”Why am I Catholic?” ... author Garry Wills Tuesday, August 27th, 2002

On Tuesday evening August 27th about 200 people filled the Sanctuary at Pax Christi Catholic Community in Eden Prairie to hear Garry Wills’ talk entitled Why I am a Catholic. The title of his talk is also the title of his current book. The evening was sponsored by The Leaven Center. I spotted at least eight St. Joan of Arc members in the audience-including Father George Wertin. The talk was 1½ hours. Most of the time was filled by questions from the audience and responses by Wills. Afterwards, attendees were given the opportunity to purchase the book and have it signed by the author.

In addition to authoring Why I am a Catholic, Garry Wills is also the author of: Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit, and the Pulitzer Prize winning, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America among many others. He is an Adjunct Professor of History at Northwestern University in Illinois.

Wills began by saying that he wrote Why I am a Catholic in response to the criticism he received when Papal Sin was published a year ago. Papal Sin is basically an uncovering and criticism of abuses of power and deceit by the papacy. Wills feels the papacy could redeem itself by telling the truth and admitting its wrongs. He hopes that will happen soon. He did not give the impression of believing Pope John Paul II will be the instrument of change. Perhaps the next Pope will be.

After Papal Sin was published, Wills said a lot of people questioned his Catholicism and asked him why he remains in the Catholic Church if he so apparently does not believe in it. William F. Buckley, Jr. said that it is a personal torture to him that Garry Wills is still in the church. To laughter from the audience, Wills assured us that he does not remain in the church solely to give William F. Buckley grief.

Wills said he believes strongly that there is nothing better then his baptism into the community of believers. His strongest theme for the evening was: The church is not the pope. The church is the people. He reiterated this belief many times in many different ways. He does not leave the church because he firmly believes that change can only come from within the church. He quoted G.K. Chesterton: “The severed hand does not heal the body.”

Furthermore, there is no such thing as a “perfect” church. Why just take a sample of this and that from each one? I like this about that church but not this. To sample churches is to do so as an individual, not as a community. Church is community, not the individual person. To work to “perfect” church as a community is what we should do.

What went wrong? How did the church go from a democracy in the early days to a monarchy? How did we get from married priests to celibate, non-married priests? How did we allow women to be denied the priesthood?

Wills says the basic answer to all of the above questions is: As the church aged and grew, it picked up the social standards of the ages and cultures it lived in. In some cases the church has refused to change its habits. The leadership will often claim this is the way it has always been done. However, changes have been made to some of the churches rituals and traditions. If there were never changes, the church would still have torture chambers.

Wills gave a few examples:

• Latin Mass-When Vatican II changed the Latin Mass to the vernacular a lot of people were very upset, including Priests who had spent years learning Latin in Seminary. It was said that the Latin Mass is the “true” way to say Mass. Wills says the Mass was probably originally Aramaic (the language Jesus spoke), then Greek. Once Christianity spread to Europe where Latin was the vernacular (of the educated anyway!), the Mass language was changed to Latin. It’s a good thing that the Mass is now said in the vernacular. Would Jesus at the Last Supper have turned his back to the Disciples and said: “I’m going to do something important soon” but in a language none of them could understand?
• Celibate Priesthood-Both Peter and Paul were married. No one required priests to be single and celibate until the aesthetic movement came into fashion. People who deprived the body and led a simple life were considered holy. At that time, people looked to their priests and decided that for a priest to be as holy as the aesthetics he had to be celibate. Today, people say priests have to remain single or else they will be distracted by their spouse and family and not have enough time for their flock. To this argument Wills said: Do you ask a doctor before they give you a prescription that will help you if they are married? If they say yes do you refuse to accept the prescription because it will probably be wrong because they may have been too distracted by family to do it right? Then Wills spoke for several minutes about a female Associate Director (she used to be called a Chaplain until the church got nervous) in his church community who has 8 children, was widowed and married again, and always has time for the community.
• Women Priests-It is correct to say Jesus did not ordain women. Jesus did not ordain anyone! The word Priest was not used in the early church. The words disciple, apostle and follower were. There were definitely females among Jesus’ followers. Neither Peter nor Paul called themselves Priests. The denial of women to the priesthood is simply a response to the social and cultural beliefs and practices of much of history. Women were long thought inferior to men. However, times have changed and are changing quickly. Thirty-years ago it was believed to be a waste of time for a women to go to college because she would leave to get married. Now look at all the women who go to college and complete the program. Wills believes he will see a woman ordained in his lifetime.

Wills mentioned the current sexual abuse scandal in the church a couple of times. He was in Dallas during the Bishop’s meeting and he believes the Bishops are scared to death. He said the document on sexual abuse produced from the meeting is stronger then most people realize. The Dallas meeting was in itself unprecedented in the history of the church. You had a forum where lay people were directly addressing Bishops in a public forum in front of television cameras. Also, the Bishops did not follow some of the directives from Rome. They said the Vatican does not realize how serious this issue has become to our parishioners. Unfortunately, he also said that he thinks the Vatican is more closed now then it was before Vatican II.

So is there any hope? Wills responded:

Janice LaDuke was baptized at St. Joan of Arc but her parents left St. Joan's in the early 70's and went to a "less radical" Catholic church instead. She's very glad to have found her way back to St. Joan's in 1994!! Janice is a librarian by profession and has been working in the library of a healthcare consulting firm since 1997. In her spare time, she enjoys listening to all kinds of music and working on her home near Como Lake in St. Paul. Janice is also Echo Thoren's assistant every Sunday at the 11:00 a.m. service.

• People are the church, not the pope. With that in mind, it is not fair to say the church is against homosexuality and birth control. The church is not against those things, the pope is.
• Wills asked the audience: Raise your hand if the recent sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church has caused you to lose your faith. No one raised their hand.
• The Catholic Church has done and continues to do great good with: missions, charities, decrying capital punishment and championing the rights of the working poor.
• The church (meaning the people) are living Vatican II, the Vatican is not.
• Wills hopes the next Pope will continue and renew Vatican II

Photos courtesy Joni Apt and Pax Christi Church