Nienstedt, Redux

Back in February 2008 writer Tim Gihring interviewed myself and a number of other St. Paul-Minneapolis Catholics for a feature article he was writing for The Minnesota Monthly. Published in April of that year, Gihring's piece focused on "the talk of the archdiocese," namely the implications of the appointment of John Nienstedt (left) as archbishop, and how such an appointment reflected the state of the wider church.

Fast forward eight years: We have a new archbishop, Bernard Hebda, appointed in response to last summer's resignation of Nienstedt in the wake of allegations of clergy sex abuse cover-ups by the chancery and, as Gihring writes in an article published last month by MinnPost, "a seemingly unrelated set of accusations: the bumbling attempts of Archbishop John Nienstedt . . . to have sex with men."

A few weeks before the publication of his latest piece on Nienstedt, Gihring contacted me and asked if I'd share my thoughts on the following questions: "Does it matter that Nienstedt may be gay? Does his hypocrisy make his repression of others in the church that much more heartbreaking? Or is it simply prurient?"

I responded by noting how a few months before Nienstedt's resignation, I shared on The Wild Reed my thoughts on the investigation into his alleged inappropriate sexual conduct with men. I also said that my thinking on this matter, along with the possibility of Nienstedt being gay, has not changed since then. Gihring checked out the post I mentioned (Has Archbishop Nienstedt's "Shadow" Finally Caught Up With Him?) and responded, "Very insightful and compassionate, Michael, as always."

Nienstedt has been the subject of numerous posts here at The Wild Reed, owing to the fact that he led the charge of two efforts in Minnesota to amend the state constitution to prohibit civil marriage rights for same-sex couples. Both efforts failed (as I document here, here and here).

As the executive coordinator of both the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities (CPCSM) and its 2010-2012 initiative Catholics for Marriage Equality MN (C4ME-MN), I was often compelled (and called upon by the media) to respond to and thus counter and challenge Nienstedt's words and actions around the issues of sexuality and marriage equality. (See, for instance, here, here, here, here, here and here). I also organized a number of actions and events that brought Catholics of the archdiocese together to speak out against and offer an alternative Catholic perspective to Nienstedt's anti-gay rhetoric and activism. (See, for example, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

Quite frankly, I'm done with discussing and responding to John Nienstedt and his ilk. All the more reason, then, that I appreciate Tim Gihring's piece published last month by MinnPost. Not only does this piece provide an update on the issues surrounding Nienstedt, it also offers a helpful historical overview of Nienstedt's anti-marriage equality efforts and the opposition such efforts encountered by Catholic groups such as CPCSM and C4ME-MN. Finally, Gihring's piece offers something rarely seen in mainstream media: a humanizing, albeit tragic portrait of a churchman in denial of his sexuality, a denial which as Gihring documents, has led to much damage and scandal.

New Ways Ministry's executive director Francis DeBernardo, a leading figure on the national LGBT Catholic scene, argues that Gihring's contention that Nienstedt made a deal with Vatican officials that if he covered up sexual abuse cases, they would cover up his homosexual liaisons, is a "case . . . built totally on speculation." Nevertheless, DeBernardo acknowledges that Gihring's portrayal of Nienstedt may well describe "a gay man who did not learn to accept himself, and whose lack of self-esteem provided him no opportunity than to act out sexually in unhealthy ways, and to project his own self-hatred onto others."

Following, with added links, is Gihring's article in its entirety.

__________________________________

Does It Matter Whether
Archbishop John Nienstedt is Gay?

By Chris Gihring

MinnPost
August 19, 2016
When allegations of a sex-abuse coverup began to leak out of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis a couple years ago, they were always accompanied by another, seemingly unrelated set of accusations: the bumbling attempts of Archbishop John Nienstedt, then the leader of the archdiocese, to have sex with men.

“The archbishop has been known to go ‘cruising’ (and I am not referring to the type of cruising one does on a ship in the Caribbean) and, on one occasion, purchased ‘poppers’ (and not the exploding candy preferred by elementary school students) and followed another gentleman to his car for, well, the type of activity that men purchase ‘poppers’ for…,” wrote Jennifer Haselberger, the whistleblower whose allegations prompted Nienstedt’s resignation last summer. On her website, Haselberger helpfully links to Wikipedia’s entry on poppers: basically disco-era sex drugs.

In late July, more stories of Nienstedt’s “promiscuous gay lifestyle,” as a fellow priest put it, were released by prosecutors. Most relate to his time in Detroit, where he moved up the clerical ladder in the late 1970s and ’80s. He’s said to have frequented a gay bar just across the border in Canada, whimsically called the Happy Tap.

But even if the allegations are true, it doesn't mean that Nienstedt is sympathetic to sexual abuse — a link between homosexuality and priestly pederasty is as unproven as it is enduring. Nor does it mark Nienstedt as unusual. Catholic researchers estimate that as many as 58 percent of priests are homosexuals. To confirm that he desired men would be like discovering that the pope is Catholic.

But Nienstedt is not just any priest, of course. He staked his tenure in Minnesota fighting marriage equality — and using church money to do so. No other archbishop in the country has gone so far as to condemn the families and friends of gays and lesbians for abetting “a grave evil.”

Nienstedt, who now lives in California, writing and editing for a Catholic institute, has publicly denied that he is gay. He recently declared, as no straight guy ever has: “I am a heterosexual man who has been celibate my entire life.”

For gay Catholics, if Nienstedt does share their desires, the deceit would be heartbreaking, “a sickening level of hypocrisy,” as one described it. It may also help explain why Nienstedt not only neglected the sins of priests, but covered them up, a pattern of denial that would be hard to fathom if it were not so deeply personal.


A different era

When gay Catholics in the Twin Cities first came together, in the late 1970s, they asked to meet with then-Archbishop John Roach. They were looking for compassion and understanding, if not acceptance — and to a remarkable degree they got it.

With Roach’s blessing, the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities (CPCSM) — an independent group of local Catholics based in St. Paul — introduced a sort of sensitivity training in parishes and in nine of the 11 local Catholic high schools. It was intended to help priests, teachers, and administrators better serve gays and lesbians, and it lasted for nearly 20 years.

“During the peak of our work,” [David McCaffrey] one of the group’s co-founders told me several years ago, “we became almost mainstream.” In 1989, the archdiocese awarded its Archbishop John Ireland Award to another CPCSM co-founder [Bill Kummer] for his social-justice activism on behalf of gays and lesbians.

The efforts paid off: “If it was okay to bash someone in the past, it isn’t now,” reported [Sister Mary Ellen Gevelinger] the director of Catholic Education and Formation Ministries in 1998. “We’re trying to teach kids what’s right.” When conservative activists objected that same year, the archdiocese defended the Safe Schools initiative.

Michael Bayly, a gay Catholic who until last year headed up the CPCSM, began compiling this history in 2009, shortly after Nienstedt became archbishop. He worried at the time that “there are some who would like to downplay or even deny such a relationship.”

But the church’s openness wasn’t limited to the Twin Cities. Bayly recalls that in 1994, when he moved to Minnesota, a bishop [Thomas Gumbleton] from Detroit came to talk with gay and lesbian Catholics on how — to quote the advertisement for the dialogue — a “wholeness in sexual expression” can be “deeply human and truly spiritual.”

In fact, Detroit was known as one of the most open-minded districts of the church. And as Nienstedt was starting out there, he was imbued with its liberal spirit.


Promoted and protected

In 1977, as the era of disco and poppers was in full swing, Nienstedt was 30, a newly minted priest in Detroit, and he became the secretary to Cardinal John Dearden, characterized by The New York Times as a “leading liberal voice in the Church.” Nienstedt himself described his mentor’s views to The Times as aligned “with the mind of the Church.”

But something changed after Dearden’s retirement in 1980, when Nienstedt went to work and study in the Vatican, which was shifting toward the neo-conservatism of the new Pope John Paul II. As a leading critic of Nienstedt has noted, the ambitious young priest saw first-hand “the changes John Paul II sought in the church and the kind of bishops whom he wanted.” When he returned to Detroit in 1985, Nienstedt’s new boss was a favorite of the pope, and, sure enough, in time Nienstedt adopted his views.

For pushing back on gays in the church, among other issues, Nienstedt would be promoted and promoted and promoted again. He would also be protected: Among the revelations in the documents unsealed last month is that the Vatican envoy to the United States quashed an investigation into Nienstedt’s homosexual activity and ordered evidence destroyed.

The evidence that exists, in the form of corroborated witness accounts, suggests that Nienstedt spent his time in Minnesota, from 2001 to 2015, living a precarious double life: indulging his homosexual tendencies, even as he railed against them.

Haselberger, who worked closely with Nienstedt in the archdiocese office as an adviser on church law, believes his proclivities help explain why he coddled abusive priests — he may have been attracted to them. And the so-called Delegate for Safe Environment, a priest overseeing child-abuse prevention in the archdiocese, came to the same conclusion about Nienstedt two years ago: being gay “affected his judgment.”

But Nienstedt’s silence protected far more priests than he could have known or been attracted to — dozens across Minnesota. And aside from suspicions of a relationship with one of the most notorious, Curtis Wehmeyer, his intervention — or lack of it — appears less about personal favor and more about institutional preservation. He saw sin, and looked the other way.

Instead, the deal that Nienstedt long ago made for the benefit of his career — to follow the church into conservatism — now seems a kind of ecclesiastical quid pro quo: if he covered for the sins of the church, the church would cover for his. The internal investigation of him, reportedly quashed by the Vatican, had been his idea — he was that confident that his name would be cleared.

But the deal may also have been a trap. By closing the door to homosexuality, marking its expression as the work of Satan and the most aberrant of sins, Nienstedt had nowhere to go with his own desires. He left himself no way out.

At the end, as multiple investigations closed in, Nienstedt still stuck to the pattern, claiming both that he was unaware of abusers under his watch and that any accusations of homosexuality were merely retaliation for his anti-gay policies. He had no choice but to double down on denial.

– Chris Gihring
MinnPost
August 19, 2016

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Gay Men in the Vatican Are Giving the Rest of Us a Bad Name
• Archbishop Nienstedt's "Learning Curve": A Suggested Trajectory (2007)
• Thoughts on Archbishop Nienstedt (2008)
• Progressive Perspectives on Archbishop Nienstedt's Anti-Gay Activism (2011)
• Has Archbishop Nienstedt's "Shadow" Finally Caught Up With Him? (2014)
• No Resignation for Nienstedt ... But Perhaps an Upcoming "Reassignment"? (2014)
• CCCR Responds to Archbishop Nienstedt's Resignation (2015)
• And What of the Investigation into Archbishop Nienstedt's Alleged "Sexual Improprieties"? (2015)
• Gay Men in the Vatican Are Giving the Rest of Us a Bad Name
• CPCSM and the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis (Part 1)
• CPCSM and the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis (Part 2)
• CPCSM and the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis (Part 3)
• CPCSM and the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis (Part 4)
• CPCSM and the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis (Part 5)
• CPCSM and the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis (Part 6)
• How Times Have Changed
• For the Record
• CPCSM’s Year in Review – 2006 (includes an announcement of the January 29 death of CPCSM co-founder Bill Kummer.)
• Sad News (The Wild Reed's July 10, 2011 announcement of David McCaffrey's death.)
• On the First Anniversary of Marriage Equality in Minnesota, a Celebratory Look Back at the Important Role Played by Catholics
• Saying Farewell to CPCSM

Related Off-site Links:
How Important is It to Know If an Archbishop is Gay? – Francis DeBernardo (Bondings 2.0, August 27, 2016).
A Timeline of Former Archbishop John Neinstedt’s Anti-LGBT Activism – Andy Birkey (TheColu.mn, June 16, 2015).
Jennifer Haselberger Was Ignored, Bullied Before Blowing Whistle on Archdiocese, Records Show – Jesse Marx (City Pages, July 15, 2014).
Betrayed by Silence: How Three Archbishops Hid the Truth – Madeleine Baran (Minnesota Public Radio News, July 14, 2014).

Quote of the Day

[Spotlight] powerfully illustrates what the church utterly failed to realize about itself: that the act of abuse, horrible as it is in any circumstance, was magnified in its unspeakable specifics because an all-male, celibate culture was so protective of its own status and privilege, so closed in on itself, that it was deaf to the searing pleas of children, parents, congregations and the few souls within its ranks who dared to speak the truth.

In the end it was, indeed, about a "system," one presumed to be about the pursuit of holiness, that turned out to be despicably corrupt. It took outsiders – journalists, particularly – to question the institution’s rationale and turn it on its head. It took as well those who removed themselves from the worst of the clerical culture, notably Dominican Fr. Thomas Doyle, who understood he was dooming his clerical career when he decided not to turn away from victims, and former Benedictine priest Richard Sipe, a psychotherapist who deeply studied the priesthood and understood the dynamics of the scandal.

Most of all, it took the courage of victims who came forward and withstood the often withering arrogance of bishops and their lawyers who tried to dismiss the disturbing truth.

Much remains to be done at multiple levels, especially in assuring survivors of paths to healing. But for those who, for very understandable reasons, might never sit with the millions of words that have been written about the scandal, the miles of documents that have been unearthed, nor hear the endless hours of testimony accrued over three decades, Spotlight provides a way to quickly grasp the essential reality of this chapter of church life.

The humiliation is stunning and fitting, given the immensity of the betrayal. It is no small irony that the Academy Awards, often a display of cultural superficiality, should be the vehicle for this Lenten truth.

– Editorial Staff
Excerpted from "Best Picture Win for Spotlight
is Fitting Humiliation for Church"
National Catholic Reporter
February 29, 2016

Related Off-site Links:
Spotlight Just Won Best Picture. Here's Why It Did – and Didn't – Deserve to Win – Todd VanDerWerff, Dylan Matthews, and Libby Nelson (Variety, February 29, 2016).
The Vatican's Newspaper Has a Surprising Reaction to Spotlight's Oscar Win – Mike Reyes (Cinema Blend, February 29, 2016).
Why Catholics Should Be Grateful for Spotlight and the Media's Exposing Abuses Within the Church – Christopher White (The Washington Post, February 29, 2016).
Spotlight: The Story Behind Tom McCarthy’s "Love Letter to Investigative Journalism" – James Rainey (Variety, October 27, 2015).
An Evasive Vatican Must Face Clerical Sex Abuse Directly – San Francisco Chronicle (February 29, 2016).
Cardinal George Pell's 90 Minutes from Hell – Alan Stokes (The Age, March 1, 2016)

CCCR Responds to Archbishop Nienstedt's Resignation

As a co-founder and current board member of the Catholic Coalition for Church Reform (CCCR), I wholeheartedly agree with and support the following media release issued earlier today in response to news of the resignations of Archbishop John C. Nienstedt and Bishop Lee Piché of the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis.

The Catholic Coalition for Church Reform and the Council of the Baptized welcome the news of the resignations of Archbishop Nienstedt and Bishop Lee Piché. Healing can now begin.

Leadership change will not be enough, though: this diocese, and the Church as a whole, needs to shed the cloak of clericalism and adopt a new attitude of inclusiveness. The faithful need to step up and play active roles in the governance of our Church as prescribed by the Open Windows principles of the Second Vatican Council.

CCCR has called for the re-establishment and empowerment of an effective Archdiocesan Pastoral Council to consult with and to guide the bishops, and for the adoption of the Standards of the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management, the same standards of accountability and transparency in governance and management adopted by many of our parishes.

CCCR has already submitted to the Papal Nuncio, the Pope’s representative in Washington, DC, the names of proven senior pastors in our diocese who are outstanding candidates to be named bishop. Rome needs to hear the voices of experience and judgment of local Catholics in the selection of our next leader.

For more information, contact Bob Beutel, CCCR co-chair at 651-324-0577 or bob@anthrolaw.com.

The Catholic Coalition for Church Reform is an organization in the Twin Cities metropolitan area that envisions a church fully alive, locally and universally, that radiates Jesus’ core teaching of radical equality, unabashed inclusivity, and transforming love.

NEXT: And What of the Investigation into
Archbishop Nienstedt's Alleged "Sexual Improprieties"?

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Roman Catholicism's Fundamental Problem: The Cultic Priesthood and Its "Diseased System" of Clericalism
• Paul Lakeland on How the Clergy Sex Abuse Scandal Reveals a Crisis of Leadership
• Has Archbishop Nienstedt's "Shadow" Finally Caught Up With Him?
• It's Time for Nienstedt to Resign
• Time for a Fresh Start in the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis
• In the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, the Unravelment Continues

Related Off-site Links:
Archbishop Nienstedt Resigns After Twin Cities Archdiocese Charged with Failing Children – Joshua J. McElwee (National Catholic Reporter, June 15, 2015).
Archbishop Nienstedt Resigns – Grant Gallicho (Commonweal, June 15, 2015).
Archbishop Nienstedt Resigns After Sex Abuse Coverup Charges Against Archdiocese – Inés San Martín (Crux, June 15, 2015).
Minneapolis Archbishop John Nienstedt Resigns After Charges Over Abuse Scandal – David Gibson (Religion News Service, June 15, 2015).
In Twin Cities, A Clean Sweep – Archbishop and Auxiliary Take the Fall – Rocco Palmo (Whispers in the Loggia, June 15, 2015).
Minnesota Bishops Resign in Vatican Crackdown on Sex Abuse by Priests – Stephanie Kirchgaessner (The Guardian, June 15, 2015).
Catholic Archbishop and Aide Resign in Minnesota Over Sexual Abuse Scandal – Mark S. Getzfred and Mitch Smith (New York Times, June 15, 2015).
Minnesota Archbishop Steps Down After Rocky Term – Amy Foriti (The Associated Press via Yahoo! News, June 15, 2015).
John Nienstedt, Archbishop of St. Paul, Resigns After Archdiocese Charged with Cover-Up – The Associate Press via NBC News (June 15, 2015).
Profile: Archbishop Bernard Hebda, Temporary Caretaker of the Twin Cities Archdiocese – Tom Scheck and Jon Collins (MPR News, June 15, 2015).
In the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, "Regime Change is Not Enough" – Bob Beutel (The Progressive Catholic Voice, November 10, 2013).

Roman Catholicism's Fundamental Problem: The Cultic Priesthood and Its "Diseased System" of Clericalism

The clerical leadership of the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis has been in the news recently . . . and not in a good way.

Last week's broadcast of the Minnesota Public Radio documentary Betrayed by Silence shocked and upset many. The documentary is, after all, a damning indictment not just of the current archbishop but of his two predecessors also. Following is part of the documentary's introduction.

For decades, the archbishops who led the Catholic archdiocese in the Twin Cities maintained that they were doing everything they could to protect children from priests who wanted to rape them.

Reporters picked up those assurances and repeated them without question. Police and prosecutors took the assurances at face value. Parents believed the assurances and trusted priests with their children.

But the assurances were a lie, and the archbishops knew it. Three of them — John Roach, Harry Flynn and John Nienstedt — participated in a cover-up that pitted the finances and power of the church against the victims who dared to come forward and tell their stories.

[Betrayed by Silence] draws on dozens of interviews, thousands of never-before-published documents and insider accounts to explain how and why powerful men protected priests who abused children.

And if this wasn't bad enough, there were soon newly-published revelations from Jennifer Haselberger (left), about which the Star Tribune notes the following.

Whistleblower Jennifer Haselberger described the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis as a place where child abusers were given repeated opportunities to remain in the priesthood, where “monitoring” was lax or nonexistent and where investigations often favored priests, in an affidavit filed Tuesday [July 15] in Ramsey County District Court.

Haselberger, who exposed troubling practices in the church’s handling of clergy abuse cases, wrote that the archdiocese had a “cavalier attitude toward the safety of other people’s children.”

The written testimony of Haselberger, an archdiocesan canon lawyer before resigning last year, comes in response to an explosive lawsuit filed on behalf of a man who claims former priest Tom Adamson abused him in the 1970s.

Haselberger is one of the major players in the resulting sex abuse scandal rocking the archdiocese. A canon lawyer who worked for the archdiocese for all but two years between 2004 and 2013, she is among key critics with direct knowledge of child sex abuse practices.

The lawsuit was filed shortly after Minnesota changed its statute of limitations to allow older child sex abuse cases to be heard by the courts. The changes in law, combined with Haselberger’s public disclosures about church practices, set the stage for unprecedented revelations now being made public about how the church handled abusive clergy.

Her written testimony is important because if lawyers are to argue that the archdiocese has created a “public nuisance,” it requires evidence of continued practices that endanger children.

Much has been written about Haselberger's testimony, and, not surprisingly, there have been renewed calls for Archbishop Nienstedt's resignation. Even the editorial board of The New York Times has chimed in, noting that:

When Pope Francis met earlier this month with victims of rape and sexual abuse by priests, he vowed to hold bishops accountable for covering up the scandal instead of confronting it.

A good place to start is with the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese, where calls are mounting for the resignation of Archbishop John Nienstedt, a warrior against same-sex marriage who, it turns out, is facing accusations that he indulged in improper sexual conduct in the past with priests, seminarians and other men.

. . . Archbishop Nienstedt acknowledged earlier this year in a sworn deposition for a pedophilia lawsuit that he did not fully disclose to police or parishioners which priests were under suspicion. But the archdiocese insists reforms have since strengthened disclosure.

The situation was only worsened by another deposition from a former vicar general of the archdiocese, the Rev. Peter Laird, who in conferences last year with Archbishop Nienstedt twice suggested that the archbishop consider resigning. Concerned Catholic parishioners, individual clergy members and university professors have also called for the archbishop to resign as the best solution. Instead, the archdiocese has made a mockery of accountability.

Hundreds of American priests have been forced from service because of pedophile crimes, but the parallel need for accountability among those who covered up the scandal has been shamefully avoided. In promising closer attention to this issue, the pope should not overlook the church’s leadership disarray in the Twin Cities.

Locally, one of the best commentaries on what the New York Times calls the "leadership disarray" in the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis has been written by Pioneer Press columnist Rubén Rosario (right). Here's part of Rosario's July 18 column, "Archbiship Nienstedt Needs to Go. Now."

Haselberger's affidavit paints a disturbing picture of church officials acting more like a cabal of corporate schemers or a power-driven political administration run amok than like shepherds of the state's largest Roman Catholic diocese.

Haselberger details how archdiocese officials gave special payments to abusive priests, allowed others to continue in public ministry and failed to notify authorities of abuse allegations in violation of a 2002 churchwide policy.

In the case of the Rev. Curtis Wehmeyer, Haselberger warned Nienstedt and others of his sexual proclivities and habit of trying to pick up men. Not only were her concerns ignored, Wehmeyer was promoted to pastor of a church on St. Paul's East Side before his conviction for molesting two boys in his parish.

These were not allegations decades old. They were recent. There's the tale of former Vicar General Peter Laird's attempt to declare disabled Father Mike Tegeder of St. Frances Cabrini Church in Minneapolis because of his criticisms of Nienstedt in the debate over the proposed marriage amendment to outlaw same-sex marriage. Laird resigned soon after Haselberger's concerns were made public.

. . . Nienstedt apparently has an ornery side to him, warning folks not to bother him and sending critical emails to church subordinates that one described as "nastygrams," according to the affidavit.

Haselberger recounts how Laird basically ignored her concerns and refused to read documents about a priest, removed from ministry just this year, who had a sexual attraction to young boys.

"I literally followed Father Laird out of the building one evening with those highlighted documents in my hands, saying that if he didn't have time to read the whole documents, he could at least read the highlighted remarks. He refused," Haselberger wrote.

Laird's reaction, Haselberger noted, was just one example of a "cavalier attitude toward the safety of children."

Cavalier? More like shameful.

In his op-ed, Rosario asks Haselberger who or what kind of archbishop she would like to see take over. Haselberger responds by saying, "I would say a no-nonsense kind of guy with more or less a pastor's heart."

Reflecting on this response I find myself thinking of and agreeing with Colleen Kochivar-Baker's contention that it's actually the system of the cultic priesthood that's the real problem, more so than individual "leaders," even those as inept as John Nienstedt. After all, as theologian and former priest Paul Collins points out, the clericalism that largely defines Roman Catholicism's cultic priesthood is a system "which has developed a kind of moral immunity over the centuries."

What happens, says Collins, is that "everyone who works in the system, no matter how generous, saintly, and virtuous they are, has to struggle to avoid being inexorably caught up in a clericalism that misuses power and that is essentially deceitful and corrupt."

Collins is quick to point out that he doesn’t believe that priests themselves are necessarily corrupt. Many, he notes, are "men of considerable integrity." Nevertheless, "they work in a diseased system and it is very difficult for them to avoid the consequences of clericalism."

Theologian Diarmuid Ó Murchú offers a similar analysis, observing that "innate to clericalism is a patriarchal, subconscious driving force which is much more about power in the name of religion, rather than about service in the name of spirituality."

It seems pretty clear to me that this is exactly what has been the case here in the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis. What's new is that it's finally being exposed, thanks in large measure to Jennifer Hasselberger.

I'll conclude with an excerpt from Colleen's aptly titled July 17 blog post, "Jennifer Hasselberger Drives a Truck Through the Lies of the Clerical Caste of the Archdiocese of St Paul and Minneapolis.

I'd love to believe the circumstances cited in [Hasselberger's] deposition were exclusive to the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, but after doing decades of research, I can no longer find it in my Catholic soul to believe the situations and attitudes she describes are unique to this archdiocese. They are not the exception to the rule. They are the actual observed practice, and this in spite of all the recent rules written specifically to look as if these practices are no longer the rule. The real rule in operation, as Jennifer shows beyond a doubt, is now as it always has been: the welfare of the offending priest before any thought of any justice for a victim.

I also know there really are dioceses where the unwritten rule does not hold sway, but these are the exceptions. The exception is not the level of duplicity and corruption in the Archdiocese of St Paul and Minneapolis. The only exception here is that a highly placed archdiocesan individual refused to play the clerical game, and unsurprisingly she just happened to be a lay woman. As for religious women and lay men, they were complicit at least to the extent that information stayed in house that belonged in the hands of police.

I don't know how many times I have written, here and in comments elsewhere, that the corruption and abuses will not stop until Catholics are released from the conditioning that God desires a magical celibate male priest as essential to the sacramental functions in the Church. The abuses of our clergy, both sexual and financial, will never end as long as all the power is in the hands of the very men who are causing all the problems. Pope Francis will not solve any of these issues by leaving the current theology of the priesthood as is. He has done nothing that demonstrates to me he has any desire to change one aspect of this theology. Even if it is eventually decided to let married men in the priesthood, that does not change a thing about the exclusive power held by the priesthood.

Related Off-site Links:
Betrayed by Silence: How Three Archbishops Hid the Truth – Madeleine Baran (Minnesota Public Radio News, July 14, 2014).
Under Oath, Whistleblower Challenges Archbishop Nienstedt Over Abuse Testimony – Madeleine Baran (MPR News, July 15, 2014).
Jennifer Haselberger Was Ignored, Bullied Before Blowing Whistle on Archdiocese, Records Show – Jesse Marx (City Pages, July 15, 2014).
Holding Church Shepherds Accountable – The Editorial Board (New York Times, July 17, 2014).
Archbishop Nienstedt Needs to Go. Now. – Rubén Rosario (Pioneer Press, July 18, 2014).
MN Archdiocese Wanted to Label Marriage Equality-Supporting Priest ‘Disabled’ – Andy Birkey (TheColu.mn, July 22, 2014).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Paul Lakeland on How the Clergy Sex Abuse Scandal Reveals a Crisis of Leadership
A Clerical Leadership Unresponsive to Voices of Reason
Has Archbishop Nienstedt's "Shadow" Finally Caught Up With Him?
It's Time for Nienstedt to Resign
Time for a Fresh Start in the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis
In the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, the Unravelment Continues

Quote of the Day

Archbishop John Nienstedt has been absolutely worthless in meeting the crimes against humanity – the abuse of children – square in the face. He thought everything had been taken care of by his predecessor, Harry Flynn, who was a gregarious guy out in public, to the point where you could feel comfortable calling him "Arch," because maybe you saw him at the next table at The Lexington and you picked up his check.

Now, Flynn's testimony has been made public and it is sad to realize that he is just as worthless as Nienstedt in facing up to the priests who have gone off the rails, the priests who are giving the average parish working stiff a bad name.

In a deposition as part of a lawsuit against the archdiocese and former priest Thomas Adamson, we learned that Flynn doesn't remember a thing about allegations of sexual abuse by priests. He didn't know anything, was hearing names for the first time, was out of town a lot, he supposed. Per his company's form, he figured that any issues were settled by his predecessor, John Roach, who can no longer speak for himself because he is in a grave. And if passing the buck to Roach wasn't thorough enough to get him off the hook, he tossed it forward to Nienstedt. Both of them, Flynn and Nienstedt, are comfortable throwing former Vicar General Kevin McDonough under the bus.

If the archdiocese was a company in which people had stock, the shares would be as worthless as the leadership. . . .

– Joe Souchery
"The Good Priests Deserve Better Archbishops"
Pioneer Press
June 6, 2014

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
It's Time for Archbishop Nienstedt to Resign
Time for a Fresh Start in the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis
Quote of the Day – October 20, 2013
Paul Lakeland on How the Clergy Sex Abuse Scandal Reveals a Crisis of Leadership

Related Off-site Posts:
Lay Participation in the Selection of Our Next Archbishop – Catholic Coalition for Church Reform (2014).
In the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, "Regime Change is Not Enough" – Bob Beutel (The Progressive Catholic Voice, November 10, 2013).
Healing Can’t Start Until the Knife is Removed from the Wound – The Progressive Catholic Voice (November 5, 2013).

Paul Lakeland on How the Clergy Sex Abuse Scandal Reveals a Crisis of Leadership

Paul Lakeland, author and director of Fairfield University's Center for Catholic Studies, will be visiting Minnesota at the end of the month to speak on "Pope Francis and the Liberation of the Laity."

I first met Paul at the Catholic Coalition for Church Reform's 2010 Synod of the Baptized, "Claiming Our Place at the Table." I was an organizer of this event while Paul was its keynote speaker. His talk at Synod 2010 was entitled "The Call of the Baptized: Be the Church, Live the Mission." It was an excellent presentation, the transcript of which can be found here.

Now Paul is returning to Minnesota where he will be speaking on what Pope Francis has to say about the role of the laity in the world and the responsibilities the baptismal priesthood places on each of us who are baptized in Christ’s name. On Wednesday, April 30, Paul will be speaking at St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church in Minneapolis (details here). Then on Friday, May 1, Paul will be at Christ Church Newman Center in St Cloud (details here). Both speaking engagements are free and open to the public.

Along with serving as the director of the Center for Catholic Studies at Fairfield University, Paul Lakeland is active in the American Academy of Religion, the Catholic Theological Society of America, and the Workgroup on Constructive Christian Theology. His two most recent books, both winners of Catholic Press Association awards, are The Liberation of the Laity: In Search of an Accountable Church and Catholicism at the Crossroads: How the Laity Can Save the Church.

Following, with added links, is an excerpt from chapter five of Lakeland's Catholicism at the Crossroads. This excerpt deals with understanding the Catholic church's sex abuse scandal, and I believe it's timely to share given all that is happening in the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis in relation to this scandal.

Let us be clear. Sex abuse in the church is a scandal, but it is not a crisis. There is no sex-abuse crisis in the church. What the church suffers from is a crisis issuing from the real problem of clerical sexual abuse of minors. Sex abuse itself is a heinous crime and a scandal in the church of the highest magnitude. But it isn't in itself a crisis.

. . . The scandal of sexual abuse revealed a crisis of episcopal leadership. Poor leadership in dealing with the scandal has led to the kind of public scrutiny to which bishops are not accustomed. The precise nature of the crisis is not something that all will agree upon, but its elements are evident. To name them is not to accuse every American bishop of all elements, but to point to systemic problems to which all American bishops must attend. Among the charges that have been made over the past few years are the following: a faulty understanding of what it is to be a leader on the part of those who select bishops, and a consequent lack of good leaders within the episcopacy; bad judgment about how the good name of the church can best be assured; secrecy; isolation, ambition and careerism; poor theology; too centralized an understanding of the church, with a concomitant over-deference to the Roman Curia; excessive bureaucratization of the role of bishop. Some or all of these may be accurate, but not all qualify as systemic issues. Inappropriate ambition, for example, is something that systemic problems can foster, but in itself it is a personal rather than a structural sin.

Beyond the crisis in the episcopate there is a deeper ecclesiological crisis that is at the same time a cultural crisis. Church historians know that structures of government in the church have changed over time and have indeed always been changing, but, what is more important, that these changes have paralleled changes in secular understandings of government. They have usually needed to stress this in the teeth of those who see the first and last word on ecclesiology to be that "the church is not a democracy."

At a major conference just a few years ago, the opening keynote address was given by a distinguished bishop who tried to make the case that Jesus pretty much envisaged the church as it exists today. Either the bishop believed this, which is sheer historical ignorance, or he thought we needed to hear this, which is insulting. And in an action that revealed so much, he then promptly left the meeting and did not hear the impressive array of distinguished Catholic historians, who deal in historical fact, and, entirely unintentionally, made his presentation seem bogus and frankly ridiculous. If only he had stayed to hear Francine Cardman challenge the proponents of what she called "default ecclesiology" to recognize that the church is not monolithic but "a dynamic, evolving, diverse movement," or Brian Tierney explain that "within the Catholic church there have always been these three, Peter, the apostles, and the people of God, but the constitutional relationships between them have been defined differently in different ages," or Marcia Colish point out that while secular governments have continued to change through-out history, becoming constitutional monarchies and then representative democracies with no kings or queens, "the church remained trapped in the absolute monarchy time wrap of the early modern period," or Frank Oakley offering up the conciliarist movement as a phenomenon that has much still to teach us, though it has been consigned to the garbage heap of church history by what Oakley call "an ultramontane politics of oblivion," or John Beal's eloquent call for a canon law that restores the balance between communio and juridic ecclesiologies. Now is surely the time to answer the question with which Oakley ended his paper: "with what confidence, after all, can we Catholics hope to erect a future capable of enduring if, for ideological reasons, we persist in trying to do so on the foundation of a past that never truly was?"

The weight of the historical evidence would strongly suggest that it is quite appropriate to ask how democratic sensibilities might have something important to offer to the church today, and that it is entirely probable that the church will evolve, willy-nilly, to incorporate some genuine role for the voice of the whole community into its structures of governance. It has been so in the church's past, most recently in the American church of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and it could be so again. The lessons of history also teach us, however, that it is exceedingly rare that an elite in any society will freely give up its own hold on power. And this brings us to what may be a yet deeper level of the crisis, namely, an ecclesiology and a polity that gives no formal role to the voice of laypeople in the church to which they belong, buttressed by the sorry history of theological reflection upon the laity. Here is where the discussion of clericalism belongs. Clericalism can be damaging and can be petty. It can be ridiculous and it can be scandalous. It can be sinister as it is in John Gregory Dunne's True Confessions and as comic as it is in J.F. Powers' incomparable stories of the lives of clergy. But in the end it always points to the real issue that for at least three quarters of the church's life the best theological definition the church could offer of the layperson was "not clergy."

– Paul Lakeland
Catholicism at the Crossroads: How the Laity Can Save the Church
Pp. 79-83

Related Off-site Links:
The Call of the Baptized: Be the Church, Live the Mission – Paul Lakeland (The Progressive Catholic Voice, September 19, 2010).
Challenges to Us As Catholics – A 10-part series featuring excerpts from Paul Lakeland's book Church: Living Communion (The Progressive Catholic Voice, September 2010).
Synod of the Baptized Uncovers Deep Well of Hope – Paula Ruddy (The Progressive Catholic Voice, September 20, 2010).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
It's Time for Archbishop Nienstedt to Resign
Time for a Fresh Start in the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis
In the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, the Unravelment Continues
Colleen Kochivar-Baker on the First Anniversary of the Papacy of Francis
Quote of the Day – September 12, 2011
Now We Know
St. Francis of Assisi: The Antithesis of Clericalism and Monarchism
SNAP Responds to Cardinal Bertone
A Clerical Leadership Unresponsive to Voices of Reason

It's Time for Archbishop Nienstedt to Resign

UPDATED: April 25, 2014

Yesterday, Minnesota Public Radio released video and transcripts of testimony given by Archbishop John C. Nienstedt during a sworn deposition on April 2, 2014. (To read the full transcript of the Archbishop's deposition, click either here or here.)

A spokesperson for Ramsey County Attorney John Choi told MPR News that investigators and prosecutors are reviewing the information contained in the archbishop's deposition as part of their ongoing investigation into the archdiocese's handling of clergy sex abuse cases. Similarly, St. Paul Police spokesperson Howie Padilla said that police "will be examining this new information to determine its value to our current criminal investigations."


Astoundingly inept

Regardless of any possible criminal charges resulting from the archbishop's deposition, one thing is painfully clear: Throughout his deposition, John Nienstedt comes across as astoundingly inept as an organizational leader – and, in my view, a spiritual one as well.

Here's part of MPR News reporter Madeleine Baran's story on the archbishop's deposition:

Archbishop John Nienstedt acknowledged in sworn testimony that he took steps to hide information on abusive priests and never provided complete files to police, according to a transcript released today.

Nienstedt said he had followed the advice of a subordinate [then-Vicar General Kevin McDonough] that he keep no written notes of certain discussions, in case those notes should later become public in legal proceedings. He said that he didn't publicly disclose which priests were being monitored, and that he relied on others to keep parish trustees informed.

Nienstedt made the remarks in a four-hour deposition taken April 2 as part of a lawsuit filed by a man who said he was sexually abused by the Rev. Thomas Adamson in the mid-1970s. The man alleges the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and the Diocese of Winona created a public nuisance by keeping information on accused priests secret. The man's attorneys, Jeff Anderson and Mike Finnegan, argued that the deposition could provide evidence of a pattern of deception by the archdiocese.

. . . Nienstedt has been under intense scrutiny for months since an MPR News investigation found that he failed to report possible sex crimes to police. Several priests have publicly criticized Nienstedt's leadership, and at least one has called for his resignation.

The Star Tribune's coverage of Nienstedt's deposition notes the following:

Archbishop John Nienstedt said he was not aware that known child sex abusers were working in various capacities at the archdiocese during his tenure, nor did he discipline anyone at the chancery for mistakes that allowed the abusive priests to continue working, a court deposition released Tuesday revealed.

Nienstedt often described himself as out of the loop on issues of child sex abuse, according to sworn testimony taken April 2, part of a lawsuit by an alleged victim of a priest.

When Nienstedt became archbishop in 2008, he said he had a briefing with key archdiocese officials about clergy abuse. He testified he didn’t remember any names of abusive priests mentioned at the time, how many were being monitored, and even the names of the archdiocese officials present.

Nienstedt said he did not request the list of “credibly accused” priests that all dioceses are required to maintain. Nor did he press for parishes to be told about the presences of clergy with histories of child sexual misconduct, who were being monitored.

“I believe we felt that we could monitor the situation without making a total disclosure to the people,” testified Nienstedt, who added that he no longer feels that way.

In her MPR News piece, Madeleine Baran quotes from the deposition transcript in reporting on Nienstedt's mind-boggling lack of awareness regarding clergy sexual abuse within the archdiocese.

Throughout much of the deposition, [attorney Jeff] Anderson appeared incredulous that Nienstedt would not have paid more attention to the problem of clergy sexual abuse.

Nienstedt said McDonough talked about the priests being monitored by the archdiocese for misconduct.

"Who were those individuals?" Anderson asked.

"I can't recall all the names right now," Nienstedt said.

"Why didn't you write it down?" Anderson asked.

"It didn't occur to me at the time to do so," Nienstedt replied.

"At the time, didn't it seem like one of the most important things you needed to do as archbishop, knowing the crisis in America of Catholic clergy abusing kids, to know who in this archdiocese had been accused and who are being monitored?" Anderson asked.

Nienstedt did not directly answer the question.

"The Archbishop" by Steve Sack (Star Tribune, April 23, 2014).

"Put on the spot" – and that's the problem

In sharing his thoughts on Archbishop Nienstedt's deposition, local blogger Terry Nelson writes: "The poor Archbishop looks and sounds like someone 'put on the spot' – and he was."

That Terry isn't fazed by a bishop in today's church being "put on the spot" over the issue of clergy sex abuse is as mind-boggling as Archbishop Nienstedt's own woeful lack of awareness, as demonstrated by his deposition. How, as Catholics, have we come to tolerate such a terribly low bar when it comes to the caliber of our clerical leaders?

Terry prays that God will give Archbishop Nienstedt strength – strength to endure the ongoing "scrutiny and defamation." I see no evidence of defamation, and why on earth should anyone in a position of authority be free from scrutiny?

I too pray that God may give Archbishop Nienstedt strength – strength to do the right thing and resign.

I mentioned earlier that the archbishop's deposition shows that he is inept as both an organizational leader and a spiritual one. I stand by this claim. His deposition makes it clear that Nienstedt has failed the people of the archdiocese as an organizational leader. This is demonstrated by his lack of awareness of, interest in, and thus oversight of a range of issues relating to the clergy sex abuse crisis as it has been manifested in the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis. This failure also shows a lack of moral and spiritual leadership . . . and in John Nienstedt's case, in a very specific way.


Nienstedt's "shadow"

Let me attempt to explain what I mean, and let me start my highlighting the words and insights of author and psychologist John Neafsey that I shared this past Easter Sunday. These words and insights relate to the Jungian concept of "the shadow" – those parts of ourselves that, says Neafsey, "don't neatly fit with our ideal mental image of the person we think we should be, our idea of what a 'good' or 'holy' person is like." In talking further about the shadow dimension of the human psyche, Neafsey notes that:

[P]roblems . . . develop when we get caught up in . . . denying or repressing the shadow side of ourselves. Defensive denial of our inner reality reflects a lack of psychological honesty. When it is based on pretense and denial, being a "good person" can also mean acting as a kind of false self. If we are too defensive, too controlled, too good all the time, we lose touch with our authentic feelings and all of the vital life energies they contain. When we are out of touch with [for instance] sexual passions, our capacity for authentic emotional and spiritual passion can become blocked.

Unconsciousness of our shadow also makes us more prone to hypocrisy and judgmental attitudes toward other people. . . . We end up criticizing in others what we are actually ashamed of and afraid to look at in ourselves.

From the very start of his tenure as archbishop (in fact, even well before he was appointed coadjutor archbishop) John Nienstedt has been obsessed with demonizing consensual sexual relationships between same-sex couples and working to ensure that such relationships are in no way legally acknowledged or recognized. In terms of the latter, he has failed completely. The anti-gay "marriage amendment," which he tirelessly championed, was defeated and, shortly after, both the Minnesota House and Senate passed marriage equality legislation. Same-sex couples now have the same civil right to marry as opposite-sex couples. During the often contentious marriage amendment "battle," many Minnesota Catholics opposed Nienstedt's anti-gay activism. In 2013 they celebrated the victory of marriage equality in the civil sphere.

Here's the crux of the matter: The time and energy that Nienstedt expended on demonizing gay relationships and attempting to deny such relationships legal recognition in civil law, could and should have been focused instead on creating a local church reflective of gospel values, including confronting and dealing with the many issues relating to clergy sex abuse within the archdiocese; issues, which Nienstedt openly admits in his deposition, he was "out of the loop" about.

I think Nienstedt's cluelessness about so much of the external crisis around him stems from his inner unconsciousness of his "shadow," and I believe that Nienstedt's shadow may well be to do with issues related to his own homosexuality and its integration into his life. Remember, according to Neafsey, the shadow is comprised of those parts of ourselves that "don't neatly fit with our ideal mental image of the person we think we should be, [and] our idea of what a 'good' or 'holy' person is like."

It's also important to note, especially when we are talking about a situation of repressed homosexuality, that "the word shadow does not necessarily mean that these aspects of ourselves are bad or sinful, but rather suggests that some dimensions of our inner experience . . . may not comfortably fit with the kind of self we aspire to be in the light of day."

As has already been mentioned in relation to Nienstedt's obsessive and misguided focus on same-sex relationships, people who are unconsciousness of their shadow are more prone to judgmental attitudes toward others. They often project their shame, fear, and anger about the reality they are denying and/or repressing out onto those who are successfully integrating into their lives this same reality.

Also, credible studies suggest that those who harbor and/or express negative feelings and hostility toward gay people may themselves be struggling with suppressed feelings of same-sex desire. (See, for example, here, here and here.)

I believe that John Nienstedt has failed to prevent his own inner struggles and issues from distorting and misplacing his priorities as both the organizational and spiritual leader of the archdiocese. Such failure demonstrates a profound and tragic lack of psychological honesty (i.e., the taking of responsibility for the shadow dimensions of ourselves) and has played, I believe, a significant role in his divisive anti-gay activism and in his scandalous lack of awareness and action with regard the clergy sex abuse crisis in our local church.

Nienstedt's situation is not unique. I've written previously about how (closeted) gay men in the church's clerical caste are "giving the rest of us a bad name."

But yesterday's disclosures regarding Nienstedt's disposition bring the issue very much into the here and now. Accordingly, for his own good and the good of the archdiocese, Archbishop Nienstedt must resign.


4/25/14 Updates:
Former Top Church Official Kevin McDonough Disputes Archbishop's Clergy Abuse Testimony – Madeleine Baran (Minnestota Public Radio News, April 24, 2014).
Archbishop Nienstedt's Deposition Draws Mixed Reviews – Jean Hopfensperger and Chao Xiong (Star Tribune, April 24, 2014).
Abusive Priests Allowed to Keep Working, McDonough Testifies – Jean Hopfensperger and Chao Xiong (Star Tribune, April 24, 2014).
He Said, He Said – Grant Gallicho (Commonweal, April 25, 2014).
Ex-Archdiocese Deputy: Clergy Abusers Given Jobs, Financial Assistance – Jean Hopfensperger and Chao Xiong (Star Tribune, April 25, 2014).

Recommended Off-site Links:
Nienstedt Admits Archdiocese Hid Info on Abusive Priests – Madeleine Baran (Minnesota Public Radio News, April 22, 2014).
St. Paul Archbishop Claims He Was Unaware of Most Child Sex Abuse Issues – Jean Hoppensperger and Chao Xiong (Star Tribune, April 22, 2014).
Nienstedt Deposed – Grant Gallicho (Commonweal, April 22, 2014).
Statement Regarding Nienstedt Testimony in Sworn Deposition – Eric Fought (EricFought.com, April 22, 2014).
Twin Cities Task Force Reports 'Serious Shortcomings' in Archdiocesan Policies – Brian Roewe (National Catholic Reporter, April 18, 2014).
In the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, "Regime Change is Not Enough" – Bob Beutel (The Progressive Catholic Voice, November 10, 2013).
Healing Can’t Start Until the Knife is Removed from the Wound – The Progressive Catholic Voice (November 5, 2013).
Homophobes Might Be Hidden Homosexuals – Jeanna Bryner (Scientific America, April 10, 2012).
Homophobic? Maybe You're Gay – Richard M. Ryan and William S. Ryan (New York Times, April 27, 2012).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Time for a Fresh Start in the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis
In the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, the Unravelment Continues
The Journal of James Curtis: Part 7 – The Note
Progressive Perspectives on Archbishop Nienstedt's Anti-Gay Activism
Thanking You, Archbishop
Quote of the Day – August 23, 2012
Casey Michel on Archbishop Nienstedt's "Crusade Against Gay Marriage"
It's a Scandal
PCV Publishes Archbishop Nienstedt's Marriage Amendment Directives to Priests
Pastor Mike Tegeder Challenges Archbishop Nienstedt's "Bullying Behavior"
Thoughts on Archbishop Nienstedt
What Part of Jesus' Invitation to "Be Not Afraid" Don't the Bishops Get?
The Talk of the Archdiocese
Interesting Times Ahead
Coadjutor Archbishop Nienstedt's "Learning Curve": A Suggested Trajectory

Colleen Kochivar-Baker on the First Anniversary of the Papacy of Francis

Yesterday marked the first anniversary of the March 13, 2013 election of Argentinian Jesuit, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio to the 'chair of Peter,' upon which he sits as Pope Francis, the 266th Bishop of Rome.

Over at her always erudite and insightful blog Enlightened Catholicism, Colleen Kochivar-Baker offers a must-read analysis of the reign of Francis and, by extension, the complex reality of the Roman Catholic Church today. Following is part of what Colleen has to say.

One thing I've learned [in the first year of Francis] is that there are at least four different Roman Catholic Churches. There is the Latin American version, the Anglo/Euro version, the African version, and the Oriental version and some of these versions are very very different in their worldview. When I looked at the results of the Univision poll which tested the views of Catholics on sex and family issues in 12 different countries I was seriously shocked at how far apart Africa was from the rest of the global Church, especially the Anglo/Euro Church. I shouldn't have been surprised because the Anglican Church has been dealing with that split for decades. Catholicism's first chance to hash this split out will come in October at the Bishops Synod on the family. We'll find out if Francis is any better at dealing with this chasm than the Anglican Primate Rowan Williams because the Catholic results show this split is not the result of progressive Anglican theology, it's about different worldviews, most of them having to do with women and gender expectations.

This brings me to the second thing I've learned this past year. Neither the Church nor Pope Francis has any idea of what to do with the problem of women in the Church. At least Francis recognized it's a problem, but his notions about the Marian and Petrine Churches do not address the problem much less solve it. I understand that Francis is taking his concepts from Von Balthasar who had a great deal of influence on John Paul II. I suppose it's a nice concept if one wants to keep men in total control because it places the feminine as the heart of the Church with the masculine as the head of the Church...a nice complimentary situation which really appealed to JPII. Really, what woman could possibly be offended by being given the role of Mary in the scheme of things? Perhaps a woman who understands that in this particular scheme of things Mary is mythologized perfection and mere mortal women are neither perfect nor myths. I've often wondered why women have to emulate perfection but men get to emulate Peter who isn't exactly anyone's concept of perfect, but I digress. This idea of Von Balthasar's only flies if you accept the underlying assumption that women somehow embody empathy, relationship, and nurturing and men don't, won't or can't without sacrificing their masculinity on the altar of celibacy. I don't happen to buy any of it, but then I also happen to believe the clerical priesthood is the root and branch of all the Church's current scandal. Which brings me to the third thing I learned this year.

Pope Francis is a priest before he is anything else. I've written that before. His defense of the Church over clerical abuse must stem from how much of a victim he feels as a Catholic priest in today's climate. One wonders why he has empathy for every other form of human misery, but not victims of his own clerical class. He better get over it because there is more to come. He can speak all he wants about the cancer of clericalism but that cancer doesn't go away because someone calls it cancer. Cancers have to be cut out, not left in place to become the next miracle for the next saint from the Vatican saint factory. Clerical abuse stands as the most salient indictment of the whole Catholic clerical system and how abusive it is to the laity, to fellow priests, and to Jesus Himself. Francis can not let this one go. If he lives long enough to call another Vatican synod it should be on the priesthood because family aside, if change doesn't come to the priesthood even the Church in Africa is going to lose its Catholic identity due to lack of sacramental access. Without meaningful change there is no doubt clerical sexual abuse will continue... and bishops will keep hiding it, especially in countries which do not have Anglo reporting requirements.

To read Colleen Kochivar's commentary in its entirety, click here.


Related Off-site Links:
Pope Marks Anniversary with Prayer and a Tweet – Jean-Louis de la Vaissiere (AFP via Yahoo! News, March 13, 2014).
Pope Francis After a Year – Thomas Reece (National Catholic Reporter, March 14, 2014).
Pope Francis: Has His Revolution Even Started? – Paul Valley (The Guardian, March 11, 2014).
A Year with Francis – Rocco Palmo (Whispers in the Loggia, March 13, 2014).
Interactive Timeline: Pope Francis' First Year in Quotes – Pam Cohen (National Catholic Reporter, March 13, 2014).
The Public Pope: Why the Intense Fascination Paid to Pope Francis—or Any Pope—Isn’t Good for the Catholic Church – Paul Baumann (Slate, March 11, 2014).
Five Truly Radical Things Pope Francis Could Do to Improve the Catholic Church – John Gallagher (Queerty, March 13, 2014).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Pope Francis' Understanding of Catholicism: An Orchestra in Which All Can Play!
Astounded
Why I Take Hope in Pope Francis' Statement on Gay Priests
Quote of the Day – July 25, 2013
Doing Papa Proud
Quote of the Day – April 17, 2013
The Servant Pope
Quote of the Day – March 13, 2013
Progressive Perspectives on the Papacy (Part 1)
Progressive Perspectives on the Papacy (Part 2)
Progressive Perspectives on the Papacy (Part 3)
Progressive Perspectives on the Papacy (Part 4)
Beyond Papalism

Time for a Fresh Start in the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis

In the wake of news that Archbishop John Nienstedt is under police investigation resulting from an allegation that he inappropriately touched a boy in 2009, I think Mike Tegeder, local priest and longtime critic of Nienstedt's leadership style and focus, says it best:

I feel very sorry for the archbishop. I hope this is just a misunderstanding or some misinterpretation. It's certainly very sad for him. These things can't be very pleasant, and I think it would be good for him to have a fresh start, and it would be good for our archdiocese to have a fresh start and just allow things to move forward here. This is not the way that I would hope that it would come about.

According to the chancery, Nienstedt has "stepped aside from all public ministry" for the duration of the investigation. Tegeder, however, is pushing for Nienstedt's resignation, regardless of the results of the police investigation. This is because Tegeder, like many area Catholics, is, as Minnesota Public Radio puts it, "troubled by the way the archbishop has handled the clergy sex abuse crisis, his stance on the recent marriage amendment battle and some of his financial decisions."

To be honest, I'm highly skeptical of this accusation of inappropriate touch being made against the archbishop, especially given its alleged circumstances – a very public group photo session following a confirmation ceremony. I believe Nienstedt when he says, "this allegation is absolutely and entirely false."

Yet it's painfully clear that we need a "fresh start" in our local church. My prayer is that the archbishop, like Pope Benedict XVI before him, will find the courage to step aside for the good of the community and, in so doing, help open the way for the Spirit to bring about healing and reform. We're seeing this on the global level with Pope Francis. Who's to say that with a new archbishop in the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, one who is hopefully selected with input from the laity, this same healing and reform could not also be experienced within our local church?


Related Off-site Links:
Under Investigation for Allegedly Touching Boy, Archbishop Nienstedt Steps Aside – Tom Scheck, Laura Yuen and Mike Cronin (Minnesota Public Radio, December 17, 2013).
Allegations Cause Minnesota Archbishop to Remove Himself from Ministry – Brian Roewe (National Catholic Reporter, December 17, 2013).
Police: Archdiocese Not Cooperating with Clergy Abuse Investigation – Tom Scheck and Madeleine Baran (Minnesota Public Radio, December 17, 2013).
County Attorney: Grand Jury Not a Likely Option in Archdiocese Investigation – Laura Yuen (Minnesota Public Radio, December 16, 2013).
In the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, "Regime Change is Not Enough" – The Progressive Catholic Voice (November 10, 2013).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
In the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, the Unravelment Continues
Progressive Perspectives on Archbishop Nienstedt's Anti-Gay Activism

Image: Richard Tsong-Taatarii/Star Tribune via Associated Press.