Beyond The Catholic Pale
The Claretian Missionaries apparently are continuing (in the U.S. at least) their occasional dedication to causes beyond the Catholic pale, in this case ordination of women to the priesthood. Their magazine, U.S. Catholic, almost 2 years ago (February 2001) featured an article on five women who think they have been "called" to be priests and their frustrations in belonging to a Church that refuses to agree. Included was a sidebar by Dominican Sr. Catharina Broome, who claims St. Therese of Lisieux wanted to be a priest.
It was Claretian interest in spreading the opinions of Fr. Charles Curran that led to an uprising of liberals against the late Bishop Joseph Sullivan of Baton Rouge. The Claretian chaplain of Catholic students at Louisiana State University invited Fr. Charles Curran (of anti-Humanae Vitae fame — or infamy) to speak under sponsorship of the Catholic center and at its diocesan-owned facilities. Bishop Sullivan rightly objected, and when the media made a free-speech cause celebre out of the ordered disinvitation of Fr. Curran, the bishop was pilloried, insulted, and vilified by Catholics more loyal to their liberal understandings than to their Church. The toll this took on the good bishop surely brought about his untimely death.
The Vatican stepped in regarding the U.S. Catholic's one-sided treatment of what Pope John Paul II has formally declared is impossible — ordination of women. The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith "requested" clarification of "the Church's teaching on the inadmissibility of ordaining women to the Catholic priesthood." In this just past December's issue, the magazine ran the Pope's 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis "On Reserving Priestly Ordination to Men Alone," and the congregation's 1995 insistence that the Pope's words on the matter are to be held "always, everywhere, and by all, as belonging to the deposit of faith." To his credit, Claretian general council member Fr. Rosendo Urrabazo commented that the Vatican request for the U.S. Catholic to give the official teaching for its readers "was very reasonable."
Of course, what the Vatican ordered for a magazine owned and published by a Catholic religious order is much more than "reasonable" — it is a duty. Such a publication has a moral obligation to present Catholic truth, rather than to scandalize concerning it. The suggestion that women can become valid and licit priests flouts Tradition as well as binding statements of the Papal Magisterium. In letting its readers draw an opposite understanding from what it prints, the Claretian magazine disregarded Christ's own warning about scandal.
Did not the Claretian editor, whose identity is unimportant though mentioned in news reports, not know this? Then there is something wrong with Claretian functioning to the point of serious imprudence. The same can be said of such Catholic papers as The Catholic Herald of Milwaukee, which is running the Catholic News Service article on the Vatican's action gave the online address for getting the original U.S. Catholic article. If the Catholic News Service actually provided that address with the coverage it provided client papers it, too, should be judged at the least imprudent in giving the impression speculation on the possibility and desirability of women becoming priests is acceptable.
This raises the question as to just what is the apostolate of Catholic journalism — to serve the Catholicity of Catholic readers and the communication of it (that is, Catholicity) for possible non-Catholic readers, or to present non-Catholic or anti-Catholic opinion on the same level as that which is Catholic? The latter approach is that of secular journalism. And if Catholic publications are going to follow it, why is there need for them? They can't do as thorough a job along those lines as openly (and often anti-Catholic) secular newspapers and journals. Perhaps your columnist here is being old-fashioned in considering Catholic journalism an apostolate; if it isn't he thinks his own career has been a waste of time. Secular journalism is dedicated to spreading any and all fact and opinion, supposedly indiscriminately, though often in a selective and subjective way. That, in an age of trivia, is an exercise in trivia. For Catholic journalism to do the same would be to trivialize the faith.
The founder of the Claretians would well understand that distinction between Catholic journalism and the secular. St. Anthony Mary Claret intended the community he founded to be missionary, as he personally always aspired to be, and was even as Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba. After resigning that Cuban post, he returned to Spain and used literature as a missionary instrument. All his 200 books and pamphlets were instructive in the faith. Spanish radical revolutionists of 1868 sent him as well as Queen Isabella into exile. That may have been providential, for in his forced residency in Rome he promoted a definition of Papal infallibility, which eventuated in the Vatican Council of 1870. It is more than doubtful that he ever would have approved a publication of his order spreading the guff the U.S. Catholic did in presenting the dissatisfaction of certain women that the Church won't make them priests. What a wonderful service a journal such as the U.S. Catholic could give if it lived up to its name.
The truth is, promoters of an often false and misleading mythical spirit of Vatican II took over much (nearly all) the Catholic press in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, gradually purging from the pages of most Catholic publications all traditionally Catholic viewpoints and presentations, and substituting their opposite. Even where, the liberals found that impossible, the result at least in many Catholic newspapers was more pap than substance. Neither approaches did much for readership, a fact that liberals choose to ignore.
It is possible Sr. Catharina has badly misinterpreted the thoughts of St. Therese of Lisieux. St. Therese once told herself, "'The good God would not inspire unattainable desires'." She was thinking of sainthood, and her determination to attain it. She knew full well the priesthood was unobtainable, and thus she would have known any thought contrary could not be an inspiration from God. But sainthood is open to everyone, even the very little as Therese saw herself. Indeed, feeling herself unable to take the steep steps to perfection (her own words) she found a way in Isaias, "from the mouth of the Eternal Wisdom" — "Whosoever is a little one, let him come to me." No woman of that spirit would feel frustration or unfulfilled at not being able to undergo ordination.
Maybe we need more Catholic commentators and contemporary journalists in that spirit of littleness. That would be in the genuine spirit of Vatican II, rather than the mythical one. The council in its document on the apostolate of the laity tells us that the perfect example of this "is the most Blessed Virgin Mary." The idea that Christ's Mother would aspire to anything that her Son did not provide — among which is certainly the priesthood He conferred only upon men — is not in the spirit of either the Council or the little way of St. Therese of Lisieux.
© 2003 The Wanderer Printing Co.
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