KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter
October 8, 2018
by Michael Sean Winters
Two news stories last week gave ample justification for my repeated warnings this summer to be careful about viewing an increased role for the laity as some kind of panacea for what ails the church. Both stories indicated that there is a kind of clericalism unique to the laity that has emerged and which bodes ill and heretical. And, most worryingly, both stories demonstrated the ugly power of money that lay leadership entails, raising the question, unique to the American Church: Can the Catholic Church be bought?
The first story was Tom Roberts’ account of a meeting at the Catholic University of America to launch the “Better Church Governance Group.” The means for accomplishing improved ecclesial governance was to form a kind of posse of ex-FBI agents, academics and conservative activists to probe into the lives of all cardinal electors, compiling dossiers “in the manner of political opposition research.” That characterization was frightening enough, but as you read the rest of their literature, (some of their protestations and walk backs notwithstanding,) it seemed that Roy Cohn was their model: This is reform with an ideological agenda. How else to explain the warm citation to Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s “testimony,” which has been demonstrated to be filled with mistakes and unsubstantiated rumors, or the derogatory references to Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, to whom no whiff of scandal has attached itself.
Most of the organizers of the effort were unknown to me but Jay Richards was listed as a “research editor.” Mr. Richards is a professor at the Tim & Steph Busch School of Business at CUA and also hosts a weekly TV show on EWTN in which he spouts capitalist agitprop. I debated Richards at the Cato Institute in advance of Pope Francis’s visit to the United States. He pretends to be an aficionado of Catholic social teaching but, in fact, he and the school at which he teaches are committed to undermining that teaching. After this, why is he still on the staff? The Catholic University of America makes much of its mission and the fact that it holds a pontifical charter. But, apparently, if your ecclesiology and your politics are conservative enough, the fact you are talking breezily about influencing a conclave is no big deal. Richards should be sacked.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.