April 13, 2014 David Timbs (Melbourne)
(Comments welcome here) David's previous articles
Tom Hoopes and the JPII Catholics
A
few days ago I came across an item in Catholica
Forum which interested me greatly. The reference came from Herbie, a regular
poster on that Australian discussion board. The article in question was written
by Tom Hoopes, an American Catholic convert, whose life was profoundly
influenced by Pope John Paul II, his life and teaching.
What
follows is a shortened version of the essential points provided by Herbie, the Catholica
poster. What they indicate in rather graphic form is not only the changed
practices in the life of the writer but a very clear view not only into his
character and soul but into the psyche and religious spirit of millions of
Catholics especially those who were devoted to John Paul II. It is certainly a
ten point statement of conservative Tom Hoopes’ Catholic identity but it is
more than this. Behind Tom’s world there lurks a whole Catholic Conservative
world just like his.
10
Things I Did Differently This Week Because John Paul II Existed
“1.
I attended the newly translated Mass.
2. I said the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary.
3. I taught at a renewed Catholic college.
4. I consulted the Catechism to answer questions … on my own and in the parish
class my wife and I teach.
5. I strategized about the New Evangelization.
6. I said a Chaplet of Divine Mercy.
7. I worried whether the Cold War would return … not whether it would end.
8. I went to Masses celebrated by two priests who found their vocations at World
Youth Day.
9. I kissed my sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth children goodnight.
Humanae Vitae didn’t seem to have a chance in the 1980s. It was a dead letter.
Then came Theology of the Body. My wife and I rejected contraception from the
start, and she earned her masters from the John Paul II Institute for Marriage
and Family. Now we have nine children and we just got back from a home-schooling
event where no one drove anything smaller than a minivan and the children
outnumbered the adults present a dozen to one — just like similar events we
have attended in Virginia, Maryland, Connecticut and California.
10. My kids played with friends named Pio, Kolbe and Gianna.
The massive number of beatifications and canonizations John Paul presided over
doesn’t just add new names to the Michaels, Teresas and Katies — it means
new examples of holiness drawn from faraway lands and representing diverse
vocations.”
- From ZENIT.org
9 April 2014 (1)
In
his 10 points, Tom Hoopes, quite eerily sets out a kind of adjusted timetable,
regimen and rule of life which bears striking resemblance to a modified
programme of family indoctrination and socialisation one might find a version of
in a junior, religious Military Academy for the docile, obedient and compliant
in the 1950s. Hoopes is probably not even remotely conscious of this. What he is
very clear about is his confident acknowledgement that his Catholic identity,
his family’s and probably that of millions like them came to be intrinsically
linked to the life and witness of John Paul II during the years of his papacy,
1978 and 2005. These people were and, it seems, continue to be his devoted
disciples. JP II became the model of Catholic Christian existence in his living
and even in his dying. No wonder his devoted disciples cried Santo
subito at his funeral! The subtext of this amazing outpouring of emotion,
however, was possibly the hope that his canonisation would be a validation of
the shape and content and integrity of the style of Catholicism Conservatives
had assumed.
Clinging to a
corpse
While
Pope Wojtyla’s personal holiness is in no way under scrutiny, his governance
and use of papal authority, his exercise of power and influence through his
teaching and behaviour are a very big
issue. Furthermore what JP II taught and did from 1982 till his death in 2005
was heavily and decisively influenced by his closest adviser, Joseph Ratzinger
of the CDF. He let that happen. During those years the two of them attempted to
impose an ideologically driven and contrived interpretation of Vatican II which
undermined and eroded many of the mandated reforms of the Council Fathers and
their collective intentions expressed in these reforms.
The blunt instruments of reactiveness were the confected New
Evangelisation of Wojtyla and
Ratzinger’s Reform of the Reform.
What they managed to achieve in the process was to sideline the Holy Spirit and
to render Vatican II almost completely comatose for forty years.
One
of the massive distortions inflicted on Catholic life during the papacy of JP II
was the imposition of some of his bizarre personal piety. He established, for
example, the second Sunday of Easter as Divine
Mercy Sunday. This stemmed from his devotion to the thoroughly neurotic
Polish seer, Mother Faustina. Appeals to Faustina’s visions and devotion to
the Chaplet of Divine Mercy quickly became a litmus test of loyalty to the Pope
and the Magisterium and by extension, a test of genuine Faith.
Jesus Christ was never mentioned nor seemed to have any part in all of
this strange business!
It
doesn’t seem to matter for Traditionalists or Conservatives that JP II, while
pastorally wise in many respects, was actually very selective in his reception
of the mandate of the Second Vatican Council. This was probably a source of
comfort and reassurance for them. Wojtyla operated out of a conceptual framework
which was pre-Ressourcement or Nouvelle
Theologie, the very underpinning of Vatican II. His theological constructs
were mainly absorbed and transmitted through the filters of his moral
philosophy. His ecclesiology is based on the principles of autocratic power and
governance. He, with the assistance of Ratzinger succeeded in destroying the
collegiality, subsidiarity and co-responsibility mandated by Vatican II.
Following
the papal election of Ratzinger, the collective need and craving for a
centralised form of directive, interventionist Church governance continued to be
advocated, promoted and even demanded by Traditionalists and Conservatives. This
was the most promising opportunity yet offered to finish off Vatican II and all
that it stood for. In times of mass collective rage and resentment such as this,
it is not uncommon for people to sacrifice their wills and autonomy. This was
the price millions of Conservative and Traditionalist Catholics were willing to
pay in order to have an autocratic papal monarch decree the permanent removal of
the source of their discontent.
Benedict
built on the custom of JP II by appointing bishops who were docile, compliant,
loyal and obedient Americans. Benedict branched stacked the American Church in
particular. Tom Hoopes and the
like-minded have for years been depositing their brains at castle-keep draw
bridges of two Popes and of the effeminate crusading culture warrior US bishops
like Morlino of Madison WI, Olmsted of Phoenix AZ, Jugis of Charlotte, NC,
Paprocki of Springfield, IL, Conley of Lincoln, NE, Chaput of Philadelphia and
Cordeleone of San Francisco CA. Not to be forgotten either are the darlings of
the exotic Tridentine Mass brigade, Cards Raymond Burke of the Signatura and
Malcolm Ranjith, Archbishop of Colombo, SR.
Another
cultural indulgence for many English speaking Conservatives, especially
Americans, is to immerse themselves in the mystique of the University of
Steubenville OH. This place is almost universally revered as the living bastion
of orthodoxy in the American heartland. (2) It too is indicative of just how
deeply time frozen is the world of Conservative Catholicism in that country.
Steubenville is not a hot bed of anti-intellectualism. It’s just that it is
such a huge embarrassment to modern critical Catholic thought. It is a stunning
anachronism, splendidly preparing students to engage with a world that no longer
exists.
With allies
like this....
Among
the very many who care little for intelligence, time or place, there are the
people who are the groupies of the monumentally ignorant spruikers of
reactionary ideology. These are typically people who hang on the pronouncements
of someone like the dissembling and highly delusional lay crusader, Michael
Voris. Apart from consistently being caught out in deception, dissemblance and
hubris, one of the things his admirers find irresistibly attractive is his habit
of constant hectoring, badgering and barking at those bishops he deems to be too
weak, too flexible, too merciful and therefore, too Christian! He labels them as
‘namby-pamby’ and they have no place in his kingdom. It should not be lost
on the observer that he enjoys little or no episcopal patronage anywhere. Voris
is on the nose, but many Conservative love him nonetheless. This should be a
concern for people like Tom Hoopes because it might be difficult to discriminate
between what he himself stands for and what the lunatic Voris represents.
Voris
believes that the future of the New
Evangelisation lies in a very aggressive muscular form of apologetics with
his own overlay of cheap shots and gratuitous insults. Voris thrives on the
rhetoric of open conflict, battle, blood, sacrifice and even martyrdom. Even
though he has been banned from using the word ‘Catholic’ in his advertising,
it should come as no surprise that his media organisation is known as
"Church Militant TV" which is a Catholic version of an ultra
self-absorbed, eccentric National Rifle Association of evangelism and
apologetics.
It
would probably be very doubtful if any of these Catholic Crusaders who seek to influence people like Tom Hoopes
would ever expose themselves to a genuine open debate in the public forum and
argue on the strengths and value of their philosophical outlook. Despite the
protestations of a tradition of robust apologetics many of them are little more
than shadow boxers. The advertising on the bill boards is meant to impress the
locals not the outsiders. If Tom and his friends really thought about the New
Evangelisation would they really believe that what they might have to say
will radically transform the lives of others?
Perceptions
matter
A
not uncommon image of the young neo-conservative is of a person who broadcasts
individuality but in fact is a crowd follower. The socio-political attitudes
most frequently expressed are often borrowed from the ideological catalogues of
others. They also tend towards emotional reaction rather than intellectual
reflection. The common dialect of the young conservative takes the form of
slogans and shallow ‘certainties’ While espousing individualism and freedom,
these people are often prepared to sacrifice both in order to become and remain
part of the social group. Their satchel of typical right wing views include:
social intolerance of the poor and disadvantaged, nagging resentment about
personal income tax, views about ‘boat people’ based on ignorance,
excessively punitive attitudes towards the incarceration of criminals and the
almost de rigueur hatred of
homosexuals.
From
a socio-economic perspective, these Catholics are profoundly ignorant of the
Church’s vast, rich and heavily documented Tradition of Social teaching.
Consequently they tend, almost axiomatically, to support a version of capitalism
which has more in common with Calvinism than with the ethos of primitive
Christianity and the doctrine of popes from Leo XIII to Francis. Their NeoCon
heroes are invariably characters like Michael Novak, George Weigel, the Fr James
Schall sj economic ‘Trickle-down-effect-Boys’ choir from Grove College.
These are well represented in the pages of Crisis Magazine, First Things
and their cheer squad includes the usual suspects, the opportunist
clerical hangers-on and camp-followers such as the opinionated sine-cure,
freeloading cleric John Zuhlsdorf.
Conservative
Catholics, seem to enjoy and ongoing love affair with authoritarian causes:
intolerance of different degrees, the crushing of heretics, silencing of
dissenters and the gagging of liberals. They also tend towards being
self-referential in their unswerving and unquestioning loyalty to authority
figures such as the Pope and the Magisterium. An attendant pathology to this
however is that, when their attitudes and opinions are criticised or scrutinised,
they very quickly play the persecution or even martyrdom card. They are, despite
the rhetoric of the Church militant, in fact nothing of the sort. What
increasingly irks the ideologues of Conservatism is the charge that they are the
original cafeteria Catholics many of whose causes are, as Pope Francis observes,
faddish and fashion statements.
Francis’
sometimes bluntly challenges those people in the Church community who are
control freaks and censorious monitors of everyone else. He confronts and names
their pathologies and they do not like this kind of catechesis in the least:
‘Today
there is a dictatorship of narrow-mindedness that kills people’s freedom. This
was the Pope’s message at his morning mass celebration in St. Martha’s
House.
In
his homily Francis reflected on the attitude of the Pharisees and how closed
they were to Jesus’ message. Their mistake, the Pope pointed out, was
"detaching the commandments from the heart of God.” They
thought everything could be resolved by respecting the commandments. But these
commandments "are not just a cold law,” because they are born from a
relationship of love and are "indications" that help us avoid mistakes
in our journey to meet Jesus, Vatican Radio says, quoting the Pope’s
words.’ (3)
An
extension of the white martyrdom theme resurrected under JP II, concerns one of
the new ‘loyal to the pope and the magisterium’ movements formed under his
papacy. These are the Franciscans of the Immaculate: the pious throw backs with
the chic tonsures, the folded arms across the chest to say nothing of the
designer monastic drapery. Pope Francis now has placed strict conditions across
all their operations one of which is on their use of the Tridentine Mass inside
and outside their communities. These restrictions have become a cause
celebre with the hurriedly assembled ad
hoc coalition of Traditionalist-Conservative groups. They see it as an
indication of the great persecution to come.
What
these people are probably failing to understand sufficiently it that the
problems surrounding the Franciscans of the Immaculate have been generated by
and are rooted in their own preciousness, self-adoration and sense of
entitlement and they are by no means alone in this. Like so many of the PJ II new
religious movements, they are symbolic of a deeper malaise among and within
many post Vat II ecclesiastical groups and organisations: They have developed a
collective amnesia and have forgotten that they are a means
not the end in itself. In adolescent
fashion, they have confused their rule books with the Gospel, their theatrical
rituals and the ‘nothing-is-too-expensive-for-God’ bling and their
liturgical fixations with authentic worship of God.
Ultimately,
all this conservative rhetoric of identity,
with solemn commitments of loyalty to the Pope and the Magisterium (Popes JP II
and Benedict XVI) will eventually be buried under the weight of its own hubris.
The carry-on evident in Tom Hoopes’ paean to and apologia for JP II amount
ultimately to just a belated exercise in face saving bleats, whimpers and
excuses.
It
would take someone with only modest skills in literary criticism to have noted
from the not so subtle tones, hints and other indications which are evident in
their print and electronic media that a majority of Traditionalists and
Conservatives hold little or no genuine, enduring respect or affection for
Francis’ two immediate predecessors.
A
principal source of this discontent is that, despite the combined power of two
successive papacies, John Paul II and Benedict XVI were unable to consign
Vatican II to the rubbish heap of Church history. They also let down the cause
of restorationism by failing to re-establish in an authoritative, definitive way
pre-1962 Catholic life and practice. It is not primarily Jorge Bergoglio who
causes them grief but those other two. They won’t come clean and admit it
though. Instead, what endures is a subterranean torrent of unresolved
disappointment, resentment and deep-seated anger. Tom deals with this through a
regimen of pious practices and maybe he’ll survive on that and even flourish
for a time at least. Ultimately
though, he and the rest of the Traditionalist-Conservative Catholic world will
have to come to grips with the fact that there is a new dynamic at work in the
Church with a new guide to ensure its effectiveness. He is intent on
facilitating the grace of a restored equilibrium and the much needed healing of
a badly traumatised Church. Something of the agenda for this is spelt out here:
The
correction the Traditionalists and Conservatives were dreading has arrived, at
least indicatively as Michael Kelly SJ writes:
“(However,)
the Church has virtually 50 years of unaddressed issues and reforms that need to
be addressed:
§
Clericalism,
the restructuring of ministry and that ticket into the clerical culture at the
heart of so much trouble for the Church – celibacy – which Pope Paul VI
prevented the Vatican Council from considering;
§
The
weak grasp of human biology reflected in the Church’s sexual ethics,
particularly as shown in the controversial issue of contraception;
§
Centralism
and careerism in Church administration and those who ambition it;
§
The
outdated nature of the Church’s legal processes;
§
And
perhaps the biggest issue: the exclusion of women from positions of
decision-making significance.
That’s
where the inclusion of Pope John XXIII in the beatification ceremonies next
month becomes a clear indication of the style and direction of his term as
Bishop of Rome.
John
XXIII’s cause for canonization had been languishing. Pope Francis dispensed
with the usual process and simply declared, as he can, that John XXIII was
worthy of canonization.” (4)
The
promises, reforms and legacies of the Second Vatican Council are once again at
stake right now. Over forty years and much to the delight, affirmation and
consolation of the Traditionalists and Conservatives the treasury of Vatican II
was either shelved or buried by JP II and Benedict. Francis has halted the
fabrication of JP II’s regressive Cold War Catholicism and the duplicitous
pretence of Ratzinger’s Reform of the
Reform. Restoration has taken on a refreshing, unexpected twist and assumed
a surprising new incarnation. It will not be held hostage to euro-centric
ideology again
Endnotes:
1) Original piece by the author, Tom Hoopes, is HERE while the Zenit article is HERE
2)
Steubenville OH Franciscan
University’s conference outreach programme gives a clear indication of their
academic and pastoral vision, HERE.
3)
Pope Francis’ homily on the
dictatorship of narrow-mindedness,
HERE.
4)
“The canonisation of John
Paul II and John XXIII – an event of telling significance,” in Pearls and Irritations, April 9, 2014. HERE.
David Timbs writes from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
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