Questions Answered – September 2019

Love in Context of Abusive Relationships

Question: Am I wrong and sinning if I do not like family members who mistreat me?

Answer: This question actually has two prongs to it. The one has to do with the relationship of volitional to sensitive love; the other with how allowing oneself to be abused or a doormat to other people’s weakness relates to this love and humility.

The answer to the first must make use of several principles. The first is based in the nature of the human soul itself. Love is a kind of co-pleasingness in which a subject goes out of himself to observe the likeness in being to another thing and affirms that likeness. The most basic form is sensual love, which man shares with the animals. The human experience of this sensual approval is what people popularly call liking. I like apples because they taste good. The being of the apple has an affinity with my taste buds and it is sweet, so I affirm it as a good. On this level I can be said to love something, but only in a sensual way. This love is most basic form of human emotion and foundation of all the experience of the passions.

The deeper experience in this approval of the good is in addition to the sensual experience: it tastes good or is pleasing to the eye or makes me feel good. This is the love of the will. This is willed or volitional loving. It is like sensuous or passionate love in that it is the approval of a good. But it is unlike it in the sense that the will approves the good of something in a universal sense and at the direction of the intellect. Man’s character is so varied and deep that there are many different levels on which a person can experience something as a good. This is because though one cannot love something unless one knows it, the intellect can consider everything except God good from one point of view but not from another. In this life even God can be considered something which is not good for man if he is lost in sin because God would be considered as a block to freely committing sin. The intellect can thus lead us to affirm something as good on one level but not on another.

In the example given of the family member, it would be very unloving in the intellectual sense to try to manufacture feelings of love or ignore the tyrannical mistreatment of another because of feelings of love. The will here should be formed according to the truth. Enablers deny the truth of the condition of someone like an abusive spouse or family member for many reasons. They may lie to the boss, clean up from him dirtying himself, or cover up wounds physically inflicted all in the name of love. In fact, the enabler is loving themselves in a disordered way in the same way the abusive spouse claims to love the one abused while hurting him or her. Truth is absent from the relationship and love must be based on truth. Love does not mean any of these things because they are all based on lies. Alcoholics call it denial, which is a form of lying.

Also, if one means by love volitional love, it is certainly possible to love the good of someone by forcing them to experience an intervention or leaving them, praying for their salvation and yet not wishing to be subject to further abuse. One does not have to like someone to wish good for them. Calling the police, pressing charges, and ceasing to live together may be the only way to wake the abuser or addict up to the fact that they are killing themselves.

There are, further, two Christian principles which must be applied. One may love the sinner (in the will) by wishing they go to heaven through conversion, but certainly hate the abuse. Further, if one cannot change the abuser, it is certainly justified in feeling angry for their evil.

But if there is no way to correct the abuser, one may certainly leave and yet forgive them because it is the only way to let it go. This does not mean one has to tolerate mistreatment. So the short answer to your question is that you are not sinning to be angry with your brother or to refuse to be a part of his life if he is abusive. But you must still pray for his conversion and forgive him. In fact, a truly humble person does not enable people who need to grow up or get help. Thomas Aquinas says that though we are all called to humility, this must be based on discretion, and so it would be proper to stupidity, rather than humility, for a person to accept every kind of humiliation.

How to Deal with the Crimes of Clergy

Question: How is a Catholic to deal with evident crimes and cover-ups on the part of the hierarchy in relation to the indefectibility of the Church? The recent clergy scandals have caused many to question whether the Catholic Church is the true Church when it can house so many derelict clergy.

Answer: I waited to answer this question until a year after the greatest clergy scandal in the history of the United States broke because I hoped there would be some wisdom and perspective on it. I do not pretend to have a final answer and there may be good ones which have been put in place during the year which has elapsed. I would hazard a few principles.

Anyone who is not in denial about this scandal has recommended a required investigation into the truth of the allegations made against the Pope and the bishops. This may involve going again into the manner in which dioceses dealt with past accusations. This is necessary but must also be tempered with respect for the fact that many of these accusations are very old and some may be the result of people who are not reliable witnesses, or who are dead at this point. Of course, whatever is proven must be admitted and dealt with. To say this is not really a crisis, or that one must attend to business as usual, is really ridiculous and shows the extent of denial and, in some cases, plain lack of intelligence on the part of Church leadership. As this can only be corrected in the final analysis by the Pope, the Vatican must admit the problem and act accordingly. A caution here, however, is in order. If the Pope should make an administrative decision in the U.S., the Vatican could lose its diplomatic immunity and become liable to civil litigation just as the diocese is. As long as the appointment of a bishop is perceived as merely sacramental, then this would not be an issue.

Some have made the attractive suggestion that each diocese must stand scrutiny of both finances and the moral practices of the clergy. The financial analysis could certainly be conducted by a secular firm with an audit and accountability for expenditures which suggest collusion or cover up. Of course, in the United States, the approved form of corporation for a diocese is that the bishop is the corporation. In effect, the money is his. One would have to avoid trustee-ism and the like in such a practice. The obligation to reform expenditures which have been used for evil purposes would be moral, not legal. Then these must cease. Regarding the moral problems, the case is more problematic. It seems some bishops, for whatever intentions, good or bad, have not sufficiently policed their own houses. The Vatican and the bishops need to realize that the same old procedure applied in practices like “move and promote” will not be sufficient anymore. Secular people may be brought in on this but the final decision must rely on the hierarchy and, if they cannot do it, they should be removed and others put in their place who will demand accountability.

What should not happen is the laity losing faith in the Catholic religion. The Church is indefectible, but not her members and certainly not her leaders. Corrupt leaders are not a new thing in the Church. It has happened before, for example, with “nepotism” in which the popes gave their “nephews” offices like cardinal. The Creed is still the same, the sacraments are still the same, and the structure is willed by Christ. Many times in the past there have been unworthy bishops, cardinals, and even popes. It is true that they have not covered up evils in the way the present hierarchy has, but, then, there were not the media aids available to ferret them out in the past. The young clergy seem to be more determined than ever to live moral and priestly lives because of the bad examples of some of their predecessors. Also, many members of the hierarchy who participated in these sad practices are from the era of the ’60s, which is slowly passing. God has permitted us to suffer these things for a reason.

Reform is always difficult. It is interesting that the Council of Trent called to answer the problems of the Protestant Reformation almost broke up several times, not over doctrine about which there was general agreement, but about the moral reform of the bishops, especially the requirement that they should be present in their various dioceses and exercise their ministry there. No final consensus was reached on this requirement by the Council but many bishops like Charles Borromeo realized it was very important and so began the practice of residing in their sees. Interestingly, in France, the King would not allow the decrees of the Council to be published. It was only Richelieu who required it almost 70 years after it ended. The renewal of the Church in France regarding the hierarchy was always slow until the French Revolution basically did away with union with Rome and produced a revolutionary state church. It was in spiritual reaction to that that the famous recovery of Catholicism was carried out in the nineteenth century.

The laity could deny their financial contributions as a condition for such a renewal. This would perhaps be the best way to send the message that accountability needs to happen. Yet they should not leave the Church. “Lord to whom shall we go?” was a question asked by Peter of Our Lord, and must be renewed in each era.