May Book of the Month (THIRD Month in a Row!!): The Faithful Departed by Phillip F. Lawler
Reviewed by John F. Triolo

The Skulls of Bishops
            If recent Pew Center data is accurate, roughly a tenth of Americans are "former" Catholics.  Other research suggests that many of those who have not openly apostatized remain ignorant of, or even antagonistic toward, the Doctrines of the Church.  Many reasons for this sad state of affairs have been offered, from the insistence by many Bishops that a few sexual deviants in the priesthood have poisoned public perceptions, to the continual refrain by dissident "Catholics" that the Church needs to move with the times as regards clerical celibacy, homosexual "marriage," and contraception.  For the majority of conservative and traditionalist Catholics, and indeed the majority of thinking people in general, these explanations do not ring clear with the sound of full or, in the case of the dissenters' arguments, even partial truth.  There is, and has been for some time, a general feeling that a straightforward study to the problem firmly rooted in history is needed to explain what happened to so gravely damage the American Church.  The Faithful Departed; The Collapse of Boston's Catholic Culture is more than up to that task.
    
            Phillip F. Lawler's trenchant examination of the decline of public Catholicism and Catholic Culture during the 20th and early 21st century provides and invaluable introduction to the historical, political and spiritual origins of the current crisis facing the Faith in America.  The study uses as a generally representative sample the history, early and recent, of the Boston Archdiocese while eschewing a reliance on easy, simple, and therefore popular explanations.  Mr. Lawler, a native of Massachusetts and a noted commentator on social, political and religious issues and the founder of Catholic World News, dismisses the feeble assurances of many in the hierarchy that the ship has been righted and everything is now fine. He also easily dispatches the glib, ill-considered assertion of the Church's internal and external foes that the decline has been brought about by a failure to replace the Heiliger Geist with the zeitgeist of the 21st century.  Instead, he argues that the current crisis is a crisis of leadership with roots that stretch back to the early 20th century, at least.

 The crux of Mr. Lawler’s argument is that the problems now plaguing Catholicism are the result of the Faith’s primary leaders, the Bishops, coming to consider the Catholic Church as a venerable and respected social institution rather than a vibrant, meaningful Faith and the spotless Bride of Christ. This attitude led to Bishops view their roll more as that of administrators, civic leaders and politicians than as confessors, shepherds and martyrs.  The end result of this was that when the Bishops had opportunities (and obligations) to choose the hard right over the easy wrong they opted to preserve their own influence and comfort rather than defend the Faith.  In the end, Lawler argues, many of the faithful, deprived of leadership, fell away from the Church.

 This somewhat controversial thesis is well and amply supported with historical evidence provided by Mr. Lawler.  One of the most effective examples given of this failure on the part of Bishops to be leaders and faithful teachers of is a series of incidents in 1995 which led to Cardinal Law ask Catholics in Boston to refrain from prayer vigils outside of abortion mills.  After a disturbed man, unconnected with anyone involved in pro-life activism launched, an attack on two abortion mills, killing and abortion collaborator at each, Cardinal Law began to distance himself from pro-life activism. Although Cardinal Law well knew that groups like Operation Rescue had no connection with violence in any of their actions, he still found it politically expedient, as Lawler writes, to “…call for any demonstrations or prayer vigils at abortions clinics to cease” because of the fear of violence.  Mr. Lawler goes on to point out that:

 

 “From December 1995 Cardinal Law Habitually coupled any public condemnation of with a warning to pro-lifers that they must eschew violence.  His statements made it easy for editorial writers to depict pro-life activists as extremists; polemicists could—and did—point out that even a notorious foe of legal abortion like cardinal Law found it necessary to chastise these people for their behavior.”

 

Mr. Lawler goes on to show how that these repeated warning by law crippled Catholic participation in groups like Operation Rescue who sought to peacefully persuade women against entering abortion clinics.  Mr. Lawler proves, in effect, that Cardinal Law was doing the work of pro-abortion partisans for them.

 It would be comforting to believe that this was merely one more example of the moral cowardice of a man already well known for that trait.  In The Faithful Departed, Mr. Lawler refuses to let readers get away with such intellectual laziness.  The rot, he shows, was actually already far advanced in certain parts of the institutional Church in Boston by Law’s day. His arguments make it impossible to disconnect the cowardly actions of individuals from the wider sense in the hierarchy the Church was primarily a civic institution rather than a religion.  Tracing the decline to the supposedly halcyon days of William Cardinal O’Connell’s time as Archbishop of Boston through the accommodationist tenures of Richard Cardinal Cushing and the hapless Cardinal Humberto Medieros to the final scandalous collapse under Bernard Cardinal Law and retrenchment under Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the current Archbishop, the book makes a convincing case. Mr. Lawler demonstrates, with often irrefutable evidence that denial and cover-up slowly became the default strategy for dealing with problems within the clergy as retreat and compromise became standard procedure for dealing with challenges from politicians and the laity.  During the 1970s this moral cowardice on the part of Bishops combined with doctrinal and disciplinary chaos following the Second Vatican Council and the rise to power of a dangerous, secretive and influential homosexual clique in the clergy to cause and conceal the widespread sexual abuse of Catholic youth by sexual deviants who had infiltrated the priesthood.  As any educated reader can guess, this was the foundation of the sex abuse scandal which put the final nail in the coffin of Boston’s Catholic culture.

 Though The Faithful Departed often describes acts by members of the clergy and hierarchy which are grotesque and disgusting in the extreme and though it exposes the hypocrisy and fecklessness of many of those who are supposed to be willing to lead, and even die for, the Church, this book should not scandalize committed, educated Catholics.  Mr. Lawler’s own faith, his love of and concern for the Church, is evident on every page.  Unlike idiotic, dissident critics such as Call to Action, Mr. Lawler does not point out the flaws of church leaders to tear them down but to build up the Body of Christ.  He is well aware, and makes sure his readers are as well, that the problems facing the Church stem not from any intrinsic fault in the Catholic Faith but from the refusal of many Catholics to live their lives in an attempt to adhere to the dictates of the Faith.  Despite the terrors recounted on previous pages, the end of The Faithful Departed is one of Hope; hope that the Church can be reformed and certainty that Christ will never abandon his Bride entirely to the clutches of the prince of the world.

 In terms of style, Mr. Lawler’s writing is engaging and entertaining in spite of the horrors which it relates.  The book is written in a clear, direct language that will be eminently accessible to the average reader.  His wit, when his rather grim material gives him the opportunity to make effective use of it, is dry and positioned so as to take the reader by surprise, even causing occasional laughter, albeit somewhat subdued and embarrassed. 

 The Faithful Departed; The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture surely is not a book for everyone; some of the material is simply too depressing for those of a sensitive disposition.  However, it is a highly useful and well conceived study of a distressing and sometimes disheartening time in the history of the Church.  Any man of good will interested in what has happened to the Faith in America and what can be done about it will read it with great interest. It receives, and deserves, my strong recommendation.

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