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Email to the Editor

Editor’s note: One of the unexpected pleasures of my work as editor of CWR has been the steady stream of correspondence that comes to me—mostly in the form of email—from friends who can provide their own witty and incisive views on current events. On occasions, the exchange of email messages on a particular topic might last several days, and involve a dozen or more contributors.

Unfortunately, since email is a medium unto itself—very different from ordinary “snail-mail” correspondence—it is frequently impossible to adapt these messages into articles for CWR, or even Letters to the Editor. So I could not share my friends’ insights with my readers—until now.

CWR herewith presents a new occasional feature, offering a glimpse at the editor’s In box. Like the Internet itself, this feature promises to be slightly anarchic in its structure, and highly informal in its style. We welcome readers’ reactions to the feature.

What follows is a selection of actual email messages among CWR’s editorial advisers. In some cases, minor editorial changes have been made to make the messages more understandable. We have used pseudonyms in order to protect the guilty.

Seeking professional advice

To: Editor et al.

From: Siege of Constantinople

This nugget is contained in a new Australian document regarding the conduct of Catholic priests:

Clergy were also encouraged to seek professional advice if they were sexually attracted to a parishioner or if a person they were helping acted in a sexual manner.

I can almost hear a crusty old-fashioned priest saying, “We are the professionals.”

To: Siege of Constantinople et al.

From: PioNono

That sentence goes beyond the suggestion that morality can be reduced to psychology; it undermines any objective basis for psychology as well. Notice how totally vague it is, thereby leaving everything to interpretation.

1. If you’re sexually attracted to Betsy Bombshell, you don’t need counseling; that attraction is normal. (If it’s her brother Bruce, that’s a different story.) If the intensity of that attraction becomes a problem, you may need other sorts of help, which a Catholic priest who hasn’t been through the re-education camps might help to provide. But how do you decide if it’s a problem?

2. What does it mean to act “in a sexual manner?” For sure you have a problem if Betsy (or Bruce) actually propositions you. But I’m guessing that the more common problem is in a counseling situation, when you begin to suspect that the conversation is heading down a dangerous path. How do you recognize the danger signs, and steer the conversation in a different direction? I’d think that advice along those lines could be very helpful. But it does not seem to be available here.

Bottom line: You decide when your attraction to Betsy is a problem, and you decide when the conversation is becoming inappropriately intimate. But if you’re the sort of guy who’s vulnerable on these grounds, in all likelihood you won’t recognize the problem until you’re already in deep trouble.

And this “deep trouble” can easily translate into “grave sin.” But if that happens, don’t worry; just seek professional counseling. Wonderful.

To: PioNono et al.

From: Irenaeus

I take an even more sinister view. Stating a principle in such a vague way not only plays into the hands of corrupt individual priests, it opens the door to abuse by the authorities. Father so-and-so seems to have an anger problem (i.e., he’s orthodox). And there’s a rumor that he’s “attracted to Betsy Bombshell.” Therefore he needs counseling.

To: Irenaeus

From: PioNono

I resent the implication that I am less cynical than you are. So I’ll see your sinister view (you’re right, of course) and raise you:

•    Remember, you’re supposed to seek professional advice if someone “acts sexually” toward you. So if Betsy bursts into your office and starts tearing off her clothes—and that can be arranged—you are the one who needs counseling.

•    Predictably a certain number of women—especially confused women, the ones most likely to seek counseling—will become attracted to the priests who counsel them. Let’s assume that this transference (a phenomenon universally recognized by practicing shrinks) is more likely to occur if the priest is distinctively masculine. Now: if Betsy tells the pastor that she has a crush on the young curate, that curate will fall under suspicion. And what sort of young priests would be more or less immune from such suspicions? Why of course the effeminate ones.

•    OK, I realize that in theory the same scenario could be played out with a homosexual parishioner and a pouffy priest. But somehow I don’t think the results would be the same. The settings on the sexual-danger meter have been dialed ‘way down for homosexual affairs. And of course if you imply that something untoward is happening, you are a homophobe, and —Catch 22—YOU need counseling.

A cry for help

To: Editor et al.

From: Siege of Constantinople

[This message contains excerpts from an Associate Press report on the resignation of Bishop Patrick Ziemann; see World Watch for details.]

The archbishop [William Levada] described himself as a lifelong friend of Ziemann’s and said he joined “friends throughout California and beyond in thanking him for the energy and gifts he has shared far and wide. Our prayers and good wishes go with him.”

This is the same benediction that accompanied other misbehaving bishops out the door—viz., thanks for their sharing of their gifts. Curious. If a bank fires a senior vice-president for embezzlement, or the CIA expels a cipher clerk for selling codes to the Sovs, do they thank them for the gifts they shared with colleagues while in their employ: their wit, punctuality, charm, cooperativeness, skill at picnic softball?

Look, a bishop could have a bottle problem, feloniously injure someone while driving under the influence, and be forced to resign his bishopric. There is no necessary duplicity in a bishop’s keeping his job with a drinking problem and no necessary inconsistency in thanking him for good work accomplished. What I can’t understand is how these guys fail to acknowledge that there must be duplicity if a bishop has a zipper problem and continues as bishop.

How do you thank someone who’s deceived you—deliberately, repeatedly, extensively—about his character (unless he hasn’t in fact lied to you; unless you’ve been in the know)? Put another way, if you have just exposed a spy in your midst, does it make sense to thank him for his on-the-job “energy?”

Cordova said Ziemann in 1996 began threatening to turn the priest over to police for possible criminal action surrounding his admitted theft of $1,200 in Ukiah church funds unless he agreed to engage in sex with him. “He was coerced into committing acts that he did not want to do,’’ Cordova said. Hume’s lawsuit charges he was forced to engage in acts of oral sex, masturbation, and sodomy.

Nobody should be pressured into functioning as a White House intern. That said, $1,200 does not seem like a great deal of leverage to use against an unwilling victim.

“We cannot in all fairness and objectivity be quick to judge the current allegations against the bishop by former priest Jorge Hume,’’ said Edward Byrom, coordinator of the diocese’s detention and AIDS outreach programs in Mendocino and Lake counties. Byrom said that “this whole sad, disgusting scenario is about extorting money from the diocese.’’

Pretty quick judgment there, Eddie.

Attorney Piasta said Hume’s charges “threaten not only the reputation of a very holy man, but the faith of the thousands of North Bay Catholics that recognize him as what a modern American Catholic leader should be.’’

The second part of Piasta’s statement is, probably, all too true. As for his being a very holy man, Ziemann has admitted the sex itself, and only denied the pressure. What, one wonders, does a very holy man do that a merely holy man does not?

Ziemann also kept quiet accusations by four Latino men that Hume had sexually accosted them in his room at the Ukiah rectory.

Perhaps Ziemann recognized Hume as a very holy man as well.

Hume charged that in 1997 he contracted a venereal disease from the bishop.

Not, I think, a reason not to join in thanking Bishop Ziemann for the energy and gifts he has shared far and wide.

“The bishop did regretfully have a personal consensual relationship with Father Hume that was inappropriate for both of them as priests. It is unfortunate that Father Hume and his attorneys are now using this consensual relationship as a weapon against Ziemann and the diocese,’’ Piasta said.

Good to know that mortal sin, when committed by priests, is inappropriate. Not everyone would have understood that prior to the post-conciliar renewal.

“[Ziemann’s] getting therapy,’’ Piasta said. “He’s OK, but he is in great pain.”

Courageous of him to seek therapy. A lesser man would be satisfied with penance.

“He is being taken care of by close friends.’’

Note: Very holy friends, I hope?

It’s academic

To: Editor et al.

From: PioNono

Father Nugent was in Boston the other day, for a talk at Northeastern University, on the topic of homosexuality and the Church.

Perhaps, in your benighted state, you thought that Father Nugent had accepted the Vatican order for him to refrain from speaking about homosexuality. Let me enlighten you—with his help.

“One of the ironies of being silenced by the Vatican,” he told the Boston Globe, “is the increase in invitations to speak.”

Naturally he cannot accept all such invitations—he is under obedience, you know—but in this case “I am interpreting this talk as not violating the punishment.” He makes that judgment because the Northeastern campus is “an academic setting, not a workshop.”

How nice that Father Nugent gets to define the terms of his own punishment. If he determines that an appearance on campus would be appropriate, well then by golly it is appropriate. It’s hard to find parole officers who would allow that much latitude. (“I am interpreting this pot party as not in violation of my parole order, since I don’t plan to inhale.”)

Father Nugent then goes on to tell the Globe reporter about “the tension that exists in the Church’s stance toward gays and lesbians.” I wonder: is the Globe an “academic setting?” (Well, it’s not a workshop.)

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