Siena, Italy, Dec 26, 2018 / 05:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- When St. Catherine of Siena was alive in 14th century in what is now Italy, it looked like it was the end of the world.
The Bubonic plague was sweeping through Europe in waves, which would ultimately wipe out 60 percent of the population. The Papal States were divided and at war. Rich churchmen were buying their positions; bishops were making sure their family members would succeed them. The pope had been living in France for 70 years, and though he would return to Rome, the Western Schism happened shortly after, with three claimants to the See of Peter.
“She lived in really terrible times,” Fr. Thomas McDermott, O.P., a St. Catherine of Siena scholar, told CNA. “And people really did think it was the end of the world.”
The state of the world, and the Church today, is different, though in some ways no less troubled. The new wave of sex abuse scandals and their alleged cover-ups have rocked anew the Church throughout the world.
When St. Catherine talked about the Church, she often referred to it as the Body of Christ, in the tradition of St. Paul, McDermott noted.
“She says the face of the Church is a beautiful face, but we’re pelting it with filth,” he said. “It has a beautiful face, that’s the divine side of the Church, but we human beings are pelting it; we’re disfiguring the body of Christ through our sins.”
While the current abuse crisis and related scandals have left many lay Catholics wondering how to respond, some Catholics have suggested looking to the saints – like Catherine of Siena – for guidance.
Who was Catherine?
Catherine was born March 25, 1347, the 25th child born to middle-class parents in Siena; about half of her siblings did not survive childhood.
At a young age, she became very devout, and resisted her parents when they attempted to have her marry the husband of one of her sisters who had died. Instead, she chose to fast and cut off her hair to make herself less desirable. She would ultimately vow her virginity to Christ, and experienced a mystical marriage to him around the age of 21.
Instead of entering a convent, however, Catherine chose to live a life of prayer and penance at home as a tertiary, or third order, Dominican. She spent several years in near-seclusion, in a cell-like room under the steps in her parents’ house, spending her days in dialogue with Christ.
After several years of this at-home novitiate of sorts, while in her mid-20s, she heard Christ telling her to lead a more public life.
“He said now you have to go out and share the fruits of your contemplation with others,” McDermott said. “That’s very Dominican, it’s from the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas.”
Catherine obeyed, and rejoined her family in their daily activities. She also began to serve the poor, and soon became renowned for her charitable works. She gathered a following of young men and women – many of them from rich families of high social status – because they enjoyed her warm personality and her holiness.
Catherine goes public – and gets political
Once she stepped back into a more public life, she became more connected and in tune with the happenings in the Church.
At the time, Gregory XI was living in Avignon and was at war with the Republic of Florence. He placed it under interdict; essentially the equivalent of excommunicating a city – they were cut off from receiving the sacraments, among other sanctions.
Through her life of prayer and her consultation with her spiritual directors, Catherine began corresponding with papal representatives and the pope himself, attempting to broker peace in Florence and advocating for reform where she saw corruption.
“The papal nuncio to Florence in Catherine’s time is grossly hated by the powerful families in Florence, and he’s hated because the powerful families feel that they’ve been mistreated by the Pope,” said Catherine Pakaluk, an associate professor of economics at Catholic University of America and a devotee of St. Catherine.
“She’s writing to the nuncios, she’s writing to the pope, and she’s trying to prevent this internal Catholic war between these parts of the Papal States,” she said. “And this is before the Great Schism when things get really bad.”
Tempers and tensions were so high that the papal nuncio of Florence was eventually skinned alive in the streets.
“So when we think about things today and how shocking and horrifying (they are), you know, things were pretty bad then,” Pakaluk noted. “The nature of the particular crimes is different, but the tensions were really high and these folks were quite violent.”
Catherine was drawn into the Church politics of her time not because of a misplaced sense of ambition, McDermott said, but because she loved the Church as she loved God.
“It wasn’t her motive to be involved in the politics of the Church, but what was best for everyone and for the church led her into politics,” he said. “But it’s not like she was interested in politics itself.”
As part of her attempts at solving the problems of the Church, Catherine joined the call of many other Catholics of the time for the Pope to return to Rome.
After some correspondence, Catherine set out on foot with her followers to go meet with the pope in person.
“It was a remarkable thing for Catherine who was a homebody to take off on foot for France with her disciples, but she was prepared to do anything for the Church because the Church was the Body of Christ,” McDermott said.
After scores of people pleading with the pope to return to Rome between 1309 and 1377, St. Catherine seemed to prove most persuasive.
During her visit, Catherine referenced parts of the pope’s dream, about which he had told no one.
“It was astounding to him (that she knew about the dream) and he took that as a clear sign from God that he was speaking to him through this woman,” McDermott said. So after decades of exile, within a few weeks of Catherine’s visit, the pope packed up his things and headed back to Rome.
“She’s a great example of a laywoman who had strong convictions about the Church and was not timid about expressing them,” said Dr. Karen Scott, an associate professor of Catholic Studies and History at DePaul University in Chicago.
“It was a very different situation from today, so it would be a mistake to think that it’s an automatic equivalent” to the problems of the current Church, Scott told CNA.
“She was living a long time ago and it was a different time and a different Church and different historical set of circumstances…but she was aware of all sorts of problems with the clergy and she believed they ought to be reformed.”
The legend of the opinionated laywoman
What Catherine excelled at in her correspondence with the pope and other clergy was her ability to balance her no-punches-pulled critiques with her profound respect for the Church and the papacy, Scott said.
“There’s a beautiful balance between clear thinking and the ability to see the flaws…but at the same time to be enormously respectful of the Church and the papacy in particular and to base all of this on her deep spiritual life, a life of deep prayer,” Scott said.
“She’s a laywoman who had strong opinions and views on (Church matters) and took action, and amazingly they paid attention,” Scott added. Amazingly, because she was an uneducated lay woman from a modest background who wasn’t particularly well-known.
“They listened to her because what she was saying was so obviously right and sincere and coming out of her prayer and the Gospel,” Scott said.
In total, Catherine wrote at least 381 letters in her lifetime. Three years before her death, she also began dictating “Il Libro” (“The Book”), a collection of her spiritual teachings and conversations with God that became known as “The Dialogue”.
A significant portion of her Dialogue, chapters 110-134, gives insight into her thoughts on the Church reforms needed at the time. Catherine relayed that the “Eternal Father” (how she frequently refers to God the Father) had told her that the biggest problem facing the secular priests of her time was money, while the biggest problem facing priests in religious orders was homosexuality.
Her frank critiques were considered so indelicate that they were excised from many of the English translations of her book, McDermott said.
“She was writing this in the 1300s, she believes it was dictated to her by the Eternal Father, and she’s always a direct hitter, she doesn’t hold anything back,” McDermott said.
But while her dialogues contain punchy critiques of the clergy, she also urged respect for them at the same time, as they are “Christs” on earth who bring Jesus to the world through the Eucharist.
“You should love them (priests) therefore by reason of the virtue and dignity of the Sacrament, and by reason of that very virtue and dignity you should hate the defects of those who live miserably in sin, but not on that account appoint yourselves their judges, which I forbid, because they are My Christs, and you ought to love and reverence the authority which I have given them,” the Eternal Father told Catherine, as recalled in her Dialogue.
While Catherine was successful at bringing the papacy back to Rome and brokering peace between Florence and the Eternal City, the period known as the Great Schism, or the Western Schism, would begin just two years before her death.
“It wasn’t crystal clear who the real pope was,” McDermott said, noting that even some saints who are now canonized had sided with opposing claimants at the time. “So that must have also seemed like the end of the world.”
“St. Catherine was totally horrified,” Scott said, “because for her, Church unity was really essential.”
During this time, French cardinals had elected a leader as the Pope, and later on, the Council of Pisa also elected a claimant. St. Catherine sided with the claimant residing in Rome, Urban VI, and moved there in the last few years of her life to advocate for him and offer intense prayer and penance for the Church.
When she died in 1380, a result of illness brought on by her extreme penances, the western Church was still in schism, and would remain that way until the conclusion of the Council of Constance in 1418.
“Some historians, I think specifically less faithful ones or who don’t have a life of faith…will say well Catherine really failed, because her goal was to bring the Pope back to Rome to heal the divisions in the Church, but how could she have succeeded if the greatest schism of the Western Church occurs after she dies?” Pakalu said.
“I don’t know that’s quite the right view. We never know the hypothetical of history, we never know what would have happened without Catherine’s influence, and she does at least initially bring the Holy Father back to Rome before she died and that was pretty important,” she said.
“My guess is that the Church was able to survive the Great Schism because she got certain things lined up before she died.”
Catherine’s lessons for Catholics today
“What would she say today? I think that’s a dangerous question,” Scott said, “because we can’t say how she would relate to the current issues and complex questions, except that she would know very well what the moral stance is, that bishops and priests and lay people should all follow.”
Catherine would set the highest of standards for honesty and integrity and pastoral concern for the laity, Scott said, as well as the highest standards “for avoiding schism and being close to the papacy.”
“Beyond that I think she would advise people to take the time to pray and discern and not have knee-jerk reactions to things,” she added.
Pakaluk said that she thinks there are three lessons to be learned from Catherine’s life and example, with the first being that any activist role in Church politics must be rooted in deep prayer and love for the Church.
“I wouldn’t say don’t get involved until you’re as holy as Catherine … but to do activism or public ministry without that deep commitment to prayer would be completely absurd and would not be faithful to her life or her example,” she said.
The second lesson, she said, would be to take the long view of history. The Church has survived hard times and scandal before, and she can survive them again.
“I am horrified at outraged at what I’m seeing and hearing about” regarding the current scandals, Pakaluk said.
“But I’m not personally disturbed, my faith isn’t challenged, because I’m so familiar with (ages) in the Church’s past, particularly and especially the one that Catherine lived through, in which there was so much corruption and so much disappointment on the part of the faithful with respect to the hierarchy and some members of the clergy,” she said.
“So it doesn’t disturb me because I think well, why would it be different? Why would we think we’re better? Why do we think we’re completely immune to some of the things that have occurred in the past?”
The third thing Catholics can learn from St. Catherine is that it is possible to be a saint even in the most trying times in the Church, Pakaluk said.
“She’s there in Heaven, she ran the race, she made it,” she said. “We can look at her not only like ‘we can do it too’, but she’s our older sister, and we can follow her and ask her to intercede for us.”
McDermott said that Catholics should be heartened by St. Catherine’s witness because even while she prolifically wrote about the problems of the Church, she never once hinted that she was thinking about leaving.
“She would’ve said don’t leave the Church, this is the human, sinful side of the Church that is being reflected. And the good of the church – stay and purify it,” he said.
“Our love for Christ and the Church – the two are inseparable – is shown in hard times when it doesn’t feel very good to be a Catholic, that we keep on walking with Christ and the Church.”
This article was originally published on CNA Sept. 16, 2018.
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Thus wrote Mahatma Gandhi: “The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience”.
Conscience means to act with knowledge. Cardinal Marx addresses the tension between reason and doctrine favoring doctrine with exceptions such as homosexuality. If reason is the rule of truth then revealed truth is not. “What moves us to believe is not the fact that revealed truths appear as true and intelligible in the light of our natural reason: we believe ‘because of the authority of God himself who reveals them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived’” (CCC 156). Man has the inherent capacity to identify truth that is the basis for forming conscience and responsibility for his actions. That is why Aquinas acknowledged that reason is the measure of truth not the rule.
I have ALWAYS believed that people making rules and judgemments must be a participant in the society in which they govern. Cardinals and Bishops and priests when they are MARRIED seem to have a better understanding and ability to govern on this subject! It is ludicrous to allow this. Much like a married couple should explain Marriage to Teens not a priest. Gosh this is quite a step in the wrong direction!
I suppose in your vision of Church governance Jesus need not apply.
According to CNA German and the German language portal kath.net, what Cardinal Marx has said smacks more of situation ethics than what appears in this current article. Following kath.net (‘Conscience decision of homosexuals must be respected’) the Cardinal warned against ‘blind rigorism’ in sexual morals. ‘Of course there must be a responsibility with regard to the gospel and the teaching of the Church, but (finally) the conscience decision made in freedom must be respected.’ Depending on CNA German the Cardinal stated that ‘questions of sexual morals are decided by your personal – though formed by Christian principles – conscience.’ And again ‘there must be respect for one’s decision made in freedom.’ The Kardinals assertions go well together with the ‘Königsteiner Erklärung’ in which the German bishops after ‘Humanae vitae’ put the decision of the ‘personal conscience’ above the norm of the encyclical regarding contraception. One is reminded of the guidelines of the Maltese bishops on ‘Amoris laetitia’ saying that a divorced and remarried person should be admitted to Communion if, “with an informed and enlightened conscience”, they believe they are “at peace with God”. These guidelines were reportedly acknowledged with gratitude by Pope Francis (http://www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/pope-francis-thanks-maltese-bishops-for-amoris-laetitia-guidelines).
The post pedophilia era, if there is a post, places the church in a somewhat deleterious fall out. Promises made by Pope Francis to “clean house” of criminal hierarchy began with a tribunal that was short lived. Compounding that false start was a rare display of acknowledgement to two Cardinals that were criminally responsible for moving criminal priests in Boston and Los Angeles. How does a faithful lay person remain so in light of these atrocities against innocent young people? Then we hear all about how our conscience should be involved in sexual matters from clergy who are supposedly a-sexual.
When it comes to restricting the ordination of women, we are living in a netherworld of old manmade tales. Women would make better, less complicated priests. The church may not have spent $1.5 billion to lawyers and the injured children in retribution had there been female clergy.
One day as he was driven up Riverside Drive William Sloan Coffin was asked what he, a Protestant minister, though of the current Catholic Church? He quipped… “they are still trying to steer the car based on what they see in the rearview mirror”. That is a saying any Catholic should remember.
“The church may not have spent $1.5 billion to lawyers and the injured children in retribution had there been female clergy.” The recent (and ongoing) spate of stories about female teachers engaged in sexual relations with teenage boys would indicate otherwise. But perhaps I underestimate the moral propriety of the fairer sex.
You need to stop perpetuating the “pedophilia” myth. The overwhelming majority of abuse cases in the Church involved homosexual ephebophiles – aka chickenhawks; intrinsically disordered sexual deviants masquerading as Catholic Priests.
As for the proposal to ordain women is concerned, we’ve all seen what a disaster that has been for the Anglican denomination. You think you’ve got problems now just proceed on that tangent.
No, the solution is to enforce the longstanding ban on the ordination of homosexuals; reaffirmed in February of 1961 during the Pontificate of Pope St. John XXIII. Furthermore, rid the seminaries, Diaconate, Priesthood, Episcopacy, Curia, College of Cardinals and consecrated religious life of homosexuals and return to a culture where virtues of discipline, obedience, humility and chastity are no longer paid lip service. That is the solution.
Exactly right could not agree w you more. Perfectly said. And to this I would add…religious should wear thier religious clothing Priest and Nuns…
You need a mystical understanding of the Mystical Body of Christ in order to understand the male priesthood. The relationship between Christ and His Church is said to be spousal. Christ is the Bridegroom and the Church is His Bride. When a husband and a wife enter into the one flesh union it is the man who enters into the woman. Likewise, in conception it is the male sperm that swims up to and enters into the female egg. It seems clear that the act of entering within is a male act. The male is the doer of intimacy. The female is the one who receives this intimacy. This explains why Christ came as a male, and why male terms like Father and Son are used to describe God, and why the Church is called Holy Mother Church.
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Because of the Hypostatic Union, Christ is One Person in two natures, divine and human. The priest acts In Persona Christi, in the person of Christ. In Holy Orders during the ordination the priest is configured to Christ in a very special way. As such, Holy Orders is in the image and likeness of the Hypostatic Union. The priest is the living icon of Christ. Consecrated women religious are considered to be brides of Christ.
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The priest acts In Persona Christi during the Consecration. In the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist during the Consecration the Real Presence of Christ enters into and becomes one with the bread and the wine. Transubstantiation at its core is a male act. The Body and Blood in a similar fashion enter into the communicant. The Holy Eucharist is a sacrament that is permeated with Christ’s maleness, and gives us a foreshadowing of the final nuptial union that is described in Revelation.
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Women don’t have to be priests to have an impact on the Church. We can begin with the Blessed Virgin Mary and the women disciples. There are many important women saints: St. Teresa of Avila, St. Catherine of Siena, St Thérèse of Lisieux, and St. Faustina for starters.
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Any woman who thinks that she has a calling from the Holy Spirit needs to study the works of St. Teresa of Avila, who is a Doctor of the Church. She wrote extensively about prayer and mysticism. St. Teresa was also a reformer who sought to restore a spiritual focus to the Carmelite Order that had fallen into lax spiritual practices. St. John of the Cross joined her in this reform effort. They both met with considerable opposition to their reform efforts. St. John was taken prisoner, jailed, and flogged.
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The arguments that are being made in an attempt to redefine the priesthood are very similar to the arguments being used in an attempt to redefine marriage.
“On the question of ordaining women to the priesthood, which the German interviewers also raised, the Cardinal gave a short, definitive answer: ‘That really is not for discussion. The pope has spoken decisively on the matter.'”…With all the talk we hear about the importance of dialogue and informed conscience, does it bother anyone else that this is the Cardinal’s quick response to a question burning on the minds of many Catholics, not at all aware or convinced this cannot be changed in the name of, “guidance of the Holy Spirit”? Does it reveal that he does not agree? Is he suggesting he yields in fidelity to the Church’s teaching? #JustAsking