Robert Blair Kaiser spent ten years in the Society of Jesus before leaving to pursue a career in journalism. He has been a religious reporter for The New York Times, Time, and CBS.
Currently, Kaiser is editor of JustGoodCompany.com, a journal of religion and culture. He's also a contributing editor in Rome for Newsweek.
Kaiser has published 10 books including: Clerical Error, The Politics of Sex and Religion, and Pope, Council, and World. His new book A Church in Search of Itself: Benedict XVI and the Battle for the Future of the Church was recently published by Knopf. I reached Kaiser in Phoenix, Arizona.
Gerry McCarthy: In A Church in Search of Itself you write about the silencing of liberation theologian and priest Leonardo Boff. You explain that: "Boff argued that a 'clerical aristocracy' had expropriated from the people of God the means of religious production, and hence had misappropriated their right to make their own decisions. This sounded like Marxist jargon, but all Boff meant was the Church didn't want people to grow up." Another theologian that was singled out by the Church was Charles Curran. In 1986, he was deemed not "suitable" or "eligible" to teach Catholic theology by the Vatican, but he wasn't saying anything different than Richard McBrien of Notre Dame. He was made an example of by Rome wasn't he?
Robert Blair Kaiser: Yes --although Richard McBrien didn't have nearly the stature of people in Europe who were in the same moral theology group. For example: People like Bernard Häring and Josef Fuchs. These were two giants in the world of moral theology who were saying the same thing Charles Curran was saying. But they were not disciplined by the Vatican. They singled out Charles Curran, because he was an American. They figured that it would make a bigger splash to discipline an American, because of the American media.
GM: This doesn't reflect well on the Church does it?
RBK: No. They're using power politics and every possible means they can muster in order to make their points, and continue to exercise their power. After all, the Church is governed by an absolute ruler governing absolutely. We've seen it happen most particularly and recently in the case of the sex abuse crisis, where we find bishops pretty much do what they want to do. They have nobody looking over their shoulder. They can transfer bad priests from one parish to another with no checks and balances.
Our parish priests and bishops govern absolutely with no oversight. Or if they have oversight, it's given by a rubber stamp committee who have only consultative power. They have no real power to tell the bishop: "You can't do that." The bishops do what they please. Pastors are little popes in their parishes. Bishops are little popes in their dioceses.
What we need is a re-structuring of the polity of the Church. I'm not talking about changes in what we believe. But changes in the way we govern ourselves. Our governance hasn't always been this absolute power exercised absolutely. In the early Church (the first and into the second century) we had no bishops or priests. We had people who presided over household churches, and some of these people were women. We have the names of three of them from St. Paul: Prisca, Priscilla, Phoebe. There was no hierarchy then. Jesus didn't establish one. The priest, theologian, and biblical scholar John Meier once said: "Jesus did not set up an authoritarian structure. This came later."
Over time these accretions began coming into the Church. A major turning point was in 325 AD when Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the empire. Then popes began acting more autocratically. But even then popes were elected by the people and priests of Rome. It was in the fifth century that Pope Leo the Great said: He who presides over all must be chosen by all. Pope Gregory the Great in the sixth century said the same thing.
GM: One aspect of Church reform could involve lay people electing their bishops. But advocating these changes is frequently characterized as being "disloyal" to the Church. How do we deal with this?
RBK: We deal with it through the power of public opinion. There are 63 million Catholics in the United States, and only 293 bishops. We outnumber them. We also have the potential power of the press and the power of the Internet (where there are no gatekeepers anymore). We can summon the power of public opinion.
The more authoritarian these people are the better it is for the movement. I'm advocating a revolution in the North American Church. It's a revolution that's conservative in the sense that I don't want to get rid of Bishops at all. But I want them to be servant bishops and not lord bishops. This is according to the apostles in Luke 22: I'm giving you authority, but it's a different kind of authority. It's not the kind of authority that kings and princes have for domination. It's an authority of service: Let he who thinks he is the greatest among you --let him consider himself the least.
This movement is founded on scripture and the early tradition of the Church --which was a people's Church without a hierarchy at all. But now that we have a hierarchy, we've gotten used to it for a thousand years. We're not going to overturn that quickly. But in the twenty-first century (because of the mass media and Internet) we'll get there sooner. We'll reach a critical mass of Catholics who are outraged by the sex abuse crisis, and who will be even more outraged by the stories that are coming out about financial peculations. That's all going to come out, because good reporters are out there and they're finding things out. They're not afraid to tell the story any longer.
I don't know what the critical mass of Catholics is today. But in the Philippines in 1983, most of the 8 million people were so upset with Ferdinand Marcos that they wanted to depose him. Did 8 million people march? No. Only 400,000 people marched on a single day and unseated Marcos without a single shot being fired. That was about 5 percent of the population in the Philippines who were able to do that. If it takes 5 percent of the Catholics in America to force a new polity on the American Church --that's fine. Five percent of 63 million is just over three million. There are more than three million people that have signed up on MoveOn.org, for example, which had a huge influence on the U.S. presidential election in 2004. That wasn't quite huge enough to elect John Kerry. But that's what they were up to.
In any event, new things are happening and I'm optimistic that (with the power of the press and Internet) we can help people understand that they can demand and get what they want, because it's their Church. The bishops are at our service. This is tied to scripture and tradition. We're not at the service of the bishops.
GM: In the book you write that Cardinal Ratzinger was opposed to Vatican II's signature document Gaudium et Spes (The Pastoral Constitution on The Church in the Modern World). You explain that: "Those who found inspiration in that document to make a better world were, to Ratzinger, simply rebelling against their lot in life. He urged they not put their hopes in 'secular political progress.' They should, rather, 'accept the Cross of Christ.'" Can you talk to me about this?
RBK: Yes. I point out that these are strange words coming from a man who has spent all of his life behind a desk, and has never seen anything of the cross. But the people in Latin America have seen a great deal of the cross. Many of them were disappeared, imprisoned, and kidnapped (and thrown off helicopters to their death in the sea). These liberation theologians and their followers have seen a great deal of the cross.
GM: Has Benedict XVI shown any signs that he's willing to dialogue about the some of the issues you've been talking about?
RBK: He's interested in dialoguing with the Orthodox Church, Jewish people, and Protestants. But as far as dialoguing within the Church is concerned --he's the same sort of guy that John Paul II was. They believe in democracy in the secular order, but not in the ecclesiological order. But this is not for all time. The Church hasn't always been this way, and it need not always be this way. This is a human thing. Therefore it can (and must) change. And there are good reasons for it to change, because we're fed up. When I say "we" I don't even use the word laity anymore. It's a terrible word. If I use it I'm already accepting their designation of me as a second-class citizen in the Church. We're all a people of God. We're priest-people and people-people. I hate the word laity.
GM: We should stay away from using the word?
RBK: Absolutely, because language means a lot here.
GM: About ten years ago, Hans Küng wrote that we needed a Vatican III. What are your thoughts?
RBK: It's unreasonable to expect the change to happen in the Church from the top down. Besides the Pope (and all the people around him) have been used to this absolute rule for a thousand years. It's so thoroughly entrenched, that it would be highly unlikely to think we could change the Church from the top down by calling another council. It seems to me that we can do it more easily in America by insisting on an autochthonous American Church. Autochthonous is a Greek word. It's a much more benign word than schism, which is terrible (because it's cutting off). I'm not advocating schism. I'm advocating autochthonous. We have 20 autochthonous churches. Most of them are in the Middle East. For example: The Chaldeans, Maronites, Melkites, Armenians and the Copts. They are Catholic, and loyal to the Pope in faith matters. They have their own polity, patriarch, liturgy, and clergy (some of whom are married and some unmarried). Some of these churches are more ancient than the twenty-first autochthonous church --which is the Roman Catholic Church. It's spread all over the world, because it was spawned in Rome (and Rome has had a long imperialistic mentality).
After Vatican II a lot of the bishops --especially from Africa and Asia-- started talking about how terrible it was to think they were presiding over colonial churches with a colonial theology, devotions, and architecture which made the Catholic Church a foreign thing in Africa and Asia. So they advocated enculturation: In this case, that meant the Gospel should be encultured in Africa and Asia. Therefore, Jesus had to have an African face in Africa, and an Asian face in Asia.
After Vatican II Rome went along with that to a certain extent. For example: In the Congo, Rome put its blessings on enculturated liturgy. They had Masses in various Congolese dialects with drums, dancing, and colourful costumes. That seemed to accord with the way Africans think and feel. But few people have tried to apply that idea to the American Church. In other words: The Church would be encultured according to the way Americans think and feel. We can't do that by drums and dancing --that's not the American way. The American way is an accountable politics with a separation of powers in a constitutional form of government where it's not top down --it's bottom up.
We have a representative democracy in the U.S. You have the same thing in Canada. An absolute ruler doesn't dictate from the top and say: Believe it or be damned. Or: Follow this or go to hell. I'm advocating something very concrete. This is more than I've heard from various reform groups in America. For example: Call to Action and Voice of the Faithful want reform. But they don't have any concrete proposal on how to get reform.
You can go to my website www.takebackourchurch.org for all the specifics on this. But what I'm urging is doable --and Canon Law gives us a way of doing it. In Canon Law we have what we call regional or national synods. We had three of them in the United States in the 1800s: The first, second, and third councils of Baltimore, which set rules for the Catholic Church in the U.S. We can have a fourth council of Baltimore. According to Canon Law number 443 (paragraph 3) up to 50 percent of the delegates to that convention can be non-bishops. I'm urging that 50 percent of the delegates should be elected from the 50 states, and appear at that fourth council of Baltimore and become part of the mix. It would look much like the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. We can write a constitution for the U.S. Church with an executive, judicial, and legislative branch. The legislative branch would possibly have two houses: A Senate of Bishops and a House of Commons. Then we'd have checks and balances. If any particular issue were to come up, it could be debated in both houses and covered by the press. The whole country could get involved in the debate. We'd come up with much more reasonable solutions to many of the problems that bedevil us today.
James Surowiecki wrote a marvelous book called The Wisdom of Crowds in which he proved that the people at large are wiser than the elites.
GM: In your Epilogue you write that: "When the people of God wake up to the fact they can exercise the art of politics and remain good Catholics, changes will start to occur in a Church where they can claim ownership, and, just as important, citizenship." But when people think of practicing politics in the Church they sometimes feel less faithful.
RBK: That's because they confuse doctrine with discipline. That's the power that Rome exercises: They lump everything together. In the book, I write that John Paul II switched the argument saying we can't vote on doctrine. Nobody is asking us to vote on doctrine. We're not re-evaluating things like the divinity of Christ. We're not advocating a fourth person of the Blessed Trinity. We're talking about human things. We have to get that idea across to the people, because they ought to have control over their own Church.
The word ecclesial is a Greek word for gathering. It had no hierarchical structure. Jesus didn't found a hierarchical structure.
GM: Last year Fr. Thomas Reese resigned from the Jesuit magazine America. Some people suggest he left on his own accord, but that's not what comes out in your book is it?
RBK: He went on his accord when the Jesuit superiors in the U.S said: Quit --so we don't have to fire you.
GM: So there was pressure from Rome?
RBK: Yes. Before the conclave last year the General of the Society of Jesus received a letter from Cardinal Ratzinger saying Reese had to go. He didn't even tell Reese about it --even though he was living in the Jesuit Curia in Rome at the time (he was there to cover the conclave). The General Superior of the Society of Jesus put that letter in his pocket --figuratively speaking-- and said to himself: Let's see what happens at the conclave. When Cardinal Ratzinger became the Pope he thought the game was over. He couldn't oppose the order from the Holy Office (The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith), because it was signed by a guy who had just become Pope.
The Jesuits could have (and should have) made a fuss about it. They should have said: We can't have a credible journal of opinion in the United States edited by the Jesuits if our Congressmen (who all receive free copies of America every week) know that this policy was dictated by Rome. They should have fought, but they didn't fight. Some of them were afraid that the Pope could (and might) even suppress the Society of Jesus as they were suppressed in 1773. I doubt very much the Pope would have done that. You could suppress the Society of Jesus in 1773 --there were only a dozen Jesuits in America at that time. One of them was John Carroll --who became Bishop of Baltimore. But now you have 28 universities and 47 high schools run by the Jesuits in the U.S. And you're going to suppress them?
The Pope doesn't own these universities. They're now governed by a mixed board of lay people and Jesuits. Some Jewish people are sitting on these boards of universities like Fordham, Boston College, Holy Cross, and Georgetown. It would have been impossible for the Pope to suppress the Society of Jesus. But they were afraid, and fear is a very bad councilor.
GM: Can you talk to me about the future of the priesthood? In your book you quote Richard Sipe from his book Sex, Priests and Power. Sipe writes that celibacy is not the problem, but rather "a power system using celibacy for the domination and control of others." Where is the priesthood going today?
RBK: You just have to look at the statistics. In many dioceses the number of priests are dwindling. In 10 years a diocese like San Jose, California, will have 49 priests --and there are over a million people in the area. What would happen in a diocese if there were no more priests? Would we be without the Eucharist? Absolutely not. We would do what Jesus told us to do at the Last Supper. We would do this in memory of him. Those folks at the Last Supper weren't all priests. There were no priests as a matter of fact. There were probably woman there. If there weren't women at the Last Supper who did the dishes?
In the Gospel yesterday (Pentecost Sunday) the Holy Spirit appeared to the disciples after the resurrection and told them that they had authority. But he didn't say only the leaders have authority. He said: You all have authority.
The new sacramental theology that was spearheaded by Edward Schillebeeck at Vatican II says that we can all "confect" (to use a phrase from Canon Law I don't like) the Eucharist. We get together. We say the words of the Canon of the Mass together, and we go to communion. This is being done already in convents all over the world where sisters do not call for a priest. They do their own Masses. That's the future of the priesthood.
It may be that the priesthood has no future. Or that the priesthood will be an elite coterie --a phalanx of people within the Church who exercise intellectual leadership. In other words: Priest-theologians who help give guidance to the rest of us.
GM: You mention in the book that the Church currently accepts married Episcopalian priests. Is there a bishop in the U.S. or Canada that would start to accept candidates to the priesthood and allow for optional celibacy?
RBK: That takes more guts than most bishops have. They've been picked to be bishops, because they didn't have any guts. So I don't expect to see that happen. They need the backing of the rest of us to get that sort of courage.
GM: At the end of the book you write that: "The catechisms before Vatican II told us about 'a teaching Church' and 'a learning Church.' Now, on the Internet, I began to see that distinction disappear. We all became learners and teachers together." Do you think some bishops are truly listening to the People of God?
RBK: Yes some are. Bishops who are intelligent and want to serve the people are very much learning from the people. We have the most educated group of non-priests and non-bishops that the Church has ever seen. Many Catholic men and women have doctorates and degrees in engineering, science and mathematics etcetera. It far outstrips the training that is given to most priests.
It's just common sense. Thomas Paine was one of the fathers of the American Revolution. He wrote a book called Common Sense. So I'm talking common sense. I'm not a political leader. I want to have eminent, retired elder statesmen on the board of www.takebackourchurch.org. People like Mario Cuomo, Leon Pendetta, and Joseph Califano who can give us some guidance. Because this is a political action I'm talking about. It's politics.
GM: Can you share some additional thoughts on re-structuring the Church?
RBK: One of the reasons why I think young people are few and far between in most parish churches these days is that they don't have a sense of ownership and citizenship in their Church. When we start saying Mass together --whether there be a priest up at the alter presiding, a nun, three lay people, or a deacon-- it's our Mass. If we can own the Mass, then that gives us a sense of ownership in our Church as well.
Many Catholics understand the theology of the Eucharist. The Mass isn't over when it's over. The priest says: Go the Mass is finished. But a more accurate translation is: Go you are missioned (in Latin: Ite missa est). That is: Go out and change your city, state, province, and your nation. Bring it under the reign of Christ and the reign of heaven. Jesus uses that word something like 47 times. He meant: Establish a polity of justice and peace. We've got to have an influence on this world. That's what the incarnation is about --being incarnate in our culture. It's about making the world a more just, peaceful and loving place. Our kids want to do that. They just don't see a connection between the pomp and pompousness of their hierarchical Church and changing the world.
Some bishops are terrific at what I've been talking about. That's particularly the case in Latin America with the liberation theologian bishops. Cardinal Roger Mahoney in Los Angeles is very good on that. Others are not so good. When Benedict XVI was Cardinal Ratzinger he tended to downplay what I'm talking about. He tended to be an elitist, and liked to see a structured society that didn't kowtow to any kind of people's revolution. That's culturally conditioned --I understand that. But we don't have to take everything the Pope says about everything as infallible. I don't know any theologian these days who believes in infallibility as it was defined in Vatican I: The Pope is infallible in himself, but not out of consensus with the Church. Most theologians teach that the Pope himself is not infallible. He's only infallible in the sense that he's speaking out on what the Church believes. He doesn't tell us what to believe. He polls us and finds out what we believe, and then gives voice to it. That's the more standard explanation.
The word infallible is unfortunate. It was a political ploy on the part of Pius IX to shore up his diminishing temporal power under the forces of the Italian Risorgimento (their revolution). We have to understand history. Most Catholics don't understand much of our history at all.
GM: The Church has come close to making the ban on ordaining women to the ministerial priesthood infallible haven't they?
RBK: Yes they have. Any outsider that looks at it can easily see that it's simply a lag of time before the hierarchical Church understands that their attitude has been culturally conditioned. It's taking us back to a time when women were second-class citizens (and still are in the Church). How crazy is it? We have seven sacraments for men and six sacraments for women. Things will come gradually. The ordination of married men to the priesthood will come first. Then perhaps the ordination of married couples. Then the ordination of women. If we're still into "ordinations" then, in the sense of creating a separate, privileged class (or caste) like we have now in the Church. Jesus didn't "ordain" anybody.
Gerry McCarthy is Editor of The Social Edge.
Credit for photograph of Robert Blair Kaiser: Julian Wasser
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