Orthodoxy Under Attack In Columbus

By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK

Being a “cradle Catholic” is one thing. Dying an intentional Catholic quite another. A current contretemps in Columbus decidedly proves the case.
Jack D’Aurora is quite upset. Or perhaps merely disappointed. He, a columnist in a Columbus paper, at any rate makes clear that he approves of the Paulist Fathers and their pomps and works. The current bishop of the place, however, believes that their public manifestations of faith, or the lack of it, must be corrected and has acted accordingly. This has met with the considered disapproval of Mr. D’Aurora, who takes care at the end of a column penned by him in a local paper The Dispatch, to describe himself as a “cradle Catholic.”
This assumes, we are to take it, that once a “cradle Catholic” always a Catholic in the fullest and most correct sense of that word. But defining the word “Catholic” in its relation to the truth seems to be the issue at the heart of this matter.
In the published pieced authored by D’Aurora, he charges Bishop Fernandes of Columbus with no less than dissembling. He writes, “Why is it Columbus Catholic Diocese Bishop Earl Fernandes cannot speak the truth? In the May 28 edition of The Dispatch, he again denied that he forced the Paulist priests to leave the Newman Center last year and repeated the fiction they ‘chose to leave’.”
The layman’s rash characterization of the bishop may be completely unnecessary. As one who writes columns weekly I can certainly understand the temptation to find necessity where there is mere misunderstanding. Or the lack of readiness to admit there may be a number of ways to describe one reality that may in fact not be contradictory, contrary to an impression following initial acquaintance with the facts. Or that the one launching accusations of lying may in fact be himself playing fast and loose with the truth. Upon collecting various accounts of a matter, one finds often that each person offering an opinion may choose to highlight a different aspect of the case. More than one of these may at the same time be true.
What we do know is true is that the bishop in each place over which he is given jurisdiction has the sacred duty of determining the suitability of any given priest to teach, sanctify, and govern as a collaborator in the episcopal ministry within his diocese. This is part of the perennial truth pertaining to the concept “Catholic.”
Anyone who has year upon year glanced at the titles available on the website of the Paulist publishing house or perused the selection of books on display in the windows of the Paulist establishment in Boston is well aware that the organization has long labored to undermine essential truths of the Faith. If the Paulists in Columbus were holdouts in this effort, it surely would have been considered newsworthy and very unlikely to have escaped our attention thus far.
Given what we know of the very public and unapologetic lack of orthodoxy for many years on the part of Paulists generally, that the bishop sought to exercise some gentle oversight by determining how many Paulists may serve the not inconsiderable number of young and impressionable Catholics on a local college campus, and what sorts of pastoral work they would be authorized to undertake in that regard, is hardly to be considered draconian.
D’Aurora’s overheated reaction to a bishop exercising oversight in what could only be described as a pastoral manner, given the untrustworthy nature of the Paulist apostolate, is more than generous. That as a result the Paulists overreacted and chose to pull up stakes entirely is not to be laid at the bishop’s door.
Also, in the same column, D’Aurora sounds the alarm:
“Beyond his aversion to the truth, Fernandes is blind to the reality about him. For years, the Catholic Church has been losing members and has failed to recruit enough priests. Fernandes sees the need to close 15 of his churches as ‘an adventure.’ Memo to Bishop Fernandes: Your ship is taking on water. This is an emergency and time to rethink everything.”
Physician, heal thyself. That a bishop, or Paulist priests, or even a Pope may misrepresent the truths of the Faith, whether culpably or not, is one thing. For D’Aurora to claim that this gives him cover to do the same, and claim the dissembler who holds office makes it so, is quite another. The Catholic Deposit of Faith, as numerous catechisms make clear, and as Bishop Strickland tirelessly labors to demonstrate, is independently verifiable apart from any person who claims to accurately or not represent it, for anyone who chooses to research the matter. Numerous souls do so, and come into communion with the Church as a result, all the time.
The office itself of bishop, Pope, or priest, is not what makes the content of his personal speech in homilies or writings or conversation true. The truth is ever independently true apart from the one who claims to be truthful. The writings and teachings and enunciations of ecclesiastics to be verifiably truthful must always and ever be submitted to the judgment of the Church’s Deposit of Faith and morals. It is precisely the role of bishop to personally ensure this very thing within his diocese.
That D’Aurora or others for that matter are shocked and perhaps even scandalized, in the good sense of that word, to witness bishops like Fernandes exercising their apostolic teaching office is a good thing. We should ardently pray for more of it.
D’Aurora claims a basis for his self-proclaimed capacity to recognize the truth in the same article decrying the bishop: “But the church hierarchy does excel at one thing: losing people. Pew Research reports there are 6.5 former Catholics in the U.S. for every Catholic convert. ‘No other religious group analyzed in the 2014 Religious Landscape Study has experienced anything close to this ratio of losses for gain via religious switching’.”
Worth remarking then that D’Aurora absolves the Paulists of any responsibility for the loss of faithful over these many years, given the long presence of these priests on campuses and in urban areas. And blames the bishops. He does not grant the possibility that Bishop Fernandes recognizes the pastoral emergency and properly credits the Paulists and their devious ilk for the growing bleed of Catholics from active participation in the Church which the writer decries. And that he has chosen to take action which will stanch it.
The business of the Church is truth. Christ is the truth and has consigned the unchanging Word in Himself never to be changed or altered. With the confidence of that same faith Bishop Fernandes knows well it is the mission of the Church to be faithful, not “successful” as the world judges.
As St. Paul, one of the first and greatest evangelizers, taught:
“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So, neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are equal, and each shall receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building” (1 Cor. 3:5ff).
St. Paul says our work is merely to plant the seed of truth and then to let God do His work. A tragedy his namesakes in the ministry failed to take note.
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever (apriestlife.blogspot.com).