Michael Voris and the Fall of the Church

 Michael Voris, through his Church Militant organization and his YouTube channel, 'The Vortex', has recently and uncompromisingly condemned the hierarchical church not only for its failure to stem the  tide  of sexual abuse in the church, but for its fostering of this criminality.  He traces the heinous acts of predatory clergy to a communist plot to plant gay men within seminaries in the Americas.  According to Voris, the infiltration of the church began in central America and spread northward. Of course, theories of communist infiltration of the church (to 'destroy it from within') are not new, and seem to have begun in earnest during the approach of Vatican II, and certainly in its aftermath. While it is obvious that Voris has an ax to grind with the gay community ( at least the gay Catholic community, though he might point to an oxymoronic character of that syntagm) and his conspiracy theory quite incredible, his overall analysis of the crisis in the church is quite sound:  Power corrupts and no crime is too large to place in its interest. Regardless, it seems that the church does not need a communist plot to undermine its mission; all we need is what we have: a callous structure, power-hungry men, and a seminary system that functions as a magnet for sexual predators.

 Recent revelations continue to demonstrate that the crisis in the church is not limited to the Anglophone world; for example, the sad and disturbing news from Germany underscores the systemic metastases of sexual abuse within the body of Christ.  It certainly appears that wherever the church is,  there are victims of hierarchical horror. For Voris, the matter is simple: homosexuality in se has seeded the church with evil acted out in criminal predation. I am not suggesting here that Voris asserts all gay men are predators and natural-born child abusers and ephebophiles, or even that members of the LGBT community cannot be faithful Catholics; he remains clear that practice, and not nature, is the culprit ( he uses the term "sodomy" more frequently than the term "sodomite"). 

As a straight male, I have little insight into the gay life-style, with all its attendant issues and struggles; but as an informed Catholic (Voris might challenge that assertion as well), I have a good sense of the Catholic Tradition, and its fundamental teachings. Moreover, as a physician, I am not prepared to say anything more than what good research has already suggested: gay men are no more likely to be sexual predators than straight men, no more likely to be child abusers than straight men. The scientific literature is far less robust in matters of ephebophilia, or sexual harassment---the kind of abuse a cleric might visit upon an adult male seminarian or adolescent male involved in his church. In addition, there is no literature that suggests that gay clergy are more or less inclined to succeed in celibacy than straight clergy. Celibacy is a gift, or it is not, so it appears.

The problem with Michael Voris's posture in the matter of the crisis in the church, then, is not an intellectual one, but perhaps a political one. His critique is sound, but his hermeneutic is suspect. He and I land in much the same place regarding what must happen in the church if it is to survive, but we part company when it comes to LGBT persons and their place in the church, whether in the pews or in the rectory. The matter of sexual orientation becomes irrelevant if celibacy is a real gift, a real expression of human sexuality and personhood. If celibacy is a farce, then we are left with the irreducible teachings of the church on natural law, idolatry, marriage (to name a few). Though readers of this blog already know that I put into question the very idea of 'nature' as it appears in the Magisterium, I continue to wonder how it plays out in the lives of all Catholics, of all Christians. What is not in question, however, is the nature of evil, and evil natures. When the heinous acts of the hierarchy, whether of sexual predation or the cover-up of such acts, are reduced to political terms, ethics, and even morality go out the window. Identity politics, the worst kind of politics, is a construct whose days are numbered, and it has no role in the solution to the crisis.

To paraphrase St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Michael Voris unfortunately plants the seed of intolerance in his politics. He might argue that a hard teaching is the first act of charity, but I would respond that a hatred of persons is never a disguised act of love. Is there room in the Magisterium for a broader idea of nature, or is that room the workshop of systematic evil? The discussion is a very Catholic one. If we do not meet all of humankind at the church's doors with the blood that issues from the side of Christ, those doors melt away, as the foundation falters, and the church falls, just as it is now falling from the hatred of the other in acts of sexual violence and the love for it on the part of those who want to hide it, call it something else, soften it, and erase its victims.

What's in a Scandal? Let's Not Lose the Face of the Victim

While this thing was always scandalous, we cannot continue to call it a scandal, though we will forever be scandalized. We really must call it what it is: systematic, institutional criminality. The victims of rape and other sexual abuses by the hierarchs of the Church dissipate under the cloak of the merely scandalous. The face of the victim recedes behind the veil of scandal. Survivors must be seen so that evil comes to light. Scandal. The only scandal here is that anyone refers to the irrevocably diabolical as a scandal. Enough.

That evil can rock the Church is one thing, but that it can destroy it is another. Christ himself indemnified the Church, stating definitively that the gates of hell will not prevail against it; but that of course assumes that good people will not simply stand by and be amazed, disgusted, violated, appalled, etc. Catholic action must now accuse the shepherds, and rid the Church of all the agencies of violence, sin, crime and other movements of evil in the flesh. It's really not a matter of not 'going to church', or withholding donations or other kinds of giving. Catholics must give the Church its blood back, its spine and its conviction, all of which has been lost. We have all, clergy and laity alike,  known too long about this cancer within the body of Christ, and we have let it metastasize. 

It's all well and good that the civil authorities now move legally to identify and prosecute criminals masquerading as leaders of the church and shepherds of the faithful, finally lifting the corporate veil covering up the most egregious sinfulness and criminality; but only lay Catholics have the moral authority to accuse systematic evil and wrest the Church from its clutches and exorcise the malignancy that threatens to undo the people of God.

No adequate sacramental theology can retain holy orders in the pedophile or ephebophile; God does not bless the devil. The Church does not breed pedophiles and ephebophiles, but it apparently attracts them, harbors them, protects them, and enables them to infiltrate the trust of the faithful, and then destroy that trust. This horrific and obvious impediment to reception of orders renders the sacrament automatically annulled, in a way analogous to the impediments that might make the reception of matrimony automatically annulled. An indelible mark cannot be etched into the soul of the violent, criminal sexual predator; and what makes matters worse is that he knows it, and pretends to that which is unattainable to him: holiness, service, love. There is simply no role for the niceties of the work worked (ex opere operato), or the work of the worker (ex opere operantis) here. We simply no longer know who or what is working what and why. To give sanctuary to sin and erase the face of the victims is to nourish the virulence of the malignancy.

From time to time, some people suggest that celibacy, with or without the complexities of a single sex environment, leads men to transform from normal and healthy sexual beings into predatory monsters. Celibacy arguably pertains only to those of superlative ascetic being, but does a choice for celibacy as part of an authentic sexuality committed to service to the other unencumbered by commitments to family necessarily lead to sexually poor health? Too many good and loving celibate clergy witness against that conclusion. Perhaps, then, an authentic celibacy might be part of the solution to part of the problem. Nonetheless, celibacy cannot be visited upon those who vicious predations have brought the rectory to its knees. The voraciousness of the predator laughs at the prospect of an authentic commitment to the other, whose sole purpose is to slake its thirst for violence. Nonetheless, and irrespective of the sexual orientation of one whose vocation to the priesthood is from the Spirit,  an authentic celibacy remains at least a possibility. Of course, the possibility that a true vocation moves a married man to the service of sacerdotal priesthood cannot be excluded, and the Church, in its reception of married clergy from other Christian traditions as Catholic priests, attests to this admission.

 The delusions of sacramentality must dissolve under the work of the Spirit. And the Spirit beckons all Catholics (indeed all Christians, if not all people of good will) to act in service to the victims of the hierarchs' horrors. What is Canon Law to the face of the human other? Canon Law wilts in the face of the other, for within the face is the trace of God. The Spirit calls us to absolute solidarity with the victims of the hierarchical church.