Tepidity, Synodality, and Abuse Deniers

Padre Pio called out tepid Catholics. He claimed that purgatory was filled with souls who were neither rebellious nor filled with zeal. The saint bemoaned those souls who receive the sacraments while living their lives in the gray middle. His sentiment causes me to ponder a few scenarios. Can we cite tepidity as a factor in the Catholic Church’s clerical sexual abuse crisis and synodality? I think it can, but first we need to define tepidity as it relates to Catholic spirituality.

Tepidity is a lukewarm spiritual state in which a Catholic’s love for God has grown cold. Tepidity is not caused by grave sin, rather, it reflects a lack of zeal and commitment to spiritual growth. Jesus addressed the condition in Revelation 3:15-16, “I know your works: you are neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.” Clearly Jesus detested spiritual mediocrity. According to Catholic journalist Cheryl Hadley, there are five common signs of tepidity.

1. Routine without relationship when prayer becomes a mechanical habit.

2. Neglect in the desire to dig deeper into understanding our faith.

3. Indifference to sin, where venial sins are rationalized as not being a big deal.

4. Lack of repentance as Confession is deemed irrelevant because of rationalization.

5. Comfort over challenge, resulting in a resistance to anything that pushes us to grow, suffer, or sacrifice. In this state, we avoid spiritual discomfort at all costs.

I believe the Synod on Synodality fosters an attitude of tepidness within the faithful. At every level of the synod process, the Church stifles exchange and debate, and it rejects the Socratic method, which gave early Christianity a rational tool with which to defend and explain the faith. What is more tepid than the Vatican’s indifference to reason and their wish to control dialogue by limiting Socratic debate? Rather than challenging thoughts through debate and exchange, it’s more comfortable to just sit and listen as others do the thinking. When there is no debate and popes and cardinals hint that there can be write-arounds of natural law, it becomes easy to rationalize homosexuality, one of the objectives of synodality. The synodal process mirrors the same tactics employed during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. For any long-established culture to change quickly, forced reeducation and indoctrination are necessary. For Chinese Communism, rethinking imperial bureaucracy required forced listening to endless lessons of proletarian sacrifice and shame-filled public exposure for not thinking in the proper manner. Rethinking traditional Catholicism for today’s modernist Vatican entails listening to endless lessons of universal salvation, which normalize homosexual behavior. Neither process is Socratic in nature. It is sad to contemplate that so-called champions of the common man (Communists and the Catholic Church) would make wholesale cultural change devoid of true dialogue. But then again, power distorts every human being’s thinking, no less the Vatican elite.

It is no surprise that the current Church leadership, who would limit deliberation, would be the same Vatican that allows the Chinese Communist Party to appoint its own bishops. Francis, Leo, and associates are as subtle as a live trout in a glass of milk. Every sordid account about the current-day Vatican makes me more sympathetic toward Martin Luther in his efforts to combat the evils of Vatican greed and the spiritual exploitation of indulgences. Luther’s 1520 letter On the Freedom of a Christian to Leo X was respectful and absolved the Pope of personal blame, rather, it fiercely criticized the corrupt Roman Curia. Leo X would not engage in debate, allowing the Curia to continue its flea market sale of salvation and his own warmongering ways.

I became a critic of Catholic Church clerical abuse eighteen years ago. In my experience publishing four books on the subject, the vast majority of laity remains reserved and lukewarm regarding Catholic clerical abusers. I have encountered and debated the abuse problem with both traditionalist and modernist deniers. Both, as if in a trance, defend the mother Church no matter the scandal. I think both sides would rather spew indignation towards others who prefer to worship at Mass in ways different to theirs, while abusers take advantage of the distractions.

Every critic of Catholic clerical abuse has experienced the ‘disconnect’ of good, observant, well-intentioned Catholics (both Traditional and Modernist) who purposely withdraw from learning anything about the sordid side of the Catholic Church. My own relatives, friends, and parishioners have told me that reading any of my words would loosen their faith. I think by Padre Pio’s definition, these people and their attitude toward clerical abuse are tepid in their reactions.

A fellow Catholic Church abuse critic has described this attitude as a version of the Stockholm syndrome. While never recognized as an official disorder by the Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders embraced by clinical psychologists, modern therapists apply the concept to interactions within abusive relationships. The syndrome is a trauma response born out of self-preservation. There are six behaviors which identify the syndrome, and they are all mirrored by Catholics of a tepid nature.

First, deniers develop an affection or emotional attachment to the abuser. There is not a person alive who does not want to have an affection for the church of their choice. Feeling emotionally attached to the Catholic Church is not bad. However, I maintain that it is risky. One can hold affection for the Church and still be a critic. In fact, I believe it is the critic who holds true affection, as it is he who values justice and seeks to avoid future scandal for the Church.

The second indicator is negativity toward anyone trying to help the abused. We have all heard of extreme domestic abuse cases in which battered wives refuse to make any charges against their husbands, only to be murdered in the future. This is a close analogy of how tepid-thinking Catholics in my life have lashed out towards me, making claims that my writing “exaggerates” or that my views are “making a mountain out of a molehill.”

Thirdly, deniers have sympathy for the abuser. I have been in discussions with deniers who believe “all” media coverage of Catholic clerical sexual abuse is fabrication. One fellow parishioner bemoaned our abusive pastor’s forced exit from our parish as being “unfair.” After the pastor publicly admitted to raping a thirteen-year-old boy while serving as a spiritual advisor at a minor seminary, the same parishioner continued her defense by claiming that someone had coerced our pastor’s confession. Some parents are so compromised by the Church that when their own children confide abuse to them, they are disbelieving and actually castigate and shame their own progeny for tarnishing the Church. That is sympathy on steroids.

A fourth indicator is the rationalization of abuse. In the Catholic Church, this disgrace is centuries old. Dyan Elliott’s book, The Corruptor of Boys, reveals how Catholic clerical sexual abuse became institutionalized in the Church and how the leadership ruled with perceived justified rationalization. Boys sexually abused by clerics were routinely accused of being tempters and punished. Current-day Catholic abuse deniers are only marginally different. They rationalize that the claims of abuse are so great and the legal recourse for financial compensation is so large that not all the claims can be true. As such, deniers begrudge just financial settlements and instead claim that the legal process victimizes the Catholic Church. Some deniers whose parishes have been closed to meet court-required payments have blamed the abuse victims as being greedy in the search for justice.

Another indicator is when deniers look upon basic decency as exceptional kindness. This feeds on the fourth indicator. When an accused archdiocese covers up priestly sexual abuse, one of the first things a bishop does is make psychological counselors available to victims. At the same time, they and their legal beagles are making every effort to discredit the impact caused to victims. In Milwaukee, Archbishop Timothy Dolan denied victims full compensation by moving funds into a trust during bankruptcy proceedings. Yet all public media statements referred to an exemplary commitment to justice for victims.

The last indicator is powerlessness. Most Catholics believe that their eternal salvation depends on whether they die in the state of grace within the Catholic Church. This type of psychological relationship clearly allows the Catholic Church to claim, enjoy, maintain, and expand its power over the thought processes of the faithful. From that perspective, the denier prefers a dog-eat-dog world in which, as long as his family is not affected, he will support all aspects of Catholicism, including the denial of abuse and its consequences.

Are the Catholic Church and Jesus one? The reality is that the Catholic Church merely continues the work of Jesus. In that sense, the pope, cardinals, bishops, and priests represent Christ as leaders of the Church Jesus established. They, as leaders, are not a substitute, a stand-in, or a replication of Jesus. Neither do they inherently possess the wisdom nor the mindset of Jesus. It is the blurring of these lines that affords Vatican hierarchy its psychological power. Scripture revisionists like Cardinal Fernandez and James Martin no more speak for Jesus than does Alfred E. Neuman. In fact, in the entire Church history, only twice has a pope proclaimed dogmas as Ex Cathedra. The danger comes when a pope tries to expand Ex Cathedra sentiment beyond dogma, as John Paul II tried during his pontificate.

Is there a cure for tepidity in the Catholic Church as it relates to clerical abuse? Here are my suggestions. First, Catholics must realize that every dollar given to the Church, on any level, empowers abuse. If you are a Catholic who firmly believes tithing connects to your eternal salvation, you are monetizing the forgiveness of whatever sins you have committed. With this mindset, one needs to make sure they tithe enough to cover all of their indiscretions. It mirrors the sale of indulgences.

Question your pastor on why some respected clerics in the Vatican teach that homosexuality is not a violation of natural law and why efforts are being made to normalize the behavior. Make a simple effort to shed some tepidity with respectful questions to authority. If Padre Pio could respectfully confront the leaders of his day, so can we.

Be indignant when your fellow parishioners or family tell you they cannot believe reports of abuse and that reading anything counter to their estimation would ruin their faith. I have responded by saying, “It seems that you have built your faith on sand. Perhaps you have been attending Mass on the beach.”

Be suspect. I am tired of unearned respect for priests, bishops, cardinals, and popes just because of their position and perceived status. My respect spans only as far as their outstretched arms can safely embrace a child. I certainly don’t want them within a certain uncomfortable distance of a seminarian.

Take Pio to heart. Don’t risk purgatory by protecting sexual perverts and their protectors.

Man up. Reject the modernist agenda offered by the power brokers in the Vatican. Homosexuality has destroyed the Catholic Church. Be vocal in your parish about the destructiveness of the homosexual synodal agenda.

Stop being deluded. Believing that the Roman Catholic Church and Jesus are identical puts you at risk of delusion. Jesus never stated that the Temple and his Father were one. He did state that he and the Father were one. The Catholic Church claims that it forms the Mystical Body of Christ and that the Church is both invisible and visible, both divine and human. It is all too easy to blur the line between the visible and the invisible for the sake of temporal power; politicians do it all the time. A faithful Catholic can believe that the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ and still believe there is a separation between the visible and the invisible, the human and the divine.

No Catholic Church abuse critic can force a denier to educate themselves on the abuse problem, force them to acquire an interest in justice for the abused out of thin air, or demand more from the Vatican without some personal integrity or commitment to justice. The Vatican hierarchy holds the power to convince the average faithful that their salvation depends on them, unlike critics. It appears the only power Catholic critics have is repetition and instilling a sense of shame in those who deny justice.

A Trad friend of mine says it will never happen, that such a state exists only in dreams. To him, hope is best left to what he refers to in the Novus Ordo Mass as the “Platitudes of the Faithful” the idealized, mostly sanguine part of the Mass officially called the General Intercessions. He may be right, but if he is, why do we even care? Let’s just say our mindless rosaries and put our envelopes into the collection basket. Indeed, his fated attitude is a form of tepidity. At least he sees the problem. A modernist would not.

David Tracy is the author of four books, critiques on the Catholic Church clerical abuse scandal. His latest book, Prohibition and the Priest is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. He is currently working on a novel, Den of Iniquity, with fellow critic Gene Thomas Gomulka due to be released early next year.