Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Modern Church in 1318

One bad priest can irreparably destroy a community and the parish. We have been witnessing this first hand for the past several decades. Every other week, one article appears about a felonious priest who wrought misdeeds or taught heterodoxy decades ago only to be saved by his bishop; only now do the accusations come to light. Out of politeness and piety we smile, say it was an isolated shame, and pretend that the damage does not endure. It does. Perhaps we would do well to consider an example from history that parallels our modern travails quite well.

In the early 14th century, an abbot-turned-bishop in Pamiers, Jacques Fournier, was eager to root out remnants of the Cathar heresy in his diocese in southern France near the Spanish border in the Midi-Pyrénées, a region so separate from the rest of France that its native tongue was Occitan. He was given a tip about a potentially heterodox conversation involving the parish priest of Montaillou, Pierre Clergue. Bishop Jacques launched an inquisition into Montaillou and discovered that virtually the entire town had slipped into either heresy or apostasy. While the rest of southern France had left Catharism and returned to the true faith, either by compulsion or, in fewer cases, with the help of Dominican preaching, this small town held firm to the ascetic religion which denied many fundamental doctrines of the Church, held the physical world to be evil and scorned, and which held their perfecti as the models and exemplars of human behavior. Worse yet, After years of investigation, Fourner found that Clergue himself was the root of the problem. Simultaneously, he lived off the Church and celebrated the Sacraments while giving private instruction in Catharistic ideas. Unlike mainstream Cathars, who in their scorn of the body denied pro-creative relations, Clergue and his brother were willing to have sex anywhere at any time. He leveraged his authority, his false teachings, and his lust over the women of Montaillou. Beatrix de Planissoles recounted that Clergue first approached her sexually while he was hearing Confessions behind the altar of St. Mary Magdalen in the village chapel of St. Peter. He told her that the Sacraments of Confession and Eucharist are meaningless, that the body is evil and hence God would not deign to enter it and that Confession does nothing, only Confession to God is meaningful. On these grounds, he continued his priestly ministry, saying Mass and granting absolutions, because he needed ecclesiastical revenues to support his lifestyle, but he did not believe it one bit. One villager openly professed that Christ did not pre-exist time, God did not make the world, and that Jesus came into the world by "screwing," as did everyone else. Clergue enjoyed a year and a half of sexual encounters with Beatrix and many other women in the village, staging liaisons in barns, his rectory, and even in the chapel itself. He kept them quiet by maintaining good relations with the diocesan office and threatening to report the more active Cathars for heresy. As the informant, he would enjoy credibility with the inquisition. It was not to be. Fournier threw Clergue into prison, where he rotted until drawing his last breath. Most of the town surrendered their Cathar beliefs and accepted various kinds of public penance such as wearing a yellow cross. Five remained in open, obdurate apostasy and were burned at the stake. Sixteen years later bishop Jacques was elected pope. 

There will be no rescue by the institutional Church, no grand restoration that will put our many modern Pierre Clergues in prison and bereft them of their pensions. We overestimate our woes though if we assume that the modern debacle is without precedent. It happened in France in 1318. The difference is that back then, those looking from the outside inward knew something was amiss.

12 comments:

  1. There will be no rescue by the institutional Church, no grand restoration...

    I'm not entirely in disagreement here, since your larger argument must go home; but I think it unwise to say that the institutional Church can play *no* role. We have before us, after all, the examples of the Hildebrandian Reform, and the Tridentine reform; and for that matter, Bishop Jacques himself was a case of an institutional leader actually exercising his authority as shepherd when it was most needed.

    But to the extent that waiting in hopes for such a development is an exercise in dangerous passivity, I agree. When the institutional Church does finally act, it will be under the same kind of impulsion that initiated previous institutional reforms - in short, it will be forced into it by circumstances, not least internal crisis so severe that it can no longer be denied or ignored. Right now, the institutional Church is still firmly in denial.

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    1. Some believe or hope—FSSPXers, many FSSP people, and sedevacantists—that one day there will be another Pius X in the papacy who will issue myriad condemnations against 99.99% of the world, consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart, restore the old Mass, and make the masses fall before his neo-scholastic wisdom. My point is that it ain't goin' to happen. The institutional Church may well be restored and reformed in a way consonant with tradition and flexible enough to guarantee its own future, but that will be the result of a large scale reform and recovery at the parish level and in religious orders, not a cause of it. Those previous reform movements were the result of militant, orthodox reforming minorities (Cluny, the Jesuits, Bellarmine etc) that had been active at the local level for decades. The Church will fix Rome, Rome will not fix the Church.

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    2. ...that will be the result of a large scale reform and recovery at the parish level and in religious orders, not a cause of it.

      Fair enough - you've made this observation before, and I wouldn't disagree with that. I also think, in fact, that it very likely informed Benedict XVI's thinking - that he would be at risk for being a marching band leader with very little band behind him, because he knew full well that there was very little in the way of a critical mass of deeply intentional Catholics attached to tradition (understood in a broad sense) to support any serious reform effort and give it impetus.

      That said, I don't think we can rule out a strident, anathema and mysticism-filled pontificate in the future, whether of Sarto's or Boniface VIII's (or some other) variety. But if it happens, it will take place in a very, very different world and Church than exists now (or indeed than existed in the early 20th C.), with scarcely imaginable upheavals in the intervening years.

      I can scarcely imagine, as it is, what a Church reviving because of a critical mass of "a large scale reform and recovery at the parish level and in religious orders" would even *look* like, because it is so far removed from the present situation. I'd imagine it would have to be some generations off, at a minimum, with a lot of societal upheaval along the way. None of us are going to live to see it, I expect, without hibernation technology.

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  2. I stay away from heretical priests. If their mind is disordered what would make me think their body is not? There seems to be a link between heresy and sins of the flesh.

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    1. Well, in Granada (Spain) a group of paedophilic (and rapist) priests was "discovered" (i. e. it came out to light) some days ago. They were preachers and, as far as I know, very "conservative"...

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    2. Ah, just like the Society of St. John.

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    3. http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0406581.htm

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    4. Most famously there is also the Legion of Christ, which at least put on a great show of conservative orthodoxy - until Maciel was found out.

      The vast majority of sexual abuse has taken place under liberal auspices in large part because most of the Church in the West has been run by liberals for the last five decades and more (and yes, it is also true that some seminaries degenerated into what amounted to gay brothels). But no corner of the Church is bulletproof against these sins; vigilance is always required.

      That said, the traditionalist Ecclesia Dei societies and groups have a pretty good track record to date, perhaps not least because they know they'll be held to a higher standard, and have fewer protectors. With more applicants, they can also be more selective, too.

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    5. Well, except the ICRSP's Timothy Svea.

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    6. dmw,

      That's why I said "pretty good" and not "perfect."

      That said, they seem to have handled Svea's case fairly well once they became aware of it.

      But as I said: Vigilance is always required. Svea is the only case I know of involving an Ecclesia Dei society or group: I hope it remains that way.

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    7. Agreed. I understand. Though, Svea was the American superior at the time, and all the vocations info I got from the Institute in the late 90s bore his signature. Creepy. And again, we shouldn't forget how influential the Society of St John was back in its day, when it had charge of St Greg's academy, and had great ambition. It's worth using the Wayback machine and checking out their stuff from 98-99. Ssjohn.org.

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