The former Australian Catholic priest and author of Papal Power considers the impact of Vatican investigations through the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, presenting the stories of seven individuals who have been anonymously accused and secretly investigated. 15,000 first printing.
Copyright
Preface
This is a book about the inner workings of the Vatican, intellectual freedom, and passionate and deeply held convictions. It also contains the personal stories of seven Catholic sisters and priests who have experienced a unique inquisitorial process: examination of their opinions, writings and even their consciences by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). But this is not just about their personal stories. What happened to them typifies the tensions and contradictions within the contemporary Catholic Church and exposes the forces that have already alienated from the policies of the Vatican a sizeable majority of thinking Catholics in many parts of the world.
The seven protagonists in this book represent the kind of agenda embraced by most committed Catholics in the Western world, as well as many in Latin America, Asia and Africa. These Catholics are demanding a more decentralised, participative approach to the Church, with much of its decision-making authority being devolved to local communities and national conferences of bishops. The Vatican and the CDF are supported by a small but influential minority of Catholics who want to concentrate all power and authority in the papacy. One of the most potent weapons used to rein in their fellow Catholics is the secret reporting of bishops, priests, sisters and laity to Rome for supposed heresy, deviations or dissent from Catholic belief and practice.
The prominent English Catholic journalist, Clifford Longley, writing in the respected London weekly, the Tablet, has compared being turned into the Vatican for investigation by the CDF to what Judas did to Christ when he went to the chief priests to betray him. I certainly felt a sense of betrayal in late January 1998 when I discovered that I had been ‘delated’ (denounced) to Rome some time in 1997 for so-called ‘doctrinal problems’ with my book Papal Power. It was a rude reminder that the Inquisition’s Australian minions are still alive and well.
My personal experience of this process has prompted this book, which contains my own story and those of six other well-known Roman Catholic sisters and priests who have been similarly investigated. In November 1999 I visited Sri Lanka, Germany, the UK and the US to interview all the contributors and to get some understanding of their pastoral and theological approach as well as of the local context.
The first thing that struck me about the people featured in this book was how psychologically well adjusted they are. Articulate, calm and intelligent, all of them have a healthy sense of humour and can laugh at themselves, a key prerequisite in anyone called to a prophetic role. But at a deeper level you perceive in them an inner strength and determination, a passionate commitment to God, to their ministry and to the search for the truth and the inner meaning of Christian existence. You also find a deep love of the Catholic Church and a complete absence of paranoia or any feeling of persecution. Never once did any of them suggest that they had been badly done by, either by the Vatican or by their religious orders, despite a complete clarity about the injustice of the process imposed on them by the CDF and by others in the Church.
In fact, as their stories show, these men and women are among the genuine prophets of the Catholic Church at the present time. While what has happened to them is compelling as personal storytelling, it also points towards the agenda that will guide the Catholic Church into the future. This is because they articulate the issues that most concern the vast majority of faithful Catholics and give expression to their faith-experience.
For the first time in the 450-year history of the Roman Inquisition and its lineal descendant, the CDF, a group of Catholics who have recently undergone examination by the Vatican’s inquisitorial procedures talk openly about the experience and the effect the process had on their vocations and careers, and describe in detail how the CDF operates. The interviews clearly reveal a number of things about the CDF. First, it is obvious that ultimately the CDF does not play by any rules, even its own. By any modern standards of jurisprudence its processes are secretive, inquisitorial, often blatantly unfair to the accused and lack any application of the basic principles of human rights. Despite the Church’s good record in this area in the broader, secular world, the CDF completely ignores human rights and shows no respect for normally accepted due process in its interactions with the accused. It is willing to invade their inner conscience and demand that even the most intimate and deeply held conscientious views be revealed. Fundamentally, the CDF lives in a time warp: despite attempts to tart it up in modern dress, it is essentially a creature of the sixteenth century whose methods have survived to the present day. Sadly, the evidence also is that the CDF cannot always be trusted to tell the whole truth, or even always to act with integrity, at least from the perspective of modern notions of equity and justice.
Second, it is clear from all the cases reported here that the CDF is not interested in genuine dialogue or real reconciliation. Without the slightest equivocation or doubt, it identifies its own view completely with the ‘teaching of the Church’, totally oblivious to the fact that its narrow orthodoxy often constricts and sometimes distorts the genuine Catholic tradition. What is quite extraordinary is that at times CDF ‘consultors’ do not seem to have a sound knowledge of, or even recognise, the basic principles of Catholic theology and ethics. This arises from the narrowness and lack of breadth of their theological approaches and their attempts to constrict the creative possibilities inherent in the Catholic tradition. The CDF constantly demands total conformity to its own view. There is never any question that its view might itself be limited, partial, or even wrong. It is this total lack of theological self-awareness that is most frightening.
Third, the CDF is highly selective in its choice of targets, and the selection of the person to be investigated often arises out of conflicts, jealousies and ambitions in the Catholic community of the country where the dispute starts and in which the accused person lives. People are also pursued because they are seen as ‘symbolic’ of a movement which troubles the Vatican. For instance, the CDF was concerned by Latin American liberation theology in the 1980s, so Brazilian Franciscan friar Leonardo Boff was targeted. In the 1990s the Vatican trained its sights on Asian theology, and Sri Lankan Father Tissa Balasuriya became the quarry.
The CDF rarely gives up; it pursues people for years. In the process it largely ignores local bishops and leaders of religious orders, except to try to manipulate them to do its will. And, as the cases of Sister Jeannine Gramick and Father Robert Nugent show, even condemnation is not the end of the long process. The Vatican continues to try to muzzle them and to prevent them speaking about the process and its result, despite the fact that they live in a democracy where free speech is guaranteed.
With the exception of the prefect (at the time of writing, Cardinal Josef Ratzinger) and the secretary (at the time of writing, Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone), all officials of the CDF remain strictly anonymous. Consultors, judges, prosecutors and even the ‘defence counsel’, who are usually drawn from the same group of people, are unknown to the accused, who will probably never meet them. However, the diligent researcher can discover the names of the CDF staff and consultors in the Vatican yearbook, the Annuario Pontificio, but this gives no clue as to the officials involved with specific cases. Finally, the CDF is above all right of judicial appeal to the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican appeals court, specifically because the CDF’s acts are always approved by the pope and, as such, are beyond appeal.
Early in the evolution of this book I decided that it would be an ‘oral history’; that is, each of the interviewees would speak in their own voice. I have given a historical, biographical and theological context to their stories in order to make the book as accessible as possible. Where the contributor deals with a complex theological or ethical issue, I have intervened editorially to explain the background or to clarify the matter under discussion. The contributors’ stories are unique, each a compelling, moving document in its own right. However, these are not purely subjective, inward-looking accounts. In all cases there has been a conscious effort to maintain a sense of both the wider Church community and the broader cultural and secular context.
By speaking publicly, as it were, for the first time, we hope to raise to some extent the veil of Vatican secrecy. We hope, too, that our personal stories will throw some light on a dark and arcane process which only undermines the Church whose truths it purports to uphold. The whole business of examination by the inquisitorial CDF is cloaked in mystery for most people, including the vast majority of Catholics. We hope that our stories will give readers a sense of what it means to be accused by anonymous informers, investigated in secret and ‘tried’ at arms length, with no recourse to appeal. Our aim is to use these stories as a stimulus to reform not only the Vatican, but also the whole process by which the Catholic Church arrives at the articulation of its belief. It is based on Jesus’ premise that it is only ‘the truth [that] will make you free’ (John 8:32).
This book has been written precisely to break this kind of silence and to begin to reclaim the freedom that belongs to the sons and daughters of God. St Paul tells the Corinthians that freedom and God’s Spirit go together: ‘Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom’ (II Cor 2:17). He further tells the Christians of Galatia: ‘Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit to a yoke of slavery’ (Gal 5:1). It is precisely this deep sense that freedom should characterise Christian and Catholic existence that motivates this book.
Books like this require generosity and support from many people. My thanks are due first to the six contributors. All of them are very busy people but they have given of their time, knowledge and expertise without stint. My agent, Mary Cunnane, has supported the book from the beginning and contributed much to it. Friendship is essential to the isolated editor and writer and many people have given me generous support. They know who they are.
Canberra, November 2000
CHAPTER 1
Palazzo del Sant’Uffizio
For several centuries now visitors have marvelled at the sheer size and baroque grandeur of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. But I doubt that many would even have noticed, unless they were really looking for it, a rather bland, dun-coloured, fortress-like building just to the left of the basilica and behind Bernini’s glorious colonnade enclosing the piazza of the great church. This plain building faces its own tiny piazza and is just across the road from a clerical outfitter called ‘Euroclero’, a kind of Kmart for priests who cannot afford clerical haute couture. The bland building is called the Palazzo del Sant’Uffizio and is the modern-day home of the Inquisition. Nowadays, however, it has the less threatening but still rather grandiose title of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).
The word ‘inquisition’ has always had sinister and threatening connotations in English. It is derived from the Latin legal term inquisitio, meaning a legal investigation or inquiry. As soon as the word ‘inquisition’ is mentioned, most people immediately presume that they know what it means. They are usually thinking of the Spanish or the medieval versions, with images of the burning of thousands of witches, Jews, Protestants and other religious dissenters. While there are clear and traceable connections with the medieval inquisitions, the CDF’s parent body, the Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition, or Holy Office, was not founded until 1542, whereas the medieval inquisitions began in southern France in 1232. The sixteenth-century Roman Inquisition’s power was primarily limited to the Papal States, which then straddled Italy from east to west and from Ferrara and Bologna in the north to Terracina on the coast just south of Rome. To a lesser extent its authority was recognised by the inquisitions which operated in most of the other states of sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Italy, among them Venice and Naples.
The Roman Inquisition was founded by Pope Paul III (1534– 49) in 1542 to counter Protestantism, which had started to penetrate into northern Italy in the late 1530s. At the same time, the Index of Forbidden Books was established. This was a list of ‘dangerous’ books that Catholics were not permitted to read, although for four hundred years the vast majority of Catholics had no idea nor any interest in the books listed in the Index. Pope Paul III hoped that by censoring heretical books and prosecuting those suspected of heresy, the Roman Inquisition would be a potent instrument in saving Italy from the Protestant Reformation.
By the mid-eighteenth century the Roman Inquisition had become less influential and was abolished when French Revolutionary forces occupied the Papal States and Rome in the 1790s and early 1800s. After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, the Inquisition was restored in papal territory, although its impact was minimal. It was the Index rather than the Inquisition that prevailed in the nineteenth century. In 1907 the term ‘Roman Inquisition’ was dropped, and in 1913 the body was renamed the ‘Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office’.
In December 1965, on the second-last day of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), it was again renamed as the ‘Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’. However, despite claims that the present prefect of the CDF, Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, has opened up the Congregation and made it more modern and accountable, the evidence in this book indicates that the name changes were merely cosmetic. The secretive attitudes inherited from the baroque period and the early twentieth century have survived and still flourish in the attitudes and procedures of the CDF.
Today the CDF is a department within the Vatican bureaucracy, charged with protecting Catholic orthodoxy and examining and judging the theological, spiritual and religious writings and opinions expressed by all Catholics. According to Pope John Paul II’s 28 June 1988 apostolic constitution on the Roman Curia, Pastor Bonus: ‘The duty proper to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is to promote and safeguard the doctrine on faith and morals throughout the Catholic world: for this reason everything which in any way touches on such matters falls within its competence’ (Article 48). This means that its ambit is wide indeed and almost limitless, because everything pertaining to faith and belief has a doctrinal or ethical aspect. In the Regulations for Doctrinal Examination (29 June 1997) the net seems to be cast even wider: ‘In order that faith and morals not be harmed by er...
