Rebelling against the Catholic Church - the nuns versus the Cardinals

Cardinal James Francis McIntyre

It is a time of great tension in the Catholic Church.  People are asking questions that people never used to ask.  

 
It seems as if the men in charge cannot keep up with the pace of change, and a widely-read national magazine puts the crisis on the front cover.  

 
The story inside explores “The Catholic Exodus,” and explores the difficulties American parishes are having staffing schools and churches with priests and nuns.

 
You can be forgiven if you think this is a story from 2011.  But it is, in fact, from 40 years earlier.  

 
It was way back in 1970 that Time magazine wrote about the Catholic “exodus,” and tried to explain “why priests and nuns are quitting.”

 
Indeed, it is easy to believe the crisis in the Catholic Church in the U.S. is a fairly recent thing.  

 
But in some ways, the debate that is going on now is an extension of debates that have their roots in the 1960s.

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This came to mind last week when I read about the death of a 95 year-old nun named Anita Caspary.  Her name is no longer a household one, but it was her’s on the cover of Time when the magazine explored the Catholic crisis decades ago.

 
Caspary came to be seen as a “rebel nun” who had a conflict with one of the most powerful Irish American Catholics, Cardinal James Francis McIntyre, who rose through the ranks of the church under Cardinal Francis Spellman, dubbed by one biographer as the “American Pope.”

 
In the end, some 300 nuns initiated a series of changes in day-to-day life that they thought were in the spirit of the times.  

 
Cardinal McIntyre, whose mother was born in Kiltormer, Co. Galway, disagreed.  When all was said and done, the nuns parted ways with the church. Some see it as one of the largest breakaways in Catholic American history.  

 
The trouble between the cardinals and the nun has its roots in the changes wrought by the reforms which came out of the Second Vatican Council.  Spellman had attended the meetings in Rome and feared liberal forces had hijacked the proceedings.

 
Spellman, whose Irish grandparents had settled in Massachusetts, was named sixth archbishop on New York in early 1939.  Later, he would also be named Apostolic Vicar for the U.S. Armed Forces, a key position with World War II looming on the horizon.

 
Since Spellman had to serve New York and the military, he relied heavily on an auxiliary bishop – James Francis McIntyre.

 
Both were seen as traditionalists, at a time when many Irish Americans were still familiar with the sting of anti-Catholicism. (In fact, Spellman accused Eleanor Roosevelt of being anti-Catholic.  When, however, a Catholic ran for president, Spellman supported Richard Nixon, an early indication of the Irish drift away from the Democratic Party.)

 
In the late 1940s, McIntyre went west to become the second Archbishop of Los Angeles.  The area’s population boom made McIntyre an influential figure.

 
When the impact of Vatican II became clear, McIntyre and Spellman were seen as opponents. 

 
The Los Angeles-based Sisters of the Immaculate Heart, however, believed that the time was right to propose a series of changes -- nuns would no longer need to wear habits, or follow traditional Vatican guidelines when it came to prayer and even reading material.

 
The sisters believed they were doing what a good Catholic does -- following the rules that were coming out of the Vatican.  

But McIntyre did not accept the nuns’ proposals. If they moved ahead with their changes they would not be allowed to teach in Catholic schools.

 
“All these changes were taking place without incident in the majority of dioceses around the country. Cardinal McIntyre simply was saying, ‘Not in my diocese,’” Sandra M. Schneiders, a professor emeritus at the Jesuit School of Theology, told The New York Times this week.

 
The 300 nuns eventually formed a communal Christian organization that served the poor and elderly and still has over 150 members.

 
So, while the times are rough these days for American Catholics, maybe they’ve been that way for a long time.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

Touch of Southie in Brooklyn as Donnie Wahlberg and Michael Patrick MacDonald speak to students

Michael Patrick Macdonald

What do a former teen heartthrob and a son of Southie have to say to roomful of Brooklyn high school students?

Plenty it turns out.

Last week, an extraordinary meeting of minds took place in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

As regular readers of this column know, I have a day job as an English teacher at Automotive High School.

In my prior life as an Irish Voice reporter, I got to know author Thomas Kelly, best-selling author of books such as Empire Rising, Payback and The Rackets.

Kelly’s latest gig is a job as a writer and producer on the hit CBS TV show Blue Bloods.  The show is about an Irish American family of cops led by patriarch Frank Reagan, the New York City police commissioner, played by Tom Selleck.

One of the main characters in the show is Chief Reagan’s son Danny, played by Donnie Wahlberg, who has appeared in films such as The Sixth Sense, Zookeeper and Saw IV and V.

Of course, in Wahlberg’s past life, he was one-fifth of the chart-topping band New Kids on the Block.  The kids -- now known as NKOTB -- still get together and perform. But Wahlberg has also successfully made the transition from singing to acting.

One thing Kelly and Wahlberg share is a desire to remember where they come from.

Both currently make fine livings in show business, but their beginnings were humble, to say the least.  So they understand that kids in traditionally underserved communities sometimes need different kinds of motivation.

That’s where the Actors and Writers Book Club of the Writers Guild Of America East (WGAE) Foundation comes in.

The club sends actors and writers to high schools to read and discuss works of literature to get students excited about reading, writing and story telling.

So Kelly asked if my students would be interested in a program featuring Wahlberg, as well as the acclaimed memoirist Michael Patrick MacDonald, whose book All Souls: A Family Story of Southie, is perhaps the definitive look at that most Irish of cities, South Boston.

In the past I’d taught MacDonald’s book in my English classes.  Though it is about poor and working class Irish Catholics, the book’s themes have always resonated deeply with my students who are largely black and Hispanic.

MacDonald writes poignantly about the scourges of crime and drugs, fatherlessness, as well as the perseverance of large families living in poverty.

The Southie disdain for snitches and rats is also something my students are quite familiar with.

I decided to spend two weeks with my current 12th grade students (60 overall) reading excerpts from All Souls to prepare them for MacDonald and Wahlberg’s visit.

This was particularly timely since just a few months back, the most infamous South Bostonian of them all, Whitey Bulger, had been arrested.

This time around, my students were consumed by the question of how we -- how MacDonald, how we all -- are shaped by our environment.

Are you destined to follow in the footsteps of alluring criminals like Whitey Bulger, as one of MacDonald’s brothers did?  Or is it possible to not only break the cycle but return to help others do the same, as Michael Patrick MacDonald did?

“Destiny -- that’s a powerful word,” replied Wahlberg last Friday in the Automotive auditorium, when he was asked by a student if he believes “geography is destiny.”

Wahlberg went on to note that his own large family from Dorchester was “poor,” surviving on welfare and “government cheese.”

But Kelly, MacDonald and Wahlberg agreed that with passion and tenacity, you can become anything you want, wherever you come from.

“My own brother was in prison,” Wahlberg added, when the New Kids were getting big.

Wahlberg, of course, is referring to world famous actor and Oscar nominee Mark Wahlberg, most recently seen as Irish Micky Ward in The Fighter.

The Brooklyn teenagers peppered the writers and singer/movie star with questions about acting and singing, passion and show biz.

“That was great,” Wahlberg said afterwards.

And in case anyone thought he was merely acting, he vowed to return to the school for a basketball game when the season kicks off next month.

Was Catholicism worse than Communism?

John Banville

If you are looking for a good anti-Catholic rant, you can listen to certain Evangelical Protestants or rigid atheists.

But why bother? Many Catholics these days are as reliably anti-Catholic as the Vatican’s oldest enemies.

This is understandable, given the revelations of the last decade or so.

Living as a devout Catholic requires a tremendous amount of dedication and sacrifice. That was especially true in a largely Protestant nation such as America, where Irish Catholics were a distinct minority for the century or so following the Famine.

But these days, it seems as if Catholics are the ones who want to throw stones at the stained glass windows.

This was made crystal clear by two recent developments in the ongoing tension between the Irish and Rome.

First came the announcement that members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) have filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court in The Hague, outlining how Vatican officials tolerated and enabled “the systematic and widespread concealing of rape and child sex crimes,” as Irish American SNAP leader David Clohessy has written.

Clohessy added, “After many years of effort in the United States and around the world, the (abuse) problem became too big to ignore. … We finally began to feel heard. And now we want these crimes investigated and prosecuted.”

Clohessy knows this move may not be popular.

“Some may be shocked that we are accusing the world leader of a church, a man considered by many people of faith to be a holy leader. But one cannot be the head of an institution and escape accountability for that institution’s continuing criminal cover-ups,” he writes.

Clohessy then quoted Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny, who said, “The rape and torture of children were downplayed, or ‘managed,’ to uphold instead the primacy of the institution — its power, its standing and its reputation.”

Most observers feel that SNAP’s ploy is not likely to be successful -- unless, of course, by successful they mean drawing more attention to an urgent problem.

Still, whatever the technical outcome, trying to haul the Vatican before a human rights tribunal means that at least some people want to equate priestly crimes with systematic atrocities committed under brutal dictatorships in places such as Haiti and China and Chile. Or, for that matter, old Communist regimes.

Which is why I was taken aback when I heard a recent interview with acclaimed Irish writer John Banville, a widely admired writer who has won the Booker Prize (for his novel The Sea) and is now gaining a larger following for his mystery novels, written under the pen name Benjamin Black.

Banville told the editor of The New York Times Book Review that Ireland in the fifties “was a time of great secrecy. We were in the clutch of the Catholic Church. The church for us was what the Communist party was for Eastern Europe.

“We only discovered this when we got older, how unfree we were. And everything was hidden, as we have discovered, to our horror, in the past five or 10 years.”

Are SNAP and Banville right? Do the church’s transgressions rise to the level of the 20th century’s worst dictatorial regimes?

We probably do need to make distinctions between Ireland and America, though Catholicism did pervade big-city parishes in the U.S. nearly as thoroughly as it did elsewhere.

Indeed, Banville’s comparison is particularly jolting for Irish Americans. They often flaunted their anti-Communism to prove to native WASPs just how patriotic they could be.

And now it is being said they themselves were no better off than the victims of Communism?

I’d say SNAP may be on to something, but I will respectfully disagree with Banville.

Moreso in Ireland, but also in America, parish institutions pervaded every aspect of life. To say they were as negatively pervasive as Communism’s rigged elections and secret police is simply too strong a case to make.

The saddest thing, of course, is that the case can actually be made at all.

(Contact tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

Governor Christie’s ‘crazy’ Catholic problem - why he relishes conflict

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie

Last May, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie explained why he seems to relish conflict.

“I have an Irish father,” said Christie, who on Tuesday announced that he would not seek the GOP presidential nomination, “and I had…a Sicilian mother. For those of you who have been exposed to the combination of Irish and Sicilian, it has made me not unfamiliar with conflict.”

Meanwhile, Christie’s wife, Mary Pat, has not only been tabbed as a highly influential partner. She is also “the ninth of 10 kids in a close-knit Irish Catholic family,” according to the New York Post.

A long time family friend, New Jersey state Senator Joe Kyrillos, was recently quoted as saying, “(Mary Pat) does not get pushed around. She’s a tough Irish woman. She comes from a family of 10 kids!”
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So, if Christie ultimately decided to throw his (ample) weight behind a presidential run, it would have added a decidedly Irish Catholic flair.

And that could have been a big problem.

On the surface, an Irish Catholic Republican is no big deal these days. The problems come when you dig deeply into the conservative GOP base, where strong vestiges of anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant sentiment still linger.

Now, it is true that Republicans already have a Catholic (Rick Santorum) and a Mormon (Mitt Romney) in their crowded field. But it’s also true that neither of them have exactly wowed vast numbers of Republicans.
And as one religious expert wrote in The New York Times in July, “Hardline fundamentalists remain anti-Mormon (and anti-Catholic, for that matter); they may not ever support any but their own.”

And let’s not forget the Muslims! Christie himself scolded conservatives who groaned when the governor appointed Muslim American Sohail Mohammed to the New Jersey Superior Court.

“I think it is terrible to try to exclude someone from office based only on his religion, and that’s what was happening here,” said Christie, before looking back to a pivotal moment in Irish Catholic American history.

“President Kennedy had to stand up in Houston and say his own personal faith wouldn’t intersect with his public life. Since then I thought we wouldn’t have any more of this ridiculousness,” he said.

Christie also famously said, “I’m tired of dealing with crazies.”

Well, that’s just what he would have had to deal with if he had jumped into the race.

Catholicism remains a problem when you wander away from the moderate Republicanism of the Northeastern suburbs and into the more intense hotbeds of evangelical Protestantism in the south and West.

Michele Bachmann has been linked to a Lutheran church with nearly half a million members whose admiration for Reformation leader Martin Luther has led them to label the papacy “the anti-Christ.”

Yes, Bachmann has left this particularly loving church. But how many Democrats do you really think are among the half a million members of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod?

Meanwhile, don’t forget that John McCain had to repudiate the endorsement of a notorious anti-Catholic preacher four years ago.

“The McCain campaign had already endured a series of other disclosures of controversial past statements from (Reverend John) Hagee about his views of Catholics,” the Times noted in 2008.

Hagee is far from a footnote these days. Word is he is thinking of endorsing Rick Perry.

The point of this is not to tar these candidates with the radical views of certain anti-Catholics. The point is to note that a significant number of influential conservatives still hold these views.

Now, it is true Christie is solidly opposed to abortion. But as his defense of a Muslim American judge suggests, he has also taken a generally moderate stance on immigration. (As, by the way, did Ronald Reagan, as Linda Chavez noted in an interesting New York Post column last week.)

It all comes down to this -- how will this ethnic Catholic who won’t bash immigrants and who talks about John F. Kennedy in a positive light fair in the Republican primary?

How many “crazies” would Christie have listened to before his famous temper made it clear that he is quite unelectable?

We won’t find out this time around, but maybe in four years . . .

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)