By DEXTER DUGGAN
One of the paradoxes of Catholic Church reforms initiated in the 1960s is that their alleged greater openness to participation and involvement by the laity often was followed by shutting Catholics out as firmly as they may have been excluded before.
Hierarchical structures were opened up, dissenters dashed across the drawbridge into the bishop’s castle, then raised the bridge behind them.
Orthodox, practicing Catholics still were left on the outside, with this difference: Previously the Church structure may have been in the hands of hierarchs whom the faithful often at least could feel comfortable with. That changed into newly powerful dissenters establishing their own conformity, which was enforced by lack of responsiveness to the everyday Catholic.
The 1960s were a half-century ago, but the drawbridge is sometimes as tightly closed as ever.
This was shown when an international priestly dissenter on homosexuality and marriage was welcomed by the San Diego Catholic Diocese to give speeches in September. The diocese declined to respond to inquiries by practicing Catholics who questioned the advisability of the invitation to Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, OP, former master general of the Dominican order.
Radcliffe went ahead to speak to four gatherings, including the diocese’s important, official annual convocation of its priests.
The September 11 issue of The Wanderer reported that San Diego diocesan chancellor Rodrigo Valdivia promptly replied to this newspaper’s September 2 email inquiry about Radcliffe’s appearance by saying, “We respectfully decline the invitation to comment for this article.”
The page one article, “Dissenter Invited to Address Priests; Diocese of San Diego Won’t Comment,” said some local Catholics were requesting that the speaking invitation be withdrawn.
San Diegans later said the diocese continued to be unresponsive to their objections. As September ended, the “Church Militant TV” video website (www.churchmil
itant.tv) said it received no replies to its inquiries either.
Video host Michael Voris told viewers that Radcliffe “travels from one diocese to another” as he pleases, “with the blessings of many in the Church establishment. . . .
“Many bishops are compromised, and dare not challenge him,” Voris said.
Some Catholics in Ireland tried to dissuade the Dublin International Divine Mercy Conference from having Radcliffe as a speaker there last February, but they didn’t succeed.
One of them, Kathy Sinnott, told The Wanderer by email from Ireland on September 28:
“I am a Third Order Dominican and was maybe in a better position than most to understand the threat Fr. Radcliffe is in many areas of Catholic teaching. I am also a volunteer with EWTN, hosting the Celtic Connection program about Britain, Ireland, and Europe, and I am acutely aware of the struggle for orthodoxy and indeed sanctity endured by religious and laity through apostolates like Divine Mercy.”
One of various venues where Radcliffe’s views appeared, Sinnott said, was The Pilling Report, the working document published in November 2013 for the Church of England’s decision-making process concerning issues including “same-sex marriage.”
Page 76 of the Report says: “Timothy Radcliffe began with the observation that for most of the Church’s history, sexual conduct has neither been a major concern nor understood primarily in terms of rules. The shift began at the Reformation but it is only with the Enlightenment that we see an overriding concern for the regulation of sex: ‘. . . my suspicion is that both this obsession with sex and a stress on rules [are] both relatively late and alien to traditional Christianity’.”
A few paragraphs later in the Report, Radcliffe said that “in our society, marriage is a fragile institution, and no bonds are as secure as they once were. ‘We live in a society of short-term contracts, whether at work or at home,’ and this makes things very difficult for couples. The Church must find ways of offering ‘a complete welcome’ to people whose marriages have broken down.”
One who reads this may think of the current push to allow eucharistic reception for remarried Catholics who didn’t obtain annulments.
On page 77, after mentioning fertility, Radcliffe is quoted: “How does all this bear on the question of gay sexuality? We cannot begin with the question of whether it is permitted or forbidden! We must ask what it means, and how far it is Eucharistic. Certainly it can be generous, vulnerable, tender, mutual, and nonviolent. So in many ways I think it can be expressive of Christ’s self-gift.”
In addition to the San Diego priests’ convocation, Radcliffe, who was born in 1945, spoke in September at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, in the wealthy residential community of Coronado, across the bay from downtown San Diego; at the Newman Club for Catholic students at the public University of California San Diego (UCSD), and at the Catholic-affiliated University of San Diego (USD).
A San Diego woman who attended two of Radcliffe’s four talks told The Wanderer that he may have muted some of his theme because he was aware of the controversy surrounding his visit.
“In neither talk did he mention homosexuality or gay marriage,” said Moira Malley. “…Probably he’s being told to cool it for a while.”
Malley has advanced degrees in French and business administration, and works from her home as a technical/proposal writer and French-to-English translator. She said she attended the September 28 Newman Center UCSD talk and September 29 USD talk.
Although both talks were at universities, she said young people were in the minority in the audiences — a “maximum of 25” young people in a UCSD audience of about 100, and one-third young people in an audience of about 400 at USD, which had a seating capacity she figured at 600.
Noticing a substantial portion of the “elderly” at both locations — which she defined as age 65 or older — Malley told The Wanderer these were people from the time of Vatican II who look fondly back at the “turmoil” then.
“The atmosphere prior to both talks was electric,” Malley said. “People are there to be reaffirmed. . . . They want to preserve that turmoil at any cost. They feel at peace and reaffirmed. They don’t see it as turmoil. We do. . . .
“From both talks I got the impression Father was saying ‘everyone’s OK’ . . . no matter what they do,” Malley said.
In neither talk she attended, Malley said, did Radcliffe speak about prayer or “the four last things,” death, judgment, Heaven and Hell. “It’s all about the here and now, as far as I can tell,” she said.
An Uneasy Feeling
An announcement at the USD website about Radcliffe’s talk there said:
“He spends most of his year giving retreats, lectures, and conference keynote addresses in the UK and overseas. All over the world, he is well known for his approachable language, depth of thinking, and strong sense of humor. His writings and lectures stretch minds and warm hearts as he offers guidance and encouragement along the journey of orienting one’s life toward God. He is a gifted presenter and his words have inspired people in hundreds of countries. . . .
“Along with Pope Francis, Fr. Radcliffe resists the culture of individualism and assures us that by stretching ourselves open to love others, we share in the life and love that is God. He will offer practical insight and wisdom into becoming more alive by discovering how to love well,” the USD website said.
The announcement said his talk was to be in Shiley Theatre — the same theater where USD holds its annual “drag show” promoting homosexuality the week before, or the week of, Holy Week.
Malley said that when Radcliffe referred to October’s Synod of Bishops on the family, “He said once a marriage is over, it’s over.”
There was no discussion of indissolubility or whether a marriage had been deemed invalid through annulment, Malley said, nor was there discussion of “eating and drinking unworthily” — a reference to a Catholic receiving the Eucharist while in a state of serious sin, such as remarriage without annulment.
She said Radcliffe said that according to Pope Benedict, a person can’t separate eros and agape. “It doesn’t sound right,” Malley told The Wanderer, because it seemed like it might prepare “the way for a gay-marriage-type thing and gay love.”
Eros is often described as self-interested or sexual love, while agape is self-sacrificing or unconditional love.
“I should underline the fact he said the first lesson of all theology, God is not a very powerful Being, and he attributes that to St. Thomas Aquinas,” Malley said.
At USD, “There was a lot of pacifism in this talk, nonresistance,” she said, adding later, “He didn’t have any answers of what to do about ISIS,” the terrorist Islamic army.
At both talks, she said, “people in the audience were very pro-Muslim.” At USD, a woman said, “We have to love them.”
“I left with the feeling. . . . I was spiritually famished, uneasy,” Malley said. “There were no real answers. I felt all this passivity was leading nowhere. . . . Maybe the very young idealists may be attracted to someone like Fr. Radcliffe. . . . I just felt it was a return to the sixties. . . . People . . . just expect problems to go away.”
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