American Catholic Bishops and the Politics of Scandal

Rhetoric of Authority

Meaghan O'Keefe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429671067
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Religión, política y estado

This book explores the rhetoric and public communication of the Catholic Church in the United States in the wake of the sexual abuse scandals and offers a demonstration of how large organizations negotiate a loss of public trust while retaining political power. While the Catholic Church remains a major political force in the United States, recent scandals have undoubtedly had an adverse effect on both its reputation and moral authority. This has been exacerbated by the public responses of Catholic clergy, which have often left supporters of the Church, let alone critics, profoundly unsatisfied.

Drawing on documents – voting guides, pastoral letters, sermons, press releases, and other materials – issued by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) as well as American nuns, the book explores Catholic political statements issued after the sexual abuse crises entered the public consciousness. Using approaches from linguistics and rhetoric, it analyses how these statements compare to similar materials issued before this time. This comparison demonstrates that for the American Catholic Church persuasion is less important than maintaining the impression that there has been no loss of authority.

This is a timely study of the Catholic Church's handling of the recent revelations of abuse within the Church. As such, it will be of keen interest to scholars of religious rhetoric, contemporary Catholicism, linguistics, rhetoric, communication, and religious studies.

1 Introduction

The American Catholic hierarchy has had a place of import and influence in American politics over the last century, and this influence remains prevalent today. From the Al Smith dinner to refusing communion to pro-choice candidates, to Catholic clergy testifying to Congress on issues of reproductive health, American Catholic bishops have helped shape twentieth- and twenty-first-century public policy. While the bishops remain a political force, their moral authority among lay Catholics has been severely damaged by the sexual abuse scandals. Drawing primarily on the USCCB voting guides, and to a lesser extent pastoral letters, press releases, and other materials, this book explores the public political statements that the American Catholic hierarchy issued after the sexual abuse crises entered the public consciousness. What emerges from this study is a portrait of a bureaucracy that seems incapable of talking to its constituents, while still maintaining an uncompromising adherence to a hierarchical model based on a particular vision of an unchanging, morally pure tradition. The questions of where authority resides, and how it can be effectively maintained, is of paramount importance to the American Catholic hierarchy. At the same time, fewer and fewer American lay Catholics regard the bishops as a source of moral authority, particularly when it comes to electoral politics (Gray, “CARA Catholic Poll 2011”). This places the hierarchy in a difficult rhetorical situation because to argue for the authority of the clerical hierarchy would undermine the naturalization of that authority. It is this paradox that structures this book: how does a traditional institution affirm its authority and retain political influence without either admitting to the apparent loss of that same authority or appearing to persuade its audience? I contend that the bishops use elaborate strategies of structural, grammatical, and lexical repetition to create a kind of oblique argumentation that allows them to make claims without calling attention to themselves.

Since 2002, the authority and credibility of the Catholic Church in the United States and abroad has suffered in the wake of multiple sexual abuse scandals. This loss of authority was the result of the crimes themselves as well as the extensive and pervasive cover-up by the Catholic hierarchy. It was exacerbated by the seeming inability of the Church to respond in a manner that satisfied its supporters, much less its critics. In the United States, the delaying tactics of various dioceses under investigation and the hierarchy’s reluctance to divulge personnel records to authorities did much to undermine lay confidence. Indeed, in June 2002, only 23% of American Catholics believed that the US bishops could be trusted to deal with sexual abuse in the Church (Formicola 112).

The Church’s statements to the press made matters worse: a spokesperson for the Vatican initially ascribed the motives of those reporting abuse as a method of “making money in civil litigation” (Allen, “Vatican Defends Church’s Handling”). Such responses seemed inept at best and, at worst, they demonized those that the clergy had already victimized. Internal responses were also problematic. For example, in 2002 the USCCB commissioned the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York to study the problem of sexual abuse by clergy using data from Church archives. The report, entitled “The Nature and Scope of the Problem of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States 1950–2002,” was completed in 2004. The report, in essence, blamed the sexual abuse in part on greater acceptance in the larger culture of “premarital sexual behavior and divorce” as well as other “deviant behavior” (Wills; Terry et al. 3). The Vatican’s investigation – known as the Apostolic Visitation of the American Seminaries and Houses of Priestly Formation – seemed far more concerned with doctrinal orthodoxy than with preventing child abuse (Congregation for Catholic Education). It is clear what the American bishops – and the Catholic hierarchy more generally – failed to do. The bishops seemed disinclined to talk about sexual morality in the context of their own failings in this area. There was no formal approach for dealing with the public and no concrete plan for crisis management. There was no public examination of conscience and little in the way of acknowledging the bishops’ role in covering up abuse. While it was evident that they failed at taking public accountability, what is less clear is what the American bishops decided to do instead.

In spite of the scandals, the USCCB has continued to be involved in American politics through public criticisms of government action, issuing policy statements, and pastoral instruction. One of the key political documents the bishops issue is their presidential voting guide. These guides direct Catholics “in the exercise of their rights and duties as participants in our democracy” (“Forming Consciences 2016”¹ vii). They contain directives to the laity about how to “form their consciences” in order “act upon the Church’s teaching” when voting for political candidates. Sexual morality and reproductive issues are central to the guides’ messages with “defense of marriage” and “protection for the unborn” being given special emphasis. The guides have been issued every presidential election since 1976 (the first presidential election after the Roe v. Wade decision) and, as such, they provide a snapshot of the American Catholic hierarchy’s understanding of their role in influencing the political decisions of the laity. In addition, because they cover a recurring set of topics such as abortion, war, the death penalty, poverty, education, and human rights, they also show how these topics have been differently configured and how emphasis on their importance has varied over the years. The changes in the discursive construction of authority and the bishop’s decisions on which issues to emphasize in these guides provide valuable insight into the way in which the bishops’ public, political rhetoric changes in the wake of the sexual abuse scandals.

The USCCB is limited in the sorts of public political statements they issue. The Johnson amendment forbids all 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations (including Churches) from endorsing particular political candidates, so while the bishops can make general statements on issues, they cannot tell people to vote for particular politicians without endangering their tax-exempt status, although the Trump administration has made efforts to allow broader “implied endorsements” without penalty (Presidential Executive Order Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty). The creation of the first voting guide was prompted by concern over accusations that the bishops had violated the Johnson amendment in the early part of the 1976 presidential elections. Abortion was a major issue in the 1976 election and both party platforms included statements on the topic. The Republican platform called for a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion (Williams 513). The Democratic party unequivocally opposed an anti-abortion amendment, although Jimmy Carter did make it clear that he personally opposed abortion (Byrnes 503–4). The USCCB met with Jimmy Carter and, after extensive discussions, announced to the press that Carter’s position was “disappointing”; Joseph Bernardin, the president of the USCCB, characterized the Democratic platform as “morally offensive in the extreme” (Curran, The Social Mission 156; Williams 528). Shortly after this, after meeting with Gerald Ford, the USCCB stated that they were “encouraged” by Ford and the Republicans. This statement was widely perceived as an endorsement of Ford’s campaign, although the USCCB explicitly denied that this was the intention behind the remarks (Curran, The Social Mission 157; Byrnes 505). In order to combat the impression that the Catholic Church was in the business of endorsing political candidates, the USCCB issued the first voting guide in September of 1976; it outlined the Catholic Church’s position on a number of different issues including housing, civil rights, and economic opportunity without explicitly endorsing a party or particular candidate (Warner 110–1).

Although they are constrained by the US tax code from supporting specific candidates, the more thorough and important constraints come from the institutional Church. These constraints are personal, hierarchical, and canonical. In nearly every case, priests rise in the hierarchy through relationships with their own bishops and tend to be personally quite loyal to them. Loyalty to those above them in the hierarchy extends upward. As Thomas J. Reese explains, before being appointed, candidates are extensively investigated for orthodoxy by the Papal Nuncio’s office to determine their positions on topics such as women’s ordination, sexual ethics, and – most importantly – their “loyalty and docility to the Holy Father” (A Flock 7). In addition to the constraints formed by loyalty to fellow bishops and adherence to orthodoxy, the bishops’ institutional role is limited by canon law. The role of the bishops, according to canon law, is pastoral, not doctrinal (Reese, Archbishop 57). In other words, bishops are meant to promulgate doctrine but not change, adapt, or create it: a bishop must always be aware of those above and below him in the hierarchy and make certain that the papal directives are clearly communicated through his office to the laity (Beal et al., Code of Canon Law 325). In spite of these constraints, the American Catholic Church has charted a somewhat independent path when it comes to political engagement and social teaching.

While these constraints might give the impression that the bishops unreflectively parrot the Vatican, this has not been the case. The teaching role of the bishops has been interpreted rather elastically in the past – the 1983 USCCB pastoral letter “The Challenge of Peace,” for example, has been considered by many Catholic scholars to be a landmark of original theological ethics (Keenan 212; Kari and Glazier 150–4). “The Challenge of Peace” supports its arguments through references to numerous scholarly articles from contemporary theologians and ethicists. The style is “more participatory dialogue” (Kari and Glazier x) than the pre-Vatican II “autocratic pronouncement[s]” (Warner 2). As Cheney observes in his 1991 study of the USCCB, while “traditionally much of [the American Catholic Church’s] communication has been ‘top-down,’ ” more recent (i.e., texts from the 1980s and 1990s) communications are more dialogic and diverse in terms of representation of different levels in the hierarchy (36). There was also more internal cooperation and, as Michael Warner points out, during this period, “the American bishops preserved unity in their own house by lessening their reliance on papal social teaching” (124). Indeed, in the voting guides from the 1980s and 1990s, the bishops tend to draw a good deal from USCCB texts as well as statements by individual bishops, rather than relying primarily on papal documents.

Since the sexual abuse scandals emerged in 2002, however, the bishops have returned to an older pattern of issuing statements that emphasize hierarchy and lay obedience and that draws more explicitly on doctrine (Kaveny, Law’s Virtues 192). Unlike the voting guides from the 1980s and 1990s which supported arguments through explicit references to the USCCB’s prior work, the post-sexual abuse guides emphasize papal texts: they drop references to USCCB texts as well as de-emphasize the bishops as reasoning moral agents. In terms of style, the USCCB’s public statements have grown increasingly more rigid, formulaic, and repetitious. This is especially true of the voting guides (titled “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship”). As a senior staff member at the USCCB observed, there is not a single memorable sentence in the entire 2008/2012/2016 “Forming Consciences” guide.² Put bluntly, these guides are dull. They are presented as if they are meant to instruct – to educate – rather than persuade. This perception is in part because education presupposes docility while arguments ask something of their audience – assent, an increase in adherence to values, or a decision to take action on an issue, among other things (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca). Arguments can be lost but statements of doctrine designed to educate cannot.

I want to be clear, however, that I am not suggesting that the bishops’ statements are representative of the arguments about Catholic doctrine and civic responsibility. There is a long and complex history of the topic in Catholic discourse. Moreover, American Catholic theologians and scholars such as John Courtney Murray, Avery Dulles, Charles Curran, and many others have specifically explored how American democracy and individual conscience function as part of a Catholic moral tradition. What I am examining in this book is the public, political discourse of the USCCB in the period following the Boston Globe’s exposure of widespread sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. I focus my analysis mainly on the voting guides issued after 2002, when the Boston Globe began its investigative series on sexual abuse of minors by clergy members, although I do give an account of the trends and substance of earlier guides and include supplementary materials such as sermons, pastoral letters, official statements, and other similar documents. This book is an account of particular texts within a particular period of time, not a study of the rich Catholic tradition on social teaching. I refer to doctrinal statements to show a departure from standard treatments of certain topics, but I am not making a theological claim. While I am not making an overall argument about the nature of religion and politics in the United States there are, however, interesting implications for styles of argument adopted by traditional institutions with compromised public authority.

The American Catholic Church’s attempts to project moral authority when its public image has been severely compromised reveal the cracks in the construction of the social reality of its religious authority. The institutional structures and practices of the Church are under strain and the response to the current crisis – however oblique this response may seem – exposes some key issues faced by not just the American Catholic Church but also by other traditional institutional bureaucracies. When considered from a rhetorical perspective, the discursive processes the USCCB engages in as it attempts to negotiate with a resistant audience, while not compromising the institutional status of the office of bishop, demonstrate some of the difficulties of transmitting ideology in a time of transformation.

Institutions that wish to maintain a position of authority and make certain their ideology prevails cannot be seen to argue for one choice among many; they must present their principles as “objectively true” (Yurchak 10). While ideology must be transmitted somehow, “ideological rule” – meaning the “practices” which constitute institutional authority – must not call attention to its constructed nature; it must appear as the transparent transmitter of “objective truth” (Yurchak 10; Lefort 189). Argument, however, seeks assent and in doing so reveals itself to be in need of something from its audience. It takes place when there are real choices between possibilities, not when “truth” is being revealed (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 45–6).

American Catholics, in participating in electoral politics, must decide between candidates, parties, and platforms – real choices about real possibilities. The bishops, therefore, in order to obscure the argumentative work of persuasion, deploy a kind of congealed grammar that emphasizes static relationships rather than action or decision (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 164). The USCCB does this through a complex and nuanced strategy of layered repetition of phrases and structures in the documents themselves. Such patterns allow institutions like the American Catholic Church to make arguments that seem natural, authoritative, and inevitable, when the same assertions, baldly stated, might prove objectionable.

The decision of the bishops to emphasize their ecclesiastical authority and present their arguments as educational rather than persuasive was, in many ways, the only tactic they could employ, given who they are and what their role is in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. In these texts, the USCCB’s relevance and importance are assumed, not argued for, and the bishops concentrate on institutional rather than individual authority. They emphasize the role of the hierarchy in the formation of lay people’s consciences. I show how an organization that presents its authority as divinely ordained copes with the potential and actual rejection of that authority. As noted earlier, to argue for a position that considered authoritative, obvious, and true would be to undermine it (Lefort 189). Indeed, why should the bishops ask for support for their pastoral role given that by its very existence the office of bishop – an office of “authority and sacred power” (Catholic Church, CCC 894) “endowed with the authority of Christ” (888) – is the embodiment of authority, irrespective of the laity’s behavior? The position of needing to affirm that which is held as obviously and inescapably true, however, is an especially precarious one.

One of the motivations for this project is, therefore, to understand why the American Catholic hierarchy issues painstakingly crafted documents which – according to a study the bishops themselves commissioned in 2011 – few Catholics regard as a source of moral guidance in making political decisions (Gray, “CARA Catholic Poll 2011”). In spite of the fact that this 2011 study concluded that their voting guides had little influence on how Catholics familiar with it voted, the USCCB reissued the 2008 guide as the 2012 guide with no changes at all. In the 2016 guide, the USCCB changed key sentences on racism and added quotations from Francis but very little else. The USCCB’s decision to continue with a rhetorical strategy that is less than effective in terms of appealing to the majority has some commonality with the overall Church communications by spokesmen who seem, as prominent Catholic scholar Michael J. Lacey put it, “oblivious to public sentiment” and “incapable of anticipating it” (16). Their failures are even more striking given that while the bishops’ discourse is unappealing and unpersuasive, there have been examples of Catholic discourse that did appeal to the American public. In co...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Controlling consciences
• 3 Citation and authority
• 4 Human rights and the image of God
• 5 Racism, abortion, and intrinsic evil
• 6 The nuns on the bus
• 7 Sounding authoritative
• Epilogue
• Index