Transparency: The watchword in the Catholic world this week

Whenever high-profile stories break within a short span, commentators will often try to appear clever by finding some common thread. Frequently these are apples-and-oranges exercises which, in retrospect, seem rather forced; the sappy encomia linking Princess Diana and Mother Teresa simply because they died within six days of one another in 1997 offer a classic example.

Within the past seven days, three major stories on the Catholic news beat have raised eyebrows, stirred discussion, and generated diverse reactions both inside the church and out:

- A rare Vatican review, technically known as an "apostolic visitation," of women's religious communities in the United States was announced last Friday. The news came as a surprise to most leaders in religious life.
-Fallout from Benedict XVI's decision to lift the excommunication of four traditionalist bishops, including one who is a Holocaust denier, continued to spread, reaching an apex on Tuesday when German Chancellor Angela Merkel rebuked the pope. The next day, the Vatican issued a statement demanding that Bishop Richard Williamson recant his views "in absolutely unequivocal and public fashion."
- The Legionaries of Christ have acknowledged conduct by their founder, the late Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, which was "surprising, difficult to understand, and inappropriate for a Catholic priest." Reportedly, that conduct included fathering a child out of wedlock.

At the risk of straining to find a connection, I'd like to propose a lesson to be extracted from these three stories, one that can be expressed in a single word: Transparency.
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To be blunt, the Catholic church these days has plenty of naturally occurring angst - we don't need to generate it artificially.

Pope Benedict and the Holocaust
By now, a lifecycle to scandals under Benedict XVI has emerged. The pope says or does something controversial, eliciting sincere expressions of confusion, protest or even outrage in various quarters. The Vatican then engages in damage control, sending reassuring signals. Reasonable people generally accept those assurances, even if they scratch their heads about why the soothing gloss wasn't offered before the fact.

In the meantime, we reach the "piling on" stage, in which other people with essentially unrelated motives jump into the fray, joining the criticism of the pope in order to grind political axes - related either to internal Catholic struggles, or to political agenda outside the church.

The Merkel comments offer a classic example. Holocaust denial is a crime in Germany, and undoubtedly the fact that Williamson's excommunication was lifted by a German pope added to the sense of outrage. Driven by public opinion, Merkel felt compelled to join the fray. Unfortunately, she was almost a week late: She demanded that Benedict XVI disavow Holocaust denial six days after he had done just that. The prior Wednesday, the pope had recalled his visits to Nazi death camps and the reality that millions of Jews had been killed during the Second World War.

Yet the bottom line is that even if some people are beating up on the pope for their own reasons, he's the one who handed them the club.
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The obvious question, therefore, is why something like this statement wasn't issued from the beginning, rather than waiting for two weeks of backlash to build.

In that regard, one telling development is the number of senior churchmen who have broken the informal taboo on criticism of the Holy See. For example, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, Austria, said: "There must be also a certain criticism of the Vatican's staff practice, which obviously did not examine the matter carefully." Given that Schönborn was a key supporter of Benedict XVI in the conclave of 2005, and that he did his post-doctoral work under then-Fr. Joseph Ratzinger at the University of Regensburg in the 1970s, one can safely assume that his remarks are not motivated by anti-papal animus.

In other words, even papal loyalists are coming to see that the meltdown illustrates a twin failure in transparency: One within the Vatican itself, in the sense that the proper people were not consulted, and the other in communication with the outside world.

Maciel and the Legionaries

The breakdown in transparency in the Maciel case is perhaps the most obvious of all. While the Legionaries have not confirmed any specific allegation against Maciel, privately Fr. Álvaro Corcuera, Maciel's successor as the order's superior, has informed members that this is not a matter of a one-time slip, but a pattern of conduct stretching over years.

Given that accusations of sexual abuse against Maciel first became public in 1997, and that the Vatican instructed him to cease public ministry and live a life of "prayer and penance" almost three years ago, one could wonder why it's taken the Legionaries so long to come even this far.

To be fair, it is no easy matter for any religious congregation to acknowledge shortcomings in its founder. It's also worth recalling that Maciel did not step down as the superior until 2005, perhaps helping to explain why no internal review was possible until that time.

However belated, and arguably incomplete, the recent disclosures have been, the order's leadership nevertheless deserves credit for acknowledging an extraordinarily painful situation.

Now that the ice has been broken, hard questions will have to be faced about who knew what, who should have known, and when. In the meantime, one feels for so many well-meaning and idealistic Legionaries, as well as members of Regnum Christ (the order's lay arm), who must be experiencing confusion and hurt. That sensation is likely compounded by the fact that the order put up such a strenuous across-the-board defense of Maciel for so long.

The lesson to be learned - that avoiding hard truths is ultimately in no one's interest - is so obvious as to scarcely need further elaboration.

In sum, this week has brought home the imperative of a greater commitment to transparency, both inside the church (including within religious orders, and even within the Vatican) and with regard to the outside world.

One would think that this conclusion is so stunningly clear, so unavoidable, that it will swiftly result in changed practices. As I am fond of saying, however, the Catholic church was not built for speed. One can certainly pray that "His judgment cometh, and that right soon," but I wouldn't advise holding your breath.