‘Render Unto Rome’: “Footnote 10” from the Ignatius Insight review-commentary

Footnote 10:

Berry implicitly and explicitly endorses organizations such as BishopAccountability.org (pages 10, 11, etc.), FutureChurch.org (finally on page 217 we learn that FutureChurch strives to abolish priestly celibacy and to ordain women), Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) (pages 152, 289-290, etc.) [read SNAP EXPOSED: Unmasking the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests by William A. Donohue, Ph.D., President, Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, July 2011, unpublished], Endangered Catholics (page 271), We Are Church (page 163) and Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) (pages 82, 92, etc.) each presented with no serious introduction to these groups for the naïve reader of this book ‒ no cautions, no warnings, no comment nor criticism. (See esp. page 152 where three of these groups criticize Cardinal O’Malley.) How is the reader to know if these particular associations are faithful to the magisterium and orthodox in faith and morals? Are they radicals in process of disaffiliation from the True Faith? Are they just like the Knights of Columbus or the Legion of Decency or the Apostleship of Prayer? Are they like Valley Interfaith in Texas which uses the methods of Saul D. Alinsky found in his Rules for Radicals? Berry owes it to Catholic readers to explain why activist organizations are desirable, if they are desirable, and above all who finances them (since he is writing about money). Most of all do not readers have a right to be told about the doctrinal positions these groups embrace, especially when the concept of the revisionist “parallel church” is a danger? Talking about money scandals is one thing, but talking about women’s “ordination” or priestly celibacy or contraception within sacramental marriage or homosexual politics is quite another. Jason Berry fruitlessly connects celibacy with his thesis on the management of money ‒ [unionized lay employees demanding ever higher salaries are irremovable and when ensconced can treat the priest as their hireling ‒ so much for replacing celibate priests with lay pastoral associates ‒ an expensive yoke Berry does not acknowledge]: “The celibacy law, which any pope could make optional, has become an expensive yoke on the church.” (p. 5) He is right that if priestly celibacy is merely an archaic legality, then it should be abolished, which means that ultimately it MUST be doctrinal, especially for nuptial theology about which he seems blissfully innocent. But with such claims he wins no friends among the orthodox. Any pope could also authorize the ordination right now of simplex priests who would not need to go to a seminary. Does Berry really want the Episcopal Church which has “more clergy than people?” In June 2011 an Austrian initiative was perhaps more honest in its self-designation: Aufruf zum Ungehorsam or Call to Disobedience. The functionalist view of Holy Orders would finally permit vending machines to dispense sacraments ‒ can Mr. Berry follow his own logic to its conclusion? See Donald J. Keefe, S.J. Covenantal Theology, two volumes (Lanham, MD: The University Press of America, 1991); revised 1996 as Covenantal Theology: The Eucharistic Order of History. Two Volumes in One  (ISBN: 0891416056 / 0-89141-605-6 ). Volume three in preparation 2011. Also Joyce A. Little, “The New Evangelization and Gender: the Remystification of the Body” in “Communio: International Catholic Review” vol. 21, n. 4 (Winter 1994): 776-799.

Ignatius Insight: Rendered Imperfectly: A Review-Commentary of Jason Berry’s “Render Unto Rome”

Tuesday, August 09, 2011

Rendered Imperfectly: A Review-Commentary of Jason Berry’s Render Unto Rome | Reverend Brian Van Hove, S.J. | August 8, 2011 | Ignatius Insight

Render Unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church by Jason Berry
New York: Crown Publishers, 2011
Pp. 420, including Notes and Index
ISBN-978-0-385-53132-0; eISBN- 978-0-385-53133-7

Like the Curate’s Egg, this book is good in parts. When Jason Berry is good, he is very good. And when he is bad, he is quite bad. One presumes the author’s lawyers approved both good and bad. First, let us consider selections from the bad.

Berry  identifies himself with the “nursing-home-flower-children” of the church with over-worn expressions such as “pray, pay and obey.” (pages 9, 279, and elsewhere) One senses he would blithely repeat all the liberal follies of the Episcopal Church (PECUSA) which once made it the fastest dying religious institution in America. [1] He is definitely not an advocate of the hermeneutic of continuity, but rather that of rupture. Let Berry spare us the rhetoric of the Sixties generation, revived recently by The American Church Council. Let a younger John Paul II Generation blossom.

Render Unto Rome is the final installment of what he terms an investigative trilogy begun in 1985. (page 17) We will wait for the decision of history to prune its merits. For now, here are highlights.

Who are the heroes and who are the villains in this book? Generally, the heroes are liberal nuns, select lay people and ex-priests. [2] We are given homey vignettes of their personal lives. Who are the villains? In general, they are corrupt and incompetent cardinals and bishops and their clerical cohorts. This must be said at the outset. Berry wants “reform from below” in a naīve way. There is no guarantee that liberal nuns (whose assets are secret), lay people and ex-priests would do a better job in a Fallen World than Cardinal Angelo Sodano or Cardinal Franc Rodé, to name but two of those he presents as his villains. [3]  The Berry model of reform is unoriginal, as unoriginal as Congregationalism or Presbyterianism, and in a book that is designed to illuminate its readers with respect to “money,” such vignettes (however interesting to certain religious subcultures) seem entirely gratuitous.

Read the entire review on Ignatius Insight…

Quotation from Temple Grandin

“I think Einstein had a lot of autistic traits. He didn’t talk until age three–I have a whole chapter about Einstein in my last book. I think Thomas Jefferson had some Asperger’s traits. Bill Gates has tremendous memory. I remember reading in an article that he memorized the whole Torah as a child. It’s a continuum–there’s just no black and white dividing line between a computer techie and say, as Asperger’s person. They just all blend right together. So if we get rid of the genetics that causes autism, there might be a horrible price to pay. Years ago, a scientist in Massachussetts said if you got rid of all the genes that caused disorders, you’d have only dried up bureaucrats left!”

Dr. Tony Attwood interviews Temple Grandin

 [December 9, 1999]

in The Way I See It 

by Temple Grandin (second ed. 2011), xxxii