Respectful, If Unsolicited, Advice To The Bishop Of Burlington, Vt.

By DEACON JAMES H. TONER

(Editor’s Note: Deacon Toner is professor emeritus of leadership and ethics at the U.S. Air War College, and author of Morals Under the Gun and other books. He has also taught at the U.S. Air Force Academy and Holy Apostles College & Seminary.
(Below is his open letter to the Most Rev. Christopher Coyne, bishop of Burlington, Vt.)

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Your Excellency:

You are recently quoted as saying that you must find new ways to engage Catholics and to keep them in the faith: “We need to think about new ways of engaging generations X, Y, and Z.” Before convening a synod next year for Vermont Catholics, your diocese is embarking on a year-long re-examination of church structure and rules. The newspaper article concerning your plans implicitly applauds your efforts, editorializing that the Church cannot keep doing what it always has done.
May I very respectfully and briefly offer some helpful (one hopes) advice about your efforts, dividing it into what, first, you will hear from the world and what, second, you would hear from faithful advisers. I subdivide that advice into four sections: one concerning yourself; another your particular diocesan church; a third, your priests; and a fourth, your people.

I

As bishop of Burlington, in a secular, not to say profane, state, you must, at all cost, refrain from any vestige of authoritarianism. If you are to have any impact on morals and mores in the Green Mountain state, you must prove that you can follow the popular will. You must incorporate the fads, fashions, and fancies of the day into your manner of leadership and management. No one, after all, kisses a bishop’s ring anymore; and no one expects, or will tolerate, your insistence about obedience to your episcopal office.
Refrain especially from warning confirmandi that they are about to enter spiritual combat in our country’s most irreligious state. Certainly, do not, as bishop, demand that your diocese’s self-identified Catholic colleges, religious institutes, retreat houses, hospitals, and high schools faithfully teach and practice all the tenets of the Catholic faith. Such insistence would mark you as old-fashioned, and the church cannot keep doing what it always has. The French revolutionary leader, Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin (1807-1874), must become your model. Seeing a crowd surge by the business in which he was shopping, he is said to have remarked, “I am their leader. I must follow them.”
The Diocese of Burlington must become a center for modern thinking. Stop with the fanatical, endless, boring, and jejune screams and screeds against abortion, contraception, homosexual practice, euthanasia; cease all the other elements of the moral dictatorship which the church has relentlessly and unsuccessfully practiced.
Your liturgy, your teaching, your art, your music, and, especially, your support of political and social programs must be grounded in the spirit of a humanity which can be perfected and divinized! Isn’t it time to read Teilhard (1881-1955) again? Your church exists for one purpose — to advance the agenda of humanity. Do so proudly! (By the way, no more “sacred hymns”! Nobody knows them, and nobody sings them. Get into some Uptown Funk, man. That will pack them in!)
Encourage your priests (and set the example for them) to be thoroughly modern, progressive, and trendy — to be avant-garde in all they say and do. This is particularly important in the liturgy. Bible verses are dull and boring, so improvise! Readings from modern secular sources, instead of, say, St. Paul, will inspire the people, proving that diocesan priests can be innovative.
Why not develop a diocesan joke book from which priests can draw material to enliven their homilies? Be sure your priests use their first name: “Fr. Bob” (not “Fr. Smith”) to underscore the point that they are never judgmental and always part of the scene. If the people, as they leave Mass, are chuckling at some of Fr. Bob’s laugh lines, tossed out during the consecration and (especially) at the dismissal, you can be sure they’ll be back. The key is the priest’s willingness to go with the flow, to improvise, to entertain, and to be popular! No more throwing stones at people! No more “holier than thou” attitudes among your clergy!
And no more “Reconciliation Rooms” — or whatever they are called. The idea is that your priests celebrate their ability to get people to think for themselves. Let’s get away from that old-fashioned structure and rules! Start with the vestments; or, to put it better, stop with the vestments; stop with the Greek and the Latin and the Hebrew. Tell your priests that it’s 2017 — 500 years after the first Reformation. Get with the times! And. . . .
Listen to the people! They leave because they are bored; they have better things to do. So meet them where they are: Get more of them into the act. More readers of modern material! More dancers! More singers of contemporary music (Bach is dead)! More distributors of the wafers and wine! What is this — a one-man priest show?
Do you get my drift here? Have women concelebrate! Let Burlington set the example! Stop with the “penance,” already! Walk into church and — bang! — the penitential rite. Sin, sin, sin! What a turn-off! That is not welcoming! The people are sick of being lectured to! The only “sin” is what keeps us from self-fulfillment. So take votes on church issues. Do most people in the Diocese of Burlington support women’s health issues and the right of abortion? Can we die with dignity? Can we have marriage equality?
Again: Listen to the people! It’s their church, not yours. The message in one word: autonomy. Let all people decide for themselves what is right! And you will engage people, not turn them off and away.

II

There is the advice of “the world,” which wants and demands a Catholic Church without mission, morals, or muscle. In a line attributed to Chesterton, we learn that the actual problem with the Church is that the world does not hate us enough. We have, this last half century, become altogether too much like the world to which we are supposed to be Christian ambassadors and witnesses (2 Cor. 5:20, Acts 1:8). It is, in fact, a terrible indictment, for it accuses us of abandoning our Lord and of embracing, instead, what is popular (John 12:43, Gal. 1:10, 1 Thess. 2:4).
That temptation — to have the praise of the world — is one to be sedulously resisted at all times and in all places. Never let false priests deceive, delude, or defraud the people (2 Peter 2:1, Jude 4) whose shepherd you are; never, in a spirit of false compassion or syncretism, permit ignorant or incompetent — read heterodox — presbyteral or diaconal “service.” Never permit sacred Masses to be filled with modernist ideology parading as Catholic worship. (See Kwasniewski’s Resurgent in the Midst of Crisis — which might well be suggested as key diocesan reading).
As bishop of Burlington, you must say, with St. Paul: Stop! “Some people there [at Ephesus] are teaching false doctrines, and you must order them to stop” (1 Tim. 1:3). In the name of keeping or attracting parishioners, do not permit novelty and contemporary ideology to supersede orthodoxy or drive out the ancient and honorable ways.
In many ways, we live at a time of hyper-optimism, such that Micawber or Pollyanna or Pangloss would enjoy. All we must do for prosperity (and redemption), we hear, is to believe in certain political prescriptions (such as socialism) which tell us they can provide all we need, and that they will permit anything we want (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1740), if we give them our souls.
But the Church tells us that this is a vale of tears, that we must conform ourselves to the true teaching of Christ the King, and that we will all face divine judgment. We must again hear Fr. Thomas Merton (1915-1968), wise in this admonition if, regrettably, not so always: “You must know when, how, and to whom to say, ‘no.’ This involves considerable difficulty at times. You must not hurt people, or want to hurt them, yet you must not placate them at the price of infidelity to higher and essential values.” As bishop, there are times you must say no to those who offer the Faustian bargain of “more people in the pews” — at the price of betraying the faith which comes to us from the apostles.
Your episcopal motto, “Trust in [our] Lord,” derived from Prov. 3:5, is completed: “Never rely on what you think you know” (GNB). You are the shepherd of people who are endangered by what they think they know, based upon ideologies at war with the Church. What you guard and teach (2 Tim. 1:14) is not your own, of course; it is the Deposit of Faith.
In testifying to it, you will be scourged; the world will hate you (John 15:18-25), but we trust in our Lord, and we preserve the faith which was handed down to us (Jude 3, 1 Tim. 6:20). Ask not, what is legally right; rather, ask, what is eternally Right. Ask not, what is done and said; rather, ask, what ought to be done and said; and ask not, what is expedient and practical and ordinary; rather ask, always, what does the Church teach (1 Tim. 3:15).
And then, in turn, teach that with all the wisdom and power you have been given. That will bring you into conflict with many, perhaps very many (including, sadly, some in birettas who should know much better). Insisting that your colleges, schools, hospitals, religious institutes, and retreat centers be Catholic if they claim to be Catholic; insisting that Catholic priests, preachers, and professors teach Catholic truth; insisting upon liturgical orthodoxy — all these will ensure that you are mocked and ridiculed, as was our Savior (Luke 22:63-64; James 4:4). And insisting that your synod feature only orthodox Catholic speakers (e.g., Fr. George W. Rutler, Fr. Bill Casey, Fr. Kevin M. Cusick) will lead to your being lampooned. But is not the heart of your teaching based on Phil. 3:8? Without Christ, there is nothing of value or virtue.
Your diocese must have a “reformation.” That re-formation must be rooted in knowing the Trinity. We will not faithfully and always serve whom we do not love; we cannot love whom we do not know; and we cannot know without genuine education (which, at its heart, means being brought out the darkness into the light [cf. John 8:12, 1 Peter 2:9, Book Seven of Plato’s Republic]).
A leader is responsible for all that his or her organization does or fails to do. If there is great ignorance of the faith in the diocese, such is finally, if not fully, attributable to the bishop and his priests. For the love of God, teach. For the love of God, inspire spiritual reading. For the love of God, insist upon broad learning in every Catholic program:
Benestad’s Church, State, and Society; Liaugminas’ Non-Negotiable; Neuhaus’ American Babylon; Hill’s After the Natural Law; Kwasniewski’s Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness; Topping’s Rebuilding Catholic Culture; Dreher’s The Benedict Option; Anderson’s Truth Overruled; [Cardinal] Sarah’s God or Nothing and The Power of Silence; Schall’s A Line Through the Human Heart; Kreeft’s Making Choices; Esolen’s Out of the Ashes — are these in the minds of your people — and priests?
What books are you recommending in your columns in your diocesan newspaper? What are your people reading as they prepare for Baptism, for Confirmation, for Holy Matrimony? Have we forgotten that the Church — your diocese — is mother and teacher? How many of your priests offer the Traditional Latin Mass? Do you offer it regularly? If your diocese’s Holy Masses are not prayed with the greatest solemnity and reverence; if someone really does refer to our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament as “wafer and wine”; if priests do not preach with grace-filled conviction (cf. 1 Peter 4:11) grounded in serious and sustained study and prayerful reflection — then you will have a bare, ruined diocese. The art, the music, the preaching—and, above all, the Holy Mass — must lift people to God, not lower them to the fads and fashions of the day (see 1 John 2:15). Sursum corda!
Your priests might well read Gail’s novel Fatherless to find there the fictional story of a priest who, after profound reflection, came to love his people enough always to tell them the truth. When we find God in the mirror, or in any human agency, we are building again the Tower of Babel; we are the Frankensteins creating our own monsters. When we arrogantly dismiss the Gospel of our Lord and laugh off the admonitions of Sacred Scripture (as in Rev. 21:8 or 1 Cor. 6:9), we have succumbed to the way and will of the World, despite the sacred charge given to us in Baptism and Confirmation (cf. CCC, nn. 2037, 2044, and 2105).
We forget, too easily and too often, who our enemy is (Eph. 6:12, 1 Peter 5:8). Your priests have the sacred and solemn duty to confect the Blessed Sacrament and to preach (see Tim. 4:2-4). You and they must be seized with the wisdom of St. Paul: “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2 RSV).
Warning us against moral permissiveness, the CCC teaches us that “the development of true freedom is to let oneself be educated in the moral law” (n. 2526). Isn’t a critical part of your own priesthood to serve as a reminder (as a kind of anamnesis) about the moral law (CCC nn. 1954-1960) which ought to guide, guard, and govern us? You will not find that moral law often proclaimed or defended (or even understood) in Burlington or Montpelier or Brattleboro. You are its principal champion in your particular church.
All people are in the City of Man but called to the City of God. We must not expect truth invariably to bubble up from assemblies of the people. Indeed, the first public opinion poll, as Bishop Sheen once said, led to the choice of Barabbas over our Lord. The bishop is not and must not be an authoritarian; but he must always exercise authentic leadership over the people. Authentic here means, as the dictionary suggests, “in a way that faithfully resembles an original.”
The study of Old Testament leadership from Abraham and Moses to Ezra and Nehemiah is well worth reflection, for it is such leaders whom the people ought to follow. “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ,” writes St. Paul (1 Cor. 11:1). When our bishops and priests imitate Christ (which, pray God, is the rule and not the exception), then we do, indeed, have the Christian duty of obedience (which is a subject well worthy of extended catechetical and synodal study: See CCC nn. 87, 144, 450, 890, 892, 1269, 1783, 2032, 2037, 2039, 2246, 2420). Ridiculed as “pay, pray, and obey,” the People of God are, in fact, called to support the Church, to pray always, and to be true to the shepherd’s call.
The shepherd, for his part, must always “walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called” (Eph. 4:1, CCC n. 1971; 1 Peter 5:3). That is a reason that the bishop and priest always ask the people: Oremus pro invicem. “The faithful,” moreover, have the irrefragable right “to be instructed in the divine saving precepts that purify judgment and, with grace, heal wounded human reason” (CCC n. 2037). Nothing there about showmanship or comedy, moral indifference parading as a “welcoming spirit,” ethical relativism, popularity — or Uptown Funk.
On September 11, 1987, Pope St. John Paul II said, in South Carolina: “Our Christian conscience should be deeply concerned about the way in which sins against love and against life are often presented as examples of ‘progress’ and emancipation. . . . [Aren’t they usually only] forms of selfishness dressed up in a new language and presented in a new cultural framework?” He continued: “Many [of] these problems are the result [of] a false notion of individual freedom . . . [prevalent] in our culture, as if one could be free only when rejecting every objective norm of conduct, refusing to assume responsibility, or even refusing to put curbs on instincts and passions!”
Some years ago, as the U.S. Army re-built after Vietnam, it used the recruiting slogan, “The Army wants to join you.” That was nonsense, of course, for soldiers must be far more than civilians in uniform. Your Excellency, be careful. The kind of thinking emerging from suggestions that you need “new ways of engaging generations X, Y, and Z” may be infected with the “reprehensible desire of novelty” (Pius XII, Humani Generis, n. 13) which mistakenly tells us that “the Church wants to join you.” But we are called to the holy, not to the profane or mundane (1 Peter 1:15). We are to summon people to Christ’s Church, not listen to the siren-song of the world, the flesh, and the Devil, calling the Church to the desacralized and disenchanted values of a neo-pagan society.
Finally, may we, with grace, stop counting. Many, tragically, will walk away from the truth (John 6:60, 66; CCC n. 1336). We are called to do the very best we can to know, love, and serve God and to be His faithful witnesses. The rest is in God’s hands. Finally, the word we teach and preach is, of course, not autonomy. It is, rather, the name that is greater than any other name (Phil. 2:9-11), and in whose service we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28).
Instead of the “new language” or the “new ways,” please, Your Excellency, deeply ponder the beauty of the Traditional Latin Mass; the unalloyed necessity of sound doctrine (Titus 2:1); the Church’s solemn mission to help all of us work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12; 3:18-19), and our primordial duty to seek Truth always (John 14:6).
“Thus says the Lord [as you might say to the people of your diocese]: ‘Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls’” (Jer. 6:16 RSV).
God bless you, Bishop Coyne.

In Christ,

Deacon James H. Toner
Stokesdale, N.C.