Book Review: The Faithful Departed

One of the brothers lent me Philip F. Lawler's The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston's Catholic Culture, and I couldn't put it down. It made me feel exasperated with the state of the Church, and drove me to pray for the insight into what I can do about it.

The book is generally a success, though it is hampered by a serious, though not mortal flaw.

Lawler centers his study around the archdiocese of Boston, the so-called "epicenter" of the clergy "sex abuse" crisis that erupted most recently in 2002. I put "sex abuse" in quotes because getting us to think of the crisis as one of sexual abuse is among the real villainies of the whole thing; the more worrisome crisis was one of moral negligence on the part of the hierarchy. On this point Lawler is exactly on target. The terrible crimes of deviant and sick priests are certainly inexcusable at any level, but the inability of bishops to address them or stop them was and is that much worse.

Lawler's thesis is that this failure of moral leadership had been brewing in the American hierarchy long before the crisis, and has continued since. His astute analysis of the relationship between Joseph Kennedy and Cardinal Cushing in the chapter "Good Neighbors" shows the beginnings of the willingness of Catholic leadership to put up with and even happily accept Catholic politicians who worked actively against the teachings and agenda of the Catholic faith. This failure is very much in evidence today: Catholic politicians are, just for example, no more likely to be Pro-Life than anyone else. On this topic you can check out Lawler's chapter, "Personally Opposed, but..." Lawler goes on to cite several bishop's statements surrounding other issues that reveal the sense that Catholic teachings apply only to Catholics, even when they derive from divine or natural law and are therefore applicable to everyone. In all of this Lawler argues that the abdication of moral leadership on the part of the American hierarchy began well before the current crisis. In seeming to look at the Church as a civic institution--and to protect its reputation as such--the leadership of the Church made friends with the secular city and compromised themselves. Instead of Catholicism shaping culture, "the culture was shaping Catholicism. The engines of evangelization were running in reverse." (200)

Lawler's even more damning assertion is that this failure in moral leadership has continued during and since the response to the scandals. Desiring to "restore confidence rather than to restore souls," (156) the bishops, in Dallas for example, "by instituting a series of policy norms...sought to deflect attention from their own appalling failures." (191) Whether this accusation is true--and I think it might be an occasion for the use of Hanlon's Razor (do not attribute to malice what is adequately accounted for by stupidity)--the outcome is the same. Policy norms, background checks, and training are all good things. I am an administrator of these things for the parish I serve, and I believe in them zealously. But they do not address the sicknesses and failures and systemic issues within the culture of the church and the clergy especially, which are the problems lying behind the scandal. Policies and norms address the symptoms rather than the disease, and on this point I think we should all listen to this book.

Lawler is also to be praised for making some courageous but unpopular claims. For instance, in the refreshing chapter, "The Wrong Explanations," he cites several authorities--including the National Review Board established by the bishops themselves--who are willing to admit that a far-reaching problem of sexual abuse that victimized teenage boys by an overwhelming proportion has something to do with homosexuality. This is, of course, vigorously denied on all sides. The denial, in my opinion, comes from the fact that so many homosexuals have found in the Catholic priesthood and religious life a safe place to indulge and be encouraged in their deviancy and affective immaturity, and they protect it with great ferocity. If you doubt me on this, go to your local clergy meeting or community of male religious and suggest that homosexuality might be a problem. You will soon see how powerful the "lavender mafia" really is. (That being said, I have no doubt that there are many priests and religious, both on earth and in Heaven, who, rather than indulge their problem, have struggled heroically with same-sex attraction and have been blessed with holiness and pastoral solicitude on account of it.) Nevertheless, Lawler is to be praised for saying the obvious thing that one is not allowed to think, much less say.

Though the book is a success to one degree or another on all these counts, it does have a serious flaw. Lawler uses the terms liberal, conservative, and radical without much explicit precision. As happens many times when we Catholics do this, what could be helpful descriptors in our theological and ecclesiological conversations drift into their secular and political meanings. Thus, sometimes when Lawler speaks of "conservative" and "liberal" Catholics, the reader hears him speaking of political and social liberals and conservatives who happen to be Catholics. This leads to the occasional serious misfortune in the book, such as when Lawler dismisses genuine successes of the bishops in the United States like the economic and peace pastorals as "fashionable" and a "politicization." (90) Surrendering good Catholic reflection to the glittering wisdom of the world goes both ways, liberal and conservative. If you can intelligently bracket off and read by the occasional lapse into this sort of thing (which I'm sure you can if you have read this far into this rantish and verbose review), this is a book worth a look.

The book is well indexed, has a helpful (if one-sided) section of suggestions for further reading, is graced by some utterly brilliant chapter titles, my favorites being "Habits of Denial" and "Not Enough Millstones."