Deja Vu

Venerable By Custom

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Christianity,

letters,

Montesquieu,

Paris,

Rome

“When Bishops Fight,” by Anthony Stevens-Arroyo, washingtonpost.com/Newsweek, June 23, 2008.

Cardinal Roger Mahony invoked Canon Law to ban Auxiliary Bishop Geoffrey Robinson of Australia from speaking on Church property in Los Angeles.

“Canon 763 makes it clear that the Diocesan Bishop must safeguard the preaching of God's Word and the teachings of the Church in his own Diocese,” wrote the Cardinal in his May 9 letter. “Under the provisions of Canon 763, I hereby deny you permission to speak in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles,” he concluded.

Robinson came to Southern California anyway and spoke at non-church locations in San Diego and Costa Mesa.

Cardinal Mahony is the archbishop whose defense of undocumented immigrants caused CNN’s Lou Dobbs to fall into apoplectic outbursts against the Catholic Church. As a young cleric, Mahony strongly supported César Chavez and because of his progressive views became a frequent target of ultra-conservative TV host, Mother Angelica. So the liberal Cardinal must have banned an ultra-conservative bishop, right? Wrong!

Bishop Robinson is an elderly cleric who retired from ministry in 2004 for health reasons. Previously, he had coordinated the Australian Bishops’ response to the havoc caused by sexual abuse in the Church under the watchful eye of the Sydney Cardinal, one of the most conservative in Australia. Appalled by his findings, Bishop Robinson decided to go beyond a dry report and write a book with what he termed “meditations” to prevent future wrongs and to heal past wounds. Entitled Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus, the book has had considerable publishing success, both in the U.S. and Australia. Voice of the Faithful (VOF), a lay group that led opposition to the suspect policies of Boston’s Cardinal Law, invited Bishop Robinson to make a national tour of the U.S., discussing the Church reform.

Yet the bishops of Australia have begun an investigation for “doctrinal errors.” The Australian bishops reject the book’s exploration of church history that analyzes disconnection between the words of Christ and the decrees of the Church. They say that because he is a bishop, Robinson is required to promote only the Ordinary Magisterium, not his own ideas. Robinson rejected such charges as unfounded. His book, he insists, makes no claim to be official teaching: it is pastoral theology, not catechism. How else can change come to the church without the freedom to denounce past mistakes and advance alternative structures…?

“Letter 29,” from Persian Letters, by Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, 1721.
An epistolary novel composed of letters written to and from Usbek and Rica, two fictional Persian noblemen on a tour of Europe, Persian Letters allowed Montesquieu to assume the ignorance of his protagonists to satirize the more puzzling and irrational aspects of Western European society and culture.

The Pope is the head of the Christians: an old idol, kept venerable by custom. Formerly he was feared even by princes; for he deposed them as easily as our glorious sultans depose the kings of Irimetta and Georgia. He is, however, no longer dreaded. He declares himself to be the successor of one of the first Christians, called Saint Peter: and it is certainly a rich succession; for he possesses immense treasures, and a large territory owns his sway.

The bishops are the administrators under his rule, and they exercise, as his subordinates, two very different functions. In their corporate capacity they have, like him, the right to make articles of faith. Individually, their sole duty is to dispense with the observance of these articles. For you must know that the Christian religion is burdened with an immense number of very tedious duties: and, as it is universally considered less easy to fulfil these than to have bishops who can dispense with their fulfillment, the latter method has been chosen for the benefit of the public. Thus, if any one wishes to escape the fast of Rhamazan, or is unwilling to submit to the formalities of marriage, or wishes to break his vows, or to marry within the prescribed degrees, or even to forswear himself, all he has to do is to apply or a bishop, or to the Pope, who will at once grant a dispensation.

The bishops do not make articles of faith for their own government. There are a very great number of learned men, for the most part dervishes, who raise new questions in religion among themselves: they are left to discuss them for a long time, and the dispute lasts until a decision terminates it.

I can also assure you that there never was a realm in which so many civil wars have broken out, as in the kingdom of Christ.

Those who first propound some new doctrine, are immediately called heretics. Each heresy receives a name which is the rallying cry of those who support it. But no one need be a heretic against his will: he only requires to split the difference, and allege some scholastic subtlety to those who accuse him of heresy; and, whether it be intelligible or not, that renders him as pure as the snow, and he may insist upon his being called orthodox.

What I have told you holds good only in France and Germany: for I have heard it affirmed that in Spain and Portugal there are certain dervishes who do not understand raillery, and who cause men to be burned as they would burn straw. Happy the man, who, when he falls into the hands of these people, has been accustomed to finger little balls of wood while saying his prayers, who has carried on his person two pieces of cloth attached to two ribbons, and who has paid a visit to a province called Galicia. Without that, a poor devil is in a wretched plight. Although he should swear like a Pagan that he is orthodox, they may very likely decline to admit his plea, and burn him for a heretic. Much good his scholastic subtlety will do him! They will none of it; he will be burned to ashes before they would dream of even giving him a hearing.

Other judges assume the innocence of the accused; these always deem them guilty. In dubious cases, their rule is to lean to the side of severity, apparently because they think mankind desperately wicked. And yet, when it suits them, they have such a high opinion of mankind, that they think them incapable of lying; for they accept as witnesses, mortal enemies, loose women, and people whose trade is infamous. In sentencing culprits, they pay them a little compliment. Having dressed them in brimstone shirts, they assure them that they are much grieved to see them in such sorry attire; that they are tender-hearted, abhorring bloodshed, and are quite overcome at having to condemn them. Then these heart-broken judges console themselves by confiscating to their own use all the goods of their miserable victims.

Oh, happy land, inhabited by the children of the prophets! There such woeful sights as these are unknown. There, the holy religion which angels brought protects itself by innate truth; it can maintain itself without recourse to violent means like these.

Paris, the 4th of the moon of Chalval, 1712.

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