Homily on Cardinal McCarrick and Dostoevsky-by Father Andrew Clyne

Printed with permission from Fr. Andrew Clyne, Parochial Vicar, Holy Redeemer Catholic Church, College Park.

Homily – 33nd Sunday O.T. (11.15.2020)

In the nineteenth-century novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s
masterpiece – The Brothers Karamazov – there is a famous
allegorical aside within the dialogue of the brothers Ivan and
Alyosha. In the allegory, Ivan describes this figure of the
Grand Inquisitor, who is a Cardinal of the Church who puts
Christ on trial again.

The Cardinal is characterized as one filled with patronizing
contempt for those whom he shepherds. His principle objection
levelled at Christ is that he came to set people free, but he
didn’t appreciate just how burdensome freedom would be. To
Christ he says, “I tell you that man is tormented by no greater
anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand
over the gift of freedom with which this ill-fated being is
born.” 1 And therefore, the Cardinal and his ilk have, in his
words, “corrected Christ’s work.” “Men rejoiced that they were
again led like sheep, and that the terrible gift that had brought
them such suffering, was, at last, lifted from their hearts.” 2

It is a bracing depiction of a bloodless bureaucrat, one in whom
seemingly all passion, life, and love, have been sapped. A man
who professes to work on behalf of God, but really believes that
God’s Church can only be governed by exceedingly worldly
means.

The inspiration for the Inquisitor is historical, but it really is a
pity that Dostoyevsky didn’t have access to the recently
released report chronicling the career of disgraced former
Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, and the many other Cardinals,
bishops, priests, and assorted other figures that enabled his
sordid activities. It would have proved incredible source
material for the Russian novelist.

Many examples here could be mentioned, but let us consider
this noteworthy exchange between a powerful Roman cardinal
and the then nuncio to the United States, recounted in the
report released this past Tuesday. It is an exchange about the
suitability of McCarrick residing in a seminary after his
resignation as Archbishop of Washington. The Cardinal in
Rome writes to the nuncio the following:

It is not opportune that he reside in [the] seminary. If the
information contained in [Priest 1’s] exposition or other
rumors already circulated were to appear in the press,
public opinion would judge negatively the fact that the
Cardinal resides in a seminary, and some might come to
doubt the prudence of superiors having tolerated this. 3

Let me translate that for you from Church-speak into plain
speak: this is bad because you and I, and our bosses, might not
look so good if it comes to light.

Notice what is not said: this is really bad because McCarrick is
a predator and seminarians are his primary prey.

It is so bloodless, lifeless, passionless, and ultimately devoid of
even a modicum of care and love.

But what it is not, to me at least, is surprising. Years back in
seminary, I remember coming across this passage in a very
different work written by a priest, which struck me both as
revelation and warning.

Approval – divine and human – and the personal
validation that follows rests at the core of clerical
ambition. Power, of course, is always attractive, even
seductive. But in the feudal clerical culture in which many
priests still live, move, and work, it is often the approving
nod of the bishop, his warm glance, that is the ultimate
reward. This wordless gesture personifies a courtly
decorum of centuries past and hints at yet unnamed future
rewards. The secret delight taken in the patron’s nod is
sweet indeed, but its price is diminishment of soul. Here
style takes precedence over substance, deferential
agreement over honest conversation. The priest returns to
his room less capable of living his own life with passion
and integrity. 4

“Diminishment of soul,” the absence of “passion” and
“integrity.” I can’t think of better descriptors of the various
church personages that populate the McCarrick report: men
who out of an overwhelming desire to pass up the ecclesial
ladder, somewhere along the line forgot how to remain
passable human beings.

And the author of that passage really gets to the heart of it: the
desire for approval – divine and human. It is thoroughly human
to desire both – to want the love, the approval, of God and man.
The problem is when we lose sight of the love that is always
guaranteed, or confuse the one with the other.

God’s love is always there. This is what is revealed in the
person of Jesus Christ. As the First Letter of St. John makes
clear, that we are capable of loving anyone or anything in
return, is only possible precisely because of this; because of
God’s having loved us first (1 Jn. 4: 19). And importantly, it is
that love, that perfect love of God alone, which casts out fear (1
Jn. 4: 18).

And I would add, therefore brings freedom. I would venture to
say that the real enemy of freedom is fear. It is fear that stunts
us, diminishes us, and prevents us from experiencing the
freedom of being fully alive. This is precisely why, per the
Grand Inquisitors complaint, Christ has brought freedom. He
has brought the love of God that casts out fear and allows for
people to experience the freedom that only comes from being
rooted in love, and who therefore don’t have to fearfully and
nervously seek it elsewhere. 5

But too often people don’t really yet know that divine love, or
as is all too common in the Church, they have confused divine
love with human love – meaning they take it that God’s love is
contingent upon the love, the approval, of various important
figures in the Church. Consequently, they go searching after
that love, are willing to do anything for it, and because it is
human, it is ultimately capricious, and subject to withdrawal.
And this means that the one consumed by the desire for it,
must always live in fear, never in freedom, because they dread
the moment it might be taken from them. And they will
certainly never do anything that might risk hastening that loss.

The tragedy is that too many of the ministers who have been
entrusted with leading others into the mystery of God’s love –
that love which along produces true freedom – live instead lives
racked by fear. They live lives of fear because they themselves
don’t necessarily know the God who is love, or because they
have so thoroughly confused the praise of their ecclesial
superiors with that divine love, that they can no longer tell the
two apart.

And I would be lying to you if I told you I think that is an
accident. I would be lying if I denied what I believe is true: that
this confusion is deliberate. That the clerical system, as part of
its formation and culture, purposefully equates divine approval
with the approval of one’s superiors, so that the system as it
exists can reproduce itself. How else to explain the incessant
pattern depicted in all its horrifying details in this week’s
report – of men presumably born with consciences who
nevertheless covered over each other’s cruelty and cowardice,
and told themselves it was service to God and his Church? 6

Over time, every con-artist gives themselves away. But in the
meantime, they end up revealing a great deal about the
character, especially the weaknesses, of those whom they have
conned.

Ted McCarrick will probably go down in history as one of the
great con-artists, but he was so effective because he knew his
marks. He, who worked the clerical system so effectively, knew
exactly the qualities of his peers. He flouted his behavior before
other ecclesiastics, practically daring them to do something
about it, knowing all the while they would never have the guts
to do anything. He knew they wouldn’t because they were all a
product of the same dysfunctional culture that had produced
him.

It all puts me in mind of another work of nineteenth century
literature, perhaps one more familiar to all of us.

As that story goes, there once lived an emperor, exceedingly
fond of clothes. In town arrived swindlers who said they
produced sumptuous garments that became invisible to anyone
who was unfit for office, or who was exceedingly foolish.
As it turned out, they produced no real garment at all, but the
emperor from time to time would dispatch his ministers to
check on the garment’s progress. Of course when they checked
on the work, they saw that there was nothing there. It was an
obvious swindle. But lacking courage, integrity, crippled by the
fear that if they said anything they would appear unfit or
foolish before the emperor or other ministers, they said nothing
at all, or they would say such things as “oh, it’s beautiful – it’s
enchanting,” or “it’s very pretty,” or even, “it has my highest
approval.” 7

Of course in the end, the emperor proceeds out “wearing” his
new garment, which because there is actually no garment, is
only his birthday suit. And everyone continues on with the
charade, although it is embarrassing, although it isn’t really
helping anyone, including the emperor and his ministers.
Everyone continues on with the farce until one little child
points out the obvious, “he hasn’t got anything on.”

And with that, the spell is broken, and the chorus begins, “he
hasn’t got anything on!” 5

Why is the child able to say what no one else initially will?
Because he doesn’t have their fears, he doesn’t have their
neediness for approval, for power, for status. He is free where
they are not.

Perhaps it took so long, so painfully long for the Church to
come to grips with McCarrick, for enough voices to say he was
conning us all, because of one sad truth. That there weren’t
enough free people – especially amongst the Church’s ministers – to note what should have been obvious. And there weren’t
enough free people because there were too many fearful people,
fearful because they had not yet come to truly know the perfect
love of God which casts out all fear.

Interestingly, at the end of the story about the emperor’s new
clothes, even though the ruse has now been exposed, the
emperor and his ministers desperately try to continue on as if
nothing has happened. The emperor says, “the procession has
to go on,” and so, “he walked more proudly than ever, as his
noblemen held high the train that wasn’t there at all.”

That might work for that emperor’s Kingdom, but it doesn’t
work for the Church that is called to lead the world to Christ’s
Kingdom, and now that so much of the ruse of clerical life has
been exposed, we can no longer ignore our problems. Averting
our attention isn’t piety, its pathology.

But in the end we will as Church, as the whole Body of Christ,
be able to say what needs to be said, and do what needs to be
done in the way of reform, only if we are truly free. And we can
only be free if we no longer live in fear, and we can only finally
be free of fear if we are enflamed by the love of God. Nothing
else will do it.
And if we are really filled with Christ’s life, then we can impart
that life to all that has become lifeless, even in Christ’s Church.

In our current moment in the life of the Church, the ending of
Dostoyevsky’s story of the Grand Inquisitor takes on even
greater significance. For after his trial, after all the insults,
hurts, and threats that the Cardinal throws at Christ, the
Lord’s response is simple: “he suddenly approached the old man
in silence and softly kissed him on his bloodless aged lips. That
was all his answer.” 6 Only Christ’s love, the love of the whole
Body of Christ, can bring life to what is lifeless – and that too
includes even those lifeless ministers of Christ’s Church.

1 Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Constance Garnett, ed. and rev. Susan McReynolds Oddo
(New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011), Bk. 5 Ch. 5, p. 221.

2 Ibid., p. 223.

3 Report on the Holy See’s Institutional Knowledge and Decision-Making related to former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick
(1930-2017), p. 259.

4 Donald Cozzens, Sacred Silence: denial and the crisis in the Church (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2002), p. 122.

5 The story is a digest of “The Emperor’s New Clothes (1837),” found in Hans Christian Andersen, Hans Christian
Andersen’s Complete Fairy Tales, trans. Jean Hersholt (San Diego, CA: Canterbury Classics, 2014), pp. 55-58.

6 The Brothers Karamazov, Bk. 5 Ch. 5, p. 228.