Letting Go

I tried.  I really did.  But I’m done trying, at least for now.

Eight or nine years ago, Catholicism beckoned to me and I answered the call of the Catholics Come Home program, initiated to attempt to bring “lapsed” Catholics back into the fold.  And I made a good effort for a long time.  Regular Mass attendance.   Active in the men’s club.  Catholic Charities Board.   Regular attendance at Lumen Christi Institute (center for Catholic thought at the University of Chicago) programs.   I had gone a long way toward reconciling with the Catholic Church.

But Pope Francis’s leap into politics and economics initially caused me to hit the “pause” button.  While I understood that Jesuits emphasize social justice, Francis often used the language of Hugo Chavez, not just to criticize greed and avarice and promote a duty to assist the poor, but to attack capitalism itself.   He followed with pronouncements on climate change, immigration, and terror.  I cooled by connections with the Church when Pope Francis asserted that the love of money drives terrorism, which told me that Francis understood neither capitalism nor Islamic terrorism.  Francis, the globalist social justice warrior had no inhibitions of taking direct shots at America and, in particular, Donald Trump, criticizing Trump when our immigration policies resulted in the separation of children from their illegal immigrant parents.    But social justice warriors have a particular vulnerability that almost always sinks them in the end and that is irony.   They almost always get hoisted on their own petards and Francis is no exception.

But now we have yet another eruption of sex abuse scandals, and worse, the nuncio Archbishop Vigano is alleging that Pope Francis knew about Archbishop McCarrick’s abuse and reversed Pope Benedict’s sanctions against him.  Perhaps the worst of the cabal that is now scrambling incoherently to do damage control is our own Cardinal Cupich, head of the Chicago Archdiocese and named by accuser Vigano as having his career advanced by the notorious Bishop McCarrick.   Cupich brushed the burning controversy aside, asserting “the Pope has a bigger agenda.  He’s got to get on with other things, of talking about the environment and protecting migrants and carrying on the work of the church.  We’re not going to go down a rabbit hole on this. “  He accused the Pope’s accuser’s of “not liking him because he is Latino,” echoing the tone deaf tack taken by Elizabeth Warren when questioned about the murder of Mollie Tibbets (“so sorry you lost your daughter to our policies, but we have REAL problems to deal with”).  Cupich in a tweet implored his followers to attend the program at the Illinois Holocaust Museum entitled “Denial.”  With that, Cupich turned himself into a sad, maddening parody.

I asked a friend what he would have said a couple of years ago if I would have told him that the Pope would make Donald Trump look good.   At least Trump tried to keep his monkey business by good old fashioned American capitalist methods---through contract and buying it in a free exchange.   And it didn’t involve kids or anyone in the power structure underneath him. 

It turns out that perhaps I was not a lapsed Catholic but it is the Catholic Church that has lapsed.

So I’m making it official.   I am leaving the Church once again.  Will it be for good this time?   Who knows, but I cannot be part of this crew that now stands opposite of much of what I believe.  It is one thing for the leader of the Church to espouse warmed over Marxism.   It is another thing entirely to gloss over the sexual predators in your inner circle.   I’m not closing the door forever, but the Catholic Church will need to demonstrate to me that it is serious about reform before I will consider returning.   Pope Francis’s letter last week suggests that it is not.

What should Pope Francis do?  It’s clear that the Church is in crisis.   Francis’s best bet is to look to …. well, Donald Trump as a model.   Francis (and I’m sure many of the Cardinals and Archbishops) despises Trump and all that he stands for.  But a Trumpian approach has a lot that the Church could use right now.

• Trump is unafraid to cast off people that have outlived their usefulness.  He dropped Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon like hot potatoes early in his presidency.    The Vatican needs to churn many in the inner circle in a highly visible bloodletting to signal that the conspiracy of silence has ended.  No cushy retirements like Cardinal Law’s.  The perpetrators and their aiders and abettors need to be outed, humiliated and scorned…. publicly.   And Francis must be one of them.

•  Trump understands brand.  Trump’s businesses are all about personal brand and he is well versed in it.   Moreover, he knows exactly how to brand others and make it stick.  “Crooked Hillary,” “Lyin’ Ted,” and “Little Rocketman” have forever branded those people.  Catholicism has a great brand.  It is a worldwide brand and the Vatican needs to stop the damage, rebuild it, and use it.  It is the Yankees of religions.  And at a time of diminishment of religion and churchgoing in the West, it is needed now more than ever. 

• Trump is unafraid to upend the status quo.  Republicans held on to free trade as a shibboleth, until Trump convinced enough people that we were getting the raw end of the deal in some instances, particularly with China.   He routinely and fearlessly defies his handlers.  “You can’t do that,” they implored about his tweeting.   “Oh, yeah, watch me.”   The Catholic Church is now in a position where Trumpian methods are called for.  That is, take bold, decisive steps to change the status quo that are certain to upset the establishment.   Let women become ordained.  Let priests marry.  Decentralize authority.   Do it and do it boldly.

• Trump understands how to directly communicate with his constituents…and his adversaries.  Right now, many of the messages coming from the Catholic hierarchy are defensive, dismissive, and self-justifying with Cardinal Cupich’s among the worst.  The Vatican needs to gain control of the messaging and this needs to happen soon.

Pope Francis has not hidden his scorn for Donald Trump and his policies and approaches. Ironically, it is a Trumpian approach that could best pull the Vatican out of this crisis.

Where does that leave me?  Frankly, I do not know.  Adrift, for now.  Do I switch and become Episcopalian, Lutheran, or Unitarian?  Do I simply sit on the sidelines and see how this unfolds?  I just know that I cannot show up every Sunday and support an organization that has ruined so many young lives that it is charged with protecting until I am convinced that real change is afoot.  Until I see bold and decisive steps in that direction, count me out.