Grief and Anguish: The Church’s Failed Moral State
On all things wrong (and some things right) with the Catholic Church...
I hate warblers. The vocal styling, not the bird: Zac Brown, Darius Rucker…It’s why, even as a Millennial nostalgic West Coast export, I can, have and will never abide or forgive the elevation of Pearl Jam as vanguard of 90’s alt rock. Give me a melancholic Kurt Cobain vocal crack, a bluesy Chris Cornell belt or even a Layne Stayley hot-and-cold grunge/metal hybrid anyday, but 20-something, San-Diego-by-way-of-Evanston Eddie Vedder gurgling into the microphone like Jeffrey Boomhauer? Hard pass. (Most egregiously, Vedder elongated the word “Wrigley” to three syllables in “All the Way”, his 2008 ode to the Chicago Cubs. You should look up the lyrics, they’re truly terrible.) The tragedy (musically, I’m sure he’s a lovely person) is that, of the three, Vedder is the only one still kicking—-and nearly into his 60’s. Or, in his own words from the 1991 hit of the same name, “oh I-I, oh oh, I’m still alive…”
Well, suh-uhhhn, have I got a little story for you…Turns out, after a six month hiatus, I’m still alive, as well, at least in my most aggrieved form. One of the initial reasons for the halt on all Grievous content were revelations in late 2023 that Substack, my legacy distribution platform, was not only allowing writers to publish white supremacist content, but profiting off it via newsletter monetization. Substack was largely obstinate about calls to amend their moderation standards (e.g.: stop making money off of hate speech and terrorist incitement), and the problem has persisted into the current year. Obviously, embracing right wing radicalization for cynical corporate gain is, let’s say, “off brand” for me, so I had to find a new home (same goes for my exodus from the angry incel catcall board formerly known as Twitter). So while the old Grievous site is still up for archival purposes, I’m going to try to see how ButtonDown goes. (Fun fact: if I get over 100 followers, I have to start paying $9.99/month, meaning I get to lose money on all this, not just time.)
So why return? Well, things are bleak out here. Gaza, Haiti, A.I. accelerating the post-labor/person economic calculus, the Supreme Court (full stop), the potential democratic reelection of a fascist North American dictator, men punching women on the street…Not all or even most of these are directly related to Church malevolence (though at least 2 out of 6, which isn’t great), but as the Eucharistic Revival slouches towards Indianapolis to be born, I can’t help but note the increasing disconnect, at best, from the “griefs and anxieties” of our age (Gaudium et spes, 1). So, permit me a few emotive warbles of my own.
Red Sea
About two years after the earthquake which claimed somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000 (or more) Haitian lives and devastated the country’s already strained physical and economic infrastructure, I was traveling on a highway back to Port-au-Prince from Petit-Goave (the coincidental epicenter of the natural catastrophe). We hit standstill traffic, and our Haitian driver pulled to the shoulder to try to skip the line, knowing that vehicles ferrying USians are often given preferential treatment at government checkpoints and roadblocks. In this case, however, the maneuver only put at the front of the action as Haitian soldiers began tossing tear gas onto the road and firing their rifles into the surrounding woods. Turned out, the road block had been set up not by the government but rather by protesters who’d tossed concrete blocks onto the road when they heard then-President Michel Martelly would be traveling in the area.
I often hesitate to share this story, for fear of imparting the wrong message. We weren’t, at that moment, caught in some act of “Haitian violence” or unrest, but instead bearing witness to the violence and unrest engendered by a global economic political order of exclusion, indifference and geo-racial animus. The United States itself has a long history of direct, self-interested intervention in Haiti, including establishing the Haitian military and consolidation of power in Port-au-Prince during an early-20th Century occupation, and propping up the brutal Duvalier regime as part of a broader Cold War strategy of supporting right wing totalitarianism as an alternative to Communism in countries considered ripe for social unrest and Communist sympathies.
I bring all this up not only because of the recent escalation of criminal violence in Haiti itself, but because the Biden Administration’s unwavering military support for Israel in its indefensible onslaught against Gaza perfectly mirrors the narcissistic, cruel, anti-life foreign policy mentality which has historically governed both major political parties. And, in case that seems too extreme or uncharitable a position, take Biden at his own words: in 1994, when the US was preparing to take military action following the successful coup against Haiti’s first democratically elected president, then-Senator Joe Biden said the following in his objection to offering military assistance: “If Haiti — a God-awful thing to say — if Haiti just quietly sunk into the Caribbean or rose up 300 feet, it wouldn’t matter a whole lot in terms of our interest.” Replace “Haiti” with “Gaza” and “Caribbean” with “Mediterranean,” and you have a near-perfect encapsulation of our president’s practical approach to the ongoing genocide.
Ask and You Shall Deceive
There are other parallels, for both the Church and the broader humanitarian world (which we can still consider the Catholic Church a part, Bishop Barron’s of the world notwithstanding). As reported by Global Sisters Report, in the three years of unrest and increased crime following the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, “kidnappers have focused on the country’s few higher-income professionals and those they believe will be able to secure large ransoms. In impoverished Haiti, that includes clergy and religious.” Unlike the targeting of Church officials and ministers during Cold War era conflicts in places such as El Salvador and Guatemala, the motivation for these kidnappings is due more to a perception that “clergy are rich because many Catholic schools are upscale institutions that own houses and cars” than any political stances—indeed, if there is a political motivation, it may be that the Church is not seen as radical enough, with its history of state appeasement and the fact that “many Haitians still see it as part of the power structure in the country…”
That, too, has Cold War parallels. The Church has a long history of institutional collusion with the Western socio-political power structure, even when it imperils ministers of the faith. I’m not criticizing the local Church in Haiti, but global Church leadership (yes, even up to Pope Francis), is increasingly proving itself wholly ill-equipped to address a world in crisis, either rhetorically or practically. Take the watered-down rhetoric and obfuscation of guilt and scale regarding what Israel is actually doing to the Palestinian population, in Gaza and elsewhere. Even in calling for a ceasefire this past March, Pope Francis took couched his statements in a generalized “stop the war,” “thousands of dead” appeal which made no distinction of the fact that Gazan deaths amount to at least thirty times the number of Israelis killed in the October 7th attack or that Israel is targeting hospitals, children, journalists and relief workers, nor does it offer any note or critique of the fact that Israel’s campaign of urban destruction, mass death and forced starvation is being waged against half a million Gazans under the nominal justification that a governmental authority which doesn’t answer to civilians won’t release roughly 100 hostages.
Look, I am glad that the Pope is calling for a ceasefire, and that our own US Bishops have done the same. But given the scope and lopsided nature of this horror, that the latter body also frames the ongoing genocide neutrally as the “Israel-Hamas war” and a “conflict” demonstrates how ingrained the leadership of our Church is with that of our nation/world. Indeed, when the first call for a (temporary) ceasefire on the part of our episcopate came back in December, it was not seemingly spurred by general dismay over the plight of civilians, but rather by “the killing of two Christian women and the wounding of others inside Holy Family Parish in Gaza.” Presumably, there is a hierarchy of human dignity here, with Catholics/Christians coming first, then (non-Arab) Israelis. Presumably, Muslim Palestinians factor somewhere in this calculus, although it’s not entirely clear where.
Lax Christi
Charitably, one imagines that the Church’s own history of rampant antisemitism plays at least some part in current deference to Israel and its “right to exist” (a right that, apparently, does not extend to the victims of their onslaught). Fair, although it’s telling that there seems to be far less concern over the Church’s continuing association with a similarly sticky history with Islamophobia, Quite the opposite: today, Crusader iconography is standard among the Catholic right, the Church solidified its strategic/brand alliance with Republicans during the post-9/11 era, and the US hierarchy’s favored presidential candidate in the past two election cycles launched his political career by hurling “Muslim” as a slur against his predecessor.
There is another way (of the Cross), of course, although one admittedly too often at the fringes of Catholic social engagement. Take the life and witness of Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, who passed away this month at the age of 94. In addition to co-founding Pax Christi USA and Bread for the World (organizations advocating for and working towards peace and an end to global hunger, respectively), his life’s work serves as a poignant counter-witness to many of the failings of his brother bishops and Vatican officials: he was arrested for protesting against the US invasion of Iraq; he visited and openly criticized US policy towards El Salvador and Nicaragua during the Cold War; he supported medical missions in Haiti. He even expressed solidarity with Palestinians, processing alongside them to the West Bank separation wall in 2008.
Curiously (or not), the National Catholic Reporter references Palestine alongside the above-mentioned conflicts/crises in a July 2023 article about Gumbleton’s life and legacy, but not in his post-October 7th obituary. But then, this “good liberal” publication also recently published a pandering “both sides” prayer for “finding balance in the Holy Land” by Fr. Thomas Reese, SJ (not exactly Romero impelling the Salvadoran Army lay down its arms), and in an article detailing the commitment of Catholic Relief Services to remain in Gaza following Israel’s attack on World Central Kitchen relief worker, NCR not only gives full credence to Israel’s description that the attack was a “mistake” (despite evidence to the contrary), but provides a lengthy description of the aforementioned Holy Family Parish attack without noting that the victims had been shot by Israeli soldiers (instead, the attack is framed as a general consequence of the war).
Left Behind
Amid all this hedging, it’s particularly obtuse of the Vatican to declare medical gender transitioning as “threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception” in its recent, hypocritically named Dignitas Infinita document. As others have observed, the document’s “analysis” of “gender theory” displays galling ignorance and an audacious lack of academic rigor. But I think it’s also indicative of the Church’s decline into partisan hackery that the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the faith would shoehorn discussion of transgender identity (as opposed to merely rights) alongside “grave violations violations of human dignity” such as poverty, war, the plight of migrants, human trafficking, sexual abuse, violence against women, and even abortion and euthanasia. As the saying goes, one of these things is not like the other: these other issues all either represent actual malignant violence or, in the case of the latter traditional “life” issues, an argued mortal consequence. (Bishop Gumbleton, by the way, was also a staunch advocate for LGBTQIA rights.)
An associate on Facebook recently reposted a long “explication” of how Jesus was “not actually Palestinian,” rebutting a common appeal from liberal Christians to identify the presence of Christ in the victims of the Israeli assault on Gaza. Historically suspect as the right wing counter might have been, it exposes the limitations Catholic moderate thinking itself in articulating a stance on the violence, particularly in terms of theological coherence and moral imagination. The dignity of Palestinian (or Haitian or Iraqi or Ukrainian) life owes nothing to the historical ethnic, cultural or religious lineage of the man Jesus of Nazareth, and everything to the God who made them and the Christ who is present within each of us. To the extent that the fact of Jesus can guide any moral calculation, it’s in his articulated alignment with the oppressed.
I know I likely won’t win many friends on the left by pointing out its many (many) moral failings in relation to the crises of our age. And yes, much like partisan politics, the “other side” is far worse on literally every single issue…(I was going to say “affecting the poor and vulnerable,” but that is far too generous). But just as President Biden faces increasing, fully justified backlash from the left for his implied “let it fall into the sea” Gaza policy, the Catholic left (what’s left of it, anyway) deserves and needs righteous, prophetic backlash for its equivocations, Western cultural myopia and, frankly, moral cowardice when it comes to the violence being committed against the least among us.
G. Fault