Texas Carmelites Case Reflects the Vatican’s New Culture of Ecclesial Punishments
National Catholic Register, 07 June 2023
Forty years ago, such punishments were rare and light; today, they are frequent and severe. Has balance been restored?
The curious case of the Carmelites in Texas brings attention to a culture shift in the Church. Ecclesiastical punishment has made a return. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of the Pope Francis pontificate is that punishment is back, sometimes fiercely so.
Bishop Michael Olson of Fort Worth was investigating the local Carmelite monastery. In response to his actions, the sisters sued in both canonical and civil court, seeking damages of $1 million in the latter filing. That itself was highly unusual, given that religious-liberty concerns usually militate against secular courts intervening in canonical matters, to say nothing of St. Paul’s view that Christians ought not have recourse to civil courts (1 Corinthians 6).
Bishop Olson did not take kindly to the civil lawsuit and told the nuns that until they dropped it, they would no longer have daily Mass and access to confession. In the fast-moving case, Rome gave Bishop Olson total control over the monastery, after which he summarily dismissed the superior for sexual immorality (which he announced publicly) and then restored daily Mass.
There is clearly a mess in Texas, but what is striking is how swift and severe were the punishments Bishop Olson delivered — and how little stir they caused. Forty years ago, when Rome moved modestly against a handful of dissident theologians, the howls of protest echoed for years, even decades. Then ecclesiastical punishments were rare and light; today, they are frequent and severe. The culture has shifted.
The principal cause is the sexual-abuse crisis. In his 2010 interview book, Light of the World, Pope Benedict XVI spoke about how the culture of punishment had simply disappeared in many places.
“The Archbishop of Dublin [Diarmuid Martin] told me something very interesting about that,” Benedict said. “He said that ecclesiastical penal law functioned until the late 1950s; admittedly it was not perfect — there is much to criticize about it — but nevertheless it was applied. After the mid-60s, however, it was simply not applied anymore.”
After the various waves of scandal, the law came back with a vengeance. The one-strike policy is now universal regarding abuse of minors, and standard practice is that initial punishments are administered instantly. Once an allegation is received, the priest is often out of ministry, his home and his clerical attire by sundown.
Such measures are widely supported as necessary to protect the vulnerable, punish offenders and restore ecclesial credibility. A massive change in ecclesial culture has been wrought by the crisis.
With the election of Pope Francis, the law took a central place in Rome’s pastoral approach. The Holy Father has issued dozens of legislative acts and completed the long process of completely revising Book VI of the Code of Canon Law, which deals with punishments.
Pope Francis continued the high-profile punishments that Pope Benedict administered to founders of new movements, most notably Father Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, early in his pontificate.
A new culture has now emerged — a culture that makes imaginable a bishop cutting off Holy Communion from Carmelite nuns. Such a thing would have simply been unimaginable before.
In the United States, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco prohibited Nancy Pelosi, then speaker of the House, from receiving Holy Communion in his archdiocese. Several other bishops supported him. That it happened now, though long debated, is part of the new culture of punishment.
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