presbyters for a Synodal, Post- Vatican II Church,” La Croix (September 4, 2021), https://international.la-croix.com/news/ letter-from-rome/not-fit-for-purpose/14837.

90. Special thanks to my undergraduate research assistants, Grace Christenson, Aidan O’Neill and Paxton Decker.